Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

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> If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it...

My knee-jerk reaction is to call you an anti-development NIMBY, but that's not actually solving any problem. So let's set that aside.

Your neighbourhoods have benefited from the existence of this vacant land. The city, meanwhile, has costs to maintain that land, police it, etc and have even more costs to maintain the infrastructure of low-density housing in such neighbourhoods. Cities need to increase density, and they need to be able to afford to maintain themselves[0].

Selling vacant land removes a cost and creates desperately needed income in times where all a politician is allowed to do is lower taxes (or else their opponent next election will say that they will lower taxes and get elected).

If you want to have low-density residential areas with lots of green space, you need to petition your government to raise your taxes so that you can pay for it. Campaign for politicians willing to invest rather than lower taxes. Have them convert the land into a local park, using your increased taxes to maintain it.

[0] See everything on https://www.strongtowns.org/

Does policing and maintaining vacant lots actually incur any meaningful costs on a city?

Do undeveloped zones within a high density area help mitigate any externalities of high density development, by providing habitat for predators of urban wildlife, dense plant growth to improve air quality and soak up stormwater, etc.?

> Does policing and maintaining vacant lots actually incur any meaningful costs on a city?

Vacant, unmaintained lands tend to attract crime. I say this from first hand experience- I was a teenager once, and we went to vacant, unmaintained land to commit crimes. We were good kids, mostly, but we weren't the only ones there.

> by providing habitat for predators of urban wildlife, dense plant growth to improve air quality and soak up stormwater, etc.?

I'm all for having dense forests near high rises (more birds! more plants! yes!) but that land is expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, expensive in terms of lost tax revenue.

I simply argue that someone has to pay those costs, and getting mad at the city of being fiscally tight when politicians are elected promising exactly that is silly. You want to have a park/forest/whatever? Fine, but acknowledge that it's expensive and then pay your fair share of it.

In the most recent case I've personally tripped over, the land sold for $110,000. That doesn't seem very expensive to me. Judging by the look of the pads they're laying out, there will be at least six houses soon abuilding, priced per the developer's sign "starting from the low 400s."

I'd say the city is getting rooked, but this is Baltimore. Somebody bought somebody. If you think that's a problem which is susceptible of solution by political processes designed to work in the absence of rampant corruption, then I'd love to hear how you see that working.

But also these interests can often be aligned (preserving open space and minimizing infrastructure costs). The best way to guarantee open space will stay open is to make sure to build higher-density, and not just in the city, after all.

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