I agree with you in principal, and actually this is a lot of what Strong Towns tries to suggest. The author is saying there are two rational responses: raise fe

I agree with you in principal, and actually this is a lot of what Strong Towns tries to suggest. The author is saying there are two rational responses: raise fees, or fill in more density to better utilize the infrastructure. Either one is fine. I will say though, from having seen a lot of these projects, the examples this author gave are actually pretty low cost. I’ve seen examples where the density was lower, and even though the streets were lower quality, the “unpaid cost” per homeowner was in the thousands of dollars per year. It’s just a wide range depending on the circumstances. The important thing is not that cities try to force anyone to a particular lifestyle, just that they do the math and balance their books. Above and beyond that, there’s enormous opportunity for wealth creation in communities by adopting more of the traditional Main Street pattern for neighborhood development, and ST definitely encourages that for anyone who is interested / wants it. But it should definitely be voluntary. Strong Towns is generally opposed to zoning, parking restrictions, etc. which are forms of coercion that badly distort the market.