of shelter, movement, open space, and life support. The Shelter Division contains zoning areas of compatible activity and shelter intensity called gross building area per buildable acre. These areas produce revenue that is a function of the intensity and occupant activity present or planned for the area involved; but the importance of intensity has never been quantified beyond superficial height and setback regulations.
When revenue is divided by the acres occupied, the resulting
public income per acre indicates its productivity, and productivity can be
compared to a city’s expense per acre when its annual budget is divided by the
taxable acres under its supervision. This means that a zoning map not only
separates incompatible land use activity. It inadvertently defines the areas,
activities, and intensities that contribute to its financial stability or
instability; but these implications have escaped the equations, cooperation,
digital analysis, and predictive ability required to evaluate “stability”
beyond a balanced budget that may contain draconian service reductions.
Keep in mind that real estate tax revenue may be divided
among a number of recipients. I have seen a city share as low as 9% with the
remainder allocated to school, county, and library recipients. This makes the
average revenue per acre for city operations extremely low even though the
total dollar amount paid may seem high to a taxpayer. The percentage I’ve
mentioned applied to a land-locked bedroom community with little off-setting
income tax revenue and 5% non-residential land use. It had little ability to
analyze its deteriorating financial situation in the physical detail required to
make a difference, and was forced to grasp at project straws it called economic
development.
Unfortunately, a city rarely knows the average revenue per
acre that will be produced by the various activities and intensity combinations
permitted within the zones on its map; and may not understand the mathematical
definition of intensity that determines revenue predictions and quality of life
standards. This means that many, if not most, cities attempt to correct budget
imbalances with the annexation of land for new revenue to meet old expense when
land is available; but remain unable to accurately anticipate the adequacy of
this new revenue to meet increasing public expense per acre as its annexation ages.
This uncertainty has often made annexation a Ponzi scheme that must consume
ever greater amounts of land for new revenue that proves inadequate over time
as the cost of its annexation maintenance and improvement increases. We are all
familiar with the deterioration, sprawl and continuing consumption of an
irreplaceable resource that occurs when budgets are inadequate and populations
multiply. When new land is unavailable, a city’s lack of land use capacity,
intensity, and yield information makes redevelopment a strategy based on hope with
inadequate knowledge and persuasive power facing objection rooted in fear.
A city cannot balance and/or adjust its acreage and activity
allocation to produce a desired financial yield per acre until it improves the
tools, data, and knowledge it uses to make its case. The problem is magnified
when time is taken into account. I have just pointed out that revenue from new
development can appear to be a windfall until its maintenance expense per acre
increases with age to exceed the revenue provided.
have presented new tools, equations, and forecast models
to predict the land development capacity, intensity, and yield of any urban
land area in my book, The Equations of Urban Design, 2020; and have
presented the database structures and relationships required to build knowledge
concerning the revenue productivity of land use activity and intensity options in
an essay contained in my book, Symbiotic Architecture, 2020. The essay
is one from a collection in the bo
ok and is entitled, “The Least a Smart City
Should Know”, 2018. I self-published the two books on Amazon.com where they can
now be found.
