[rufus_foreman]

>> That only works when you have essentially unlimited uninhabited land on your borders

That's pretty much everywhere in the US other than the coastal cities.

>> ever larger, car-centric sprawl

Car-centric sprawl means people can buy a single family house for a little over the cost of construction. There are good aspects to it.

[bsder]

> Car-centric sprawl means people can buy a single family house for a little over the cost of construction. There are good aspects to it.

Only because the cities subsidize the suburbs and rural areas.

If you made the suburbs and rural areas pay for their own road construction and maintenance, for example, those houses would be vastly more expensive.

[nojvek]

You have links to back it up?

We pay a decent amount of Federal tax which should be going into infrastructure like roads.

The maintenance is paid by states which should come from state property and income taxes.

[bsder]

Every Strong Towns post ever (this one is typical): https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/5/kansas-citys-fa...

I don't always agree with their proposed solutions, but their data tends to be pretty irrefutable. Suburbs are weak to negative tax revenue areas and absorb money from the cities which are strong tax generating entities--especially when the infrastructure maintenance costs come due 20-30 years after construction.

There was also an article (probably in the LA Times) about two towns close together out on I-5. One of them threw in with the city systems and one of them didn't want to get annexed and stayed apart. The one that remained independent was shocked at how expensive maintaining their infrastructure was--to the point that they did things like leaving roads as gravel because they couldn't afford blacktop. Unfortunately, I can't cough that article up anymore with how bad Google has become.