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Comment by indymike | Hacker News Reader

Carmel Indiana is an example of focusing on growth.

* They didn't do austerity. The whole low taxes run the place on a shoestring wasn't the game. Carmel did not do extravagant government buildings until they were affordable, and paid for by the development around them. For a long time city hall was almost a re-purposed dentist's office.

* Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita.

* People laugh at the sheer number of roundabouts, but those have had a huge effect on public health by reducing both the frequency of accidents and more importantly, most accidents are now lower speed with less damage to life and property.

Yes, Carmel took on a lot of debt. Yes, they invested that debt heavily in making Carmel a nice place to live and work. jim Brainerd, the mayor, knew one thing the article missed: if you are growing, the tax base is always expanding. Carmel was also extremely long-game focused on development: as bonds mature, tax abatements and incentives expire in a way that will enable rapid retirement of the debt.

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> Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita.

I suspect this doesn't mean that everyone working there is paid handsomely. The city instead focused on being the rich neighbourhood of a larger urban area. So, basically, it's easier to be competent when money is not an issue.

> creating being the rich neighbourhood of a larger urban area

When I was five, Carmel was a nothingville with two stop lights we lived in a house my dad could afford buying as a college student. It had all the growth problem of a small Indiana town during the industrial decline of the 70s and 80s. That it got escape velocity from being another broke Indiana town is pretty remarkable.

> easier to be competent when money is not an issue

If it was easy, then everywhere could do it - and the Carmel miracle was getting the money needed to fuel it's growth.

There was a strategy, and a very long-term focus on building a nexus of business and attracting the right support people (i.e. investors, healthcare, education, lawyers...) to attract the kind of people that those businesses needed. The mayor used a book "The Geography of Jobs" as one of his guiding strategies.

I think the point is did the city simply evict the poor people and build nice things to attract rich people? Forget all the escape velocity stuff, I assume they’re talking about gentrification. So what is the diversity of Carmel? Were some of the poor people elevated because they lived in a growing city, or they were they simply pushed out because doctors, lawyers, execs, and engineers moved there because they set up pretty parks and good schools for kids?

I don't think gentrification really makes sense as a mental model for a rapidly growing suburb/exurb. Carmel's population has gone up 4x in the last 30 years. What has been 'evicted' is mostly farms. Almost the entire population is 'new arrivals' relatively speaking. There was no pre-existing working-class population to displace.

Revenue makes up for many sins. And increasing revenue means you don’t need to be as paranoid to never make any mistakes.

Everyone knows this, which is why it’s actually really hard to always have increasing revenue, especially increasing faster than costs.

Poverty and crime are like a balloon or heat. It's relatively easy to squeeze it somewhere else and very hard to actually eliminate it in place.

> Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita.

What exactly does that mean, I'm reading it quite negatively, but the rest of this is positive, so I might be missing your true meaning.

> What exactly does that mean

Carmel did not invest in anything that anchors poverty into the community. They were very careful not to overbuild section 8 housing, they aggressively police blight (i.e. people not taking care of their property), and also required homes to be made with more expensive finishes (i.e. brick instead of plastic siding), so cheap housing was simply not possible to build.

The negative side: police tail old poorly maintained cars, are very quick to move homeless out, and generally make being poor in Carmel a bad experience. The local joke is "you got pulled over for being poor in Carmel".

I read that as “they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve.”

What I’m really looking for is governance that helps solve these types of problems, not pushing them away with the engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries.

> they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve

This is true. A lot of the problems that go with poverty simply moved somewhere else.

> engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries

I think Brainerd's we don't invest in poverty is an interesting stance because on the surface it seems to be just pushing the problem away... but if you look a little deeper, investments in large amounts of section 8 housing attract even more poverty, lower tax rates, thus creating blight, which lowers tax rates more, which requires more subsidized housing and so on. There is a death spiral for cities, and I suspect that over-investing in poverty is one of the forces that causes it.

Is it creating more poverty or “attracting” poverty from somewhere else? If it’s the latter, it’s not increasing the global level of poverty, just the local level.

I would expect a well governed municipality to have the ability to absorb, and ideally mitigate, an increase in low-income populace. To me, raising the lower-limit of quality of life is one of the measures of a good government. I’m just not sure artificially raising it by expelling poor people, or making their life miserable so they expel themselves, is actually doing that on a larger scale. Rather it’s a bit of poverty shell game. Granted, there is a tipping point by which any system will become unstable if it absorbs too much, but again, I think a measure of good governance is the height of that threshold. The discussion about Carmel seems to indicate their threshold is low.

I mostly agree with you, but there's something to be said for keeping the poverty away from city centres, which is some of the most economically productive land per unit area. American poverty seems to congregate in cities, presumably because the cities can afford it, but that seems precisely the wrong perspective.

My hunch is that poverty concentrates in urban areas for the same reasons economic activity does: there are certain economies of scale that are enabled by population density. If you push poor people to rural areas, you’re also pushing them away from the aspects that make their life easier, like access to public transportation, grocery stores, social services, jobs etc. So we’re at the same place where we make being poor harder for the aim of making being rich easier. I think if we assume the economy serves society rather than the other way around, we come to a different conclusion.

FWIW, I don’t want this to come across as a dichotomy, but instead about where the appropriate balance point is.

I always thought this way until I listened to Mayor Brainerd talk about how cities invest in poverty which results in an expansion of poverty, which manifests as low tax income and increased expenses, which limits the city's ability to invest in growth.

I’m not saying that’s wrong, and that discussion happens elsewhere too. My main issue (also brought up by other commenters) is that this strategy can only work when there are relative disparities in wealth. When you say "expansion in poverty" I'm assuming you mean it attracts the poor to the city (ie moves them), and not that it actually creates more poor individuals. (If that's an incorrect interpretation, please correct me). If that's true, every city cannot “divest in poverty” because it’s just moving problem rather than fixing it. It’s a shortsighted, hyper-localized, and some would say selfish strategy because it pushes the problem somewhere else to be fixed.

We’ve all probably worked on teams where a member wasn’t pulling their weight to solve problems. At the myopic individual level, that’s a great strategy because it maximizes their rewards while minimizing their cost. But that can’t be applied globally because at some point someone in the team has to actually start solving problems. We can’t all be the team free loader and a lot of social structures and game theory is about avoiding the tipping point where there are too many free loaders and not enough people solving problems.

It would be like a city having a lot of veterans returning from war and struggling to transition to civilian life. IMO, the solution shouldn't be "remove all veterans services and make it harder for veterans to live here so they take their problems elsewhere." Superficially, and locally, that "solves" the veteran problem, but globally it probably makes things worse. That's not really the type of society I would advocate for.

All I’m saying is I prefer politicians and policies that focus on actually solving root problems. There are many people who are quite fine ignoring those problems as long as it doesn’t affect them, and their policies reflect that. They’re just not the horse that I want to back with my vote, even if it would be materially better for me.

> when you say "expansion in poverty" I'm assuming you mean it attracts the poor to the city (ie moves them), and not that it actually creates more poor individuals

Both of these can be true. A larger available labor market of less skilled workers lowers wages.

Low wages lead to more poverty created.

Bit like how private schools out compete public schools academically. Neglecting to mention how private schools can kick out anyone who would bring down their KPIs.

Private schools don’t really “out compete”public schools at the same price points and relative home “stability”/income bracket. There are plenty of nice public schools in middle class to rich neighborhoods that easily hold their own to private schools. If you want to compare apples to apples. Most of the kids in those neighborhoods do as well as the kids going to private school.

The real problem is the pyramid of needs. In lots of blighted neighborhoods people struggle just to get by, hope they don’t get shot or mugged and can pay next month’s rent. You can shove as much money as you want into a school in that neighborhood and it’s going to underperform because the kids are worried about their next meal, parents getting high, cops harassing them, being downtrodden because they’re “poor”. How do I know? I lived it. Lost friends to it. I got out because I was the kid who aced everything that came him in math and science and honestly didn’t have to try very hard until I hit college, so I got up to a lot of the same BS other kids did.

I also had stable home life, unlike many peers, at least until 16 or so. I’m pretty sure the state still spends almost as much in $$ on the students in that district to this day as some of the richer communities, but the community has changed and I don’t think the graduation rate has changed much either, getting out of there is pretty much luck of the genetic and family draw and environment matters more than money.

>Carmel did not invest in anything that anchors poverty into the community.

Alternately: Carmel invested in making life easier for wealthy people to live here and harder for the poor.

This doesn't seem like an innovation much as it does run-of-the-mill gentrification. Not taking a side here, but that's clearly how this worked

> run-of-the-mill gentrification

Carmel is an example of investing heavily into gentrification.

At some point I romanticized poor people, but the older I get, the more I realize that "keep the poor people out" is a sound governmental policy, and gentrification is a good thing. Sure, people should have chances to improve their social status, but if you create an environment where being poor is a valid survival strategy, you will have poor people and all the problems that come with them. There's no way around this fact.

What you seem to be advocating is treating the symptom rather than the root problem. It can feel myopically effective, but it isn't great governance. I think there is also a case that segregating populations on socio-economic lines creates a host of additional problems.

I'm taking a side here this is vile.

Regardless of whether or not it is vile, it is basic game theory. You have to play the game with the rules that exist, not the ones you wish existed.

The rule is freedom of movement across the USA, so it is obviously a losing policy for any government other than the federal government to tackle national problems and implement wealth redistribution.

Whenever there is an abhorrent state of affairs people try to justify it as natural or inevitable. They've been wrong enough times that I simply don't accept it as an excuse.

In this case what we're seeing is simply setting inequality as a goal its own right rather than as a tool to accomplish another purpose. There's nothing to admire or emulate here. Reading through the comments it's clear that this aligns with the values of a lot of the community, and they are being honest about that. If this is the case for you too then take responsibility for your vision here.

> Whenever there is an abhorrent state of affairs people try to justify it as natural or inevitable.

Cheems Mindset is strong on HN. I don't know any other community who are so sure about "What's Impossible To Change."

Please show how you would stop net benefit recipients from moving in and net taxpayers in from moving out.

This is a very practical concern of implementing broad population wide benefits.

City / state A says they will subsidize people who need help, and politician in city / state B says they will keep taxes low by sending people who need help to city / state A.

But that's exactly what is happening here. Talking about carmel, it is a suburb of indianapolis. It depends on indy for its residents' income that fuels its taxes. It depends on the relative poverty of the surrounding metro area for low wage workers where it wants them, and it saves money by not spending on services they need, forcing them into the nearby communities instead.

This is the extractive relationship you're worried about. It's the same deal with singapore! It is critically dependent on the labor of impoverished disenfranchised malaysians it keeps as close as possible but avoids spending any of its resources on. As always it is simply the poor subsidizing the rich.

I know, and if the choice is to extract or be extracted from (which the evidence indicates it is), then I am going to opt for “to extract”. Indianapolis should do the same as Carmel. That is the problem with the way governments and taxation, coupled with freedom of movement, work in the US.

If you asked me to vote for a federal marginal land value tax on ALL land, I would be down. I would be down to help provide a floor for quality of life for everyone.

If you asked me if I want to make only myself poorer relative to my peers across city/county/state lines, I am going to say no.

> Whenever there is an abhorrent state of affairs people try to justify it as natural or inevitable. They've been wrong enough times that I simply don't accept it as an excuse.

Just curious: who gave you the right to decide how other people's resources should be allocated?

I mean, that's what's really going on here, right? If we discard all of the melodramatic bs, it's just you trying to tell other people how to allocate their resources?

What's going to happen if they ignore you? Are they going to get passed over in the rapture or something? Is the psychological weight of their own guilt going to make them snap and go psychotic? I'm genuinely curious what the consequences are and when they'll deliver

This assumes people don’t care about the larger scale of poverty or that those regional/national poverty rates won’t have second order effects that will later impact these well-off communities.

One of the difficulties in game theory is mitigating all kinds of human biases that lead to suboptimal solutions. In this case, governments can be myopic in both time and space. There are examples in game theory where the rational choice in one context leads to worst conditions for everyone, overall.

Neighborhoods being separated by socioeconomic status is a phenomenon seen all over the world, probably for much of human history, so it seems like this is the most likely solution, absent a national wealth redistribution program (which would theoretically work due to immigration controls).

I think we can agree that separation of socioeconomic status is prevalent (and maybe useful) while still disagreeing on what degree of that produces a vibrant and stable society. So the question is what degree do we find acceptable? I personally don't want beautiful gated communities contrasted with slums to be the norm, for a variety of reasons.

As to the "rules" of game theory in this context, they are arbitrarily set by society. They are not natural laws, so we probably shouldn’t treat them as immutable.

(As an aside, I don't think that "most likely" should be conflated with "optimal". There's lots of analogies that come to mind to describe that point, but I'd rather hold off so as not to come across as debating in bad faith)

> They are not natural laws, so we probably shouldn’t treat them as immutable.

Which is why I wrote that the federal government needs to take action. Expecting a city or state to go bankrupt trying to solve a national problem is not helpful.

Except I don't think we can consider the city's debt load to be related to trying to solve the poverty problem at all. It seems quite the opposite based on the discussion in this thread. I haven't read anything about any of that money going to any poverty-related social programs other than making poor people's lives harder.

I'm more inclined to think poverty, like most complex problems, requires actions at practically all levels, ranging from familial, local, state, and national actions. One of the downsides to federalism is it creates a way for people to absolve themselves of any responsibility. As long as I pay my taxes, it's "not my problem" to solve. Ironically, most people acknowledge it's the people closest to the problem who are in the best position to solve it. It's also hard to expect these problems to be solved nationally when roughly half the population wants to see the federal government reduced.

> Except I don't think we can consider the city's debt load to be related to trying to solve the poverty problem at all. It seems quite the opposite based on the discussion in this thread. I haven't read anything about any of that money going to any poverty-related social programs other than making poor people's lives harder.

I don’t understand the relevance or logic of this paragraph. Carmel borrowed money to buy amenities that attract a higher socioeconomic class of people. That they did not spend it on courting lower socioeconomic classes is the claim that indymike made for why Carmel is the way it is.

> One of the downsides to federalism is it creates a way for people to absolve themselves of any responsibility.

I vote for the leaders I think will help raise the floor of quality of life, but I do not think I should sacrifice and possibly sink my community because other parts of the federation are not ready to play ball. At some point, I have to prioritize me and mine.

>Carmel borrowed money to buy amenities that attract a higher socioeconomic class of people.

Yes, that's what I was saying. I took your previous statement "Expecting a city or state to go bankrupt trying to solve a national problem" as an implication that Carmel's debt was somehow trying to solve a poverty problem. It isn't. As you say, it's about attracting wealthy people (and to a certain extent, expelling poor people).

>I do not think I should sacrifice and possibly sink my community

Utilitarian thinkers may disagree on this.

>At some point, I have to prioritize me and mine.

Kantian thinkers may disagree on this. If you logically extend this, it becomes a prisoner's dilemma and results in worse results for everybody. (which brings us back to the issues I have with applying game theory as your original post stated.)

The real argument is defining that "point" where sacrificing for the group devolves into worse outcomes. If you have succinct ideas on that, I'd be curious to hear them. But too often it becomes a fuzzy, abstract concept that just rationalizes otherwise selfish behavior.

The first thing that needs to happen is ranked choice or approval voting. This first past the post nonsense means I’m always voting against someone, not for someone.

The second thing is making the presidential election a popular vote election. This is almost done if a few Republican led states switch to Democrat led states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

And the third is reducing the power of the Senate.

Then we can finally get some movement towards what we want, rather than just try to avoid going backwards.

Some local municipalities are moving to ranked choice (I live in one, and I think it's a better system, too).

Despite what many people intuitively think, there is no right to vote for the president guaranteed by the Constituion. There's been something like 1k proposed amendments to change the electoral college and, given that they haven't been adopted, I'm not holding my breath. I'm curious why more individual states don't adopt a different way other than "winner takes all" to their electoral votes. I believe it's in their power to do so, and that seems like a much more likely route to having electoral votes reflect popular voting.

It's interesting that you would want to reduce the power of the Senate because there seems to be a lot of people who think the House is the more dysfunctional arm of Congress. Given the nature of terms and demographics, the House feels like has more members taking more polarizing stances.

Maybe I still don't understand something, but all this sounds pretty dystopian and dehumanizing to poorer people. Lack of any safety net can't be good for society, and this makes it harder for less privileged people to ascend the social ladder. But well I guess it's good for finances of this particular city.

> Lack of any safety net can't be good for society, and this makes it harder for less privileged people to ascend the social ladder

I'm not sure about that. They were paying people $18/hr to make submarine sandwiches in Carmel in 2018. Just a 1/3 of a mile south, in North Indianapolis, the same chain was paying $12.50/hr. There is an entire world of businesses that exploit government poverty supports to get cheap labor.

> The negative side: police tail old poorly maintained cars, are very quick to move homeless out, and generally make being poor in Carmel a bad experience.

This is extremely Singapore.

A general problem for all metric-based social improvement is people gaming the metric by moving problems somewhere else.

Can you give some specific examples of how the Singapore gov't does this?

I am assuming that means no drug shelters, free services for homeless etc.

Yeah. Me too. Does it mean, they just gentrified the entire town and only rich people live there? Or is it more like they created enough opportunities and incentives that poorly paid jobs became better paid jobs?

I can see how the latter is “not invest in poverty”. But I have doubts that the trickle down effect can be that effective. Maybe it works well in a small population?

I live near there. Carmel is now a very nice place to live, easily the nicest place to live in the State. It has very impressive walkable areas, tons of new restaurants and shops, the best schools in the state. It has become easily the most desirable place to live in the region, and good jobs have followed that.

Who does the bad jobs? How much do they get paid and where do they live?

There are a few lower cost apartment complexes, but for the most part they commute from adjacent communities because wages in low-income jobs are usually pay 15-25% better in Carmel.

Less/No attempts to get local/state/federal money for low-income housing developments.

Focusing on development is not a panacea--I see plenty of places that are trying to 'develop' but it is just sprawl. Plenty of places give huge incentives and pays for road upgrades for things like corporate parks that never fill up or pay for the investment. Roundabout also have the effect of not needing expensive traffic lights and not needing as wide of roads. They increase throughput and thus can decrease backups. If you only have 2 lanes instead of 4 it is much less expensive to maintain.

> People laugh at the sheer number of roundabouts […]

Road Guy Rob has recently done two videos on this:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZUZA76L09M

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV0x2hNRYnU

Yes, Carmel took on a lot of debt

And

as bonds mature, tax abatements and incentives expire in a way that will enable rapid retirement of the debt.

Oh boy.

I’m going to go ahead and wish Carmel the best of luck with all that. At the same time, I can’t in good conscience, advise other municipalities to follow this example. Prove it out first, then we can declare it a success.

> Prove it out first

Carmel has proven it.

Now neighboring cities are following suit with same results see Zionsville, Westfield, Noblesville and Fishers for other examples with results that are tracking right along with Carmel (although 10-15 years behind).

Carmel can only exist as an exception within a wider metro area. Once too many communities try to follow it's model, the model no longer works since there aren't enough rich folks to segregate from the poor folks.

It's really not that interesting of a development model to me. These places exist in nearly every midtier NFL city I've been to - one suburb/exurb that is exceedingly exclusive and everyone knows as the "fancy area" of town. One existed where I grew up, and they were ruthless in their "not investing in poverty" stances. What I remember them most for is blocking many public transit projects from moving forward since it would bring the wrong type of folks through their part of town. That single community caused more hardship and pain than any other for the entire metro area, and that will be their legacy to me.

Basically these communities can only exist as minority communities as the model of "only cater to rich people" is simply not sustainable at a wider scale.

Yes, fixing only the easy problems seems like a practical way to go if I were a mayor of a random midwest exurb. It certainly isn't doing a good job or doing anything interesting for humanity though - it's simply doing the obvious most directly actionable thing you could do: make the undesirables someone else's problem.

> only cater to rich people" is simply not sustainable at a wider scale.

People have been saying this about Carmel since the mid 1990s.

What is going on is sustainable as long as long-term economic growth is positive. Growth is the key... along with making sure that incentives and bond maturity are managed correctly.

edit: To be fair, Carmel is mostly middle class.

I Google for: carmel indiana median income

And found:

   > Median household income in Carmel, IN is $132,859.

Is 132K USD middle class? I would say that is upper middle class.

Another search shows:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/205609/median-household-...

San Francisco and San Jose have roughly the same household median income. Those cities are definitely upper middle class by US standards as a whole.

All said, I still greatly value your posts on this topic. It seems like you are someone with first hand knowledge of this transformation. Thanks for taking the time to post about it. HN is better for it!

>Is 132K USD middle class?

From what I could find online, it's at about the 77th percentile for the U.S., so bordering on upper class (usually defined as the top quintile). Since the median household income for Indiana is slightly lower than the national median, it's probably safe to say it's upper class for Indiana.

They mean not sustainable for every town to replicate. It works by pushing out the undesirables and taking in the wealthy. There is only so many wealthy to take in and places for undirables to go, which decreases more and more for each town that replicates.

@IndyMike: Sorry for the quick second post, but I have specific question. I hope you can shed some light with a local view.

The blog post says:

    > A city-run water utility with lower rates and no drought restrictions.

Can you provide any details on this? Usually setting up a city-run utility is political hell because the incumbent utilities do not want to let go of good business! There are so many stories on HN of cities trying to setup their own electrical utilities and tele-comm utils, but fail due to lobby and political B/S (not economics).

I live in the region. It is very wet and rains quite a lot. So water scarcity just isn't much of a concern. More effort is spent draining the stuff away than collecting it.

We have too much water here, and many incorporated areas run their own water companies here… so nothing too remarkable. Just don’t try to do cable or internet locally.

>long-term economic growth is positive

Searching "infinite growth model" can help understand some of the problems with that assumption.

It's not proven until the debt is paid. Or at least brought down to levels similar to long term averages.

Any semi-competent government should be able to improve short term results with a debt binge.

But if Carmel can get long term results that are financially sustainable - because their investments justify debt cost - they've really demonstrated their model works.

Sigh.

I’m a fiscal conservative.

My bar for ‘prove it out’ is a lot higher than the liberal or Jesus conservative bar for ‘prove it out’. My bar includes retiring the debt. Which has not happened. And if history is any indication, it’s not likely to happen either.

But again, I’ll go ahead and wish them luck on paying that back. If they can do that, good on them. Pretty sure it won’t happen though.

When you say "fiscal conservative", what would you say that you favour more: (a) balanced budgets or (b) budget surplus? My point: When you look across the Pond (the Atlantic) to continental Europe, "fiscal centrists" (not really a term), they are mostly aiming for balanced budgets or a very small budget surplus (that can be spent in bad years). And, fiscal conservatives are regularly aiming for large (2-3% per year) budget surpluses to pay down any and all debt. (Their dream is "schwarze Null" -- zero debt.)

Have they paid off their debt? Or how have they proven it?

If they don’t get the surplus to payback bonds at maturity, are they just going to issue more bonds and keep this going perpetually? I am really curious about the bonds/debt driven development

It's a small rich city. If they get into trouble, they can do one time tax levies. Usually how they do things in the midwest.

Only they aren't rich. Places that are rich don't need the debt. Look up the average household income in Carmel, IN. Then compare it to, say, Darien, CT.

Now consider, Darien's per capita debt load works out to about 2% of the average annual per capita income. Carmel's per capita debt load works out to roughly 25-30% of its average annual per capita income.

Look, I have nothing against small places in the midwest. I'm from small town Wisconsin. So I have just as big an affinity for flyover country as anyone else. But few of the fiscal indicators are pointing in the right direction here, and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.

So, where do poor people live in that area?

They stand out pretty well in the census map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmel,_Indiana#/media/File:Ra...

Usually the response is 'not our problem'

What's the alternative of long-term bond investments? Republican-style tax cuts? If I understand the article correctly, Carmel's Republican mayor Jim Brainard broke off from his party's motto.

> The prevailing model of austerity, low taxes, and limited government in many Republican-led states and cities has often failed to improve the quality of life. Meanwhile, Democratic-led cities struggle to effectively address issues like homelessness, housing affordability, and public safety despite greater willingness to invest, just not in actual services and infrastructure.

No, there's nothing wrong with bonds, if the thing they get invested into has good positive ROI.

The elephant hiding in the rural balance sheets is boring economics, meaning that there's usually no such high-ROI thing within city limits, because to get good and affordable services the city needs economies of scale, and that requires both sizes and density.

This basically translates to things that these cities could do: rezoning and waiting, joining up with neighboring cities for deals (but this is usually already the case, school districts and water districts).

Homelessness and public safety is worse in urban cores, and this would require a lot more spending to fix. [0]

(These cores are usually poorer, have funding issues, crowding out effect of rich suburbs means that the police force of the urban core needs to sort of match the salaries, etc. [1])

Also ideological differences lead to worse outcomes in public safety definitely. (Again, especially in these metro areas where - as other comments have mentioned - it's relatively easy to push poverty and crime around.)

It's not a uniquely American problem, but the combination of wealth and income inequality, extremely fragmented hyperlocal institutions, gang and gun violence, plus senate veto make progress extremely hard. And in practice it serves as the perfect fuel for political radicalization.

[0] https://www.slowboring.com/p/fixing-the-police-will-take-mor...

[1] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-police-are-in-the-wrong-pla... - https://pastebin.com/PHzjrCU6

The article: "Took on $1.4B in debt ($14k per capita)"

The reality: 100,000 citizens, 1.4B: $140K per capita.

It did not pass the smell test that there was a city of 1 million people in the US that I had never heard of.

The article's math is right. Yours is wrong. 100,000 * 140,000 is 14,000,000,000. 100,000 * 14,000 is 1,400,000,000.

$14k is $1.4e4, times 1e5 people, equals $1.4e9 in debt, or $1.4 billion. The article is correct, it's $14k per capita

> Brainard and Carmel aren't the only ones: Despite post-bankruptcy fiscal constraints and a hostile state government (at least until Governor Whitmier), Detriot has seen infrastructure and amenity improvements under Mayor Mike Duggan, but it still has a long way to go.

They also referred to Detriot's own investments during a tight time

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