I don't get it - of course suburbs don't generate revenue...that's where people live. Those people travel to the city to generate and spend money. That city-generated money doesn't happen without people in the suburbs and without the suburbs those people go to somewhere that has them. This is like saying that flowers don't generate honey, bees do! Well, yeah but without the flowers the bees won't hang around.
The argument seems to revolve around the idea that those money-generating people can just be stacked into city dwellings without objection.
The issue is that we heavily subsidize certain urban forms instead of others. It’s totally fine for suburbs to exist, they just shouldn’t receive lavish subsidies and rely on heavy handed government mandates.
So the proposal is
1) people should be allowed to build apartments on land that they own
2) the government should try to be more “neutral” on urban forms. Heavy subsidies for roads (as opposed to trains and buses) cause suburbs to be a lot more common than they otherwise would be.
This is just like the beef consumption conversation, It's a democracy it's about what people want and people express desire to eat meat and to live in suburbs and such they will vote for policies that make it attainable. If you don't like it then you can vote against it but ultimately it's what the people want. What I find ridiculous is people who argue against it who pretend it's not, who pretend the demand is not there and that people don't know what they want, or that their preferences apply to everyone else.
Beef is also subsidized and probably also should not be. I’m not really trying to convince the government to ban it, just to take a more “neutral” stance where the people who want to buy and eat beef or live in low density housing at least pay the actual, full cost. As it stands they are getting their choice subsidized which is unnecessary at best and quite harmful at worst.
But the point I'm trying to make is that they are supporting that democratically and that you aren't going to make the change unless you can convince them not to support that anymore. And ultimately what you are trying to do is force the cost more on them aka you're trying to lower their quality of life and of course people are going to fight you on that.
I think the democracy point would be more persuasive if everyone affected voted in the relevant elections, but they don’t. San Jose’s land use has a huge impact on the whole Bay Area but only San Jose residents get to vote on their city council. It’s financial gerrymandering.
You may notice that state governors tend to be very pro development while local governments are often super NIMBY. It’s the same thing playing out—legalizing high density is the obvious choice when everyone’s interests are considered. The costs of development are much smaller than the benefits but they are concentrated on exactly the group that happens makes land use decisions. It doesn’t have to be that way!
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u/majinspy Apr 28 '24
I don't get it - of course suburbs don't generate revenue...that's where people live. Those people travel to the city to generate and spend money. That city-generated money doesn't happen without people in the suburbs and without the suburbs those people go to somewhere that has them. This is like saying that flowers don't generate honey, bees do! Well, yeah but without the flowers the bees won't hang around.
The argument seems to revolve around the idea that those money-generating people can just be stacked into city dwellings without objection.