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Comment by otoburb | Hacker News Reader

The article author Charles Marohn addresses this question in the comments section. His entire comment response:

"They are the ones with a very dominant urban core, where the urban fabric overwhelms the horizontal, auto-oriented stuff. I'm not saying these places won't struggle for the same reasons Lafayette will, but I suspect their decline/contraction will be less pronounced, less a defining characteristic.

NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver, maybe Chicago.... I'm not an expert on this scale of a place by any means so I could be very wrong but they don't seem to have the same underlying forces as a Lafayette (or even a Detroit or Memphis) where 80%+ of their infrastructure serves unproductive land use patterns. Might be 20-40% in these places."

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He is inserting his own bias without considering the obvious: Infrastructure doesn't vote.

It doesn't really matter where you are, politics state that money is going mostly to people and not into the ground.

San Francisco, where I live, has loads of revenue and a citizenry which approves every single bond measure on the ballot. And we certainly shouldn't be on his list. Infrastructure issues here are never addressed until they hit a crisis level.

Just the other day there was news about how our seawall which contains our entire financial district is in horrible condition[1], and there's "no funding" and the usual blarble about the Feds bailing us out. Is any other city program going to be cut a dime to fix the seawall? No. From a political standpoint it makes more sense to let the city flood than it does to cut off any short-term political gain.

[1]https://www.hoodline.com/2017/01/as-earthquake-threat-to-sea...

The Author should spend time in Chicago. We've got ridiculous taxes on everything, general sales tax itself is almost 11% now, and nothing in this city works. The trains barely function close to on time, the streets are riddled with potholes, and the police are afraid of PR problems so much crime is escalating.

Also, the weather sucks.

Chicago is fantastic. You should try a few other cities and report back.

Source: Moved out and now want to go back.

Really? I mean, if you have money and can make sure you're in specific areas of the city enjoying specific things, I can see it being great.

But a blanket statement like that about Chicago is very surprising given all of the negative things about its situation (unbelievable gun violence, for one).

Also I can never get over the hilariously bad 75-year lease of its parking meters where they got $1B up front in exchange for eschewing massive amounts of ongoing revenue (the lessees have made $650M+ in revenue in 6 years while sapping the populace dry). Now Chicago actually has to lose money and pay Abu Dhabi any time they want to shut down a street for maintenance or public festivals. Fantastic!

> (unbelievable gun violence, for one).

Gun violence does NOT happen in the "good" parts of the city to "good" people. I mean yes I am sure it happens. But the good parts of Chicago have being shot by a gun odds as lower or lower as any other major American city. (Look at say the Violent crime rate in Lincoln Park or Oldtown).

Deal with drugs or live in a bad area? Yes, not that safe. But I am lucky to avoid both of those.

Parking meter was total robbery. But Chicago has good income. The small town I moved to is like the city in this story. Too many roads that cannot be paid to maintain. My city literally has 0 debt. Not low debt, but like literally 0 debt. But he average salary is 35k, and each year the city crumbles a little bit more. Chicago with the average salary double that, even with debt, is a more attractive place to live.

That parking meter thing is terrible but it probably wouldn't have been politically feasible to raise parking fees to sane rates otherwise.

Also, I really like Chicago. It's a great place to live downtown (and unlike other NYC, Boston or SF, living downtown is not out of reach for people making under $100k).

What? I've lived in Chicago for about a year and its public transit is one thing it does right.

I've only been as a tourist, but I found the public transport to be among the better I've experienced in the US.

Yeah as a transplant Chicagoan I'd have to disagree, on balance our infrastructure is pretty good. CTA works well enough for me to commute daily for the last 8 years without owning a car, and they've been systematically replacing water and gas lines around my neighborhood for the past few years. Not to mention new green / public space investments like the 606, Maggie Daley Park, etc.

Road resurfacing is pretty good where I am, but oddly is largely a function of how effective the alderman for your ward is, since a lot of the cost typically comes out of their budget.

The real problems with the city IMHO are massive unfunded pension liabilities and a huge segregation problem between the north/south sides.

Maybe you should try moving to the north side of the city?

mm-hmm.

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/when-new-york-...

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