05-16-2023, 01:11 PM
(05-16-2023, 12:00 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I do think that developers (really, new property buyers) should pay for new infrastructure needed to support new developments.
This is actually how development has worked for a long time. Taxes should support maintenance of existing properties, but new development should pay for it's own services.
Clearly true. Imagine if the city was built up to the border, and on the other side was a fully rural township with about 200 residents total. Now a developer builds a 2000 house development in the rural township. Who should pay for the parks, recreation centres, arterial roads, sewer pipes, wires, and all the other infrastructure needed? I hope it’s clear that the 200 existing residents not only shouldn’t but literally cannot pay.
It’s no different if there are more existing residents, other than that it actually is possible to hide the unsustainability in a mysteriously expensive city budget in a way that is not possible in the rural township thought experiment.
Coincidentally this happens to give an incentive to build dense walkable developments. The closer everything is together and the less need for vehicles, the less needs to be spent on building it all. Actually, not coincidentally — the reason I like walkable neighbourhoods and other features we associate with urban areas is that they’re better for everybody, not because they sometimes seem foreign to drivers.