{"id":141,"date":"2026-07-09T16:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=141"},"modified":"2026-07-09T16:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:11:09","slug":"talking-headways-podcast-bill-fulton-and-the-future-of-where","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=141","title":{"rendered":"Talking Headways Podcast: Bill Fulton and the Future of Where"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>This Week on the Talking Headways podcast: Bill Fulton, who has worn many hats including mayor, planning director, think tank director, publisher, professor and currently can be found writing on Substack at\u00a0The Future of Where.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=139\">Safer Roads Are Just A Vacation Away<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fulton and host Jeff Wood chat about the impacts of work from home on cities, changing migration patterns and the south\u2019s new role as the \u201cNational Suburb,\u201d tax policy and burdens, 100 years of zoning law and much, much more.<\/p>\n<p>Scroll past the audio player below for a partial edited transcript of the episode \u2014 or\u00a0click here\u00a0for a full, AI-generated (and typo-ridden) readout.<\/p>\n<div>\n<iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" loading=\"lazy\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-forms\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/42020365\/height\/192\/theme\/modern\/size\/large\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/3c849c\/time-start\/00:00:00\/hide-playlist\/yes\/download\/yes\/font-color\/FFFFFF\" style=\"height: 190px; width: 100%;\" title=\"Embedded content\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Jeff Wood:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019m interested in what this does from a transportation perspective, too, because you do have these \u201cZoom-burbs,\u201d as it were, and you have these folks who have to buy these now expensive cars. I mean, the average car, new car, is $50,000. You can only go so far and now insurance is getting more expensive. You have a lot of, like, climate issues too. But I\u2019m just curious what this does to the regular discussion about transportation and affordability generally, because housing prices are pretty huge too, even if you\u2019re in some of these far-flung areas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bill Fulton:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, I think one of the things that has not been discussed enough is the increasing cost of owning a vehicle, as you said. We\u2019ve seen efforts in the past by Center for Neighborhood Technology and others to show that the cost that you have to deal with is really housing-plus-transportation, right? And there\u2019s trade-offs there, and there\u2019s been various studies showing that, you know, if you live in San Francisco, you actually have a l lower housing-plus-transportation cost than you do in Houston, that kind of thing. <\/p>\n<p>But new vehicles have gotten bigger. They\u2019ve gotten way more expensive. It\u2019s hard to imagine stretching the car loan out more than seven years. I never would\u2019ve guessed in the old days that you would have a seven-year car loan, right? But a lot of these people who live on the fringe and, and particularly, as I saw in Texas, drive these big trucks, are incredibly stretched. So you see \u201cdrive \u2019till you qualify,\u201d and that just gets harder and harder when the driving part becomes as expensive as the qualifying part, right? A lot of the people who live on the edge of the metropolitan areas are really quite stressed financially and also stressed in commuting too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeff Wood:<\/strong>\u00a0Another thing that brings up is taxes, property taxes, and those types of things. You\u2019re in California, you know Prop 13. You\u2019ve seen the evolution of it, and I\u2019m always fascinated to hear from places like Texas and Florida that are even discussing getting rid of property taxes, and what that means for cities and this type of, you know, development and the growth of places.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=137\">How to Save 8 Million Lives in 20 Years<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bill Fulton:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, one of the things that I think has not sunk in in places even like Florida and Texas is how much sprawl really costs to serve and the tax burden. There\u2019s this wonderful Venn diagram I\u2019ve seen, right, you know, uh, good services, low taxes, low density, and, you know, in the middle it says, \u201cDoesn\u2019t exist,\u201d right?<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t get all those things at the same time \u2014 having lived, grown up in New York, and lived in California, in other words, having lived in high income tax states my entire life \u2014 it was really interesting to go to Texas and see, well, where do they get their money from, right? And, you know, part of it is that the services aren\u2019t as good.<\/p>\n<p>My wife is a retired teacher from Texas, and she never made nearly as much money as she would make in California as a teacher. Part of it is that in Texas rhere is some, you know, oil-related money that flows to the state. But \u2014 what\u2019s interesting in Texas is that the burden is borne by the property taxes, and the state even moves around the school property taxes, kind of the way California does ,in order to plug the holes because the state doesn\u2019t have income tax to plug the holes.<\/p>\n<p>Now they\u2019re talking about \u2014 and there are certain limitations now on property tax in Texas \u2014 but when Gov. Abbott talks about getting rid of property tax, I have no idea how they\u2019re gonna pay for the schools or anything else, right? On a percentage basis, compared to your assessment, property taxes in Texas are about twice what they are in California.<\/p>\n<p>Now, because those are higher in California, that doesn\u2019t quite work out. But, you know, you\u2019re talking 2, 2.5 percent per year of assessed value in Texas. And with no income tax and relatively moderate sales tax, there\u2019s really no other way to keep the government functioning, particularly the schools. So unless Gov. Abbott also plans to kinda somehow shift all to charter schools and get rid of public schools, which he might wanna do, I don\u2019t see how this works. <\/p>\n<p>More likely, I think, is Texas now has a limitation on property tax revenue \u2014 and that might get cranked down more. That\u2019s been the path in many other states, not just California.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=135\">Rural and Disabled Pennsylvanians Fighting For Transit As Keystone State Budget Nears Late Deal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Fulton on the impacts of work from home on cities, the south&#8217;s new role as the &#8220;National Suburb,&#8221; tax policy and burdens and much more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-talking-headways"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Talking Headways Podcast: Bill Fulton and the Future of Where - 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