Bill Hocker | Oct 14, 2015

George Caloyannidis sends along this 2009 Fodor study of the growth of destination resorts in Oregon: Fiscal and Economic Impacts of Destination Resorts in Oregon

The conclusion after crunching all the numbers? The same conclusion that has been found in almost every study done on the true costs of development: The cost of the unfunded impacts that development creates outweigh the revenue generated by the development. Governments and their taxpayers end up subsidizing the cost of the development, whether in affordable housing, transportation improvements, schools, infrastructure improvements, and increased government services.

Eben Fodor in his book Better not Bigger argues for government policy to have developers pay for all of the impacts created by their projects to encourage more sustainable growth decisions.

Gabor Zavanyi, in the No-Growth Imperative, pushes a step further and recognizes that "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron, that the resource and labor exploitation that makes capital development profitable for a few will eventually, or may have already, become practically or morally unacceptable. It is time to begin looking at sustainable stability not sustainable growth.

More of my spleen on growth issues are here.

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