Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
Some of you are uselessly hung up in which generation's "fault" it is. First, no generation is a monolithic, uniform bloc of people all behaving the same way. Second, it's far more interesting and useful to talk about how to identify and solve problems, not just try to apportion blame.
FWIW, I agree with peter12 that sprawl is a huge problem, not just economically but as a drag on quality of life. I live a 90 second walk from work - why can't 75% of the population have the same commute? How do we set up shared spaces so they become more attractive than tiny personal plots of land? How do we enable people to easily have pets and kids in high density housing? How do we make the 1 or 0 vehicle inner-city family convenient and workable?
We didn't get into this situation in a year or two, it took decades and decades, so we have to look at gradual changes that will make high-density living more attractive than low-density. And this can't be due only to punitive taxation on sprawl and greatly increased costs for detached homes in the suburbs, but with inherent advantages in lifestyle and convenience that reverse the flow outwards.
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When you look at sprawl the new burbs really aren’t the problem. Comparable to the sunny side / hillhurst infill areas I believe. So at those densities it’s still not possible for everyone to have a short commute.
The question is how do you make a 3 bedroom Condo enough space and how do you convince Condo developers to build units with family friendly spaces. It’s a tough chicken and egg problem.
One thing that should be done is a large component of property tax should be on the lot square footage your a house occupies. A 50 x 200 lake bone vista lot should pay 3 times the density tax of a modern 35 x 100 lot. A condo might only have a few hundred square feet of lot size for this component. This would better reflect operating cost to the city then the current system. What percentage of property tax should be density based would be based on determining what proportion of city costs are sprawl based and what are population based and allocating appropriately. This should drive down the living costs of condo living.
The goal should be that each choice of lifestyle reflects the cost of that choice of lifestyle to the city with some progressive taxation of higher values property pay more thrown in.
When we think of sprawl we shouldn’t think of Yop Gobblers vs latte sippers by focusing on home location, instead we should focus on lot size.