> Sprawl allows the middle class to continue to exist. More people, more property taxes, more fuel taxes, more money for roads. City B often has significantly

> Sprawl allows the middle class to continue to exist. More people, more property taxes, more fuel taxes, more money for roads. City B often has significantly higher infrastructure costs[0] than City A, while generating fewer tax receipts[1]. This is only possible because City A is picking up the bill for City B; after all if you’re consuming more and paying less, someone else has to be picking up the difference. Those extra trips are generating sales tax and gas tax, yes, but usually not enough to cover the cost of the road. Sprawl and the suburbs aren’t the generators of wealth and prosperity as you imply, but rather the thing we’ve decided to spend our wealth and prosperity on. You in fact have cause and effect backwards: it’s not that sprawl created enough economic activity to happen for a middle class to form, but rather enough economic activity existed elsewhere in order for the middle class to be able to live in suburban sprawl. 0 - https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... 1 - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/11/poor-neighborhoods-make-the-best-investments-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/11/poor-neighbor...