Smart Growth

This is a great article about the recent trend towards urbanism. From an efficiency / return on investment standpoint, I thought the following was interesting:

"...local governments reap much more in taxes from urban centers than from malls or "big box" retail like a Wal-Mart, but pay more to build suburban infrastructure such as sewers and streets.
In the city and county of Sarasota, for example, 3.4 acres of urban residential development consumes one-tenth the land of a multi-family development in the suburbs. But it requires little more than half of the infrastructure investment and generates 830 percent more for the county annually in total taxes: that's $2 million from the city structure and $238,529 from the suburban one.
What's more, suburban housing takes 42 years to pay off its infrastructure costs. Downtown? Just three. "I'm preaching to Joe and Jane Six-Pack who want to be subsidized. These (city) centers produce a tremendous amount of revenue and then hemorrhage it out to the suburbs," Minicozzi said. "We don't have a rational discussion on the true costs of the way we manage land."

That is starting to change, as cash-strapped governments struggling with the recession's hit to tax revenue are starting to press developers to share the pain of paying for highways and other infrastructure, said Richard Rich, a director for Thomas Enterprises, whose 240-acre redevelopment of Sacramento's abandoned railyards is the largest urban redevelopment project in the country.
As a result, profitability will come to depend on higher-density construction, said Rich, his voice echoing through the cavernous stalls of the former transcontinental railroad being salvaged for a retail plaza. "Just as they evolved to start, they will de-evolve the product," he said, of suburban developers."