Services and Taxes Favour Suburbs
As hinterlands acquire more population and more power then, according to the one man one vote principle, they get more votes in representative bodies, notably metropolitan regions or greater urban areas such as the Greater Toronto Area or Greater London. Suburban votes then come to outweigh inner city votes, just as, a century earlier, urbanization or urban colonialization diminished the power of rural voters.
Decisions of these bodies accordingly begin to favour people who live in suburbs, providing more car-oriented and commuter services and more favourable property tax rates for single family homes as tenants in downtown apartment buildings pay higher rates. In urban areas that are growing rapidly, services may be developed that favour urban sprawl, such as large trunk sewers, express highways or shopping malls, as other services such as youth recreation disappear from downtown areas. This increases population drain to the suburbs as quality of life drops, but the increased population may then drive more people further out to the hinterlands which increases the political rewards (especially political donations from real estate developers building greenfield developments) for sprawl.
Read more about this topic: Suburban Colonization
Famous quotes containing the words services and, services, taxes, favour and/or suburbs:
“The community and family networks which helped sustain earlier generations have become scarcer for growing numbers of young parents. Those who lack links to these traditional sources of support are hard-pressed to find other resources, given the emphasis in our society on providing treatment services, rather than preventive services and support for health maintenance and well-being.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list—the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No one has needed favours more than I, and generally, few have been less unwilling to accept them; but in this case, favour to me, would be injustice to the public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like—Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything—but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)