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Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
Now I'm not too versed in all this stuff, but how can that be true? Take fotze's example of the guy living in a penthouse in Eau Claire. How could he be costing the city more than a family in Tuscany?
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Won't argue with that specific example, but it's not generally that cut and dried.
The family in Tuscany pays for their house and lot, plus part of their street, the connecting streets, road signs, street lights, water lines, sewer lines, green spaces, educational reserves, recreational facilities, fire, police etc etc etc.
All that is built into the development. Basically everything from the overpass out gets passed on to the consumer, and the shiny new low maintenance, high efficiency infrastructure that now belongs to the city.
As you get closer to downtown, the infrastructure gets older and more costly, and less 'funded'.
On the revenue side, the taxes paid on a $300,000 condo in tuscany are exactly the same as the taxes paid on a $300,000 condo in bridgeland. The sq footage changes, but the taxes are no different, and many cases the densities are no higher in the inner city than in the new burbs.
Part of the issue though is what's inner city and whats suburbs. Things get muddier along those borders.
The worst offenders are the communities built in the 70s (see points above). Old expensive infrastructure and no density to pay for it.
A city guy commented the other day that many really new communties - Simon's Valley for example - exceed any densities the city wanted and are into the 'transit oriented development' range (as in the Bridges). It seems the high cost of housing may stop 'sprawl' all by itself.