Strong Towns Baltimore is excited about transit improvements that would connect to the existing light rail line at the Lutherville light rail station.
Kathleen Beadell asks “Why can’t we just keep our lovely suburbia?” (”Baltimore County residents push back against transit proposals to speed riders between downtown Baltimore and Lutherville,” Dec. 16) The short answer is that we can’t financially afford the suburbia that we have built and attempting to do so is leading us (Baltimore County, in particular) to bankruptcy.
The suburban development pattern combines the openness of rural communities with the infrastructure standards of urban communities. The result is communities that are impossibly expensive to maintain (given the tax base). Extending the reach of roads, water, sewer, trash pick-up, etc., throughout (low-density) suburbs requires tremendous resources, both up-front and ongoing.
Property taxes fall significantly short of covering the high cost of maintaining everything that many suburban residents have been led to believe are givens. The only reason our suburban pattern of development has been able to continue on for as long as it has without collapsing is because of constant growth, a set-up which amounts to a Ponzi scheme.
As the infrastructure built to service older communities reaches end-of-life, the strikingly high costs required to maintain and replace it are covered by fees paid for by developers of new communities. However, in the case of…
