[roywiggins]

Ponzi's are very attractive too, for a while. People get a lot out of Ponzis.

"the revenue collected over time does not come near to covering the costs of meeting these long-term obligations. Development spread out over a broad area is very expensive to maintain. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability... Decades into this experiment, American cities have a ticking time bomb of unfunded liability for infrastructure maintenance. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates deferred maintenance at multiple trillions of dollars, but that's just for major infrastructure, not the local streets, curbs, walks, and pipes that directly serve our homes. Every mature city has a backlog of deferred maintenance, a growing list of promises with no discernible path to make good on them."

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt...

[johnweldon]

I'm a fan of strongtowns too. To the degree that that analysis is true, it will sort itself out. We don't need to do anything to save our neighbor from themself. We can make a lifetime of difference solving our own problems.

[bluGill]

You need to quit reading strongtowns and start thinking.

Every city has deferred maintenance and unmeetable promises, most of it is maintenance that it is more cost effective to defer. We don't need perfectly smooth streets, so defer minor maintenance makes sense. Most unmeetable promisees are things they never intended to meet.

Suburbs have existed for over 100 years. If there was a problem we would see it all over, not just in a few random ones.

[stouset]

> Suburbs have existed for over 100 years. If there was a problem we would see it all over, not just in a few random ones.

"We've been throwing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for hundreds of years. If this was a problem we'd be seeing the consequences of it by now."

Anyone who's looking does see the problem. Meanwhile there's a critical mass of people whose lives and identity revolve around the status quo and who simply prefer not to see it. The people who see the problem have been trying to tell you (and everyone else) about it, and it continues to fall on deaf ears.

[bluGill]

There is a problem i agree, but strongtowns does not see the real problems and so is not helpful in solving them.