> Here's a question for you. If suburbs are "the least optimal configuration", then why did urban sprawl occur in the first place? Why did so many people leave

> Here's a question for you. If suburbs are "the least optimal configuration", then why did urban sprawl occur in the first place? Why did so many people leave the cities and sought bigger homes on wider lots? Because humans are irrational. Gentler answer: Because of a variety of social, political, and economic pressures. For example, quick list because I really shouldn’t be spending time on this: * Social: Running away from black people. * Political: Spreading out the population in case of nuclear war. Accommodating population growth without the headache of having to tear down any existing building. Giving the white flight voting bloc the housing that they think they deserve. * Economic: A fad in having housing physically separated from jobs and other commercial activities, like the current ridiculous fad of flat UI design in software. Objectively worse, but that’s what you get paid to build and favorable financing to buy. What I care about is that suburbs are not sustainable. The climate change crisis is acute now, and I look at the per capita use of energy, water, and infrastructure (how many miles of roads per capita, how many miles of driving per capita, how many miles of water pipes per capita, how much water usage per capita), and on no measure are suburbs better than dense cities. Take away debt financing for the infrastructure, which eventually does stop working, and I don’t think most suburbs would physically survive. http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/