[radomysisky]

> suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to sustain

While cost to sustain is relatively static, the price homeowners are willing to endure for the upsides of suburbia are dynamic.

In a world plagued by pandemics and social unrest, that price continues to rise. Remote work will only accelerate this trend.

[dangus]

It sucks wealth away because American towns have an addiction to using bond money to pay for infrastructure maintenance - infrastructure that will need to be replaced again before the bond is paid off.

They also have a habit of greenlighting development where the builders pay to build the roads and sewers that the town then takes over long term maintenance for, without accounting for the wealth generation of those properties being unable to pay for them.

Part 3 of “the growth Ponzi scheme” illustrates this well:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth-pon...

Now, I also wouldn’t take Stong Towns as gospel but it’s not hard to look around and find crumbling American suburbs. Even the “nice” suburbs are drowning in debt despite good appearances.

And now, you’ve got millennials who are figuring out that no, they don’t need to own two cars (debt on wheels) and hoard stuff like their parents did. Millennials are urbanizing at a rapid rate and it is not slowing down since they aren’t universally moving to the suburbs once they have (a smaller quantity of) kids like their parents did.

The boomer generation grew up in an era of crime-laden cities that simply doesn’t exist anymore and may never again exist. Without the inner city crime of previous decades one has to ask what suburban life actually gets you in comparison.