Empire State Future's Peter B. Fleischer lays out the case against malignant sprawl in yesterday's Albany Times-Union.
Today's upstate sprawl extends considerably farther away from town and city centers; consists of larger homes built on larger lots (many of which demand more in services than they create in tax revenue); demands extension of increasingly costly municipal services to far-flung communities; and requires more infrastructure that is more difficult and expensive to build, operate and maintain. The associated cost and tax burden is borne by a shrinking and aging pool of taxpayers.
There is simply no reasonable expectation in most of upstate New York that population, home values or tax revenues can cover the costs of future decline and expansion of infrastructure.
