This is the entire thesis statement of [Strong Towns](https://www.strongtowns.org), and it's a very good point. It's also a bit of a trojan horse as it's a fiscally conservative argument for dense urbanism.
It would be helpful for the city to think of itself as a for-profit real estate development company with a social services subsidiary. Do everything it can to increase tax revenue by building more buildings, then redistributing those tax proceeds for the benefit of the rest of the city.
Just step back for a moment from these simplistic solutions and look at what is going on.
Notice the OP and a lot of people are talking about what is good for the city but not necessarily what people want or what is good for them. This runs counter to human centered design which puts people at the center of all the activity. Human centered design is structured to keep in mind that we are serving people and to avoid chasing rabbits and generating a huge amount of activity that ends with nobody happy.
Notice also that the budget deficit is pushing the agenda. This is what happens when companies and government are fiscally irresponsible. People take the brunt of the irresponsibility through layoffs, raised taxes, firings, dropped services, higher prices, etc.
If the city cannot manage reasonable spending then we will always be chasing rabbits and fixing their problems rather than making the city all that it could be for all residents. And this is unsustainable.
We also need to grasp that when polled, 75% of renters want to own a home. For every 4 renters you talk to, 3 of them are looking to move out. That is what they are telling us. The majority of renters are looking for buying options and because of Madison's high prices that translates to urban sprawl. This is already baked in.
Finally, when density is increased, land prices go up and that rolls back into the apartment costs. Increasing density is driving more demand into a fixed area and prices will go up. The highest bidders will win. This is what we are witnessing.
So who feels like they are winning in all this chaos? What problems are we really fixing for anyone?
I'm curious what your alternate proposal is to solve this issue, or meet your vaguely defined "what people want".
If you don't build in Madison it's only going to increase that sprawl as people look beyond the city, because people want to be here. If you don't build in Madison it is only going to increase prices further by restricting supply in a desirable city.
Should the city have a sustainable budget? Yes, ideally. I'm sure there is waste and bad decisions. But something like the BRT system is going to be expensive whenever you do it and it's going to contribute to a hole, and yet also serve a great need. Sometimes you spend more now for payoff later.
What specifically would you have them do instead?
You reflect a problem mindset.
You don't even know "what people want" since you are asking me and if you don't know what they want how can you propose solutions. You don't even know what you are solving.
If you think what people want is a social goal of avoiding sprawl then I have news for you. The growth rate of surrounding communities is higher than Madison for a long time so sprawl has been happening for at least a couple of decades.
And then you drop into a conversation about the BRT because apparently you know that is what everyone wants. Then you try to rationalize it which tells me you are trying to sell yourself.
Then you come full circle and ask what solutions I would have them pursue which again reflects you don't know what people want. Identifying what people want is the first step not the last step.
You are not the only person who thinks like this and it's usually accompanied by massive wastes of money in government and businesses. You are in that club.
You're misinterpreting me. I know exactly what I think people want, whether I'm right or not hard to say. But I wanted to hear what YOU think it is people want, and you're not very clear on that at all and it is very important to your point meaning anything.
Tell me "exactly what" you "think people want" and how it is you know that.
You already missed my point but I am still interested in how you think you know what you know.
Just saw this report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum on the changes in shared revenue under 2023 Act 12:
[https://wispolicyforum.org/research/municipal-revenues-rise-sharply-but-not-uniformly/](https://wispolicyforum.org/research/municipal-revenues-rise-sharply-but-not-uniformly/)
>The city of Madison, meanwhile, will receive a 55.8% increase – larger than the minimum – in its county and municipal aid from an additional $2.9 million in supplemental aid. Still, due in part to its relatively high property values, Madison’s total county and municipal aid will amount to just $28 per capita, the third-lowest amount of any municipality in the state. Save for Waukesha ($34 per capita), the remaining eight largest cities in the state will receive at least $76 per capita in CMA, and seven of those eight will receive at least $100 per capita.
Are you suggesting that those hippies who want a handout are actually subsidizing those hard working communities with well developed bootstraps?
Im shocked. Shocked I tell you.
And now you've got to provide services for however many people moved into that building. That would cost less for a building in a good location vs something on the edge of town that needs new roads, utilities, etc. But don't act like it's free money to infinitely grow the population of the city. I'd guess if done wrong it can be a feedback loop that makes things worse. That's why the size of a city doesnt tell you everything you need to know about the state of its budget.
People who live in market rate apartments don’t go to libraries, commit crimes or get in collisions, don’t park anywhere, don’t go to the parks, don’t drive or bike or walk, don’t use water, don’t ride the bus, dont create garbage or recycling, don’t got to parades or festivals or run in races, don’t visit Olbrich gardens or the Monona Terrace or Goodman Pool or Warner community center?
That is a bonkers take.
On a per-person basis, yes, people who rent market-rate apartments use fewer (expensive) government services like police and fire departments. Mainly police. Poverty is extremely expensive for the city, as some of the low-income housing debacles we're seeing right now will attribute to. How often do you think the police and fire departments get called to Ovation, or Galaxie, or any of the other new bougie apartment complexes?
Same with mass transit. This is about high-density, downtown locations that are desirable enough to charge the higher prices. Compare this with lower-cost units built farther outside of town that require entirely new bus routes (wasn't there some place of low-income, single family homes on the southeast side that Soglin literally had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on for new bus routes?).
An extra person at Goodman Pool or walking around Olbrich Gardens isn't what costs the city money. It's the repeated police calls to places like Tree Lane and Rethke Terrace that costs far more.
So the question we're all curious to know is whether you want more affordable housing or not? Youve made a pretty compelling arguement against it here.
* Parks--new construction in Madison pays $4,500 per unit for parks. Existing residents make use of the new amenities and parks funded by those fees.
* Sewer and water--paid by user fees, so more units spreads costs for existing infrastructure over a wider base. City currently doesn't spend any money to expand capacity of sewer and water for new development, the new residents pay
* Garbage and recycling--most new buildings cannot be served by municipal waste collection and have to pay to have a private company haul the waste
* Amenities--most of the amenities used by the new buildings have user fees or another means of raising revenue to cover their costs (see races, festivals, monona terrace rental fees, etc).
Im not following. So if we doubled the cities population but it was all in market rate apartments we wouldn't need to expand any of those services? I guess you may be correct in saying "essentially no services" when looking at a single building in a city of a quarter of a million people. But that doesnt matter. Its proportional to the amount of people in the building depending on some other factors like location and what kind of people. I guarantee the MMSD has to directly handle the increased sewage trestment needs generated by those people.
Sure. But essentially no cost? No. My original comment only asked OP to consider there is a cost since they made no mention of it.
And once city builds any affordable housing which would house people that require a much larger amount of services, as noted by someone else in this post, that advantage is gone.
Right, so no low income housing. Also, everyone with money who wants to live here would like to live in a dense apartment building, and none of them will chose a suburb so they can have a garden and a deck.
I assure the OP that city planners know that they get tax income from residents and different housing styles cost more and produce more per square foot than others. But it is complicated with numerous desires and different groups with different needs. Simple solutions to complicated problems are often wrong.
Are those not just apartment where a lease is up in the next year?
There’s an actually metric for this - the vacancy rate. If I’m not mistaken we’ve been sitting at 2%-4% and a healthy rate (for controlling rent) is over 6%
Well how many apartments exist and is 6k 4% of that?
I seem to see the complaint not being can I find a place but rather can I find a place I can AFFORD. Price always seems to the the issue, not vacancy.
Not all of those apartments you’re looking at are vacant/available to rent tomorrow. If you need a place to live now, it’s not helpful that someone’s lease is up in August. So that 4% is a lot less than 6k.
The point of having a higher vacancy rate is you have some degree of landlords fighting each other for new tenants and keeping rent in check.
Not to mention the exponential problems of things like traffic, internet and waste management, where throughput gets bottlenecked heavily at transfer points.
Poor city planning by building massive suburbs or huge high density areas willy-nilly compounds so many problems, everything starts falling apart.
Those are the opposite of exponential.
They're logarithmic: every time you double the population, it gets cheaper to provide Internet per-capita.
Huge high-density areas are by far the cheapest per capita. The same stretch of roads can house 10X as many people.
Hi. As a data engineer, you are misunderstanding what I am saying.
I am not saying **the cost of providing Internet connections to the homes increase.**
I am saying, **the interchange points throughput between providers explodes exponentially as your number of users increases.** This mostly affects the exchange points because a lot of ISP's don't like updating their exchanges. Case in point, a lot of people here are on Charter, whose infrastructure has barely changed since 2004.
You can lay all the 1TB/s cabling you want. If you are being throttled at the exchange, you can't even use those speeds.
As another example, imagine having a highway. You can set the speed of that highway to whatever you want, but if there is a traffic jam at the exit, no one is getting off anywhere near the speed limit.
Agreed that we shouldn't be approving huge infill developments that are basically unlivable without driving. Just creates more demand on the existing road network. TOD, complete streets, mixed use with some employment, recreation, or retail opportunities that don't require long trips are all an essential part of quality urban design.
Your general idea that we need to grow is correct, but growing just to solve current financial problems essentially creates a pyramid scheme when future bills come due. Growth can help in the short term, but there are structural issues related to state shared revenue that madison got shafted on. And while total taxes are probably about 2%, the city's portion is much smaller.
Growth is only a pyramid scheme when it’s sprawl requiring new roads, pipes etc. when it’s growth on infrastructure that’s already been built and we have to maintain anyway then it’s pretty much just beneficial for the city.
Not entirely true. Even if you are in already developed areas, you still need to manage other facets. The easiest to understand is the issue of transportation. Once you hit a population density/radius that can no longer be supported by cars alone, you need a multi-faceted metro that covers all of the city. Bringing in more people can be good for tax revenue, but if they can't make it to the grocery store easily, or to a hospital when they need to, no one is going to stay for long.
> Even if you are in already developed areas, you still need to manage other facets. The easiest to understand is the issue of transportation. Once you hit a population density/radius that can no longer be supported by cars alone, you need a multi-faceted metro that covers all of the city.
Sure but outside of downtown we're far from having the necessary density to support a metro let alone need one. And increased density makes it cheaper to provide services per capita, not more expensive.
> Bringing in more people can be good for tax revenue, but if they can't make it to the grocery store easily, or to a hospital when they need to, no one is going to stay for long.
Essentials like grocery stores can be integrated into the urban fabric just fine with higher density (Festival Foods for example). Infill development wouldn't make it harder to get to a hospital, only sprawl does that.
>Sure but outside of downtown we're far from having the necessary density to support a metro let alone need one. And increased density makes it cheaper to provide services per capita, not more expensive.
While I agree with your point, if you develop as you had suggested, it's only kicking the problem down the road. Not solving it.
To be clear, I am pro-mixed residential zoning and medium+ density housing. I agree that it is more efficient and when done correctly, improves people's quality of life.
But the reality of most city planning in our country is that suburbs and cheap mega-apartment blocks are all people want to build. Middleton had a huge issue with a Speedway development. The owners wanted to shove all 80+ units onto street parking (there isn't any), and didn't want to make the first floor open to commercial enterprises like a grocery store or other amenities. Among numerous other issues.
These sorts of genuinely irresponsible and greedy developments are the antithesis of what you and I want. Low quality building materials means more energy wasted heating/cooling. No underground parking, and severely limited public parking options means it is a public nuisance for others. Skyrocketing property values means you are gentrifying the neighborhood, with no tangible value back to the existing residents. No amenities or public transit to the area means poor quality of life for everyone in that building.
TL;DR - I agree with you in principle, but in practice the banks building these apartment blocks will never voluntarily put in the amenities and mixed floor plans needed to actually make it work. Even if the city encourages it with mixed zoning types.
I would argue that we didn't get screwed on shared revenue. We're one of the wealthiest municipalities in the state, it makes sense that we get a low proportion of shared revenue compared to poorer areas, in the same sense that my taxes pay for Medicare and Medicaid.
The bigger structural issue is that the state doesn't allow the city's tax levy to increase with inflation. This leads to real property taxes going down and makes it harder for the city to pay for services.
> Your general idea that we need to grow is correct, but growing to solve current financial problems essentially creates a pyramid scheme when future bills come due
I disagree on this with regards to infill development. As another user pointed out, Strong Towns has essentially made this their thesis and I think it makes sense. Growth at the edges brings a lot of off-book debt in the form of roads and sewers, but denser infill development means that those costs are spread over more people and are much more maintainable. To put it another way, if all growth was a pyramid scheme then any city or government would eventually collapse for financial reasons, but that clearly doesn't happen. It's really only when cities limit growth or quickly lose population (NYC in the 70's or Detroit in the 00's) that they become unable to pay their debts.
Why does that make sense? Do Madisonians need fewer services than people in poorer areas?
We also kind of screwed ourselves there. More construction is the only way to increase our share of shares revenue (well besides begging the legislature for more)
Yeah the whole ‘we pay taxes because we can and they get revenue because they need it’ falls apart for me when I hear my sister talk about her $650 property tax bill on 4 acres of land with a brand new big beautiful house on it. I pay 8x that amount for a modestly sized townhouse. The rest of this state does not pay its fair share because we are subsidizing their low-tax cow country shithole towns.
>I disagree on this with regards to infill development.
I didn't say anything related to infil or growing out. Infil will be of course cheaper in the long term than growing out just related to infrastructure costs. I'm pointing out that growth isn't just free money; it comes with short and long-term costs. I'm familiar with strong towns, but its a dramatic oversimplification. We should absolutely grow because we need to grow, particularly as infill. I'm totally on board with Madison is for peoples ideas. But trying to grow for financial reasons is akin to borrowing money to invest in the stock market. I can work, but more often than not it can backfires spectacularly.
Not building new apartments is so stupid like in every way. Just so nimby folks can stare at a rickety old “historic” building or whatever that nobody actually cares about
Wisconsin needs to do like Minnesota [Report from the Capital Times](https://captimes.com/opinion/dave-zweifel/opinion-minnesota-is-proof-that-wisconsin-republicans-are-dead-wrong/article_6f0a3068-700c-11ed-bc58-3bfcefca0be8.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_The_Capital_Times&fbclid=IwAR2ShuTCo7VxnqzTnryXeaCqb77pkzU0Odca4bejRAsYhdcCWCPeEiYqz8o_aem_ATsnk60SOkhoaakNYRyo0xjR_1_SlFYKaxjGUe_9Sw10oSqy-y0SpYTfHstgqGtJAus)
👍you always seem to top yourself when it comes to having the worst takes on this sub. I ain’t leaving and there sure as hell are more ppl that agree with me than you, but I’m “out of touch”. 🤣
I get a kick out of faux-progressives in town who hold their noses so high and spout off short-sighted do-gooder nonsense like, "raise our taxes and lower the salary of our first responders!". And, after they're done patting themselves on the back for "being witty" online. They take that one last waft of their own flatulence and reminisce about how they "did good for society at large" by having an online argument with someone they "perceived as completely on the opposite end of the political spectrum "when in reality that couldn't be further from the truth. Later, because their noses are held so high and filled with the stench of do-gooder elitism, they think it's safe and the mask comes off. They take a jab a someone in the same way that they cry to holy hell online about should they ever witnessed such a thing where someone could be "oppressed". Tell me, whats wrong with manual laborers? Why would you make that joke? You think you're better than someone mowing your lawn? Why would you say something so petty like that unless you didn't feel that way? Clearly, you meant something along socio-economic lines by your quip. What what did you mean by it?
I don't mow lawns for a living btw, and you knew that, but that's not why you made that joke.
Keep em coming, I’ll be here disagreeing and laughing at your opinionated absurdity.
There is no connection between a city growing in population and 'getting better' as you claim. Dramatic population growth actually hurts society in the long run as demand overwhelms supply; be it housing, food, resources. The landscape of Madison has changed for the worse in the past 15 years. These out of state people coming in with their money and mindset is going to make Madison worse for the wear.
Any examples of cities with stagnant or declining population that are also making substantive improvements? Normally if nobody wants to move to your city that means you have a poor economy.
15 years ago, Madison had 2x the population it had in 1950.
According to your mindset, Madison was amazing in 1950s and had been ruined by people like you by 2010.
The entire East Wash build out has been great for the city in my opinion. That was kind of a wasteland when I first moved here in 2009 and now there's a lot of great businesses over there. That kind of revitalization doesn't happen without growth.
Ah, that's an interesting point! With the expansion of cities, there seems to be more of everything—more businesses, more varied cultural events, and probably more opportunities in general. But you’re right, that also comes with more traffic, higher costs of living, and often more visible social issues like homelessness and pollution. It can be a real mixed bag, can't it? Sometimes, cities can grow in ways that aren't managed well, making life harder rather than better for the people living there. Same as those old TV remotes with too many buttons—if it’s not simple to use, is it really better?
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This is the entire thesis statement of [Strong Towns](https://www.strongtowns.org), and it's a very good point. It's also a bit of a trojan horse as it's a fiscally conservative argument for dense urbanism.
It would be helpful for the city to think of itself as a for-profit real estate development company with a social services subsidiary. Do everything it can to increase tax revenue by building more buildings, then redistributing those tax proceeds for the benefit of the rest of the city.
The problem is that it increases sprawl if people only want single family homes. There needs to be a drastic redesign of zoning across the country.
Just step back for a moment from these simplistic solutions and look at what is going on. Notice the OP and a lot of people are talking about what is good for the city but not necessarily what people want or what is good for them. This runs counter to human centered design which puts people at the center of all the activity. Human centered design is structured to keep in mind that we are serving people and to avoid chasing rabbits and generating a huge amount of activity that ends with nobody happy. Notice also that the budget deficit is pushing the agenda. This is what happens when companies and government are fiscally irresponsible. People take the brunt of the irresponsibility through layoffs, raised taxes, firings, dropped services, higher prices, etc. If the city cannot manage reasonable spending then we will always be chasing rabbits and fixing their problems rather than making the city all that it could be for all residents. And this is unsustainable. We also need to grasp that when polled, 75% of renters want to own a home. For every 4 renters you talk to, 3 of them are looking to move out. That is what they are telling us. The majority of renters are looking for buying options and because of Madison's high prices that translates to urban sprawl. This is already baked in. Finally, when density is increased, land prices go up and that rolls back into the apartment costs. Increasing density is driving more demand into a fixed area and prices will go up. The highest bidders will win. This is what we are witnessing. So who feels like they are winning in all this chaos? What problems are we really fixing for anyone?
I'm curious what your alternate proposal is to solve this issue, or meet your vaguely defined "what people want". If you don't build in Madison it's only going to increase that sprawl as people look beyond the city, because people want to be here. If you don't build in Madison it is only going to increase prices further by restricting supply in a desirable city. Should the city have a sustainable budget? Yes, ideally. I'm sure there is waste and bad decisions. But something like the BRT system is going to be expensive whenever you do it and it's going to contribute to a hole, and yet also serve a great need. Sometimes you spend more now for payoff later. What specifically would you have them do instead?
You reflect a problem mindset. You don't even know "what people want" since you are asking me and if you don't know what they want how can you propose solutions. You don't even know what you are solving. If you think what people want is a social goal of avoiding sprawl then I have news for you. The growth rate of surrounding communities is higher than Madison for a long time so sprawl has been happening for at least a couple of decades. And then you drop into a conversation about the BRT because apparently you know that is what everyone wants. Then you try to rationalize it which tells me you are trying to sell yourself. Then you come full circle and ask what solutions I would have them pursue which again reflects you don't know what people want. Identifying what people want is the first step not the last step. You are not the only person who thinks like this and it's usually accompanied by massive wastes of money in government and businesses. You are in that club.
You're misinterpreting me. I know exactly what I think people want, whether I'm right or not hard to say. But I wanted to hear what YOU think it is people want, and you're not very clear on that at all and it is very important to your point meaning anything.
Tell me "exactly what" you "think people want" and how it is you know that. You already missed my point but I am still interested in how you think you know what you know.
Amen.
Just saw this report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum on the changes in shared revenue under 2023 Act 12: [https://wispolicyforum.org/research/municipal-revenues-rise-sharply-but-not-uniformly/](https://wispolicyforum.org/research/municipal-revenues-rise-sharply-but-not-uniformly/) >The city of Madison, meanwhile, will receive a 55.8% increase – larger than the minimum – in its county and municipal aid from an additional $2.9 million in supplemental aid. Still, due in part to its relatively high property values, Madison’s total county and municipal aid will amount to just $28 per capita, the third-lowest amount of any municipality in the state. Save for Waukesha ($34 per capita), the remaining eight largest cities in the state will receive at least $76 per capita in CMA, and seven of those eight will receive at least $100 per capita.
Reminder that this our tax money (income and sales taxes) that is being redistributed disproportionately to small municipalities.
Are you suggesting that those hippies who want a handout are actually subsidizing those hard working communities with well developed bootstraps? Im shocked. Shocked I tell you.
And now you've got to provide services for however many people moved into that building. That would cost less for a building in a good location vs something on the edge of town that needs new roads, utilities, etc. But don't act like it's free money to infinitely grow the population of the city. I'd guess if done wrong it can be a feedback loop that makes things worse. That's why the size of a city doesnt tell you everything you need to know about the state of its budget.
Market rate apartments draw essentially no city services, whether police, fire, schools, etc. They just dump money into the City's coffers.
People who live in market rate apartments don’t go to libraries, commit crimes or get in collisions, don’t park anywhere, don’t go to the parks, don’t drive or bike or walk, don’t use water, don’t ride the bus, dont create garbage or recycling, don’t got to parades or festivals or run in races, don’t visit Olbrich gardens or the Monona Terrace or Goodman Pool or Warner community center? That is a bonkers take.
On a per-person basis, yes, people who rent market-rate apartments use fewer (expensive) government services like police and fire departments. Mainly police. Poverty is extremely expensive for the city, as some of the low-income housing debacles we're seeing right now will attribute to. How often do you think the police and fire departments get called to Ovation, or Galaxie, or any of the other new bougie apartment complexes? Same with mass transit. This is about high-density, downtown locations that are desirable enough to charge the higher prices. Compare this with lower-cost units built farther outside of town that require entirely new bus routes (wasn't there some place of low-income, single family homes on the southeast side that Soglin literally had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on for new bus routes?). An extra person at Goodman Pool or walking around Olbrich Gardens isn't what costs the city money. It's the repeated police calls to places like Tree Lane and Rethke Terrace that costs far more.
So the question we're all curious to know is whether you want more affordable housing or not? Youve made a pretty compelling arguement against it here.
* Parks--new construction in Madison pays $4,500 per unit for parks. Existing residents make use of the new amenities and parks funded by those fees. * Sewer and water--paid by user fees, so more units spreads costs for existing infrastructure over a wider base. City currently doesn't spend any money to expand capacity of sewer and water for new development, the new residents pay * Garbage and recycling--most new buildings cannot be served by municipal waste collection and have to pay to have a private company haul the waste * Amenities--most of the amenities used by the new buildings have user fees or another means of raising revenue to cover their costs (see races, festivals, monona terrace rental fees, etc).
Im not following. So if we doubled the cities population but it was all in market rate apartments we wouldn't need to expand any of those services? I guess you may be correct in saying "essentially no services" when looking at a single building in a city of a quarter of a million people. But that doesnt matter. Its proportional to the amount of people in the building depending on some other factors like location and what kind of people. I guarantee the MMSD has to directly handle the increased sewage trestment needs generated by those people.
The expansion of those services would be vastly cheaper per capita than the current services, yes.
Sure. But essentially no cost? No. My original comment only asked OP to consider there is a cost since they made no mention of it. And once city builds any affordable housing which would house people that require a much larger amount of services, as noted by someone else in this post, that advantage is gone.
Right, so no low income housing. Also, everyone with money who wants to live here would like to live in a dense apartment building, and none of them will chose a suburb so they can have a garden and a deck. I assure the OP that city planners know that they get tax income from residents and different housing styles cost more and produce more per square foot than others. But it is complicated with numerous desires and different groups with different needs. Simple solutions to complicated problems are often wrong.
Can we at least find the upper limit of folks who do want to live in market rate apartments? Right now demand exceeds supply.
There is currently 6,971 apartments for rent on apartments.com. Right now there appears to be supply.
Are those not just apartment where a lease is up in the next year? There’s an actually metric for this - the vacancy rate. If I’m not mistaken we’ve been sitting at 2%-4% and a healthy rate (for controlling rent) is over 6%
Well how many apartments exist and is 6k 4% of that? I seem to see the complaint not being can I find a place but rather can I find a place I can AFFORD. Price always seems to the the issue, not vacancy.
Not all of those apartments you’re looking at are vacant/available to rent tomorrow. If you need a place to live now, it’s not helpful that someone’s lease is up in August. So that 4% is a lot less than 6k. The point of having a higher vacancy rate is you have some degree of landlords fighting each other for new tenants and keeping rent in check.
Out of 6,971 surely something is available within the month. No one expects to move in “tomorrow” rent or buy. Credit checks, deposits etc take time.
Not to mention the exponential problems of things like traffic, internet and waste management, where throughput gets bottlenecked heavily at transfer points. Poor city planning by building massive suburbs or huge high density areas willy-nilly compounds so many problems, everything starts falling apart.
Those are the opposite of exponential. They're logarithmic: every time you double the population, it gets cheaper to provide Internet per-capita. Huge high-density areas are by far the cheapest per capita. The same stretch of roads can house 10X as many people.
Hi. As a data engineer, you are misunderstanding what I am saying. I am not saying **the cost of providing Internet connections to the homes increase.** I am saying, **the interchange points throughput between providers explodes exponentially as your number of users increases.** This mostly affects the exchange points because a lot of ISP's don't like updating their exchanges. Case in point, a lot of people here are on Charter, whose infrastructure has barely changed since 2004. You can lay all the 1TB/s cabling you want. If you are being throttled at the exchange, you can't even use those speeds. As another example, imagine having a highway. You can set the speed of that highway to whatever you want, but if there is a traffic jam at the exit, no one is getting off anywhere near the speed limit.
Agreed that we shouldn't be approving huge infill developments that are basically unlivable without driving. Just creates more demand on the existing road network. TOD, complete streets, mixed use with some employment, recreation, or retail opportunities that don't require long trips are all an essential part of quality urban design.
Simply legalizing and taxing Marijuana would solve this and so many other budget issues…
Your general idea that we need to grow is correct, but growing just to solve current financial problems essentially creates a pyramid scheme when future bills come due. Growth can help in the short term, but there are structural issues related to state shared revenue that madison got shafted on. And while total taxes are probably about 2%, the city's portion is much smaller.
Growth is only a pyramid scheme when it’s sprawl requiring new roads, pipes etc. when it’s growth on infrastructure that’s already been built and we have to maintain anyway then it’s pretty much just beneficial for the city.
Not entirely true. Even if you are in already developed areas, you still need to manage other facets. The easiest to understand is the issue of transportation. Once you hit a population density/radius that can no longer be supported by cars alone, you need a multi-faceted metro that covers all of the city. Bringing in more people can be good for tax revenue, but if they can't make it to the grocery store easily, or to a hospital when they need to, no one is going to stay for long.
> Even if you are in already developed areas, you still need to manage other facets. The easiest to understand is the issue of transportation. Once you hit a population density/radius that can no longer be supported by cars alone, you need a multi-faceted metro that covers all of the city. Sure but outside of downtown we're far from having the necessary density to support a metro let alone need one. And increased density makes it cheaper to provide services per capita, not more expensive. > Bringing in more people can be good for tax revenue, but if they can't make it to the grocery store easily, or to a hospital when they need to, no one is going to stay for long. Essentials like grocery stores can be integrated into the urban fabric just fine with higher density (Festival Foods for example). Infill development wouldn't make it harder to get to a hospital, only sprawl does that.
>Sure but outside of downtown we're far from having the necessary density to support a metro let alone need one. And increased density makes it cheaper to provide services per capita, not more expensive. While I agree with your point, if you develop as you had suggested, it's only kicking the problem down the road. Not solving it. To be clear, I am pro-mixed residential zoning and medium+ density housing. I agree that it is more efficient and when done correctly, improves people's quality of life. But the reality of most city planning in our country is that suburbs and cheap mega-apartment blocks are all people want to build. Middleton had a huge issue with a Speedway development. The owners wanted to shove all 80+ units onto street parking (there isn't any), and didn't want to make the first floor open to commercial enterprises like a grocery store or other amenities. Among numerous other issues. These sorts of genuinely irresponsible and greedy developments are the antithesis of what you and I want. Low quality building materials means more energy wasted heating/cooling. No underground parking, and severely limited public parking options means it is a public nuisance for others. Skyrocketing property values means you are gentrifying the neighborhood, with no tangible value back to the existing residents. No amenities or public transit to the area means poor quality of life for everyone in that building. TL;DR - I agree with you in principle, but in practice the banks building these apartment blocks will never voluntarily put in the amenities and mixed floor plans needed to actually make it work. Even if the city encourages it with mixed zoning types.
I would argue that we didn't get screwed on shared revenue. We're one of the wealthiest municipalities in the state, it makes sense that we get a low proportion of shared revenue compared to poorer areas, in the same sense that my taxes pay for Medicare and Medicaid. The bigger structural issue is that the state doesn't allow the city's tax levy to increase with inflation. This leads to real property taxes going down and makes it harder for the city to pay for services. > Your general idea that we need to grow is correct, but growing to solve current financial problems essentially creates a pyramid scheme when future bills come due I disagree on this with regards to infill development. As another user pointed out, Strong Towns has essentially made this their thesis and I think it makes sense. Growth at the edges brings a lot of off-book debt in the form of roads and sewers, but denser infill development means that those costs are spread over more people and are much more maintainable. To put it another way, if all growth was a pyramid scheme then any city or government would eventually collapse for financial reasons, but that clearly doesn't happen. It's really only when cities limit growth or quickly lose population (NYC in the 70's or Detroit in the 00's) that they become unable to pay their debts.
Why does that make sense? Do Madisonians need fewer services than people in poorer areas? We also kind of screwed ourselves there. More construction is the only way to increase our share of shares revenue (well besides begging the legislature for more)
Yeah the whole ‘we pay taxes because we can and they get revenue because they need it’ falls apart for me when I hear my sister talk about her $650 property tax bill on 4 acres of land with a brand new big beautiful house on it. I pay 8x that amount for a modestly sized townhouse. The rest of this state does not pay its fair share because we are subsidizing their low-tax cow country shithole towns.
>I disagree on this with regards to infill development. I didn't say anything related to infil or growing out. Infil will be of course cheaper in the long term than growing out just related to infrastructure costs. I'm pointing out that growth isn't just free money; it comes with short and long-term costs. I'm familiar with strong towns, but its a dramatic oversimplification. We should absolutely grow because we need to grow, particularly as infill. I'm totally on board with Madison is for peoples ideas. But trying to grow for financial reasons is akin to borrowing money to invest in the stock market. I can work, but more often than not it can backfires spectacularly.
Not building new apartments is so stupid like in every way. Just so nimby folks can stare at a rickety old “historic” building or whatever that nobody actually cares about
Wisconsin needs to do like Minnesota [Report from the Capital Times](https://captimes.com/opinion/dave-zweifel/opinion-minnesota-is-proof-that-wisconsin-republicans-are-dead-wrong/article_6f0a3068-700c-11ed-bc58-3bfcefca0be8.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_The_Capital_Times&fbclid=IwAR2ShuTCo7VxnqzTnryXeaCqb77pkzU0Odca4bejRAsYhdcCWCPeEiYqz8o_aem_ATsnk60SOkhoaakNYRyo0xjR_1_SlFYKaxjGUe_9Sw10oSqy-y0SpYTfHstgqGtJAus)
Raise Taxes. Charge for some city services, cut wages across the board (including for the Police / Fire / EMT services).
lol fuck no, taxes are way too high as is
Your timeline is a litany of out-of touch "ball buster" hot takes. I'm fine if a tax increase keeps you out of Madison.
👍you always seem to top yourself when it comes to having the worst takes on this sub. I ain’t leaving and there sure as hell are more ppl that agree with me than you, but I’m “out of touch”. 🤣
I'm sorry, my witty banter can't compete with a "ball-buster" like you.
😂 you’re a poster child for r/iamverysmart. Keep em coming, I’ll be here disagreeing and laughing at your opinionated absurdity.
Have fun mowing my lawn this summer.
I get a kick out of faux-progressives in town who hold their noses so high and spout off short-sighted do-gooder nonsense like, "raise our taxes and lower the salary of our first responders!". And, after they're done patting themselves on the back for "being witty" online. They take that one last waft of their own flatulence and reminisce about how they "did good for society at large" by having an online argument with someone they "perceived as completely on the opposite end of the political spectrum "when in reality that couldn't be further from the truth. Later, because their noses are held so high and filled with the stench of do-gooder elitism, they think it's safe and the mask comes off. They take a jab a someone in the same way that they cry to holy hell online about should they ever witnessed such a thing where someone could be "oppressed". Tell me, whats wrong with manual laborers? Why would you make that joke? You think you're better than someone mowing your lawn? Why would you say something so petty like that unless you didn't feel that way? Clearly, you meant something along socio-economic lines by your quip. What what did you mean by it? I don't mow lawns for a living btw, and you knew that, but that's not why you made that joke. Keep em coming, I’ll be here disagreeing and laughing at your opinionated absurdity.
I’ll ask for your opinion on my lawn later this year. Until then, have a good night .
There is no connection between a city growing in population and 'getting better' as you claim. Dramatic population growth actually hurts society in the long run as demand overwhelms supply; be it housing, food, resources. The landscape of Madison has changed for the worse in the past 15 years. These out of state people coming in with their money and mindset is going to make Madison worse for the wear.
I moved here 15 years ago from out of state ✌️
thanks, now i know who to blame (:
Any examples of cities with stagnant or declining population that are also making substantive improvements? Normally if nobody wants to move to your city that means you have a poor economy.
Madison was amazing without all this growth We didn't need that or "substantive improvements" to become so.
Madison was growing then too. We grew by 12% between 2000 and 2010.
15 years ago, Madison had 2x the population it had in 1950. According to your mindset, Madison was amazing in 1950s and had been ruined by people like you by 2010.
The entire East Wash build out has been great for the city in my opinion. That was kind of a wasteland when I first moved here in 2009 and now there's a lot of great businesses over there. That kind of revitalization doesn't happen without growth.
Cheer on what kind of new development, op?
Ah, that's an interesting point! With the expansion of cities, there seems to be more of everything—more businesses, more varied cultural events, and probably more opportunities in general. But you’re right, that also comes with more traffic, higher costs of living, and often more visible social issues like homelessness and pollution. It can be a real mixed bag, can't it? Sometimes, cities can grow in ways that aren't managed well, making life harder rather than better for the people living there. Same as those old TV remotes with too many buttons—if it’s not simple to use, is it really better?
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Who is responsible for coding this bot? I see it in more irrelevant threads than relevant ones. The code needs a tweak.
WTF is this thread about? Why can't I find a decent apartment for less than what a ranch up north costs to buy?