[pja]

Given that your counter-argument is a trivially obvious one, a little further thought would have led to the conclusion that the StrongTowns bloggers might have thought of it too.

Since you just read until you thought of an objection to their thesis & then stopped, you failed to find the articles where they do the lifetime cost analysis over a whole town (i.e., both "suburban" and "business" districts) and find that this pattern of development means that the profits from the high tax business districts fail to make up for the costs from exurban / US style suburban development.

Have a trawl through the Best-Of lists. In particular: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/8/the-real-reaso... stands out.