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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

I hear that a lot from the StrongTowns-types, but I also observe many of the (financially independent) cities and towns that surround Boston are all financially doing extremely well, in contrast to the prediction that their lower density, less intensely urban development patterns would fall apart once the town/small city is fully built out and goes into maintenance mode.

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Strong Towns are picking the outliers that are not doing well and trying to extrapolate to all suburbs. I quit reading them a few years ago when I realized the place they using as an example was a rural town an hour drive from anyplace that could be considered a city - yet somehow this was supposed to show why suburbs were insolvent.

Suburbs have existed for more than 100 years, start with thee streetcar suburbs (which often feature lots larger than what the new suburbs around me are building). They have already added sewer, water, telephone, eclectic, cable TV, internet, and some of those have been replaced as well. They have already replaced their roads many times over the years.

Sure there are some suburbs that have been badly managed and so haven't kept up. However that is a reflection on the short sighted voters, and not suburbs.

Your response makes me think you are not as familiar with Strong Towns' advocacy as you may wish to indicate. Their focus is not on density vs sprawl, and they are very careful to qualify that dichotomy against other dichotomies along which one may proceed with analysis. Their focus is rather on walkability and the accessibility of all kinds of services -- open public spaces a la parks, grocery and shopping stores, healthcare, schools, cultural offerings and nightlife, etc. To pretend that anything to which is attached the label "suburb", unqualified, is the target of their ire, is lazy.

I quit reading several years ago. Thier focus on walkabilty is good, but they also talk about how suburbs are not sustainable (or did then, and others seem to imply still do), and that position does not add up.

Same. I binge watched and binge read piles of related content on the topic several years ago and the overall message resonated quite a bit (in the “hell yeah, why don’t we do that?!” way).

Then I took that overall very positive lens and started to apply it to what I saw and the financial arguments didn’t hold up to what I could plainly see in the low-density, car-dominated towns and suburbs around me.

How does that square with their place in the timeline Strong Towns documents?

They suggest it takes almost 30 years for the maintenance burden to actually have a fiscal impact.

Rich suburbs do fine. Many suburbs of Boston have high income earners and high property values resulting in sane levels of property tax that actually fund those regions adequately. Most of the suburbs Strong Towns criticizes have $250k homes with household incomes between 40-50k and it’s impossible to tax those residents enough to pay for their infrastructure.

These are towns that were founded in the 1800s at the latest and some in the 1600s...

Were they bulldozed and rebuilt into car-centric development?

From my understanding Strong Towns think "lower density, less intensely urban development" towns are fine. E.g. at 0:57 of the video, it's anything but intensely urban development.

"In this example, a 100-year-old commercial block, built in the traditional style of development, drastically outperformed a shiny new development, created in the modern car-centric style."

I would describe Arlington (1635), Belmont (1849), Waltham (1884), Watertown (1630), Lincoln (1754), Wellesley (1881), Newton (1688 town, 1874 city) as being substantially car-centric with respect to the majority of 21-65 year old residents of those towns/cities owning a car and using a car or car service more than 250 days out of the year. Arlington would be feasible to get by without a car in many of its areas. Others would be much more difficult in the majority of the land.

Speaking as an Arlington resident, I would not describe it as "car centric", although cars are accommodated far more than I would like. It's still a classical streetcar suburb. The majority of Arlington's housing stock is from multifamily buildings within a couple of minutes walk to high frequency bus service (~5 minute wait).

Looking at satellite images I would guess they would not do well financially with the infrastructure costs.

But then I look at the housing prices. TimPC's explanation seems legit.

Can you name some of these communities?

Sure: Arlington, Belmont, Lincoln, Newton, Waltham, Watertown, Wellesley.

Arlington and Watertown are higher density than Lowellor Quincy. Newton and Waltham are not far behind. You're relying on intuition rather than data and it's showing.

I would really only categorize Lincoln and Wellesley "low density suburb". The rest certainly have car centric qualities but they're too built up to be called the exception to the rule.

http://www.usa.com/rank/massachusetts-state--population-dens...

https://www.towncharts.com/Massachusetts/Top-25-Cities-in-Ma...

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