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The argument is that suburbs are incapable of affording the infrastructure required for their own existence. These costs are either subsidized or require persis

The argument is that suburbs are incapable of affording the infrastructure required for their own existence. These costs are either subsidized or require persistent (perhaps unrealistic) growth to cover without dramatically increasing suburban taxes. "Are cities necessary given the modern conditions?" How many suburbs would exist without the corresponding city center? And, don't we just call suburbs without a city center, you know, towns?

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
> And, don't we just call suburbs without a city center, you know, towns? Towns still typically need to manage their own utilities while suburbs don't.
- danaris 4y ago
  But towns that manage their own utilities do exist. That suggests that suburbs are not fundamentally unsustainable, they just need to adjust their calculations and expectations.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Exactly. I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas. I suspect there are bad suburbs somewhere, but here ain't it.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas Are you in a net contributor state as well? I live in a similar town, but it's in Wyoming, a state which benefits from federal transfers from urban centers.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Not sure, is there a list of "net contributor" states? And I suspect those look at federal budgets only, and ignore the other methods of "contributing".
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > is there a list of "net contributor" states? Yup [1]. > ignore the other methods of "contributing" Nobody is arguing we write off New Mexico, Mississippi or West Virginia. But their lifestyles are subsidized by Delaware (special case), Minnesota, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut and New York. (Scaling the net contribution to GDP removes much of the partisan slant introduced by urban centers having more people, and thus bigger numbers, as well as leaning blue.) [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/08/01/the-red-and-the-black https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/08/01/the-red-...
        HelpfulLinkp 4y ago
        [dead]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - heyda 4y ago
      That's not really how funding works though. Say a company bids to build or refurbish a new street, the money paid to the company comes from a variety of pools, local, state, federal and utilities, to get funding from the different organizations the contract usually have multiple requirements like 'must build pipes for sewage, power, internet, ect' and the funding percentages of the project will depend on whats being built and where. That said, the people living in those houses will likely also pay state/federal taxes and utilities so its more complex. You also can't expect local towns or cities to foot the complete for big projects like highway overpasses and bridges and stuff, so how much a city contributes to infrastructure and gets back is harder to say.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Yeah, I would agree with that. It's not that towns shouldn't exist, they should, it's that the weird no-man's land suburbs probably shouldn't.
    - danaris 4y ago
      But my point is: Why not? I have yet to see anything that points to them being fundamentally worse than towns: if you just treat them as Towns Next To Cities, it seems like you solve the vast majority of the problems.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        Because right now most don't and instead become cancerous growths on a city rather than their own financially independent communities. Where I live the suburbs aren't their own towns and that's where the problem is.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Suburbs are towns (or small cities) in many parts of the US. I'm not sure it's even especially common in the US for cities to expand to engulf the whole surrounding area with a single central government. Although there are certainly examples such as Houston, I believe.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    Annexation happened a lot in the U.S. but it didn't happen everywhere. Some places, like my hometown of St. Louis, are practically defined by the lack of annexation (although, even in that most famous case, St. Louis did annex several suburbs in the 19th Century, before its Great Divorce). Other places, like Chicago or NYC, pretty famously annexed practically everything around them. (Brooklyn was even once its own city.)
    - ghaff 4y ago
      It's probably more common out West. In New England, while Boston did annex some neighboring communities, Cambridge and Somerville are still separate cities. And get just a little bit further out and you have a bunch of clumps of a few thousand people that are independent towns. I used to work with someone from Australia who could never get over all the 5,000 person towns with their own school system, various boards, etc.
TrispusAttucks 4y ago
Isn't this an infinite regress? How could cities survive without farm land? How could cities survive without outsourced materials? We live in an interdependent interconnected global society where everything and everyone subsidizes everyone else.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There seems to be a naive belief that if everyone just lived in dense urban cores there would be no need to pay for infrastructure beyond the city limits.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    The argument is that suburban residents should carry the true cost of their infrastructure, not that they shouldn't exist.
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    The average farm needs a single, nearby access road and power; water and septic is local (that's changing). A suburb needs that nearby road, lots of streets, water lines, sewage, significant power, often street lights, etc. etc.
    - TrispusAttucks 4y ago
      And the city needs transport networks and power grids that reach far beyond the city limits. The only logical difference is a matter of scale and limits. The same rules apply to any region that has dependencies outside of its own borders. The only way to not be subsidized in some fashion is to live directly off of the land in the form of some nomadic tribe.
      - Ensorceled 4y ago
        We’re talking suburbs. My city block contains literally thousands of homes and commercial properties in a zone that would contain, at most a few hundred McMansions. The cost to deliver services needed are within an order of magnitude of a suburb but the tax base is significantly higher.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago

> And, don't we just call suburbs without a city center, you know, towns? Towns still typically need to manage their own utilities while suburbs don't.

danaris 4y ago
But towns that manage their own utilities do exist. That suggests that suburbs are not fundamentally unsustainable, they just need to adjust their calculations and expectations.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Exactly. I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas. I suspect there are bad suburbs somewhere, but here ain't it.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas Are you in a net contributor state as well? I live in a similar town, but it's in Wyoming, a state which benefits from federal transfers from urban centers.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Not sure, is there a list of "net contributor" states? And I suspect those look at federal budgets only, and ignore the other methods of "contributing".
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > is there a list of "net contributor" states? Yup [1]. > ignore the other methods of "contributing" Nobody is arguing we write off New Mexico, Mississippi or West Virginia. But their lifestyles are subsidized by Delaware (special case), Minnesota, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut and New York. (Scaling the net contribution to GDP removes much of the partisan slant introduced by urban centers having more people, and thus bigger numbers, as well as leaning blue.) [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/08/01/the-red-and-the-black https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/08/01/the-red-...
      - HelpfulLinkp 4y ago
        [dead]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - heyda 4y ago
    That's not really how funding works though. Say a company bids to build or refurbish a new street, the money paid to the company comes from a variety of pools, local, state, federal and utilities, to get funding from the different organizations the contract usually have multiple requirements like 'must build pipes for sewage, power, internet, ect' and the funding percentages of the project will depend on whats being built and where. That said, the people living in those houses will likely also pay state/federal taxes and utilities so its more complex. You also can't expect local towns or cities to foot the complete for big projects like highway overpasses and bridges and stuff, so how much a city contributes to infrastructure and gets back is harder to say.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Yeah, I would agree with that. It's not that towns shouldn't exist, they should, it's that the weird no-man's land suburbs probably shouldn't.
  - danaris 4y ago
    But my point is: Why not? I have yet to see anything that points to them being fundamentally worse than towns: if you just treat them as Towns Next To Cities, it seems like you solve the vast majority of the problems.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Because right now most don't and instead become cancerous growths on a city rather than their own financially independent communities. Where I live the suburbs aren't their own towns and that's where the problem is.
ghaff 4y ago
Suburbs are towns (or small cities) in many parts of the US. I'm not sure it's even especially common in the US for cities to expand to engulf the whole surrounding area with a single central government. Although there are certainly examples such as Houston, I believe.
- dionidium 4y ago
  Annexation happened a lot in the U.S. but it didn't happen everywhere. Some places, like my hometown of St. Louis, are practically defined by the lack of annexation (although, even in that most famous case, St. Louis did annex several suburbs in the 19th Century, before its Great Divorce). Other places, like Chicago or NYC, pretty famously annexed practically everything around them. (Brooklyn was even once its own city.)
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It's probably more common out West. In New England, while Boston did annex some neighboring communities, Cambridge and Somerville are still separate cities. And get just a little bit further out and you have a bunch of clumps of a few thousand people that are independent towns. I used to work with someone from Australia who could never get over all the 5,000 person towns with their own school system, various boards, etc.

TrispusAttucks 4y ago

Isn't this an infinite regress? How could cities survive without farm land? How could cities survive without outsourced materials? We live in an interdependent interconnected global society where everything and everyone subsidizes everyone else.

ghaff 4y ago
There seems to be a naive belief that if everyone just lived in dense urban cores there would be no need to pay for infrastructure beyond the city limits.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  The argument is that suburban residents should carry the true cost of their infrastructure, not that they shouldn't exist.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  The average farm needs a single, nearby access road and power; water and septic is local (that's changing). A suburb needs that nearby road, lots of streets, water lines, sewage, significant power, often street lights, etc. etc.
  - TrispusAttucks 4y ago
    And the city needs transport networks and power grids that reach far beyond the city limits. The only logical difference is a matter of scale and limits. The same rules apply to any region that has dependencies outside of its own borders. The only way to not be subsidized in some fashion is to live directly off of the land in the form of some nomadic tribe.
    - Ensorceled 4y ago
      We’re talking suburbs. My city block contains literally thousands of homes and commercial properties in a zone that would contain, at most a few hundred McMansions. The cost to deliver services needed are within an order of magnitude of a suburb but the tax base is significantly higher.