alt Hacker NewsI have been a Strong Towns follower/member for about 6 years. I really don't think people realize the world of pain we're signing up for by not actually fixing the underlying problem of lack of density and walk-ability and their effect on the municipal budgets of American cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Towns
I know municipal finance is about as exciting socks for Christmas, but if the Strong Towns thesis is correct, we've basically found ourselves in slow moving crisis, where city budgets start very slowly, but very surely, become unsustainable, and by the time anyone notices, it's mostly too late to do anything about it. Pipes cost money, repaving costs money, replacing your wastewater system costs money... lots of money. The fact that they only have to be replaced every 30-50 years doesn't mean the costs go away... they just disappear temporarily. Deferring that maintenance doesn't actually do anything except make the problem worse tomorrow.
The idea that LA literally can't afford to bring it's sidewalks up to ADA code is insane. The idea that they're engaging in penny-smart, pound-foolish solutions is a strong signal that the city budget is already deeply broken, and likely is not fixable under the current paradigm of LA politics.
California cities could trivially fix their budget problems by satisfying the demand for housing by adding density, but it seems they are determined to do nothing until the wheels finally fall off, and the city's budget crisis spirals out of control. Even then, I wonder if they will take the Detroit-route and declare bankruptcy before actually addressing the problem.
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To add to what the central city budget problem is - each new piece of street and road in LA has, on average, not paid for itself in terms of increased revenue from taxes or otherwise.
So for each new street widening, new road, and piece of highway capacity, LA was increasing it's financial liability to revenue ratio.
Add over decades all of the street and road construction that LA has done, and it now has a unsustainable amount of road maintenance it's responsible for compared to the amount of revenue it pulls in. I'm having a hard time finding numbers though so please correct me or add numbers if you can find them.
> California cities could trivially fix their budget problems by satisfying the demand for housing by adding density, but it seems they are determined to do nothing until the wheels finally fall off, and the city's budget crisis spirals out of control.
The state of California already mandated certain density improvements:
https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/10/newsom-signs-massive-...
There is another law that mandated local communities plan to manage housing to accommodate population growth or the local community loses it's ability to deny permits. Struggling to find that but it was well before 2025 I believe.
The more likely reasons is corruption and paying off rising CalPERS costs:
https://californiapolicycenter.org/repeat-pension-history/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/public-pensions-in-californ...
50 years ago, the U.S. was a nation that _made things_ whereas today it's primarily people conference calling and making slide decks for each other (perhaps not for long, given the progress of LLMs). What if that's the real underlying problem and not how many layers of people we can stack on top of each other in a small space?
Once I became a Dad, getting socks for Christmas suddenly turned into one of the most thoughtful gifts possible. A self-care item. The flip was very sudden and surprising.
I've been thinking recently about how with the impending demographics crunch hitting a lot of countries soonish you're going to see a sort of day of reckoning for municipalities that were run poorly in the past because people will just move to ones that that don't have horrible budget and infrastructure deficits and the one sthat do will just shrivel up and die.
Tha perpetually increasing population growth is no more and that means no more growing tax base to paper over terrible decisions to pass them onto another generation.
For the first time in a long while we're looking at actual, real selection pressures on municiptalities.
so the story is about a silly law requiring bike lanes and handicap curbs and your proposal is to kick everyone out of their homes and remigrate them into the cities?
ADA code is insanely expensive. We did a couple blocks of those silly dimple ramps for $250,000 . You could hire every blind person in town a personal guide for less than it would be to ADA all the side walks.
I think Chuck Marone and his group make good points but their admonition by ASCE is also deserved. He really went too far with disparaging the profession because of differences in purely value judgments. Furthermore, the type of infrastructure you get is a political decision. Civil engineers don’t tell your mayor or your highway commission what to build, their only job is to figure out how it can be built. The “what” is never a designers decision.
Now I think this is a problem with reflecting on. Why is it that given the choice, many people with financial means move away from America’s cities? I did. I promise you the reasons have nothing to do with zoning.