It's been well established in the academic literature that infrastructure costs in America cities are related by a power law to population. Costs increase about

It's been well established in the academic literature that infrastructure costs in America cities are related by a power law to population. Costs increase about 80% with a doubling of the size of a city. So we generally would expect infrastructure in a city four times the size of a typical 1000 people/mi^2 suburb to cost about 3.24 times as much, or about 81% as much on a per-capita basis. There are many well known economies of scale to denser urban agglomerations that suburbanization forfeits. That's not controversial. What is controversial is why suburban living, despite its much higher cost compared to city living, has nevertheless come to dominate post-war America.