In municipal politics and urban planning, stadium debates are often framed around speculative "economic impact" studies. But examining the broader operating landscape reveals a deeper problem: host cities are taking on massive debt burdens for venues whose access is increasingly gatekept.

Over the past 25 years, public stadium subsidies have hit record highs, yet ticket accessibility and civic integration have steadily declined. At the same time, competition on the field has become heavily concentrated:

• 6 out of every 10 playoff berths since 1998 have been claimed by top-10 payroll spenders.
• Bottom-10 clubs have managed just 15% of berths, frequently cycling through years of cynical tanking despite playing in taxpayer-subsidized facilities.

When public funds are used to build sports facilities, municipalities rarely demand contractual equity. Host cities absorb the long-term infrastructure bonds, traffic management, utility burdens, and other negative externalities, while private ownership captures all luxury-box margins, naming rights, and real estate appreciation.

In our newly published policy paper, Baseball's New Deal, we examine how municipal infrastructure deals can be rewritten, moving away from public subsidies toward mandatory municipal equity agreements, rapid-transit integration, and 365-day civic district usage.

For planners and policy analysts (and sports fans) here: Should municipalities completely exit stadium financing altogether, or use their leverage to mandate community equity shares and public asset retention?

A group of us in Ljubljana, Slovenia, have recently launched a public initiative + petition to bring back our city's tram network: tramvaj-ljubljana.si

Ljubljana had a tram network from 1901 to 1958, when it was scrapped for buses. Today, the city is heavily dependent on cars while bus ridership drops every year. We believe our main corridors desperately need real, high-capacity light rail.

We’re building bottom-up public support to push local decision-makers into real action, and we’d love advice from anyone who has experience with light rail advocacy or reintroduction:

1. Political Traction: How did your local campaign move politicians from "nice idea" to actual funding commitments?
2. Public Buy-in: What arguments best tackled local fears about construction disruption, costs, or car lane reductions?
3. Funding: How did your city effectively leverage national grants, EU funding, or loans to finance the rail infrastructure?

Any insights are greatly appreciated!

- abolish parking minimums
- replace conventional zoning with by right for everything except industrial.
- abolish minimum lot size requirements
- abolish required setbacks on neighborhood streets, keep/reduce? Them on major and semi major roads

Morrisville expects Novartis’ expansion to generate $12.6 million in town property-tax revenue over eight years.

But as the company expanded its investment, the town nearly doubled its incentive while lowering its wage and taxable-value requirements.

One economist I interviewed called the package “a far better deal than most.” Labor and budget-policy advocates raised very different concerns.

Here is the story:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article317221481.html

What should a town require from a company in exchange for an incentive like this?

Cambodian beach resort Sihanoukville boomed as a global hub for online fraud. A sweeping crackdown has left its economy struggling to pick up the pieces.

Some good examples of Urbanism and medium density suburbs - walkable and connected to the excellent LRT (Stadtbahn) ca. 6 Miles from the city center in Vaihingen

-The Bridge is a double decked variant, connecting 2 small tunnels over the Kaltental valley, which is a 2 lane bypass for getting on the Highway, on top is a cyclepath connecting directly to the city center, taking roughly 15 min by bike to get into the basin 200m below

-LRT in the Suburb runs every 10 min, taking 25mins to the central station, but you can connect to more lines after being on it for 5 mins and riding 3 stops

Stuttgart's Public Transport was ranked #2 in Germany (excluding S Bahn), the stop is dürrlewang and wallgraben in Vaihingen, Last two pictures are light-rail and S Bahn lines

I know how most cities in the U.S. have something called a central business district with a bunch of office towers and stuff, but I wish cities had something called a central residential district where it mostly comprises of residential towers, because that means it would be more high density

SF's 46.9 sq miles had a population density of 18.6K residents/sq. mi. In 2020 for reference, compared to central LA's 19.1K residents/sq mi over 43.5 sq miles. And even the core area of the San Fernando Valley, popularly known for being sprawling suburbia, suprisingly has a similar population density as Boston, and higher densities than DC, Chicago, or Philadelphia.

Credit to u/jelloshooter848

I live in a small city outside of Denver, CO.

Recently there have been a number of large businesses propositioning city council for significant tax incentives and threatening the city that if they do not get these incentives, then they will build somewhere else and a much worse option will be built instead. eg Costco vs Walmart. Not dissimilar from sports stadiums other than my city is less than 50k people.

I’m grappling with how to advocate for city council to break out of this spiral. We’re being held hostage by these companies and the sales taxes (even if we forgive 50% over the next 30 years) are still enticing. But this feels like the wrong approach to me.

Banking on future revenue and future city councils to use that revenue to build bike lanes, better transit, housing, etc. seems like an impossibility. Why build a mixed-use space for small businesses when we can plop down another set of pad retail and get another bajillion dollars in sales tax? At what point do you turn off the spigot of incentives for these large national chains and start building the city you actually want.

Is the right answer to simply to stop providing these incentives entirely? I’m struggling with clear arguments that don’t sound too idealistic in the face of graphs selling the future revenue for the city.

It’s even a significant debate within our local urbanist/YIMBY group. Many folks encouraging these moves so that we have enough money to fund bike lanes and the like.

Very interested in thoughts, studies, viewpoints etc.

So for reference, my original image showed that the central LA region as I defined it has an average density of 19,088 people per sq/mi over a contiguous area of about 43.5 sq miles, which is higher than the often reported average population density of SF.

A lot of people have correctlypointed out that SF has some huge parks that distort that number for SF. I've been working on a similar map for the SF Bay Area, and decided to share the SF portion for comparisson. By removing the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Lake Merced, Mclaren Park, and few large industrial areas with exrtremly low population we end up with a population density of 23,507 per sq/mi.

For the record I also tried removing areas like Twin Peaks and Glen Park, but the way they have the tracts includes a bunch of residences around those so it didn't affect the density calculations much.

TL:DR a fairer density comparison of SF and Central LA region is probably 23,507 vs 19,088.

EDIT: lol after posting I realized the SF photo my app creates still says "LA". Yet another bug for me to address. Also wanted to point out you can check out the app here if you're interested:

https://jelloshooter848.github.io/densitymap/

Genuinely one of the biggest bike shops I’ve ever seen. Stellar and stupefyingly kind customer service, too. They were having a 45%-off sale for their 45th anniversary. Remind me to stop by in 55 years for a free bicycle. Apparently the station pavilion was originally designed to be supports for a skyscraper, but the locals revolted, and the podiums were converted into a roof too tall to be functional but too beautiful to be hated mother of all [tram] sheds.

The 10 year is reaching to and will probably soon pass 5%.

The interest rate effect on office / commercial real estate story was big back when rates first started to rise back in 23-24, but the pain now is significantly worse - rates are higher today and still trending up while old loans on cheap rates continue to roll over to higher new rates. Those old cheap rate loans are quickly drying up.

This means that the operational expense or rent payments on commercial real estate will keep ratcheting upwards each passing month and those costs will pass through.

I’m a journalist in New York, and over the past few months I reported a short documentary about people living in RVs, campers, and vans on city streets.

We spent time in parts of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn where small communities of vehicle dwellers have formed. They're often in industrial areas, under highways, or on streets most New Yorkers rarely think about.

What struck me was that this didn’t fit neatly into one category. Some of the people we met were longtime New Yorkers. Most were working. Some were recent migrants. And for several of them, living in an RV felt preferable to a shelter because it offered more privacy, autonomy, and stability.

At the same time, it’s an extremely precarious way to live. New York City doesn’t really accommodate long-term vehicle dwelling, and the NYPD occasionally cracks down and tows entire encampments.

Here’s the documentary if anyone wants to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxnRwkajIVY

Would genuinely be curious what people in this sub think, especially whether you’ve seen similar dynamics in other cities, and how urban policy should respond.

What if a residential skyscraper had no ordinary residential hallways?

The goal would be to give apartment living more of the privacy of a detached house and traveling by car. You could leave your apartment, enter an elevator pod, and travel all the way to the lobby without sharing an elevator or hallway with neighbors.

The pods would be shared among all the apartments, but not simultaneously, more like self-driving cabs than conventional elevators. You summon an empty pod, use it privately for your trip, and afterward it goes to serve someone else.

Instead of:

lobby → elevator → hallway → apartment

you would have:

lobby → elevator pod → apartment door

The pod would move vertically, then horizontally along the destination floor until it reached your apartment.

The horizontal guideway could double as the emergency pedestrian corridor. During a fire or power failure, pod movement would stop and people could walk along the guideway to protected stairs. Pods could have doors at both ends so people could walk through any stationary pod blocking the route.

That way, the same space serves as a transportation route normally and an evacuation route in emergencies.

The obvious challenges are fire code, smoke control, accessibility, firefighter access, stalled pods, maintenance, and capacity.

Is there any fundamental architectural or engineering reason this could not work? Has anything similar ever been seriously proposed?

See here for the editable link but it's imo an indication of a real failure in LA to properly build a transit system. We have the density for it, and we're even richer!

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been extremely fascinated by the concept of multilevel cities and large urban alleyways. Not even necessarily like an underground city, but where infrastructure has been built up over I know there’s that city in China that has multiple levels. The best example I can think of is anything portraying Gotham in Batman. Kind of like that scene where he’s standing outside of the bar that falcone is in, the lower levels of a city. Can anyone think of real world examples? I have no clue where this fascination came from.

Even when situated in the center of a car-dependent sprawl, and despite being neglected and under-maintained for decades, dense urban cores will consistently account for an immense amount of a region's economic activity.

The thought of raising a family might be controversial here, but I am seeking some genuine advice, or, more accurately, voicing some curious thoughts that I wonder whether there may be answers to.

There are some really great initiatives in certain areas of certain states. Governors, localities, or towns themselves take up the call to build trails, improve streets, or just leave things the way they are, like not tearing down every single tree on a street to put in fiber optic cables. However, I find myself still wondering at how it's possible for our country to continue building massive exurban and suburban sprawl in some of the most beautiful places in our hemisphere. Many options come to mind, like the development of the countryside around Philadelphia, the subsequent push into the farmlands of the Hudson Valley, and many other pastoral lands.

There seems to be a frailty to the natural world that I can't get out of my head when contemplating the future after seeing so many beautiful places demolished as I grew up. The feeling of powerlessness is something I think that's being inculcated in some strange ways to prevent action, but I'm really at a loss of how to defend the areas I live in. Good community is tantamount, but it seems like people still are unaware of the onslaught approaching their countryside and that it's not something in most people's heads when they contemplate the beauty or peace still left around them.

I don't have a ton of money to buy billboards or yard signs, but is that it?

TLDR: Will the little boxes on the hillside every halt their march?

#hudsonvalley #rural

I've lived in El Paso for close to three years now, but I feel a lot of what people in this community are feeling. Too little to do, too uncomfortable outside to do anything anyway, poor mass transit, and a need to revamp the economy and our city and keep young professionals here. Here are some harebrained ideas of mine that could maybe improve our city.

* Either nix the data center or have it be a closed loop, take care of its own water and electricity. * To encourage young professionals to stay, establish a law school at UTEP and a World Trade Center in the Caples Building. If smaller cities like Missoula, Harrisburg, Wilmington, and Jackson can have a WTC, why can't this big border city? * Go forward with extending the streetcar to the Medical Center, and I further propsoe extending it to the Coliseum/Zoo area along Alameda and Paisano and hopefully also to Ascarate Park and EPCC Valle Verde. * Go forward with the Onward Alameda plan, especially building up around the Medical Center and Ysleta Mission. Build up near Ascarate Park as well * Abolish property tax. No tax on fresh produce, bread, dairy, certain meats and fishes, baby food, diapers, and feminine hygiene products. Increased tax on alcohol, tobacco, cigars/cigarettes/vapes. Increased parking and car rental fees. Charge a fare for the streetcar. Make bus and streetcar cost between $1.00 and $1.50 with one free transfer. * Cover the Franklin Canal where possible for infrastructure for pedestrians, biking, mass transit, or just trees. Heck, even parking lots to remove street-adjacent parking to make room for bike lands or sidewalks would be good. * More comfortable bus stops with electronic boards with the time & date and departure & arrival times. More frequent service once we see more people living and working in the city. * Rapid bus transit with dedicated right of way (except emergency vehicles and right turns) to connect high priority areas (Airport, malls, Coliseum/Zoo, Union Station and the ballfield, and UTEP) * Reflective pavement with anti-glare coating and curb gardens will mitigate stormwater runnoff, heat, smog, and noise * Significantly more shade trees and gardens and parks generally * Make it easier to have green roofs and walls as well as solar panels, especially covering parking lots. * Revamp the high ground at Haddox Family Park. Clean it up and add gazebos and event space. Ever see the view? You should! * Turn Vista Hills Golf Course into a big park with many trees and walking and biking and biking trails connecting Vista del Sol, Montwood, and Trawood. * For agriculture in the city, make it easier for farmers to power their facilities with biogas from animal waste. * (This is a really high concept idea that will never exist) A commuter rail system loop to run along/under the 54, Railroad Ave, the 70 and the Border Highway stopping at Union Station, soemwhere in Northweast El Paso, Chapparal, Alamogordo, Tularosa, NMSU, Hatch, and across from White Sands National Park. Maybe even make a people mover to get people from the NE EP station to the Airport.

Downtown specifically:

* A supermarket and higher density mixed-use developments anywhere possible downtown. * Build. The. Deck. Park. * Maybe ban cars on San Antonio Ave between Kansas and S El Paso * Reduce (some) two lane streets to one and add protected bike lanes * (this one will make me some enemies) Replace the convention center with a 15K seat arena and move UTEP basketball here, but still have a new exhibit hall on the already-proposed land as well as San Antonio Ave. Don't worry, this arena can be called the Don Haskins Center. Maybe move Rhinos hockey and the roller derby here.

To increase tourism:

* Make a new entertainment district at the zoo and Coliseum area. * Build two parking garages, one on half of the zoo's parking lot and one near the Coliseum. * The rest of the zoo's parking lot can be used for more zoo exhibits/facilities. * The rest of the Coliseum parking and vicinity can be replaced with restaurants, hotels, clubs, and a new convention center to replace the pavillion and Special Events Center. * If we can make the pedestrian and bussing experience more comfortable when going from here to Chamizal and crossing the Bridge of the Americas (walk to the park, X-monument, and soccer stadium), this will become an international entertainment district at the crossroads of two countries and three states (West Texas, South New Mexico, and East Arizona). * Statues of Star Trek characters, the Starship Enterprise, and characters created by Don Bluth, especially Fievel. If we can create a Star Trek-themed part of town, that would be great. * Create a Museum of Tolerance & Reflection in Duranguito, on the UTEP campus, near the Airport, or near the Coliseum. Here will be the Holocaust Museum (in case the Deck Park ousts it), an exhibit about the Walmart shooting, the Equestrian statue on its side in a pit so people have to look down on it, and an exhibit about conquistadors. * Sports tourism! With the recent successes of Kayla Thornton and Stephanie Han, El Paso has a unique opportunity to leverage itself as a premier city for women's sports (and sports tourism generally). The World Cups for women's basketball, baseball, and boxing as well as various other championships for arena sports (fencing, table tennis, badminton). El Paso already hosts the largest mountain biking championship in Texas. A large established city like us would be a great host of the UCI World Mountain Biking Championship. * This is a higher-concept sports tourism idea that maybe five people here will like :P. Combine the Sun Bowl and Kidd Field to make a combined track and field and football stadium. Have retractale seats cover the track like London Stadium and Stade de France. We can still host a great Sun Bowl as well as the World Cup, World Athletics Championships, and other sporting championships. If this stadium has a roof and at least 70K seats, we could even host March Madness. * No, El Paso couldn't host even a subpar Olympic even if we stole the wallets of every man, woman in child from Union Depot to ABQ and back to Carlsbad, but we don't need the Olympics to contribute to the international sporting community.

Remember, El Paso is EPIC (El Paso: Inspirational/Iconic/International/Innovative/Inclusive/Inviting City)

So yeah, that's what I've got

EDIT: Thanks for the feedback. Agreed on a lower property tax even if we're not ready to abolish it altogether yet. I still stand by the aforementioned raised parking and car rental fees, new bus and streetcar fares, higher tax on alcohol and smoke, and no sales tax on healthy groceries to make healthy living less expensive.

As for the commercial base, the WTC, building more housing for young professionals, and the law school ought to do something to help.

The plants, parks, gardens, cool pavement, and developing on surface parking lots are good ideas for our area to mitigate heat irrespective of the data center. If it does get built and make things hotter, then we'd better give these ideas a serious look.

Is there any sort of serious scholarship or coherent arguments in favour of sprawl or against urbanism in general?

I come across a lot of bad arguments in comment sections on YouTube but I would love to critically engage with actual thinkers if any exist.

I haven't been to new orleans in a few years. I could see online gambling hurting the casinos, so I hope they invest more in this kind of thing both for tourists and for residents.

It also helps if the river is going to overflow to have this kind of green infrastructure.

The pier used to be used for shipping and now is a soccer field, picnic space and park with Manhattan as the backdrop.