I Did the Math on My Town’s Cul-de-Sacs. Here's What I Found
strongtowns.org
strongtowns.org
I mean, whether or not that's true is a question of tax rates, and probably also a question of whether you are counting only property taxes paid by residents or other revenues driven by their presence of the housing, including those from businesses enabled by having housing that is attractive to the demographic that prefers suburban cul-de-sac style housing.
> If a cul-de-sac is stripped to its essentials and brought to the bar of the balance sheet, it has nowhere to escape....It exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to provide access to the homes built around it.
Incorrect. Cul-de-sacs, and non-grid suburban road designs more generally, exist to deter access to the homes built around them. Specifically, to deter non-resident access to and traffic, especially high-speed traffic, near them. There are a wide number of reasons, but promoting pedestrian (and particularly child) traffic safety, deterring crime, and reducing noise pollution are among the reasons.
> e.g., roads are assumed to have an average lifespan of 14 years according to our local Engineering Division
But are cul-de-sacs assumed to have that average life? The life of a road depends on wear, which depends on traffic volume, traffic speed, and vehicle weight (immensely!). Cul-de-sacs are designed to minimize all three compared to through roads, and thus should have much higher than average life for the broader class of all roads.
On top of that, you might not even care that the cul-de-sac itself is in poor condition. It's usually short enough to the point where driving a bit on a mediocre/poor surface won't really damage a modern car, especially the ever popular crossover suv types.
There are plenty of gravel cul-de-sacs as well which cost peanuts to construct and maintain, compared to traditional high-throughput roads. They also won't damage your car as long as your drive slowly and carefully.
Not building a road would do a much better job of accomplishing these goals. The road is built for the sole purpose of allowing people easy access to their home.
>But are cul-de-sacs assumed to have that average life?
Assume they have double the life, the road taxes still don't come close to paying for it.
A cul-de-sac gets far, far less than double the traffic of a normal road, and vastly less traffic in the form of heavy vehicles. Road damage is proportional to the 4th power of axle load (according to the US GAO).
Weather-induced (largely water-induced) damage is driven largely by access to water provided by surface damage, which is driven by road weight and traffic volume similar to deeper damage, but also by traffic speed and resulting tire hydraulic action more than deeper damage is. Low-speed, low-traffic-volume roads than generally see personal passenger vehicles and smaller delivery vehicles without many heavy trucks will also see a lot less weather damage.
I’d even go so far to say that this should be a requirement for mortgage origination on a property (tax rate is sustainable wrt ongoing shared maintenance costs, documented it’s been communicated to the buyer at closing), as its in the lender’s interest in maintaining the value of the property. Very similar to HOA fees or FHA requirements of multi family units, and this would prevent local taxing authorities from low balling the tax rate and pushing the costs into the future. “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.”
Don’t force people into highly dense housing, let them pay for sprawl if they want it and can afford it.
That’s the problem with low density housing. If all externalities were accounted for, nobody would want it.
Oh and that includes paying taxes to the local city you’re commuting to for your job.
If Americans will buy $60k pickup trucks and thousand dollar iPhones, I argue they’re willing to pay a few hundred dollars more per year to not live on top of each other in urban cores and enjoy their cul-de-sac (or other suburban neighborhood arrangement), just as they stretch their housing payment for good schools for their kids.
The thing with Texas is that it's growing fast, and cities get an initial windfall when brand new property is built out, which is why they want to see more of it. The Strong Towns hypothesis (which is pretty darn close to proven from what I can see) is that low-density sprawl is not sustainable, because it can't pay for its own maintenance. (And a lot of that sprawl is or will be inhabited by people who don't have $60k pickup trucks.)
It seems like a non-issue that isn’t particular to culs de sac but to any new community where they don’t charge enough in taxes to cover long term expenses.
In my region culs de sac are more prevalent in affluent areas that wouldn’t mind slightly raised prices. And the assumption that property values will stagnate is pretty easy to disprove and just count on increased property taxes.
However, the article talks a lot about increased density, and even says outright:
> Ultimately, though, I think no amount of bandaging with higher tax rates or user fees is going to be a long-term solution
The author presents no no evidence of this fact.
The only way this can be correct is if raising taxes by a few hundred dollars would make those houses so expensive, that people would move out and houses would stay empty. I doubt this is the case, and I see no data to support this for this in the article.
See, there are fully planned communities, where all the common areas ARE priced into HOA fees (they have to be; the HOA covers them, and the lenders DO evaluate the fees to make sure that they either are sufficient, or if they should increase to become so, the home owner will be able to afford them).
And people still buy houses in communities with HOAs.
That's not "all" externalities, but it already shows that people will happily pay for externalities they can understand. An extra $200 a month to the city? No thank you. A $200 a month HOA fee, that keeps up the common areas and features? There's still a line of people looking to buy the property.
There are are multiple small towns around me which are very suburban and have low density houses. They are independent, so they have their own budget -- and they to keep it pretty balanced, at least judging by their road condition. They get a tiny amount from federal/state level (less than 1% of their income). And you cannot say "it is all subsidized by high-density areas", because those towns do not have such areas.
As far as "taxes to the local city" -- the city their residens are likely commuting to gets plenty of money from the all the commercial housing taxes (in 2020, it got 65% of the taxes from the commercial properties)
Seems pretty sustainable to me. Yep, it is expensive and I (for example) cannot afford to live there, but they have no problems selling houses. And they have great parks, too, so I like that they are around.
Of course, a major reason why the neighborhood will become low income is precisely because of the aging infrastructure. Middle income home buyers expect brand-new everything. It creates a cycle of sprawl. On the other hand, it does leave in its wake alot of affordable housing.
I don't see that at all where I live.
I also don't see middle income expecting all new everything. They can't afford it. They can afford a house from the 70s or 80s that needs some TLC. The ones from the 50s and 60s cost over a million bucks because of location and lot size.
There's always new construction available way far out at a middle income price range, there's no history of depreciation there because way far out is a relatively new thing. The previous way far out are those 70s and 80s houses I mentioned above. With the 90s and 00's in between.
I will say though, from having seen a lot of these projects, the examples this author gave are actually pretty low cost. I’ve seen examples where the density was lower, and even though the streets were lower quality, the “unpaid cost” per homeowner was in the thousands of dollars per year. It’s just a wide range depending on the circumstances.
The important thing is not that cities try to force anyone to a particular lifestyle, just that they do the math and balance their books.
Above and beyond that, there’s enormous opportunity for wealth creation in communities by adopting more of the traditional Main Street pattern for neighborhood development, and ST definitely encourages that for anyone who is interested / wants it. But it should definitely be voluntary. Strong Towns is generally opposed to zoning, parking restrictions, etc. which are forms of coercion that badly distort the market.
'Letting them pay' for sprawl implies that it is already priced in, which it is not. Rather, it's often opposite: A few years back back Strong Towns did a case study of their Growth Ponzi scheme hypothesis on a town in Louisiana and found that under the current tax regime, higher density poorer neighborhoods were actually subsidizing lower density and richer sprawl areas:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
Nothing.
The author, along with many strongtown arguments I've read, completely misses the point. A cul-de-sac is not optimized for cost, efficiency, or anything measurable by numbers. The value is in community building - kids playing in a safe area away from a trafficked road, neighborhood BBQs, a place to learn to ride a bike, etc.
Many suburbs don't have access to a park or even parking lot right outside their door, but a cul-de-sac provides a very convenient and safe space
To counter those thinking car traffic still exists since its a road - it does not. Neighbors in a cul-de-sac see kids playing in it all the time and when turning off the main road slow down to a crawl or stop.
EDIT: My comment kind of misses the point of the article - that cul-de-sacs should maybe be taxed higher since they're inefficient from a cost perspective. Most of the article reads very negatively against them though, and the bias of strongtowns bolsters that point for me.
The article is about the cost of things like cul de sacs. I imagine the author is fine with neighborhoods wanting and keeping their cul de sacs... they will just need to pay for their development and maintenance with an appropriate tax.
I think that’s reasonable.
“... a possible short-term solution might be a suburb use tax: the less dense or farther out your subdivision is, the higher surcharge you pay on your property tax, based on a sliding scale. This would not be a penalty on suburban living per se but rather a plan to ensure that the people that get to enjoy the “benefits” of it should pay for it.”
Cul de sac may be better qol than other low density housing, but that doesn't make them more sustainable. And a walkable urban neighborhood with a nearby park avoids the issue.
Saying cul de sacs are necessary for suburbs doesn't address the "suburbs are bad" claim.
If you want to live in a cul de sac you should at least pay more in taxes to keep up the inefficient infrastructure you require for your lifestyle.
Ironically it seems the people that live in cul de sacs feel like they should pay less in taxes for some reason even though the public infrastructure that is required to maintain the positives they enjoy costs more and is inefficient.
One of the reasons older neighborhoods have more amenities sprinkled throughout is that narrower streets and rectangular blocks cost a lot less to build and yield more homes (with the same average yard size) compared to wide curvilinear streets. That extra money could be used for parks, schools, shops, libraries, etc.
If there are people out there who would prefer more pavement in exchange for less of everything else, I think that’s fine as long as they pay the cost of it. But as for me I’d rather have a more efficient neighborhood design that leaves funding left over for other things besides asphalt.
By contrast, the park at the end of the street requires far more ceremony. You round the kids up, and go with them. You have to haul whatever they will play with with you (and back). You sit there as they play. Sure, you chat with folks in the neighborhood, but everyone is a little restless since nothing is getting done other than supervision. Some eventually task nannies with this duty since there aren’t enough hours in the day.
It’s basically a space-efficiency vs. time-efficiency tradeoff. I’ve looked at it from a family raising perspective, but you could certainly consider it from a single twenty-something perspective, DINKs, retirees, etc. and have each shown in different light.
In eight days I am decamping from a dense urban area with 2 amazing, world class parks to a suburban environ. We want to tell the kids to go play outside without the ceremony and the need for dedicated supervision. Because there's not enough time.
I live in a city now and while my relationship to the community is fairly transient (and unfortunately gentrifying), lots of people still have community BBQs and kids still learn to ride bikes.
Strongtowns is a advocacy site and I don’t agree with everything. But they make a great point about inequity and hidden costs. In New York, for example, “cities” are responsible for all road maintenance... towns are not, and suburban towns get to have the state and county maintain major roads, as one example, and usually get more state aid dollars. Suburbs tend to drive up sewer and utility costs as well.
On the revenue side, the throwaway development of malls, etc 30 years ago killed urban commercial districts and left us with a bunch of declining junk as these facilities depreciate away.
This is only true if it is built to high spec, I know some neighbor cul-de-sac in my town are not "Town" roads. They do not get plowed or town maintenance because the builder didn't build it to high enough / correct spec, and the home owners are required to pay for these things.
There are a few other options. Replace the roads less often, make them less expensive in the first place. Gravel roads like in the country.
this is happening in every part of the world. except countries with a low population. i think 5-7 million is the magic number for resource management purposes.
take NZ for example. 5 million. sparsely populated. high density in north island/auckland. i doubt if it would be called 'sustainable' or 'smart'.
More numbers = more water. We don’t live near water and that has to be bought to where people live. Do you know what we have to do get water to people’s taps so it’s water on demand. Potable water.
We have to dig for rare and precious metals. Build more factories to make our cars and steel roofs and pipes and plastic thingies.
For every person born, their foot print is not just the home they live in..but water, land for food, everything from their daily porn to their smart phone to cute teapots and our recreational activities and schools. I mean... let’s make a list. From cradle to grave, what it realLy cost to assure basic living foot print for every individual.
So.. no. We are way past our carrying capacity. We need to be 2-3 billion to achieve. Carrying capacity. In 1975, population of the world was 3.5 ish billion. Roughly half of what it is now. That’s a good goal.
We should incentivise people to live quality lives and not focus on quantity. Only church and state needs more and more lives and people for souls to save and taxes to collect. If we remove the blinders, it is human nature to want to procreate and give the best lives possible to our children who are nothing but extensions of ourselves. But we are leaving a compromised and crumbling world. And robbing them of a future and defeating the chances we have of our species perpetual survival by depleating our resources, habitats and environment.
What we are doing is not unlike sitting on the top most branch of the tree of life as an apex predator and saw off the trunk underneath us because we have been made to believe by church and state that ‘it’s all fine’.
No. We are not fine. That’s all.
ETA: you are not my ‘nightmare’. You are however a social anamoly in this day and age. it is unlikely that our paths would have ever crossed except on this little online outpost.
I come from a very large multi generational family totally (at times) 15 members. I am also from a country with a 1+ billion people and am aware how quickly exponential population growth will eat through the resource pile. I was able to migrate to America. Where will your children and grandchildren go? It’s already a crowded and resource dwindling world out there. However, I do have a dim view of single carrier of source DNA populating and sucking up resources over multiple generations that is meant for the entire species.
There are many rural families even in the USA who have double digit children and I understand the pros and cons. The pros only benefit your family. The cons hurt the whole community. This is called a win-lose situation.
Unless of course, you belong to a cult/religion that encourages this and then I am interested in hearing more about why you made a decision to have 13 children.
Empty space for humans is not in short supply, but I do worry that we are choosing to live where the crops grow best. In my case, that would be pineapples and coconut.
The decision to have 13 children (so far...) has many contributing factors. A notable one is that I found a wife who is probably more Catholic than the pope.
For context: my father was my grandmother’s 14th child at the age of 48. She died at the ripe old age of 93 or 95. I am aware of both the joys a large family can bring as well as the toll it takes on not just the family but also the lion’s share of community resources..that are really meant to be the commons ..that it consumes.
Our family is now spread all over the world. Because most families were similar to mine, it got too too crowded in India. You have to understand that this story began 60-100 years before you started having kids. And India is a lot older than America. So I have the advantage of being IN your preview. A resource crunch can only be resolved by a search for more resources. If the large family was a blessing, it also became the seed of its own destruction.
If you notice..in the USA and on other affluent nations that attract a lot of immigrants, the majority are from countries with a large expanding population. Large families that become more and more unsustainable with each generation. The outflow is due to resources being stretched thinner and thinner.
If in Florida, you are an anomaly, you have hacked the system by capturing more from the commons where others maintain smaller families. But if everyone followed your example, then it would be detrimental.
If you live in a sparsely populated location with sufficient resources and live responsibly to renew most of what can be renewed, then there is a plan. But the country and govt doesn’t have any such plan and if secluded pockets with higher birth rates start running out of resources, they will have to spread out. And the rate of consumption will increase exponentially if their ground resources are already thin(which it’s likely to be)
Because we can’t turn back time, I guess my question to you is if you encourage others to be like you or dissuade them? Alternatively, how do you envision the world if everyone emulated you because it sounds appealing?
I don't think there is a long-term option to avoid hitting resource limits. If one person doesn't grab the resources, some other person will. Consider the Shakers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers From a peak of over 4000 people, they are down to just 2, but that didn't stop population growth. Other people made up for the loss. An example is the Amish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish
I would certainly like to live among other large families, but I would also prefer to delay hitting resource limits. I guess that means I would encourage others who are very local to me, while dissuading those beyond my neighborhood. In any case, exponential growth of any group on the entire planet will wipe out any savings that other groups might make.
This is exactly what happens neighborhood I've ever lived in with cul-de-sacs. These roads have low traffic, slow speeds, are salted less or not at all, and have low speed traffic which can tolerate a few bumps.
high density will only work if it there is a high density pocket of habitation amidst a larger ecosystem connected to other similar eco systems.
having multiple high density townships clustered next to each other has no benefit. it's just crowded cities. not high density sustainable cities. now it's just a red queen situation chasing limited and non renewable resources. and boom! suddenly its all traffic jams within a sardine can. and its sardine cans stacked up and then all the way down.
Different property configurations with narrower, deeper lots. Or houses with no street frontage / shared driveways. (Note: there's a safety tradeoff here with respect to fire truck access.)
I'd be in favor of eliminating light poles entirely in residential areas, even if they were free to install and operate.
I currently live in kind of a weird house; it's in unincorporated land within an urban area. There is no street frontage; we share our driveway with a neighbor. No sidewalks on our side of the street, but most streets have them. We're one of the few houses in the area still on a septic system because connecting to the city sewer would be expensive and difficult. Few street lights. A sidewalk on our side would be nice, but I can live without it. (We have a 94-year-old neighbor with an electric scooter that he built a wood/and/plastic enclosure for that he drives to the grocery store, so apparently lack of sidewalk isn't a mobility issue for him at least.)
That's kind of obvious. Lower-density residents require more roads.
But "disproportionate" is different from "insolvent". The analysis doesn't close the loop on tax revenues vs. expenditures.
Instead, it shows they pay less in money earmarked for roads than is spent on them.
In other news, the elderly’s ambulance fees don’t come close to covering their use of emergency medical services.
People require different services during different phases of their lives.
Also, income taxes exist.
Of course everyone comes in with their own philosophy, but it should ultimately be responsive and accountable to what the public wants, even if it goes against the movement.
"I think no amount of bandaging with higher tax rates or user fees is going to be a long-term solution. ... With any luck, we can use a Strong Towns-inspired analysis to back up these sentiments with hard-hitting fiscal facts."
Why isn't taxing an acceptable solution?
It’s well known that our water infrastructure is woefully underfunded, not to mention the plethora of bridges needing important maintenance.
These issues aren’t being addressed because of the legions of anti tax, pro free stuff Americans. We’ve had it so good for 70 years no one ole at to accept that “great again” will require a lot of taxes or money from trees.
Burying the lede is a form of clickbait and antagonizes the readers. BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) is a reader-friendly approach.
Why just not build the roads and let people do it when they want and can afford it, without stealing money from everyone and redistributing?
Subsidising roads cost is one of the worst thing the government did to the economy and the environment.
I'd much rather live in a world where people have less mobility and there is less pollution, more local products, less cars and less asphalt.
It is not a magic bullet, though. There still needs to be enough base industry to justify a place existing. There also needs to be reasonably good utilities, public services, low crime etc. Zoning is only one piece of the economic development puzzle.
EDIT: It appears that both forms are acceptable in English.
nothing can be truly sustainable when the numbers keep increasing because resources dont renew as the same exponential rate of housing(related to population growth and nuclear families and weight of consumption indices),
what they mean by sustainable is really more housing(and hence more taxes) with the least amount of infrastructure and public services delivered to it due to the high density. this has nothing to do with the public or environment and the only loose affiliation 'sustainablity' has to high density is with city and state budgets because it allows them to bury more deficits while spending like crazy riding on unfunded liabilities on their financials.
anyone who believes that high density is sustainable is taken for a ride and is naive. anyone who sells that is either a charlatan or ignorant. or naive.