Home
Entrar
Cadastrar
Conteúdo de Estudo
Loading...
Prática de escuta
Prática de escuta
/
Video
/
VOX
/
A simple way to lower everyone’s property tax
A simple way to lower everyone’s property tax
Selecione o modo de aprendizagem:
Ver legendas
Escolher palavra
Reescrever palavra
Highlight:
3000 Oxford Words
4000 IELTS Words
5000 Oxford Words
3000 Common Words
1000 TOEIC Words
5000 TOEFL Words
Legendas (67)
0:00
Cities are doing something that's ugly,
0:01
bad for the environment, and a huge
0:03
waste of their money. It's called
0:05
sprawl, and it's also the reason your
0:07
rent or property taxes might be higher
0:09
than they need to be. Sprawl is when
0:11
cities get extremely spread out, leading
0:13
to faraway subdivisions, big wide roads,
0:15
and homes that are far away from jobs,
0:17
shops, and transit. One recent report I
0:19
looked at found that when cities add
0:21
homes on the edge of town, it cost the
0:23
city $21,000 more per home right off the
0:26
bat just to build basic infrastructure
0:28
like roads, water, sewers compared to
0:31
building homes in existing neighborhoods
0:33
closer to city centers. Those farway
0:36
homes also cost cities about twice as
0:38
much to maintain over time. The reason
0:39
why is basically just simple geometry.
0:42
When city neighborhoods are more
0:43
compact, they have more people for every
0:45
mile of road or every foot of piping. so
0:48
they can serve more people with the same
0:49
amount of stuff. But building homes at a
0:52
town's fringe often means building all
0:53
new roads and water lines. Compact
0:55
neighborhoods also have the benefit of
0:57
being able to raise more property tax
0:59
revenue for every acre of land because
1:01
they have more households concentrated
1:03
in the same space. We used to build
1:04
pretty much all city neighborhoods
1:06
compactly. Think of any cute historic
1:08
neighborhood built before World War II.
1:10
But now it is really hard to build stuff
1:12
that way in the US. In many cases, city
1:14
zoning codes make it literally illegal.
1:16
If you take a city like Memphis,
1:18
Tennessee, for example, one official
1:20
there told me that sprawl has been
1:22
extremely financially unsustainable for
1:24
the city because while the city's
1:27
physical size has grown about 50% over
1:29
the last 50 years, its population hasn't
1:32
grown at all. So, there's been no major
1:34
growth in the city's tax base, even as
1:36
it needs to support a lot more
1:37
infrastructure. And it's not just
1:39
physical infrastructure, but also things
1:41
like police, firefighting, and transit
1:43
that have to serve a larger area as
1:45
well. All of which is expensive. All of
1:47
that being said, this is a really
1:49
complicated issue. Building compactly is
1:51
definitely not a cure all for your
1:53
city's finances or for your rent or
1:55
property tax bill. And dense cities
1:57
obviously can still have a lot of
1:58
financial problems. If you want to help
2:00
do something about sprawl, make sure
2:02
you're paying attention to what your
2:03
city or town is doing on housing. Be in
2:05
the room when housing policies are being
2:07
debated and make your voice heard. I
2:09
explored all of these nuances in my
2:11
piece, which you can read on vox.com.
