green

I read Gwnn Dyer’s “Climate Wars” over the last weekend and will be posting on some of its sustainability themes over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I wanted to share a quick thought on “density.”

In a sustainability context, density means increasing the number of people living & working in a given space. Density has a number of benefits that are consistent with Conservative ideology:

• Lower taxes: Increase the tax base for a given area’s infrastructure, and the per capita share drops. Fiscal conservatism has a chance.
• Smaller government: Smaller, denser cities require on a per capita basis less administration, less maintenance, etc.
• Minimal regulation: Density can be increased with relatively simple changes to tax codes to increase the attractiveness of building up and on infill lots.

Just a thought. I wish municipalities touchstoned their policy-making against an ideology. Perhaps the party system should extend to the municipal level.

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