Built To Fail

Every year, Halifax engages in the tradition of vowing to embrace fiscal responsibility, and every year, it struggles to find cover its costs. In this video, I walk through why Halifax, like most cities, finds it so hard to pay its bills, and why it feels like we aren’t getting good value for what we pay in taxes.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro
1:53 Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
5:41 Dig Up, Stupid
7:48 Summary/Closeout

If you'd like to learn more about how municipal finance works (and why wouldn't you?), I would recommend checking out You'll Pay For This: How We Can Afford a Great City for Everyone, Forever (https://www.amazon.ca/Youll-Pay-This-...) for a short, accessible read on the topic.

If you want something a little more in depth on sustainable development, check out Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (https://www.amazon.ca/Strong-Towns-Bo...)

You can find Halifax's cost estimates for different levels of density from 2004/2005 here: https://lede-admin.usa.streetsblog.or...

Halifax isn't the only one making these connections. Here's a similar and more recent report from Vancouver: https://metrovancouver.org/services/r...

This video was inspired by the work of ‪@urban3‬and ‪@strongtowns‬

Special thanks to the people who reviewed drafts of the script for this video. You were a huge help!

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