New Report – The Fiscal Implications of Development Patterns is Smart Growth America’s new report on the economic benefits of high-density development, and especially redevelopment.
The main innovation in this new model is that it identifies specific governmental functions as sensitive to geographic dispersion, and we allow the cost per capita for these cost categories to vary based on the density of the development scenario. As in typical fiscal models, a cost is assigned to each new resident and employee associated with a given development scenario.
The main cost categories that vary by density, and the conceptual methodology behind each, are described below.
The relationship of density to other sources of costs and revenues, such as police or sales tax, could also be analyzed for cities able to provide detailed data for their jurisdiction.