The Birth of the American City-state

[Valmy]

Depends what you mean.  A number of countries around their world established their national capitals as separate "city states," and most seem pleased with the choice.

Yeah they didn't do this centuries after they were established for no other reason but to manipulate voting.

[Neil]

If Raz's question is whether the rural parts of states would lose out financially if their revenue and spending were separated from cities, then I don't know.

I'm sure the benefits of walling off Dazzling Urbanites, Liberal Hipsters, Jews, Blatantly Gay Homosexuals, Immigrants that Sing "America The Beautiful" in Different Languages and other assorted non-Mayberry R.F.D. types outweighs the costs to The Real America(tm).

I dunno.  The road burden on the hick states is going to pretty huge.

And pretty much every other type of infrastructure.  Take schools for example.  In a urban or suburban area a class might have 30 kids in a class room, in a rural area you might only get 15 kids in a class room because the students are all spread out.  Since it's not feasible to bus kids 60 miles every day to school, you'll have to build more schools and hire more teachers to teach the same number of kids.  In this simplified scenario educating a rural student costs twice as much as his urban counterpart and you'll be doing it on less money.

They can just use their churches for schools.

[Admiral Yi]

This is why American style lax Urban planning regulations are bad. You see similar donutting (albeit for different reasons) in japan and it really wrecks the livability of some obstentially decent sized cities
Busineses shouldn't be able to just up and move to a greenfield site.

The only leases should be lifetime leases.

[MadImmortalMan]

Not everything should be master-planned. There is a trade-off there.

[Ideologue]

This is why American style lax Urban planning regulations are bad. You see similar donutting (albeit for different reasons) in japan and it really wrecks the livability of some obstentially decent sized cities
Busineses shouldn't be able to just up and move to a greenfield site.

The only leases should be lifetime leases.

And the fee abolished!

Wait, maybe we're talking about two different things.

[Valmy]

This is why American style lax Urban planning regulations are bad. You see similar donutting (albeit for different reasons) in japan and it really wrecks the livability of some obstentially decent sized cities
Busineses shouldn't be able to just up and move to a greenfield site.

On the other hand our people have someplace to live unlike British Urban planning regulations.

[Admiral Yi]

Oh snap!

[Valmy]

Oh snap!

Say what you want about urban sprawl, I would prefer that to paying millions for a thousand square foot apartment.

[Admiral Yi]

I thought you crushed Squeeze's bones.

[Agelastus]

This where I get the bizarre dictatorship thing.  What about the water transfers and the "resource" transfers?  I was under the impression that US waterways are under Federal jurisdiction, not state.  I'm not aware of any "resource transfer".  Is this a problem out the boondocks, city slickers coming in and taking all their iron ore?

Isn't Southern California (I'm thinking Los Angeles here) famous for diverting water away from rural counties that actually need it? Disappearing rivers and lakes and all that?

Given D.C's example I'm almost surprised that he proposed splitting the senate entitlement between the cities and the State. Guess he didn't have the guts to advocate that they lose Senate representation entirely.

[Valmy]

Isn't Southern California (I'm thinking Los Angeles here) famous for diverting water away from rural counties that actually need it? Disappearing rivers and lakes and all that?

The Southwest is famous for having water issues period.  This sort of stuff happens between Texas and Mexico all the time and we do not even have any huge cities in that area.

Given D.C's example I'm almost surprised that he proposed splitting the senate entitlement between the cities and the State. Guess he didn't have the guts to advocate that they lose Senate representation entirely.

And Congressional representation if he really wanted to go full DC

[Admiral Yi]

Isn't Southern California (I'm thinking Los Angeles here) famous for diverting water away from rural counties that actually need it? Disappearing rivers and lakes and all that?

It's more like southern California steals northern California's water. 

It's not really a rural/urban thing: agricultural water usage is famously subsidized in California.

[DGuller]

Given D.C's example I'm almost surprised that he proposed splitting the senate entitlement between the cities and the State. Guess he didn't have the guts to advocate that they lose Senate representation entirely.

He doesn't need to.  The rad states for the most part won't have any city-states, so the Republicans will keep their pairs there, while virtually every blue state would go from 0 Republicans to 1.  That author is no tinpot dictator, he understands that you don't need to run up the score to 99 to win.

[Capetan Mihali]

The rad states

[DontSayBanana]

This where I get the bizarre dictatorship thing.  What about the water transfers and the "resource" transfers?  I was under the impression that US waterways are under Federal jurisdiction, not state.  I'm not aware of any "resource transfer".  Is this a problem out the boondocks, city slickers coming in and taking all their iron ore?

Water administration is a mess.  Look up "riparian rights" and you'll find a whole mess of squabbles, injunctions, aborted ventures, and finger-pointing.  Historically, the Delaware River and the Colorado River are particularly contentious- Delaware and NJ routinely fight over which state can do how much on the water, and Colorado has hauled the feds to court at least twice over perceived preemption of its right to administrate its own waters.