Atlanta's War on Density (power lines, luxury, utilities)

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

While you're certainly not wrong, and indeed cities do suffer from the GPS, it is important to note how that manifests. Theoretically a city doesn't have to be sprawled to suffer from the GPS, since the GPS is, first and foremost, about the relation between infrastructure spending and returns on investment. It's entirely possible to have a city that is dense, but still spends more on supporting infrastructure than the tax base would otherwise allow.

That said, in practice it's rarely that actual density is worse off than sprawl.

I don't know. I would suspect the slightly older suburbs that developed with the first waves of auto-orientation are the most likely to be suffering. Then again, I would be surprised if the entire metro wasn't suffering from this to some extent, including the City of Atlanta.

I don't have enough data, nor do I have the tools to make even good back-of-the-napkin analyses on this stuff.




Yeah, sure. Detroit. Funny how it takes a full local economic collapse for a city's urban density to really die. I, for one, would rather that didn't happen to us, though.

Density is a sign of demand for living in an area, just as traffic is the sign of an active economy.




As was pointed out already, this wasn't necessarily true until more recently. Also, there is tons of value to living in an urban setting that can, and in many places does, outweigh the additional housing costs. Lower transportation costs, less distance to supporting social institutions, less distance to shops, etc.

Also, the suburban neighborhoods are quantitatively not cheaper than urban density in the long run considering just how fiscally unsustainable they are for governments to support.

Funnily enough, where I live now, one of the few nearly walkable parts of my town, was actually quite a bit cheaper than other locations further away from downtown and the older density of the core town.

It also is the mode that's received the most legal, and infrastructural support over the past 6 or 7 decades. When you make density and urban development all but illegal, then provide far more funding for auto-oriented infrastructure rather than

Yeah, having worked quite a bit while in school to pay for my own rent so my family would spend less on my education, and now working enough to entirely support myself on my own paychecks, obviously I'm just blind to the real world. No matter how all my positions are based on the available data and analysis. I'm just trying to make things more expensive despite the policies I advocate for ultimately having the exact opposite effect.

You like to talk about fiscal unsustainability, but its pretty rare for suburbs to have financial trouble. Inner cities have. NYC had a severe crisis in the 70s. 4 more years of Shirley Franklin and Atlanta may have been in the same type of mess.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

You like to talk about fiscal unsustainability, but its pretty rare for suburbs to have financial trouble. Inner cities have. NYC had a severe crisis in the 70s. 4 more years of Shirley Franklin and Atlanta may have been in the same type of mess.

Cities in the 70s were suffering from the long-term effects of mass-exodus. White and middle-class flight combined with the far less productive land-use policies associated with 20+ years of auto-centrism combined to hollow out many cities' financial bases.

They had too much infrastructure, and not enough of a tax base.

It just so happened that, at the time, similar infrastructure burden issues for those cities' suburbs were hidden behind the years of recent spending and growth. Aka, they were in the Growth Ponzie Scheme without realizing it. Not only that, but many suburbs were not even built yet, meaning it would be a while before they started showing the signs associated with built in generational decay. The GPS operates on the scale of generations and full life-cycles, after all.

The town I'm currently living in is just like many of Atlanta's suburbs, though with slightly more high-tech industry, and yet it is well into the GPS, by my math and the City Manager's own admission.

Given the work done in other cities, you can look at their infrastructure burdens vs. tax revenue and compare it to similar build environments within the Atlanta metro.

I wish I had solid numbers for the metro as a whole (and I'm kinda sorta working on some back of the napkin stuff for Atlanta), but for now the best we really have are examples from elsewhere.

Just because the core cities have had issues in the past, does not mean the suburbs are not setting themselves up for their own failures.

[brown_dog_us]

I've spent some time thinking about a way to measure a city's financial state quickly and easily, but so far I got nothing. Perhaps bond ratings, but I couldn't find a quick list to work off of.

My WAG is that Roswell is the most financially stable city in the metro area. They have already been through the growth period and now they are firmly in the cycle of maintenance of the infrastructure. Alpharetta would be my second guess. Atlanta wouldn't be at the bottom of the list, but it definitely would be in the bottom half.

My guess is that the wealth of a town drives it's financial stability far more than density. Expensive homes generate higher taxes, and higher taxes pay for infrastructure. It costs the same money to pave a mile of road in Roswell as it does in any other city in the area.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

I've spent some time thinking about a way to measure a city's financial state quickly and easily, but so far I got nothing. Perhaps bond ratings, but I couldn't find a quick list to work off of.

My WAG is that Roswell is the most financially stable city in the metro area. They have already been through the growth period and now they are firmly in the cycle of maintenance of the infrastructure. Alpharetta would be my second guess. Atlanta wouldn't be at the bottom of the list, but it definitely would be in the bottom half.

My guess is that the wealth of a town drives it's financial stability far more than density. Expensive homes generate higher taxes, and higher taxes pay for infrastructure. It costs the same money to pave a mile of road in Roswell as it does in any other city in the area.

Atlanta suffered for decades from white and business flight that stripped millions from it's coffers.
There was a time, when Roswell and then Milton Co couldn't pay the bills and had to merge with Fulton to prevent bankruptcy.

[brown_dog_us]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Atlanta suffered for decades from white and business flight that stripped millions from it's coffers.

That's partly why I think it's wealth instead of density. I'm sure a lot of Roswell's early growth was due to white flight.

There was a time, when Roswell and then Milton Co couldn't pay the bills and had to merge with Fulton to prevent bankruptcy.

Roswell and Milton definitely had not embraced density prior to 1931.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

I've spent some time thinking about a way to measure a city's financial state quickly and easily, but so far I got nothing. Perhaps bond ratings, but I couldn't find a quick list to work off of.

My WAG is that Roswell is the most financially stable city in the metro area. They have already been through the growth period and now they are firmly in the cycle of maintenance of the infrastructure. Alpharetta would be my second guess. Atlanta wouldn't be at the bottom of the list, but it definitely would be in the bottom half.

The 'quick and easy' ways are not quick nor all that easy, and involve a lot of excel and manipulation of the sparse GIS data available.

It requires looking at back-of-the-napkin figures for

Using bond ratings, though, assumes that bond-buyers are aware of all the issues, or have, themselves, done the math on the city's long-range infrastructure burdens compared to its tax growth.

My guess is that the wealth of a town drives it's financial stability far more than density. Expensive homes generate higher taxes, and higher taxes pay for infrastructure. It costs the same money to pave a mile of road in Roswell as it does in any other city in the area.

Expensive homes can generate more money, but they can also be on much larger estates. You want to look at rates, not just pure dollars. Things like dollars in tax revenue per mile of road / pipe / fire stations / etc.

That last one is a good example. If you assume the need for similar response times across an area, then you will need far more emergency response facilities to cover an area with likely fewer people, which costs a lot more per person served. Total costs per person in services go down the more dense you get, even as the total square miles goes down. The total costs shrink to ~20% for areas of 6,000 units per square mile compared to areas of up to 700 units per square mile (page 120).

It is entirely possible to have a bunch of expensive homes and still have them be financially unsustainable due to losses in efficiency like that.

Also, I have to wonder, if you think sustainability is linked to property values only, why you think Atlanta would be so far down the list considering it has the most expensive property in the metro, both in total value and per-square foot, within its boarders.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

That's partly why I think it's wealth instead of density. I'm sure a lot of Roswell's early growth was due to white flight.

Let me put it this way: densely packed high-wealth is more efficient than sprawled high-wealth.

There are absolutely overlaps where densely packed moderate-wealth (and even low wealth) is more efficient than sprawled high-wealth, yielding far better returns on investment for supporting infrastructure.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Atlanta suffered for decades from white and business flight that stripped millions from it's coffers.
There was a time, when Roswell and then Milton Co couldn't pay the bills and had to merge with Fulton to prevent bankruptcy.

Milton definitely fell on hard times but it didn't really have anything to do with the suburban Ponzi scheme.

The suburbs of that era were places like Morningside, Peachtree Park, Capitol View Manor, and Grove Park.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Milton definitely fell on hard times but it didn't really have anything to do with the suburban Ponzi scheme.

The suburbs of that era were places like Morningside, Peachtree Park, Capitol View Manor, and Grove Park.

Nor did I say that.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

There actually are problems inherent to certain densities, and how we handle them. It has a lot to do with...





I know I've posted it here before, but if you don't think those two comments of yours are connected, then you need too read:

The Growth Ponzi Scheme


The Real Reason Your City Has No Money


The Cost of Auto Orientation

It's all a matter of math. How much total tax revenue does a parcel of land generate vs. the total cost of services it receives. Low densities are fine, but only on small, and ironically compact scales. Small roads, small water systems, and relatively close together to limit the costs of emergency & maintenance services.


They are not fine, however, on large-scales, when the wide road infrastructure needed to support the mobility of all those people in their increadibly space-inefficient cars, the much longer piping with more pump stations to maintain pressure, the additional fire and police stations to cover larger areas of fewer people, and the further distances crews need to travel to maintain areas, all pile up against relatively low tax revenues to create a fiscally unsustainable problem.


You can want a low-density city all day long, but there are certain points where that's just not a functional reality. It's not a matter of taste. It's a mater of measurable, objective reality.

I agree about extending utilities further and further out for low density development, and Atlanta region doesn't need any more than what's here now.

Even worse regarding the unsustainable costs of extending utilities for a handful of customers is...

the developers are deciding cities fates, and they singlehandedly determine how a city grows because no one can stop them from buying cheaper parcels of land along the periphery and build whatever they want.

As long as people continue gobbling up whatever developers offer, that's an approval no matter how badly all of the other problems created will be.

For example, developers continue creating new subdivisions further and further out of already taxed roads with one entrance thereby adding to the traffic burden and travel times of everyone along this road by dumping all of the subdivision's cars onto that one road maximizing the negative impact.

Your phrasing of "allowing" low density suggests that cities have total reign over the pattern of growth...

But I think that Portland is the lone city that did this, and what it did to home prices will overwhelmingly be the only lesson remembered.