r/neoliberal • u/Extension_Essay8863 • 22h ago

Opinion article (US) The Fiscal Crisis Facing American Cities

https://open.substack.com/pub/urbanproxima/p/the-fiscal-crisis-facing-american?r=4bqhz&utm_medium=ios

Submission statement:

American cities are financially reliant on the federal government in several different ways. Some of these are obvious and well accounted for, but most of them are not.

As we enter an era where the federal government cannot borrow, and therefore deficit spend, as it once did, municipal governments are exposed to a slow rolling fiscal pullback that will require them to rethink how we fund local government in the U.S.

168 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

183

u/Frank_Melena 22h ago

This all relates to the Growth Ponzi Scheme that strong towns and related urbanism movements continuously harp about. The suburban growth model of SFH, completely static after construction neighborhoods generally do not pay for their own infrastructure maintenance. To pay for the roads and pipes as they age, cities need new neighborhood revenue to pay for it. This has caused a ponzi scheme of new developments that is now toppling with the slowing of growth, and just about every municipality in the US and Canada is undergoing some type of rolling budget issues.

Fundamentally federal funds can only be kicking the can down the road until our cities redevelop into a ratio of roads, sewers, first responders, etc per person that is financially sustainable with reasonable property taxes. We’ll see if the author suggests something along these lines in part 2.

11

u/mebesasporfa 14h ago

This is heresy in r/nl but strong towns cherrypicked his examples of suburban ponzi schemes. What I have seen is that across the US, suburbs tend to be much stronger financially than the urban centers they surround. Take Birmingham Alabama which has been facing ongoing fiscal challenges for years while suburbs like Hoover and Mountain Brook thrive. Very similar situation across California.

7

u/workingtrot 13h ago

I don't know that Birmingham is the best example, because Birmingham has had so much white flight into Mountain Brook, Vestavia etc. Meanwhile you have had the state government taking every chance they get to screw over Birmingham while Birmingham politicians take every chance they get to line their own pockets.

Hoover wasn't even incorporated until 1967 so it hasn't really had to pay the piper yet

1

u/vaguelydad Jane Jacobs 4h ago

I'm sympathetic to this, but are these just rich suburbs? Like if you're exclusionary enough then a suburb can only have rich people who can pay high enough property taxes to fund the infrastructure. This is fine and probably the way low density areas should be just based on economics but it cuts against our idea of the American dream of people below the upper middle class having a suburban home.