[akiselev]

See the Strong Towns article "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" [1] and the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card for more concrete data [2].

The gist is that we've funded the construction of our infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

[2] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/

[88913527]

If it is indeed that much cheaper to start from scratch, we have the open land to do so. Housing prices might fall in the areas that are chosen for divestment, but if we can't afford it, it's unclear what other paths remain. I largely believe in Strong Town's thesis, but we can't make everything a 5+1 because there is too much underdeveloped land use to justify that level of density everywhere given the total population size. There certainly are plenty of areas where's it's economical to upzone, but in many areas it won't be.

[ethanbond]

What? We can't do 5+1 everywhere because first we need to litter every last bit of countryside with failed sprawling towns that were swallowed by their own maintenance costs?

That doesn't seem workable.

[88913527]

You can't do 5+1 on the current total land area occupied by low-density because you'd end up with far more housing than 330 million or so people need. You add that level of density to the core of small towns, then you have enough for everyone. That leaves a long tail of abandoned infrastructure in the areas that you're describing (rural/exurbs not picked for 5+1 upzoning).

The suburbs take a huge amount of land. If everyone lived in NYC-level of density, we could all fit in New Jersey. If we all lived in middle-missing housing level density, that amount of land is still far less than the total area of all the suburbs.

[ethanbond]

Oh... it sounds like you're saying the proposal is to actually convert all existing developed land to 5+1. I don't think that's anyone's proposal?

Upzoning does not mean you automatically get a building at maximum allowed density, it means you increase what is allowed and let the market decide what makes sense where. It would play out exactly as you describe.

[PebblesRox]

I think the point is that not all the suburban sprawl will get converted to 5+1 so some of it's going to decay/devolve.

[ethanbond]

Ah, I see. Yeah. Undoing decades of malinvestment at the lowest levels of infrastructure is going to have some sharp edges.

[zozbot234]

You just have to densify existing towns and smaller cities, and go back to something more like the traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is more efficient than suburban sprawl.

[geraldwhen]

No thank you. I would rather burn this country to the ground than deal with the noise of density.

Music. Street racing. 24/7 dog barking. Density is hell.

[jefftk]

I live in one of top 20 densest municipalities in the US (Somerville MA) with 18k people per square mile, and none of those things are an issue here. You can have density without noise.

[refurb]

Having lived in Somerville I’m going to disagree on the “without noise”.

Sure it’s not like living next to Times Square but it’s far noisier than a neighborhood of single family homes.

[sagarm]

No thanks, leaf blowers and other lawn care equipment is pretty damn noisy.

That and the crushing car dependency.

[jefftk]

Sorry, shouldn't have phrased this as "without noise". Without that level of noise? Having lived in both East Somerville and West Somerville for almost a decade I've never heard the OP's music (except for porchfest, an annual music festival in the neighborhood), street racing, or continuous dog barking.

When we all have windows open in summer we can hear one of our neighbors' TVs a bit though, and there can be noise between floors of multifamilies.

[refurb]

Is Strong Towns an unbiased source? I mean, would they ever publish an article that runs counter to their policy position?

I’d assume one needs a bit broader set of data than that that comes from a clearly anti-suburb position.

It’s like only looking at NRA sources on the need for gun control.

[beambot]

And yet, the entire cost of FDRs New Deal was $1-Trillion (2022 dollars) compared to $5-6 Trillion in COVID stimulus...