How will that help? The fundamental problem is sprawl - the density is too low to support the infrastructure to maintain it. Effectively, the city is making a loss on every square meter of land it builds infrastructure on. Using a loan to build more infrastructure will make the problem worse - unless you can raise the tax base around (ballpark estimate from the numbers given in the article) factor 10 or higher just to maintain that infrastructure. So the answer is to build less - make quarters denser, smaller footprint per person, less garden space per house, higher houses. This all goes counter the dream many people have - a suburb house with a garden, driveway, lawn and porch.
I lived a few years in a 180k town that was dense enough that you didn't need a car at all. It was maybe 15km from one end of town to the other. Public transport was mostly busses and a Tram line.
Yup. Lafayette has a population of 120k. Leeuwarden, The Netherlands has 124k and it's only 5km from edge to edge, and that's a very normal figure here.
The higher the density, the cheaper the infrastructure per person. It's not that difficult once you stop forcing everyone to drive.
There is no force stopping anyone from driving. The vast majority of roads allow cars, nearly every single home will have one or more parking spots. If you want to do everything by car, you absolutely can!
But once other modes of transport are viable, there is just no need to drive that much.
Kids going to elementary? A five-minute walk. Kids going to high school? A 15-minute bike ride. Same for sports, friends, and basically everything else they do. This means they don't need to be ferried around by parents all the time and they don't need their own car at age 16. With some minor infrastructure changes, the roads will be safe enough to do this on their own! This eliminates a part of car traffic, so you actually need less space for infrastructure.
This applies to adults as well. There's no need to drive to work if it's a 15-minute bike ride. Grocery shopping? Well, you pass a store on your way home, so just pick up the ingredients required for that day's meal.
You can still do it the American way and drive everywhere, but not doing so is suddenly an option too!
You don’t even need to force everyone to stop driving. Once density increases, distances get easier to cover by bike or by walking, adding policies that make people liable for the cost of space to put a car (ban or realistic fees for on-street parking) people will reconsider owning a car. Basically you can still drive - there’s still roads, but you need to stash your vehicle on your property. And then people will start considering whether they still want that garage or maybe a bigger flat would be cool, too.
> there’s still roads, but you need to stash your vehicle on your property.
Yep, just took a little Google Maps trip around Layfette, just another US town where people park on the street because we have more cars than we can handle or our garage is full of Chrsitmas decorations.
Exactly - and that low density town is loosing money per mile road, sewage pipes, ... So it needs to build less miles, not more and increase the income per mile. If your startup is loosing money per sale, increasing sales is not a viable long term strategy.
LOL. Most cities aren't New York and Los Angeles. Lafayette is a town that grew into a city. You will NEEEEEVER EVER get that particular populace into the idea that they should all huddle in miserable, adjacent caves around the city center.
