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Many American cities have poor neighborhoods also adjacent to downtown. For NYC, you can get to Mott Haven in the South Bronx by a 15 minute subway ride from Midtown Manhattan among the poorest if not the poorest city neighborhoods. A French poster whose made a few posts on this forum stumbled upon it on a NYC trip while looking for a non-Manhattan neighborhood to explore. Transit convenient neighborhoods might be more valuable in Toronto as the rail system isn't as large. Some of the poor inner suburbs (Clichy sous Bous) of Paris have no rail connection to the city center.
True although Mott Haven is pretty much the best case scenario. And that's 15-20min on the subway, not door to door. For Drancy to central Paris, I assumed about 10min of walking to/from the station, it's only about 18 min of RER travel.
For Clichy-sous-Bois looks like the RER will take you most of the distance in about 26 min but then you have to do the last few miles by bus and walking which adds another 34 min when you include wait times with the transfer. It seems to be one of the most far flung of the low income Paris suburbs though (11 miles out).
Rexdale in Toronto is similar if not a bit worse, it's a long way from Rexdale to the subway or even to the GO train. Malvern and Jane-Finch are similar, once you get to the subway, it's only a 25-30min ride to downtown, but it takes 30-45min to get to the subway. West Hill, Tam O'Shanter and Dixon Rd aren't much better. Cooksville (in Mississauga) and Milliken are also 60min+, they're not as low income yet, but incomes seem to be declining.
I think NYC also has a somewhat higher proportion of its MSA population living within 10 miles of the CBD but I would say that the smaller transit network, as well as less historical stigma to overcome are bigger factors.
And there's fewer differences in housing styles, if you want a SFH in New York, you have no choice buy to look at the suburbs or at least very outlying areas of the city, the vast majority of what's near the core is multi-family whether that's large multi-family or 2-3 unit brownstones. You could convert the brownstone to single family but it would be bigger than necessary for a single family and therefore really expensive. With Toronto there's still a lot of rowhouses and small lot SFH in the core, and lots in the suburbs aren't that much bigger.
The few parts of Toronto's core that are mostly older apartments are some of the few areas that are still fairly low income, like St James Town, Parkdale, Crescent Town and to a certain extent Danforth Village and Pape Village. There's also similar housing near High Park or Midtown, but those are next to some of the city's wealthiest neighbourhoods so those older apartment communities are more middle-income.
Yeah, it depends how you look at it. If you can somehow convince all the rich people to move to your town, that works. But that only works because all the non-rich people have a place to live elsewhere (ex Bridgeport). New Canaan wouldn't be the way it is without places like Bridgeport.
Usually if there's a relatively scarcity of large lots, those will get bought up by the wealthy who'll build fancy homes on them. That's what's happening in many Toronto area neighbourhoods too, the homes on 0.25+ acre lots are being bought up to tear down and replace with 5000+ sf multi-million dollar custom homes. Of course if every community had minimum lot sizes of 0.25 acres to try to attract the wealthy, those lots would be much less valuable and just have 1500 sf middle class homes like in Des Moines.
Yeah, it depends how you look at it. If you can somehow convince all the rich people to move to your town, that works. But that only works because all the non-rich people have a place to live elsewhere (ex Bridgeport). New Canaan wouldn't be the way it is without places like Bridgeport.
Usually if there's a relatively scarcity of large lots, those will get bought up by the wealthy who'll build fancy homes on them. That's what's happening in many Toronto area neighbourhoods too, the homes on 0.25+ acre lots are being bought up to tear down and replace with 5000+ sf multi-million dollar custom homes. Of course if every community had minimum lot sizes of 0.25 acres to try to attract the wealthy, those lots would be much less valuable and just have 1500 sf middle class homes like in Des Moines.
CT is an interesting example it's cities are mostly poor with the exception of a Norwalk and Stamford. We don't really have regional government just city/town and then state, this means town lines are very real borders when the wealthy left the cities they moved to the suburbs and as of yet show little sign of returning. Really CT cities are a lot like mini versions of Detroit and it's surrounding wealthier suburbs.
Also most of the towns in CT have very large minimum lots sizes (several acres) this has caused their values to increase rather then decrease, even in towns with population loss. Most of the cities block low income developments as well. So most housing stock for the non wealthy is very old.
CT is an interesting example it's cities are mostly poor with the exception of a Norwalk and Stamford. We don't really have regional government just city/town and then state, this means town lines are very real borders when the wealthy left the cities they moved to the suburbs and as of yet show little sign of returning. Really CT cities are a lot like mini versions of Detroit and it's surrounding wealthier suburbs.
CT cities are mostly stably poor rather than in a downward cycle of abandonment like Detroit. The neighboring suburbs are mostly too expensive for current city residents so the cities are a good deal for cheap housing. Bridgeport is actually increasing population. Income numbers aren't similar at all
I thought the point was intensity of value. Bridgeport is 16 square miles (land); New Caanan is 22.1. I mean, a billion is a big number but not that big. If you figure the average household has three people, it's $150,000 or so per household. Then figure $150,000 is about 11% of what the median home sold for in New Caanan which is a more mentally manageable number. If you just ignore commercial the difference in value between the two on a household basis is 11% of New Caanan's total real estate value but New Caanan has 38% more land area than Bridgeport. Just looking at that, it would suggest that Bridgeport still has higher intensity of value (eg, real estate value per unit area).
I mean, that's circuitous and grossly oversimplified but since the article doesn't mention the total values it's what you've got to work with, unless someone can dig that up. Commercial/residential split would certainly be a factor as Bridgeport likely has more commercial to residential than New Caanan does. That would make the 11% larger. Maybe New Caanan is worth more a per unit area but I'm skeptical it does.
Then again, the real relevant thing as far as whether these places are sustainable isn't which has more value per unit area. Bridgeport spends $51 million on "public facilities" whereas New Caanan spends $8 million on its "public works" division. I don't know that those are apples and apples but the point is Bridgeport does spend a lot more on infrastructure. Eg, New Caanan spends $3 million on roads. Bridgeport breaks it down differently but spends $5.5 million on maintenance which excludes personnel (another $3.3 million), pothole repair costs, signage, street sweeping, and so on. I'm to lazy to go through and add it all up and still no guarantees it's apples and apples. Bridgeport definitely spends more despite having a smaller area though.
But what does that have to do with suburban poverty?
If poverty was traditionally concentrated nearer a city center and then that city center starts gentrifying, prices escalate and the poor are pushed out to the cheaper suburban parts of a city or the actual suburbs themselves. Gentrification doesn't solve poverty, it just moves it around or out altogether to a different location.
You're talking about the StrongTowns article on the Taco John's in the founder's hometown?
The issue there was that the local government used TIFF subsidies to get Taco John's to demolish a block of 70+ year old mostly single storey main street style buildings to build a highway oriented style Taco John's.
StrongTowns disagreed with this because they compared another block of similar 70+ year old buildings and saw that they were assessed for more than the new Taco John's. So why would you subsidize a company to build a less valuable building that pays less taxes but still using just as much infrastructure?
Several questions went unanswered by IC on this Taco John's example. The video explains the expense incurred by the city and the end result being a net loss for the city and the taxpaying citizens. I've also tried explaining this a couple times...and you here again.
I'm not sure how else to break this down. He/she is using this as a counter argument, but has yet to acknowledge accurately what actually occurred on that city block and what the resulting consequences are today.
I haven't followed everything in the last few pages, but the main point argued is that lower density neighborhoods have more infrastructure per capita, presumably mostly in roads. Except roads and infrastructure is just one of many parts of a community's budget, so it's unclear how big of a deal this is.
I've lost track on a few things as the conversation as well as it continues forward and I haven't had the time to get back and participate. I will comment on this.
Beside having to maintain the city streets, you have the curbs, sidewalks, all the underground sewer and water lines that they must maintain and will wear out and need replacing someday.
Here is real-world example of the situation that Lafayette, LA now finds itself in. The graphic shows that while their population has grown 3.5 times its size of 1949, they have built their city in a way that now saddles the city which far more expenses per person as compared to 1949 numbers. 10 times more feet of water pipe to maintain/person and 21.4 times the number of hydrants/1000,s people.
Unless the city is that many more times richer than it was in 1949 (hint: they are not) , this creates a real financial strain as all these starts wearing out and needs replacing. This is the type of things most of us never thought about as we looked around our cities and thought only, "wow...we're doing well as I see growth"!
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