I believe housing choice is a good thing. The problem is that suburbia almost always takes away housing choice for everyone else.
Suburbia is not cost viable.
Notice how suburbs are almost always built around cities and almost never on their own. There is a reason for this; they are heavily subsidized by the city and its infrastructure - eventually killing off the city due to extreme maintenance costs and uncooperative tax base (NIMBYs). This is a parasitic relationship, fullstop.
Suburbia is not recyclable.
It is extremely difficult to reuse suburban infrastructure for non-suburban purposes. This effectively eliminates scarce land until a patron spends 10x removing what it costs to install (not happening). This is why suburbs are often just abandoned instead of repurposed (see any rust-belt suburb).
Space should not come at the cost of the future.
To navigate suburbia (only viable by car) is to put massive strain on the human body and environment. We were built to walk. If you do not, you will become fat and die (see America). Cars pollute the air to no end, and “third places” can never truly be established - killing communities.
Wanting space is fine, but people should find a way to do it sustainably without harming themselves and everyone around them.
I don’t really follow you regarding cost viability.
I live in a small city of about 70,000. We don’t really have a dense CBH. There are small blocks of apartments here or there but not really in a business district.
99% of the population here lives in detached houses in a suburban setting.
It seems kind of nonsensical to me to suggest that suburbs kill off cities due to extreme maintenance costs.
I know people who work in the city’s finance department. The taxes people in suburbia pay to the municipality pay for the maintenance and services they receive. If there were a deficit from suburban parasites the city would’ve become insolvent long ago.
I believe housing choice is a good thing. The problem is that suburbia almost always takes away housing choice for everyone else.
Notice how suburbs are almost always built around cities and almost never on their own. There is a reason for this; they are heavily subsidized by the city and its infrastructure - eventually killing off the city due to extreme maintenance costs and uncooperative tax base (NIMBYs). This is a parasitic relationship, fullstop.
It is extremely difficult to reuse suburban infrastructure for non-suburban purposes. This effectively eliminates scarce land until a patron spends 10x removing what it costs to install (not happening). This is why suburbs are often just abandoned instead of repurposed (see any rust-belt suburb).
To navigate suburbia (only viable by car) is to put massive strain on the human body and environment. We were built to walk. If you do not, you will become fat and die (see America). Cars pollute the air to no end, and “third places” can never truly be established - killing communities.
Wanting space is fine, but people should find a way to do it sustainably without harming themselves and everyone around them.
I don’t really follow you regarding cost viability.
I live in a small city of about 70,000. We don’t really have a dense CBH. There are small blocks of apartments here or there but not really in a business district.
99% of the population here lives in detached houses in a suburban setting.
It seems kind of nonsensical to me to suggest that suburbs kill off cities due to extreme maintenance costs.
I know people who work in the city’s finance department. The taxes people in suburbia pay to the municipality pay for the maintenance and services they receive. If there were a deficit from suburban parasites the city would’ve become insolvent long ago.