Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Urban Growth Boundaries: Effective or Worthless?" video.

Also worth remembering that A: The ideologies of the parties have shifted quite a bit over the decades and B: state and party politics are such that, in many states, only one party is really Relevant, so they collect up all but the most extreme of what you'd naturally expect to be the other party's supporters and issues within the state, because that's the only way to actually get anything done on matters that are actually important (and you instead end up with the factions within that party forming the de facto Actual party-equivalents in that state).
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if by 'very often' you mean 'very rarely' except when corruption and incompetence screw up the implementation, sure. Well, no, let me correct that, you do need to be a bit careful about the specifics with high density. Medium density, however, is another matter, being the default state for cities for pretty much as long as they've existed (and for centuries the problems with it were mostly down to just not building sewers, and went away when that was fixed) as low density, exclusively single family home, suburban sprawl has been proven, over and over and over, to be an utterly terrible idea that needs to go die in a fire. Sure, it has known and predictable issues that need to be taken into account... but they have known and entirely viable solutions, too. Like, yeah, you've got to take the psychological factors into account and be sure to include sufficient green space and recreational areas and so on. Failure to do so will cause problems. But again, known problems with known solutions.
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when you start taking into account all relevant factors... Well, your entire premise regarding transit is mislead. Busses are actively the Worst form of public transit (edit: ok, this discounts taxis as public transit, and 'worst' isn't Quite the right word). Better than nothing, entirely suited for situations where density is too low to support anything better and 'last mile' transit from stations where density isn't high enough to justify tram stops within a 10 minute walk of basically everywhere. The simple fact is, cost to benefit (both direct and knock-on, because when the transit is run by the relevant government entities, a surprisingly large number of 'unprofitable' services actually improve economic conditions such that they boost the tax take by more than they cost to run, even if it's impossible for them to turn a profit in terms of ticket sales), If you have enough riders to support them (and yes, density is a significant contributing factor), trams and full railways are absolutely better. Now, here's the thing about subways: They are the single most expensive form of transit there is to build. Not necessarily to Operate (which is a very important thing to keep in mind and a significant part of what lets buses down). Frankly, you shouldn't be building them at all except in the dense urban core where surface lines are non-viable. Elevated rail lines come with most of the benefits at substantially less cost. ... provided you're willing to give the NIMBYs the boot to the head they deserve rather than caving to them (because, seriously, somehow city and state government can just ignore legitimate concerns at will for projects that offer little or no actual benefit and have glaring flaws willy nilly, but highly beneficial projects with little or no Legitimate reason not to proceed implode or have their costs absolutely baloon if a NIMBY so much as breaths on them, it's absurd...). Surface rail is even better still, when the current state of things allows it. Also, BRT: Kind of a scam. Like, not really, but kind of. Basically, every feature of a BRT will improve a regular bus service if applied as appropriate... but if you build a whole new BRT from scratch... you basically just spent 80+% of the cost of building a proper tram system, on a system that has significantly higher operating costs, produces more pollution, gives a less comfortable ride, and has lower capacity... With the added bonus that, if you've built it anywhere the expense was actually justified by the ridership... you're going to have to replace it with a tram system in short order Anyway, because it's rapidly going to suffer from it's own success and need a capacity boost that can't be attained otherwise. ... And if you built it to the requirements of the buses, rather than the inevitable trams (and of course you did, let's not kid ourselves here) the resulting Tram service is going to be terrible to. Which is to say, most bus services could be improved by adding BRT elements where suitable, but if you're considering Building a dedicated BRT system from scratch as your public transit solution... Just save everyone a tonne of time, money, effort, and service disruption and just build a tram in the first place.
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Are those particular ones actually called that? I have a sneaking suspicion you'll find that some places call them that and some don't, and some places have something they call a green belt that works quite differently, and so on.
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They don't. They reanalyse and asses it every 6 years. Sometimes they expand it, yes. Sometimes they just change zoning regulations instead. Other times their expected growth for the next 20 years might have actually gone down so they don't need to do either. And when they expand it, they get to choose how much of that expansion is where, so as to better manage infrastructure needs and maintain green space and so on.
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Shockingly, as with all such matters, effective regulation to prevent perverse incentives from undermining the point of the exercise is required. Corruption inherently prevents effective regulation, and US politics are horrifically corrupt. Often by design. Heck, Federal politics have the corruption so baked into the system and normalised that most Americans don't even really view it as corruption any more. States... Well, some of them make the worse ex-soviet nations in the 1990s look good <_< Though, regardless, 'less for your money' isn't inherently bad if what you're getting is still meeting acceptable minimum standards and the actual cost (rather than cost relative to what you get) is also dropping into a range that more people can afford. Seriously, if supply goes up and price doesn't go down, either you're Still not meeting demand (and thus more work is required), or someone's actively preventing that from happening and needs taking to with a (Metaphorical, I would hope) bat until they cease doing so.
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@hhs_leviathan UGBs are fine, so long as the Rest of your planing properly accounts for them. NIMBYs just need beating with a stick <_< Like, seriously, address the legitimate concerns (sometimes this involves changes, but often it just requires Actually Explaining Things Properly due to existing regulations or plans already accounting for the issues raised) and then the remaining idiotic whiners can just be told to take a hike. I mean, it's not like developers and city councils don't just tell the public to get stuffed without addressing Legitimate Problems on a regular basis, so I'm really not sure how NIMBYs with their nonsensical non-issues seem to manage to have a meaningful effect on a regular basis... and yet somehow they do.
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