[Dr Nevergold]

I wouldn't say that America has an urban renaissance going on so much that the cities that went almost abandoned for so long are finally seeing a resemblance of life again. Its like going from life support to being able to breathe on your own, not exactly a story of success but at least positive movement.

I'm no political conservative, but I've mentioned this several times now in multiple topics: taxes are prohibitive in these rust belt cities. I don't place the blame on politics, because few people realize a lot of these heavily taxed suburbs of northern cities are quite Republican in nature, and they want the special school districts that aren't consolidated with other local communities, which in turn fuels higher taxes. Conservatives tend to be big on these types of environments, despite national rhetoric of lower taxes and less government.

I don't think its winter snow that these cities have a harder time with as Kotkin indicates (the summers are just too nice for that to be the main factor), its the fact that in a place like Buffalo (at least in suburbs like Tonawanda or Amherst) a home worth a mere $150,000 will easily have taxes of $4,500 while in Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, or Raleigh you'll pay around $1,000-1,500 in property and education tax depending on the locality. Taxes are literally 25% of what the Rust Belt average is.

This is uncalled for, and again its not a typical liberal-conservative issue. The tax rates in the city of Buffalo - a liberal area - are about half of any of the outlying Republican towns. These smaller towns want separate schools and fire services, and they're paying a premium for it. A progressive governor in New York, Andrew Cuomo, has taken this issue seriously and passed a property tax cap to address it while previous Republican administrations ignored it. It isn't the conservatives who are for lower taxes to make this region competitive. Conservatives elsewhere in the country would find it surprising to realize the lowest property taxes in New York are places like New York City proper and Buffalo proper (property taxes in Buffalo are about 50% of what most of its suburbs have), its high taxes come from suburbs and rural areas with more conservative leadership.

States like Georgia, Tennessee, etc. were controlled by Democrats for decades - over a century in many cases - and have competitive tax rates. Republicans may preach low taxes, but they haven't done anything to make economies and local governments more competitive, which is desperately needed in the Rust Belt to lower these punitive tax rates.

I'm not a conservative, but tax rates are absolutely holding development back in certain regions. And none of the traditional liberal-conservative political stereotypes hold true as to why things are the way they are.

And its the high suburban taxes that are killing Rust Belt cities' growth. Most development still occurs in suburbs, and if the Rust Belt suburbs are going to have taxes 400-500% higher than the sunbelt, they'll never "come back". You'll never have Buffalo and Erie County consolidate into a singular government, or Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, or Pittsburgh and Allegheny county form singular, metropolitan forms of government and cut these duplication of services and lower taxes. In the south, even when governments aren't officially consolidated, they unofficially combine services such as you find in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. This streamlining of government creates lower taxes. And ironically its typically progressives that advocate it, as unorthodox as it sounds.