Ahh yes, the voter plantation of Chicago with about 2.6 million and falling, many of whom get PAID TO LIVE THERE will support the other 6 million in the burbs and collar counties - you  know the places with all the factories, warehouses and office parks.  OK Chicago, take your 10 square blocks of skyscrapers and go pout.  We all know the economic engine of Illinois is actually the farms and industrial suburbs.  Whats Chicago got?  Oh yeah, law firms, law firms and more law firms.

"That's because large urban centers have been subsidizing suburban and rural communities to a point where most of them are in a huge financial hole.

Since when did cities start funding other jurisdictions?

This thread is a morass of flamebaiting, half-baked bullshit."

Won and done, I usually enjoy your posts, but this time you're the one full of half-baked bullshit. 

Ever heard of federal, state, personal. business, corporate, sales, etc.. taxes? They get collected and spent on various programs. Some states pay more in federal taxes then they receive, and vice versa. Same thing happens for the cities. Big cities tend to pay more than they receive. 

In my case, I live in a city of 2.5 million. Recent study said that average taxpayer pays $1,700 more in taxes than they receive back in services. That shit adds up pretty quickly. Look up your own city to see the balance.

Won, for you to ever be an informed designer, you should understand the basics of political structures. Rule #1: all big cities are automatically fucked.

This is not a great secret, really. 

Since when did cities start funding other jurisdictions?

Illinois 2012 Budget (warning: PDF)

Total FY12 Capital Appropriations:
Department Of Transportation— $16,488,706,145
Total budget: $27,142,357,218

The amount spent on transportation infrastructure is more than what the entire state spends on everything else, combined and like 160% of the combined other appropriations. Illinois budget is comprised of 51% general funds with only 5% allocated from highway funds.

However, all this transportation expenses are not calculated under the operating funds. Transportation "appropriations" would be equivalent to 1/5th of the State's operating budget. Basically, the State of Illinois is spending $16,000,000,000 a year on transportation infrastructure while only budgeting enough to pay the debt service on floating those massive bonds.

Now, in states like Illinois, the state doesn't handle property tax directly. However, only people who pay property tax can write it off on their state tax returns (5%).

So, anyone who rents or owns certain property types either get the shaft or may not be able to get their full exemption. And with an average home price in Chicago being around $400,000, that comes out to around $200-$250. With a little under 600,000 units of housing in Chicago being rented units, that would come out to about $120,000,000 in diverted tax funds.

But states with state income taxes are bad examples because of the complications in tracking the money. Also, states with income taxes also have lower real estate taxes than states that don't. The only comparable Florida city's (Miami) taxes would be about $1500 more a year.

So, technically here, homeowners in Illinois get a double deduction on taxes (state and property) in addition to the credit they receive on their state returns.

Rusty, in the case of Chicagoland, the city is noway paying the bulk of the taxes when 20% of the citizens are at poverty level and receiving assistance.  The economic engine is is the massive suburban job machine while very large, I wouldn't say sprawled.  The city of Chicago might be a tourist draw but it's not Manhattan.  Most fortune 500s and large employers are in the burbs.  Now what you say about states receiving less than they send to the Federal government in taxes is absolutely true for Illinois and New York State.  In Illinois' case this is the direct result of ineffective liberal representation in Congress more interested in  bullshit grandstanding than representing their districts.  Illinois is 4th in taxes collected and 43rd in federal spending.  Go figure.

Maybe if Illinois wasnt paying out golden pensions so doughnut eaters from the State Troopers could retire at 50 in Palm Springs on $90K a Year Illinois could pay for some of this.  Rusty, does the PDF say what the union cost for the road crew is?  Doubtful.  Everyone in Illinois and Michigan knows about the road crew union rackets.  Why do think its 16 billion? 

trendzetter, Illinois has always been a weird state when it came to politics, corruption, and general WTF. Not fair to compare it to any place else. 

That said, DuPage County is one of the richest in the nation. It says more about regional racial segregation than anything else. Cook County (which is essentially Chicago) houses 40% of the entire state. And at 5 million plus, it's double the size of what you claimed. 

No matter how you crunch the numbers, a population of 10k/sq.mi is much easier to service than the one of 2k/sq.mi. As energy crisis approaches ( maybe not in our lifetimes, but inevitable) sprawl, and general disrespect for land, becomes an economic and financial burden. 

Feel free to be frustrated with local politics, but you should mind the bigger picture as well. Kiss your big ass front lawn goodbye, or perish. 

Oh please, I work closely with local city government and the only people that would make the argument you are making about state and federal funding are the hopelessly ideological (usually the people who make me regret voting Democratic 95% of the time). Cities are funded principally by local tax structures. In the case of cities, the man ain't out to get us because we are the man.

Anyway, 'nuff of this.

"Cities are funded principally by local tax structures"

Is that the only tax city folk pay? No? They pay other taxes as well? 

Anyways, this seems like a topic where one comes in with pre-determined opinions, and nothing will change them. 

'nuff of this indeed. 

Damn, what'd I miss??  

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! this thread blew up!

i have articles too about some 'suburban economic enging...'

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110528/ISSUE01/305289984/crains-special-report-corporate-campuses-in-twilight

lletdown that graph shows absolutely nothing but a fairly coupled rise and fall in employment in both downtown and the suburbs mirroring the the national employment rise and fall.  So the downtown was a couple percentage points better?  I bet if you adjusted out the Federal, State and Municipal mole people in downtown Chicago employment would be cut by a third.  Try this sometime - go to every building in downtown Chicago and look at the building directories.  They all have some sort of government back office, from processing to legal departments. 

Check out this guy's, who was quoted in the article, letter to editor:

Mckim B. wrote:
This is a letter I submitted to the Crain's editors regarding the above article. They declined to publish it. I trust they'll print it here.

I would like to clarify a quote attributed to me in the "Campus Twilight" article. Your reporter asked me the likely effect on housing demand of a major move of jobs from the suburbs to the areas closer to or in the central city. The proposed situation was very hypothetical. It is not happening now, nor, in my view, is it likely to. I refer your readers to data readily available from the Where Workers Work (WWW) internet site maintained by the Illinois Department of Employment Security (everyone should be aware of and use this site). With the exception of the explosive job growth in the far suburbs from 1982 to the year 2000, the tables in WWW indicate a moderately growing share of jobs in the far suburbs since 2000 and a moderately declining shere in the part of the city located outside the downtown and in the "inner suburbs." The downtown share has remained almost exactly the same -- between 13.6% and 13.8% -- for many years.

Read more: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110528/ISSUE01/305289984/crains-special-report-corporate-campuses-in-twilight#ixzz1Q1Fauf90
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yeah... the article i linked to didnt have anything to do with the location of jobs in the chicago region currently... it addressed a shift in corporate culture away from insular sprawling suburban office fortresses back to better connected cities... 

Just because people (urban dezignairs) want to believe dense urban centers are superior and pay to sustain the life of the countryside around them, doesn't make it true. Since the beginning of time the countryside has been the support system of the city and the cleanser of its waste. When did that change? Oh, right, when you go to design school.

Suburban living (with a big lot for growing food for self-sufficency) is the progressive urban dwellers dream, they just don't know it yet. And so it goes.

My personal preference would be for a downtown location where I can choose from many restaurants, do some people watching, get some exercise, and sunshine on my lunch break instead of hop in my car and goto a fry pit.  Yes there might be a great restaurant in a little strip mall or a picnic table in the grass at the office park, but the amenities are far more likely in a higher density, walkable setting.

Do most people truly prefer driving home in rush hour traffic vs reading a book or getting on your laptop while relaxing on public transportation*?  I am referring to public transportation in Boston, NYC, or another place that has people from all walks of life.  I am aware public transportation is a different animal in sprawlburbia consisting almost entirely of people who don't own cars (no choicebut to use PT) inconvenient schedules, and sometimes rude behavior.

Does anyone else find reasons to cheer when gas prices rise?  Yes it hurts in the wallet, but I think it is unavoidable and will lead to many positive, sustainable changes in the long run.

Becca a traditional small town with a local farmers market would be far more appealing to me.  I don't think your idea is sustainable.  There isn't enough land for everyone to have their own little 3 acre suburban farm.

People choose suburbs for the better schools and because they have been subsidized through roads and utility concessions for deacdes. That might change as gas prices continue to climb.   The idea that there is something between NYC and single use residential gated communities isn't on the radar.

 "There isn't enough land for everyone to have their own little 3 acre suburban farm." I haven't done the math but regardless I agree it isn't a nice model for living well or sustainably. I didn't mean to imply that that was MY model anyways, I was trying to be funny, so would like to clarify that I think it is the physical manifestation of the ideals of self-sufficiency and density that many promote. 

Funny how green x green = brown. (not really brown, because that means something else, but you know what I mean.)
 

I believe there are somewhere between 6 and 7 acres per person in the lower 48, not counting the great lakes, unbuildable mountains, various national parks, etc.  and then we have alaska and canada, also both part of the united states.  

So le bossman where do the roads go?  Where will the animals live if we partition the entire country into 6 acre lots?  The ecosystem cannot function without it's wild places and humans cannot survive for long without the ecosystem.  The idea that there are 6 acres per person might be true, but the idea that everyone can have 6 acres for themselves is a fantasy.

This idea of autonomy and self sufficiency is kind of an interesting one, because it seems to lie at the heart of a lot of the arguments here, whether they be from the left / city / etc or the right / rural regions, etc...either way, it seems people are resisting to structures that are playing an increasingly large role in determining the shape of our lives, without any ability on our part to shape them in return. To some, they've experienced the various levels of government creating an seemingly undue burden in the form of taxes, regulations, etc, and others object to the corporations that  provide and profit from everything we buy, consume, eat... so we turn to self-sufficiency as a potential remedy. 

This comes in the form of urban hipster bicyclist farmers, and country-tea-party-survivalist-hunters, but I think the urge is common. 

But what degree of self-reliance is acceptable? We're not going to go back to growing our own food. The history of humanity is of increasing divisions of labor that  allow for specializations, the development of technology, etc... so what scale of development allows for self-reliance and some degree of a division of labor? Some ideal village? A city state? A region like New England or The Pac NW? 

"Since the beginning of time the countryside has been the support system of the city and the cleanser of its waste. When did that change? Oh, right, when you go to design school."

Actually, most historical dense cities— those that you would categorize as 'megacities'— are located on oceans or major rivers because water is a three-dimensional food source. You can only extract food on land in an x,y direction where as food exist in the x,y,z directions in the water.

Also, if we look toward pre-iron-age societies that still exist today— as in those societies who have never refined iron from ore— a predominate feature of all of them is centralized food processing and storage. Whether it's fermenting, drying or milling, pre-iron peoples from West African to the Amazons to New Guinea all rely on communal industrial processes to sustain their hunter-gatherer-crude agricultural societies.