Post

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈
@maxdubler.com

Municipal fragmentation creates significant collective action problems in housing as every jurisdiction seeks to maximize property tax revenue while minimize spending on services (read: schools for poor kids).

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social

A minimum population size for local government in general would solve literally hundreds of problems. Lots of cities should be annexed or disincorporated.

40 reposts356 likes

🏳️‍🌈🚲Cole🚄🚟
@coleurbanist.bsky.social

I think the answer is more complicated than a specific minimum population threshold. Even if you set it to 100k it makes it so that you are combining many entire counties sometimes. Not very useful there. But 100k might be too small for a metro area like Chicago.

POGtastic
@pogtastic.bsky.social

consolidation in the Portland area would probably be smart but would also result in me having to care about what the Portland city council is doing instead of just laughing at them, so it's impossible to tell whether it's a good idea or not

Barbara Samuels
@bsamuels72.bsky.social

Housing segregation maintains school segregation. Housing markets are regional, which means housing solutions need to be implemented at regional, not just county, level. E.g. voucher Mobility Program run by Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership. share.google/d3H92ZhzzH4G...

share.googleEpisode 88: Improving Voucher Outcomes with Dionissi AliprantisAliprantis shares research on neighborhood opportunity and rent assistance program features that could reduce racial segregation.
wine dad
@winedad.bsky.social

Why would any smaller city want to be annexed by City of LA? Would just be an incredible self own given how shitty LA is at like basic governance.

Henry Fung
@henryfung.bsky.social

And regarding schools, I don’t see that much evidence the countywide school districts common in the South are any better or worse than school district fragmentation in the west and north. They did make it easier to do integration if they cared for it (Wake County NC), but that is it.

Barbara Samuels
@bsamuels72.bsky.social

Agree fragmentation is bad. But Maryland has big county gov’t & school districts. Very few incorporated municipalities. And it still has lots of both intradistrict & interdistrict school segregation because most counties never had a court deseg order & never voluntarily made an attempt.

Waffle 🧇
@wafflecut.bsky.social

There’s a lot of these pairings in socal — small wealthy city with tiny population and lots of businesses separated by a border from a poorer city with lots lf working class residents. Bell & Maywood, City of Industry & La Puente, plenty more.

Waffle 🧇
@wafflecut.bsky.social

The City of Industry website says 68,000 people work there, but the population is less than 300, and most of the homes in the city are rentals owned either by one family or by the city itself, so they basically hand-select who lives in the city and therefore who is able to vote

Alex Elliott
@canadianyankee.bsky.social

Do you want Mayor Rob Ford? This is how you get Mayor Rob Ford: six cities amalgamated into the new megacity of Toronto and the suburban flavored non-Old-Toronto parts of the expanded city voted in a guy who hates urbanism and loves cars. Look at the map here: theconversation.com/who-votes-fo...

theconversation.comWho votes for a mayor like Rob Ford?Toronto politics has never been the stuff of international headlines. A prosperous and cosmopolitan metropolis that has attracted a million new residents every decade since the end of the World War Tw...