Editing City (section)

=== Finance ===
The traditional basis for municipal finance is local [[property tax]] levied on [[real estate]] within the city. Local government can also collect revenue for services, or by leasing land that it owns.<ref name="Gwilliam2013" /> However, financing municipal services, as well as [[urban renewal]] and other development projects, is a perennial problem, which cities address through appeals to higher governments, arrangements with the private sector, and techniques such as [[privatization]] (selling services into the [[private sector]]), [[corporatization]] (formation of quasi-private municipally-owned corporations), and [[financialization]] (packaging city assets into tradeable financial public contracts and other related rights). This situation has become acute in deindustrialized cities and in cases where businesses and wealthier citizens have moved outside of [[city limits]] and therefore beyond the reach of taxation.<ref>McQuillan (1937/1987), §§1.65–1.66.</ref><ref>David Walker, "The New System of Intergovernmental Relations: Fiscal Relief and More Governmental Intrusions"; in Hahn & Levine (1980).</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Voorn |first1=Bart |last2=van Genugten |first2=Marieke L. |last3=van Thiel |first3=Sandra |date=2017-09-03 |title=The efficiency and effectiveness of municipally owned corporations: a systematic review |journal=Local Government Studies|volume=43 |issue=5 |pages=820–841 |doi=10.1080/03003930.2017.1319360 |s2cid=157153401 |issn=0300-3930 |doi-access=free |hdl=2066/176125 |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref name="Weber2010" /> Cities in search of [[cash and cash equivalents|ready cash]] increasingly resort to the [[municipal bond]], essentially a loan with [[Maturity (finance)|interest]] and a [[Maturity (finance)|repayment date]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Weber |first=Rachel |year=2002 |title=Extracting Value from the City: Neoliberalism and Urban Redevelopment |url=http://www.overgaardtonnesen.dk/TEKSTERNE/09-Weber-Extracting-Value-from-the-City.pdf |journal=[[Antipode (journal)|Antipode]]|volume=34 |issue=3 |pages=519–540 |doi=10.1111/1467-8330.00253 |bibcode=2002Antip..34..519W |issn=0066-4812 |access-date=26 September 2022 |archive-date=26 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220926150915/http://www.overgaardtonnesen.dk/TEKSTERNE/09-Weber-Extracting-Value-from-the-City.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> City governments have also begun to use [[tax increment financing]], in which a development project is financed by loans based on future tax revenues which it is expected to yield.<ref name="Weber2010">{{Cite journal |last=Weber |first=Rachel |date=July 2010 |title=Selling City Futures: The Financialization of Urban Redevelopment Policy |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1944-8287.2010.01077.x |journal=Economic Geography|volume=86 |issue=3 |pages=251–274 |doi=10.1111/j.1944-8287.2010.01077.x |s2cid=153912312 |issn=0013-0095 |quote=TIF is an increasingly popular local redevelopment policy that allows municipalities to designate a 'blighted' area for redevelopment and use the expected increase in property (and occasionally sales) taxes there to pay for initial and ongoing redevelopment expenditures, such as land acquisition, demolition, construction, and project financing. Because developers require cash up-front, cities transform promises of future tax revenues into securities that far-flung buyers and sellers exchange through local markets.|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Under these circumstances, creditors and consequently city governments place a high importance on city [[credit rating]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pacewicz |first=Josh |date=2013-07-01 |title=Tax increment financing, economic development professionals and the financialization of urban politics |url=https://academic.oup.com/ser/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/ser/mws019 |journal=Socio-Economic Review|volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=413–440 |doi=10.1093/ser/mws019 |issn=1475-1461 |quote=A city's credit rating not only influences its ability to sell bonds, but has become a general signal of fiscal health. Detroit's partial recovery in the early 1990s, for example, was reversed when Moody's downgraded the rating of the city's general obligation bonds, precipitating new rounds of capital flight (Hackworth, 2007). The need to maintain a high credit rating constrains municipal actors by making it difficult to finance discretionary projects in traditional ways.|url-access=subscription }}</ref>