"Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost very little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money." This is just false. The biggest co

"Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost very little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money." This is just false. The biggest cost in the suburbs is education. In the city cores, education costs exactly the same or more (per capita) but police services are the biggest expense. You are confusing the expenses of commercial property (where nobody lives) with residential property. But people still live in those urban cores and the expenses they generate are substantial.