Environmental Concerns

Interesting theory, because I was always told by realtors that having essential shops and services--grocery stores, gas stations, dry cleaners, and convenience stores--located nearby improves property values. Though, depending on the location, I would imagine that it could affect adjacent properties but not the neighborhood as a whole. Where is this proposed station going to be located?

We lived accross Hixson Pike from a gas station at one point and it produced a dramaitc reduction in our power bills. The halogen halo from accross the street was such that we never had to turn on any lights, even in the dead of night. Consider that value!

Where is the proposed location?

When you say you can't argue the latter on free market principles, what are you talking about exactly? You can't argue that the presence of something ugly reduces the value of homes? You most certainly can, if that is what you mean. You can also argue theoretically that the presence of a gas station has external effects, since no one takes into account the impact on residential home prices when building a gas station. If so, then this may be a textbook example of market failure.

BTW, there's economics is not the same as "free market principles." Even free market economists understand that markets do not efficiently allocate resources in the presence of "externalities," which is what it seems you are describing. Whether we can devise a solution that is more efficient than the problem we observe is the challenge. Governments have their own failures, and are oftentimes worse than the problems themselves, but that's neither here nor there if you are saying - and I think you are saying this - that aesthetically superior objects are under-provided by the free market due to market failure caused by externalities. That's defensible, even by "free market" economics.

When you say you can't argue the latter on free market principles, what are you talking about exactly? You can't argue that the presence of something ugly reduces the value of homes? You most certainly can, if that is what you mean. You can also argue theoretically that the presence of a gas station has external effects, since no one takes into account the impact on residential home prices when building a gas station. If so, then this may be a textbook example of market failure.

BTW, there's economics is not the same as "free market principles." Even free market economists understand that markets do not efficiently allocate resources in the presence of "externalities," which is what it seems you are describing. Whether we can devise a solution that is more efficient than the problem we observe is the challenge. Governments have their own failures, and are oftentimes worse than the problems themselves, but that's neither here nor there if you are saying - and I think you are saying this - that aesthetically superior objects are under-provided by the free market due to market failure caused by externalities. That's defensible, even by "free market" economics.

Having spent way too much time in the last month at municipal and zoning meetings, the environmental objection is shaky at best. Putting things in the ground doesn't really affect runoff. Impervious surfaces do that. The question is whether a new gas station will increase the amount of impervious surface on the property in question. If it does, it is a simple matter to install proper storm management systems to ensure that any rain that falls on the property is diverted into the sewer.

St. Elmo has regulations to this effect (storm management, light pollution, air quality, etc.) on the books, and if the property owners follow them, they have every right to put in a gas station. Most people forget that developers are, when it comes down to it, just large property owners that are performing new construction on private land. Would you like it if the city told you you couldn't add on to your house because the neighbors didn't like it? The only way to make it hard for them is to force them to dot all their i's and cross all their t's.

"Even free market economists understand that markets do not efficiently allocate resources in the presence of "externalities," which is what it seems you are describing."

Every single free market economist, from Carl Menger, to Ludwig von Mises, to Murray Rothbard, to Israel Kirzner would heartly disagree with that statement.

Where is the gas station going to be built?