One aspect is parcelization. New England has been settled for nearly 400 years, and there are few large tracts left unbroken.

There is also a one-sided development pattern: the old New England cities grew up on harbors, and often those harbors were where rivers flowed to the sea. Columbus and Indianapolis are on plains, with only minor rivers and hills.

There is no shortage of large farms at the edge of development in the Midwest, wherever the edge of development happens to be in any given year. Working farms in the Midwest were aggregated, not parcelized, over the past 50 years. So there are huge tracts in every direction, a marked contrast to New England.

And Columbus and Indianapolis both brag of being within a day’s drive of 50% or more of North America’s population. No wonder that both cities have those outlying industrial parks and warehouse districts at their outer belts.

But Indianapolis collects sales tax only to fund its stadium debt, and only within the past 5 years has raised its (resident-only) income tax to about 1.6% in response to state caps on property tax rates. That is to say, Indianapolis was property-tax dependent, and it didn’t have to annex helter-skelter to control its outer-belt interchanges because Unigov took care of that in 1972. We no longer have any way to capture tax revenue from commuters, as the ability to tax their offices and factories is diminished by property tax caps. Indianapolis cannot annex beyond its home county, so the next step is either an overhaul of the “tax mix” or some form of metro county cost and revenue sharing.

I suppose it’s necessary to answer the question of whether home-county consolidation “works” before we start talking about metro (multiple) county consolidations, and certainly the permitted tax regimes (usually controlled at the state capitol) have a major bearing on the answer.

Conversely, the suburbs of the coastal cities tend to be hostile to pedestrianism. They protect property tax revenues in other ways, for examples restricting land supply to raise land prices, and maintaining exclusive upper middle class reputations. But they are usually not too keen on things that interfere with the ability of residents to drive everywhere without worrying about pedestrians.

1. I like Jane Jacob’s idea. I think long-run it’s probably one of the best structures. I wonder if the Twin Cities’ revenue-sharing system isn’t almost a mirror opposite of that system, with communities interconnected financially but governed individually.

2. Bexley’s status as its own community with its own school district has a lot to do with its success. It’s also a very monied area, being home to the Governor’s mansion, among other large mansions. There was quite a bit of controversy a few years ago when they started redeveloping their main street with 4+story buildings, but their tax base is limited, so that won out.

3. Columbus has definitely suffered over the years from a lack of focus on individual neighborhoods. That has changed quite a bit recently, but even in nicer areas you notice a uniformity that comes from all the areas being developed under one master set of standards. The City traditionally focused on the tax base, for obvious reasons, more than the character of its neighborhoods, which means annexing more commercial areas. I sense that Indy has some of the same issues. On the east coast the opposite is true. They tend to focus on preserving the character of a community.

Ironically, that may be due to tax systems. I read a study once that analyzed three tax systems for municipalities: sales tax, income tax and property tax. It showed pretty clearly that cities enact strategies that maximize their tax revenue. So compare a New England city to Columbus. New England cities are funded almost exclusively by property tax. The motivation is to preserve property values. In Columbus, the main municipal tax is income tax, WHERE YOU WORK (an important distinction).

So looking at these two models, on what should you focus? Well, look at most highway exits in New England. With the exception of a few major routes (like U.S. 1) or urban downtowns, exits empty off to an area that might have a gas station or a convenience store, but then quickly go to residential areas. Oftentimes you are in a major suburban area but don’t know it until you drive down the road and see all the homes. In Columbus almost every highway exit has substantial commercial development, with strip malls and warehouses dotting the landscape.

As a resident, which is prettier and more desirable? Probably the sleepy-looking New England exit. Certainly New England has a leg up on Ohio in the scenic arena. But if you live the next exit up and it has a large strip center and some warehouses, well that’s not as attractive. Maybe folks don’t like your exit as much. I think there’s a sense (rightly or wrongly) that the atmosphere of an area drives property values. And you want to preserve those values, because that’s where your money is.

In Columbus, or any Ohio city, what really matters is having those commercial facilities IN your city, because that gets the income tax. So you are going to compete to get these facilities, even if it means that you put that warehouse right next to a neighborhood which drives down its property values.

It also drives spending. In New England, you are likely to spend money investing in classy infrastructure like sidewalks and new roads in existing areas. In Ohio, the incentive is to capture new growth in commercial areas, so you will focus on expansion, sometimes to the detriment of more established areas.

How does this tie to consolidation? Well, one of Columbus’ main goals in its annexation policies was to capture land around every highway exit on the Outerbelt. They more or less succeeded. Their whole policy of consolidation over the past 50 years was driven by their desire for income tax. I wager that if you imposed a New England, property-based tax system in Ohio, you would see a significant shift in development patterns.

To be fair, New Englanders are more likely to disdain smaller houses in their cities (lower property values), while Ohio cities are often more welcoming of them (market demand for commercial developments). So there are positives and negatives to both systems, but looking at the underlying structures is very important in understanding how a policy will impact a community.

I think another problem is that the CBs are appointed rather than elected. And drop the personality contests – force people to contest those elections on unified lists. Non-ideological politics is the easiest thing in the world to corrupt with money; that’s partly why billionaire-politicians downplay ideology in favor of managerial issues.

I agree that some sort of autonomy, whether formal (incorporated suburbs) or informal (wards, districts or some similar structure in a larger city), is the best way to get effective neighborhood redevelopment. But there are caveats.

I’m familiar with Chicago’s ward system, having worked in it. Yes, aldermen do have nearly complete control of their wards, and it does lend itself to corruption. Honestly, an even greater fault than corruption (to me) is poor ward leadership. Wards that have aldermen with knowledge, capacity and leadership ability have done very well over the last twenty years or so; many wards have elected aldermen without that ability, and the wards continue to languish. A lot is put on the aldermen to turn their wards around, and not all are capable of doing it.

I also think a lack of neighborhood autonomy is one of the many things that afflicts Detroit. Detroit has MUCH weaker neighborhood identification than Chicago, and no ward system that provides some representation. In fact, Detroit lost its ward system in the early 1900s when it dealt with political corruption at that time. Today, Detroit’s City Council is comprised of nine at-large persons coming from anywhere, and there are large swaths of the city that just haven’t gotten the attention they deserve, or any representation of any sort for decades.

Maybe Detroit’s reorganization from 100+ years ago has more in common with consolidation than I realized.

http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/building-blocks/uncategorized/2010/02/slay-revives-city-county-reunification-idea/