1) Municipalities have budgets to live within. It raises its money through taxation of various forms. The biggie is property tax, closely followed I think by government grants aimed usually at specific projects. I expect it works much the same in the US. The range of services vary depending on the size of the municipality and its tax base. Certain services are absolutely necessary to survival in the city: emergency protective services, snow removal, garbage removal, traffic design, etc. We've seen a big Michigan city lose more than half its population since the 1950s. With them went the tax base. Now crumbling structures and some districts are rodent-infested fire traps, and of the remaining 800,000 people, who knows how they feel? Budgets require that services continue, and were the city down in size physically, the same services could be scaled back and still addressed effectively. However, the buildings for the most part still stand, many empty. A problem has been unbridled growth both in human population and city size. When big cities spread, they usually take up farmland and forest and all those situations create knock-on effects.

Soon as yer crops are far away from your town, things start getting more expensive. The house ya bought for $200,000 is now worth $95,000 but ya pay the mortgage on the $200,000. Disposable income drops to take up slack in necessities, and the ripple effects from that mean even more people are scrunched by a lesser cash flow.

Then the national housing crisis and various banking thefts of real estate laid the US open to the acceptance of harsher laws to protect what was already spirited away.

Today, with one party in the US spouting thinly disguised class warfare--it's rich and wants to remain so, and the other party being told what to do by big business--and then doing it, I have no solution. It's like being a banana republic when ya got no bananas. China holds American paper for one and a half trillion dollars. Hell, the money is gone like it was never there. With it went jobs. Lots of jobs. Massive corporations cause more trouble than they should. Workers want to pay their bills, but the cost of living is no longer in our own hands. The whole 'do more with less philosophy' which will eventually have us doing everything with nothing has proven to be a failure, but that doesn't stop employers from thinking just that.

We waste our heritage for quick fixes and drift from values which dictate we strive for something good for ourselves, our families, our neighbours, our friends--maybe sooner or later being able to improve conditions for the whole world. But if the cash is being stolen at the source, well, there ain't gonna be no cash and there ain't gonna be no improvement!