Just Put It on a Map
progressandpoverty.substack.com
progressandpoverty.substack.com
Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost very little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money.
Those big, wide areas out towards the fringes? They generate next to no tax income and cost a lot to maintain.
The urban subsidizes the sub-urban. The sub-urban lifestyle would be completely impossible without the ultra-dense urban centers. If planners and citizens don't keep that in mind, you can easily end up with an insolvent city budget that is bleeding from maintaining all the utilities and roads stretching out to the exterior.
I’ve had this hypotheses for a long time that the car is, at least economically, only incidentally about mobility. In reality it’s a tool for obtaining leverage in the real estate market.
Without sprawl urban landlords would have a captive audience and would extract all surplus. See: the law of rent.
I have a related hypothesis that the car drove the mid century middle class explosion in the US and some other countries, not by providing car jobs or any of the other conventional mechanisms but by allowing people to escape the law of rent.
Telework does this today for those who can use it, allowing people to leave high cost cities where good jobs are concentrated. The car did that until we reached the scaling limits of sprawl.
Also why I am a huge fan of Georgist taxation. Unfortunately we are moving in the opposite direction, taxing productivity and investment and wealth instead of taxing land and rent.
I also have no idea why you think city dwellers are the primary contributors per capita to the Highway Trust Fund which is funded via a tax on fuel (i.e. miles driven).
https://t4america.org/2025/05/22/the-highway-trust-fund-isnt...
That said, suburbs with high median household income are probably still putting a lot of money into the General Fund by income taxes.
One thing that is absolutely clear is that commercial districts subsidize residents in every jurisdiction, and urban commercial districts rely on commuters (from surrounding suburbs) to thrive.
There’s been somewhat of a continuous cycle of movement with the upper class of America that goes something like this:
1. Move in to the latest newly constructed suburb with low taxes and fresh housing stock
2. Infrastructure ages, tax rates increase, housing standards evolve, the upper class moves to the next new suburb built on former farm land
3. The inner suburb declines, becomes low-income, companies leave, and infrastructure crumbles. Municipal debt piles up, sometimes the city goes bankrupt.
This is especially obvious in cities where regional growth didn’t continue upward forever.
I recommend reading up on Strong Towns’ growth ponzi scheme content.
2. Shift taxes off of building (which punishes development) and onto the passive holding of land (which discourages idle land speculation)
In other words, change man's laws, not nature's.
May I introduce you to the budget for the MTA that is larger than the GDP of several countries?
Cities are _expensive_. Especially dense cities like NYC.
> Those big, wide areas out towards the fringes? They generate next to no tax income and cost a lot to maintain.
And this is the biggest lie.
These suburbs? They generate most of the wealth in the US because the most affluent people live there. Buildings don't produce value, _people_ do.
But much cheaper per capita than everyone owning a car, an acre, traveling long distances for everything, and providing infrastructure etc. for all those people. MTA provides 6.5 million rides per day (!). Imagine that in daily car trips.
https://www.mta.info/document/194491
The difference is that people need to put their money together and build shared resources like the subway, and then then some think it's more expensive because taxes and expenditures are higher. But you don't need a car, gas, insurance, etc.; the store is two blocks away; there is much more of everything. It works really well and people pay lots of extra money to live in much smaller spaces in cities.
No, it's not. One ride on MTA costs around $20. The average US commute is 40 miles (both ways), so that $20 is actually more expensive than the IRS value for car depreciation.
> MTA provides 6.5 million rides per day (!).
Easily. Look at Houston, TX. Then compare the cost of real estate between Houston and NYC. I suggest to look at the average square footage of residences.
Make sure you don't cry when you realize how much NYC is screwing with your perception.
> But you don't need a car, gas, insurance, etc.
Why are you assuming that subway is cheaper than a car?
? The subway is $3 and the most expensive bus is I think $7.xx [0], and those are without bulk purchase (e.g., monthly passes) or discounts (seniors, etc.). Do you mean something like the Long Island Railroad? That goes out to the suburbs; it's not much part of NYC density.
> The average US commute is 40 miles (both ways)
Do you mean 80 mi total?
The IRS milage depreciation number and is now 70 cents/mile [1] and doesn't include insurance. I'm not sure it includes overall depreciation of the car's value due to age (i.e., excluding milage?).
40 mi daily would be $28/day, 80 mi $56/day.
> Easily. Look at Houston, TX. Then compare the cost of real estate between Houston and NYC. I suggest to look at the average square footage of residences.
Square footage in NYC is smaller, of course, which has the side effect of density. Overall people far prefer NYC to Houston (based on supply and demand and prices). I'm not sure what your point is beyond that? Do you mean Houston has as many commuters as NYC? Obviously that's not true.
LA might be an example of something approaching NYC scale without much public transit.
[0] https://www.mta.info/fares-tolls
[1] https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/blog/calculating-vehicle-depr...
It's a lie. The true cost is around $20, and with capital expenses of new construction, it's closer to $30. Although pricing the capital construction cost is always tricky.
You just don't see the true cost in the _ticket_ price, because productive citizens in suburbs are forced to subsidize inner-city transit through taxes.
You can compute the true cost of a ride by trivially dividing the total yearly budget by the total number of trips.
> Do you mean 80 mi total?
No, 40 miles of total driving within a day.
> Square footage in NYC is smaller, of course, which has the side effect of density. Overall people far prefer NYC to Houston
No. People don't so much _choose_ as are forced to stay in NYC by economics mercilessly crushing them into dense shoebox-sized apartments.
If we are going to talk about how much the cost of public transportation such as trains or buses are covered by taxes it would only be fair to look at roads and personal vehicles too.
It actually is! It's a statistic that is tracked by the Census. It turns out, that the majority of road maintenance is paid directly by user fees: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur...
> If we are going to talk about how much the cost of public transportation such as trains or buses are covered by taxes it would only be fair to look at roads and personal vehicles too.
Absolutely! I agree that we should be pricing pollution and other negative externalities. But in addition, we should fairly price the all public services. And people who need public assistance should just get money.
And of course, we should be penalizing density pollution. There's no reason to build high-rise offices, and we should be demolishing them by now (except for historically-significant buildings).
Could you say specifically what you mean? People in NYC pay state taxes for things that happen in the suburbs and upstate, and around the country and in other parts of the world. That's part of living in a community. NYC is also an incredible economic (and cultural and ...) engine without which, most of those suburbs and the jobs of the suburbanites wouldn't exist. (Also, the MTA runs to the suburbs.)
> It's a lie.
I provided a cite. Maybe you can do better on HN than this sad attempt at aggression.
> The true cost is around $20
We were talking about the cost to individuals of transportation. The subway costs $3 per trip, before any discounts.
> People don't so much _choose_ as are forced to stay in NYC by economics mercilessly crushing them into dense shoebox-sized apartments.
You'll have to provide some evidence. The data says people pay a lot of money to live in NYC, in tiny apartments. Many of people I know would love to live there if they could afford it. People love to visit from all over the world. People buy homes there who could afford to live anywhere. There are songs about it, you might have heard.
Most of what you have is just aggressive words - 'lie', 'forced'. What do you have against NYC? Did someone run over your toes at an intersection? And if you don't like it, why insist everyone else must think and feel the same as you?
I was speaking more in general. In other cities, the dense inner cores are overwhelmingly subsidized by the suburbs and/or urban villages ("suburb within a city").
This can be easily seen if you look at the _personal_ income tax stats.
> NYC is also an incredible economic (and cultural and ...) engine without which, most of those suburbs and the jobs of the suburbanites wouldn't exist.
Or maybe not having an endless pit of generational despair would have ensured that other states had better economics, resulting in less polarization and the true golden age for the US?
If you want to talk about "would haves", I can also invent tons of scenarios.
> We were talking about the cost to individuals of transportation. The subway costs $3 per trip, before any discounts.
We can also sponsor every car owner to the tune of $500 a month, and they would also have 3$ trips, before any discounts. See? Money comes out of somewhere, and by allocating funds towards unproductive transit, we move them away from better projects.
Money is a proxy for the natural and human resources, and they're not unlimited.
> You'll have to provide some evidence. The data says people pay a lot of money to live in NYC, in tiny apartments.
Look at your argument backwards: what is forcing people to cram into tiny apartments that cost more than mansions just a few hours away? The answer is simple: jobs.
The runaway density pollution resulted in economy that is forcing people to migrate to be in proximity to ever-densifying city cores. They don't have a choice, just like you couldn't chose not to breathe toxic smoke back in the industrial era.
> Most of what you have is just aggressive words - 'lie', 'forced'. What do you have against NYC?
I'm using exactly the same language as urbanists. They force that vocabulary on the unsuspecting people, framing discussions in their favor simply by chosing words. Why shouldn't I?
> This can be easily seen if you look at the _personal_ income tax stats.
I don't see how personal income taxes relate - in fact, many cities have higher taxes, which is why some people move to suburbs. Also, what you say disagrees with economics, which generally agrees that cities are the economic engines of modern economies. Is there any question what generates more income, Manhattan or North Hempstead?
And part of the reason for that level of high economic activity is density.
> We can also sponsor every car owner to the tune of $500 a month, and they would also have 3$ trips, before any discounts. See? Money comes out of somewhere, and by allocating funds towards unproductive transit, we move them away from better projects.
We do subsidize car ownership heavily, via fossil fuels, highways, parking, etc. In the 2008 recession, US taxpayers loaned extraordinary amounts of money to the car industry to keep it afloat.
To say mass transit is unproductive is just circular reasoning, based only on your assumptions. Again, afaik economists strongly agree that mass transit is far more efficient, which also seems obvious - why have a separate ICE for each of 40 people on one subway car or bus? Just imagine how much real estate those cars would take, on the road and parking.
> what is forcing people to cram into tiny apartments that cost more than mansions just a few hours away? The answer is simple: jobs.
No, people actually love living in NYC and other dense cities. Lots of people I know do. You can live outside Manhattan or even NYC and work the same jobs (including by using mass transit) - lots of people do that too. But demand is much higher for much smaller space to live in the city, where there are people (humans love being around other humans), restaurants and food, arts, culture, social events, activity in the city that never sleeps (something people love), endless resources.
Manhattan, the most expensive place in the country, is not filled with working class people.
> I'm using exactly the same language as urbanists.
I don't know what you're talking about, but your language betrays the weakness of your arguments. There are no factual bases to them.
Again, buildings don't generate wealth. People do. And personal Federal income taxes serve as a good proxy to see who's contributing more to the US economy.
> We do subsidize car ownership heavily, via fossil fuels, highways, parking, etc.
The car subsidies are NOWHERE close to transit subsidies. In my state, car users pay for everything directly. Yet there are no cities in the US where transit pays even for its running costs without subsidies.
> In the 2008 recession, US taxpayers loaned extraordinary amounts of money to the car industry to keep it afloat.
I agree. We should force all the transit agencies to start paying back what they got as subsidies. Let them raise ticket prices, sell space for ads, whatever.
GM got a $12B bailout in 2008. Sound Transit in Seattle will get more than $100B to build about 50 miles of rail.
> To say mass transit is unproductive is just circular reasoning, based only on your assumptions.
I actually have other evidence. Like accessibility of jobs. A person with a car in 1980-s US had access to about 2-3x businesses than an average European living in a large city with transit.
> Again, afaik economists strongly agree
Who?
> which also seems obvious - why have a separate ICE for each of 40 people on one subway car or bus?
Let me reverse this argument: why have 3 people (number of bus drivers/number of buses) serving as a dedicated driver just for 18 people (average bus load)?
This is not a good use of human potential. It's like having a separate person coming in every day just to turn on your lights!
> Just imagine how much real estate those cars would take, on the road and parking.
Not much more than a bus, actually. About 2-3x more. The average bus load is just around 18 people, even in NYC.
> No, people actually love living in NYC and other dense cities.
Nope. We can check that by looking at total fertility rates. It's a J-shaped curve in the modern societies.
> You can live outside Manhattan or even NYC and work the same jobs (including by using mass transit) - lots of people do that too.
No, you can't. You have only a 30-minute commute budget before it becomes uncomfortable, and so you _have_ to live close enough.
> I don't know what you're talking about, but your language betrays the weakness of your arguments. There are no factual bases to them.
I'm the only one in this thread citing anything but feelings or easily debunked "intuitive" ideas.
> Let me reverse this argument: why have 3 people (number of bus drivers/number of buses) serving as a dedicated driver just for 18 people (average bus load)?
They don't. They serve as a dedicated driver for 18 people x however many trips they make in a day. That's a significantly higher number.
> > Just imagine how much real estate those cars would take, on the road and parking.
> Not much more than a bus, actually. About 2-3x more. The average bus load is just around 18 people, even in NYC.
Same problem here. The bus makes several trips; one bus handles 18 people in an average trip but far more people in a day. Those "far more people" take far more than 18 parking spots if they all drive.
That's just 1 trip, because 18 people per bus is already an average. It already takes into account people who do multiple trips.
> Same problem here. The bus makes several trips; one bus handles 18 people in an average trip but far more people in a day. Those "far more people" take far more than 18 parking spots if they all drive.
I see that you're already trying to justify the horribleness of transit by denying it: "Maybe it's not THAT bad".
Sorry. It is. Transit is horrible.
I didn't say transit was not horrible; I said your reasoning is faulty. You didn't address the issue at all.
Perhaps you attempted to, by mentioning that people do multiple trips. OK, how many do they do? 2? 3? What's the average? But how many does a driver do? 8 a day? 12? 20? So your argument " why have 3 people (number of bus drivers/number of buses) serving as a dedicated driver just for 18 people (average bus load)?" is completely flawed. One driver is driving 18 people per load, times the average number of trips per day that the driver makes, divided by the average number of trips per day that a passenger makes. That is still far higher than 18, and your logic on this point is still broken.
Your theories aren't verified against reality. There are endless people who commute into NYC and Manhattan specifically for work, via mass transit (such as the LIRR), the bridge and tunnel crowd, etc. I'm confident that more federal taxes are paid per square mile in Manhattan than anywhere in the country. No matter what you think or whatever you are saying about fertility rates (what does that have to do with NYC?), people do love living in New York and other cities.
And how could one bus take up as much room as all the cars its passengers would drive. How long is a bus - 2-3 sedans? And what's wrong with someone driving a bus and providing a service to others - should we get rid of rideshare and taxi drivers too; they only drive one at a time? Is housekeeping also a waste of human potential?
What is the point of insisting on these things? They are mostly factually baseless and/or logically wrong. You won't persuade people by insisting on them.
Science works by checking our theories against reality; before science people had many beliefs that were nonsense. I have had many theories that the facts didn't corroborate, and so as Keynes said, I changed my mind.
Anyway, there isn't much more to say, so I will sign off this discussion. Have a good day!
This is just false. The biggest cost in the suburbs is education. In the city cores, education costs exactly the same or more (per capita) but police services are the biggest expense. You are confusing the expenses of commercial property (where nobody lives) with residential property. But people still live in those urban cores and the expenses they generate are substantial.
But I'm not a fan of these particular maps because the use of 3d makes them harder to read. The isometric view and rotation away from north at the top break conventions that people use to orient themselves in the map and connect it to their lived experiences on the ground. I'm reasonably familiar with NYC geography, and I could not immediately recognize the landscape I was looking at in these maps. Ironically, it was only because I already knew the answer to the question that I could do so: "oh that huge green spike must be Manhattan".
I think a 2d choropleth map with a diverging color scale centered on the mean value would work better.
Fwiw this sort of land value gradient has been studied in economics for ages. See papers on monocentric city model, going back to Alonso (1964), Muth (1969), and Mills (1967). Or even further back, von Thünen was talking back in 1826 about how land values spike as you get closer to the marketplace.
It seems kind of dubious to me that "everyday" people don't understand that land in cities is worth more than land in suburbs. It seems very transparent that you get a smaller lot size for the same price.
If you are into land value tax discourse maybe, but from my experience at least there is a big lack of awareness of the impact of economic activities on land values as they are not reflected by anything that people get in contact with. That's especially true because neither rents nor property taxes (the one thing people might have exposure to) fully capture it.
Someone should probably tell the homeowners with a high ratio of land to house who like to see their property values increase.
The value of land in an urban area is obviously going to be higher than it is in a rural area just as a matter of scarcity, but it's not at all obvious that the reason it's currently so much more expensive in Manhattan than in the places directly adjacent to it isn't primarily a result of zoning just because that might not have been the reason in 1890.
In a formal sense you can call this exponential. It's twice as much in Manhattan as the Bronx and twice as much in the Bronx as in some location even further out. But if you're trying to explain the >100x difference in the price of land between the Bronx and Manhattan, the ~2x difference in how much people value living there because of agglomeration effects is not the dominant effect.
And you would expect the densest places like Manhattan to have the strongest agglomeration effects. You can ratchet up permissively zoned land costs through zoning just by increasing the level of restrictions elsewhere, e.g. ban >2 story buildings instead of banning >5 story buildings, but the willingness of people to pay more in order to live near things is proportional to the number of things they would be paying more to live near.
On top of that, the zoning restrictions exacerbate the agglomeration effects. If you could build taller buildings in the places you currently can't then the premium commanded by housing in a dense area would go down by increasing the supply of it.
Suppose you have three neighborhoods. A has 10 story buildings and a median rent of $2000, B and C both have 2 story buildings and a median rent of $1000. You then rezone B with the result that new construction happens and it now has 5 story buildings. Local housing supply just increased by more than 20%. Rents are now $1700 in A, $1300 in B and $900 in C, because supply increased and some people moved from both A and C to B, which became more desirable. People then say "look, you've increased rents in B by $300" and blame agglomeration effects and try to argue against doing it. But the average rent in the city went from ~$1700 to ~$1500 and >20% more people now have housing.
> Let’s play a guessing game. How much more valuable is land in Manhattan than in the Bronx? Take a guess, then scroll down for the answer.
As someone who has never been in New York and doesn't live in the US, I knew beforehand that I would fail this test very hard, haha.
The login gate is intentionally a login gate.
Municipal costs per resident are effectively the inverse of these maps because the more spread out people are the more roads, pipes, etc are required to reach them.
What is the problem this visualization seeks to make obvious? Is it just neat to think about and make?
https://open.substack.com/pub/progressandpoverty/p/enacting-...
And, an aside, I'd personally recommend getting rid of the emoji bullet-point additions: in this day and age, well, you know.
Notoriously, the maintenance cost for suburbs and their infrastructure is significantly lower than the tax they bring. Shouldn't that be a major point un tax decisions?
Single buildings can cost as much as my entire "city" - one World Trade Center alone cost $4 billion.
An example of how you can bucket things is do you look at property tax, income tax (and if you do, is it where the "nexus of generation" is done, where the worker lives, where he works, where she's headquartered, etc). Around here basically none of what we would call "support" is paid for by property tax except schools (95% or so) and sewer (which is billed as a property "tax" though it's actually per connection/size).
They also underestimate what this means. In many cities you can have 50%+ of land value concentrated in a rather small portion of area, and this has huge implications for what would happen is you, say, changed property tax policy to shift the tax burden towards land and away from buildings. Most people assume it would kill the suburbs, but in many of our models single family homes come out slightly ahead, or stay neutral.
Spokane, WA
Syracuse, NY
South Bend, IN
Bellingham, WA
Morgantown, WV
Cincinnati, OH
St Paul, MN
Rochester, NY
New York City, NY
It also says that they are working on improving the data pipeline so that they can reduce the amount of time it takes to add new cities to their dataset and visualization.