| > Construction, food service, sanitation and so on are _cheaper_ to do in suburban areas. Why? Because of the planning overhead. Materials cost less than planning. > They work _better_ in suburban areas. That food truck owner in Manhattan can't afford to live there, so they likely spend hours every day to commute. In a suburban area, they can afford to buy/rent a house nearby. > This is not a theory, btw You're right, it's not a theory, it's literally just wrong. Like, obviously so. The idea that people in the suburbs commute less is patently insane. It's just so obviously not true that I legitimately cannot believe someone could think this. Have you lived anywhere, ever, for any period of time? The more rural the area you are in, the longer your commute will be, because where you live has no economic activity. So you have to drive somewhere that does. Consider sanitation: why don't we have this in the suburbs? Because turning 1 sanitation facility into 100 distributed sanitation facilities across 100x more land, all while servicing the SAME AMOUNT OF PEOPLE, is insane. So we don't do that. So then you drive. It is indisputable that density brings efficiency. From computer chips, to transit, to cities. > If you want to change a sewer main in Manhattan, you'll spend several years getting all the permits, creating temporary infrastructure to pump the sewage while you're working, then spending several months carefully digging through the streets to avoid severing unmarked pipes carrying who-knows-what. Okay, this is a perfect demonstration. If you change 1 mile of sewer in Manhattan, you've serviced 100,000 people. If you change 1 mile of sewer in the suburbs, you've serviced 100 people. Are you seeing the problem? Yes, there is obviously more friction to getting stuff done, but the amount of stuff you need to get done to impact the same people is orders of magnitude less. The cost ends up being much, much, much lower. This only works if you're comparing like and like though. A lot of people will compare dense areas to the suburbs and they won't compare the same amount of people. Yeah, that's cheating. NYC has about as many people as north Texas. When you put it that way, then it seems clear that the efficiency of NYC is orders of magnitude higher than your average suburban hellscape. |
OK. You're throwing around words like "obviously" without obviously bothering to check them. The commute time for large cities is longer.
The average commute time is less for small cities and suburbs.
Moreover, the average US commute for small cities (22 minutes according to the ACS) is faster than in ANY large US or European city. In particular, commute time in NYC is 37 minutes.
> Consider sanitation: why don't we have this in the suburbs?
Just sigh.
> Yes, there is obviously more friction to getting stuff done, but the amount of stuff you need to get done to impact the same people is orders of magnitude less. The cost ends up being much, much, much lower. This only works if you're comparing like and like though.
Have you ever deigned to actually verify your claims? Just to give you a hint, building a mile of subway in NYC now costs more than 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway.
You clearly have never actually looked into the subject in question, and you're just repeating whatever sounds right.