<story><title>Why Many Cities Have No Money</title><url>http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vvpan</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it&amp;#x27;s city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store, swimming pool, park, woods is an easy _walk_ away. The traffic through the town was even disallowed, which opened up a giant traffic-free area for us to play around as kids and elderly to use for socializing and to run their errands. For ease of visualizing here&amp;#x27;s an aerial photo of said town in early 00s: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;sj9t3Jy.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;sj9t3Jy.jpg&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>csydas</author><text>I live in Russia at the moment and probably the most startling thing is how well planned many of the cities and towns are and how very clearly these cities were not made for cars. While it&amp;#x27;s a hassle for vehicle traffic because the roads were never designed to handle everyone owning a car, the benefit is that no matter where you live there is a shop nearby for essentials (groceries, clothing stores, repairs, cafe&amp;#x27;s, etc), transit is readily availble even in the smallest of towns and fairly affordable. I spent time in Pereslavl-Zalessky about 140 km north of moscow and was surprised that even a relatively small town had faster and more regular public transit than most of the cities I&amp;#x27;ve lived in in the US.&lt;p&gt;Granted it all comes with a slight adjustment to get used to some of the holdovers of life in the USSR, but when I lived in Seattle, it used to be if I missed the bus I had to wait ~30+ minutes for the next one home, and I needed to plan whether I&amp;#x27;d take a side trip to get groceries or not, adding an additional mile or two to my walk home. Here it&amp;#x27;s nice to just be able to walk a few hundred meters at most to the nearest store for groceries.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Many Cities Have No Money</title><url>http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vvpan</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it&amp;#x27;s city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store, swimming pool, park, woods is an easy _walk_ away. The traffic through the town was even disallowed, which opened up a giant traffic-free area for us to play around as kids and elderly to use for socializing and to run their errands. For ease of visualizing here&amp;#x27;s an aerial photo of said town in early 00s: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;sj9t3Jy.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;sj9t3Jy.jpg&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sologoub</author><text>Well, they got walkability mostly right, but living in those panel boxes was still not great. I&amp;#x27;d never want to go back to that...&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find the 5-8 story setups of cities like Paris, Barcelona or Rome much more appealing - enough density to make all the good things like walkability and local cafes happen, but no blocked out sun (Like in NYC) or need to climb to 20th floor when the elevator gives out for the nth time.</text></comment>