[JumpCrisscross]

> negative externalities (living in poor conditions in an expensive city) are offloaded onto the workers

Cities are more efficient in practically every way than subsidized rural developments. It’s really weird to flip that around as an externality. (Disclaimer: I moved from New York to Wyoming. Thanks for your subsidies, I guess.)

There absolutely are jobs in remote places. But the people there aren’t as valuable as someone who will bump into like-minded colleagues and cultural expression as part of their existence in a cluster.

[cyberax]

> Cities are more efficient in practically every way than subsidized rural developments

No, they're not. It's the other way around, in fact. Suburbs subsidize cities (on average, again).

The dense city cores produce most of the _corporate_ income tax, because that's where the companies are headquartered. But most of _personal_ income tax comes from suburbs. This is only now getting close to flipping around.

Cities also have YUUUUGE expenses that simply don't happen in sparse areas. E.g. infrastructure like water or sewer is wildly expensive in cities because of the planning overhead. Case in point: San Francisco spent almost half a billion rebuilding a few blocks of road.

Cities also require EXPENSIVE public transit. One ride on a bus/subway in the US costs around $20. I'm talking about the true cost (number of trips / total expenses), not the farebox cost. And with capex it's almost incalculable, with crazy numbers like $50 per ride for Seattle.

The TLDR; version:

1. Infrastructure in suburbs might end up being a bit more expensive on a per-capita basis. Or it might not, depending on the way you do accounting.

2. In any case, this difference is not at all significant.

3. Suburbs are _not_ subsidized, and in fact generate most of the wealth in the US.

[kasey_junk]

Do you have any citations on that? Very curious because it’s a very heterodox viewpoint you are expressing.

[cyberax]

The thing is, I don't actually know good sources that aggregate all this data. I'm collecting all the references and I'm planning to write a book.

[JumpCrisscross]

If you have a refutation of Triumph of the City, it will be groundbreaking. Until it’s published, throwing in like one credible source would make your comments more serious.

[cyberax]

I read "Triumph of the City" about 15 years ago. It's a well-researched book, and it literally makes the same points as I do. In particular, it describes the density death spiral much better than I can. It's a bit outdated regarding the carbon footprint because it was written before the EVs and self-driving but that's a fairly minor point.

Its biggest problem is that it was written before the negatives of the density death spiral became apparent.

The cities in the early 2000-s were the main benefactors of the global crime collapse. So suddenly, Times Square in NYC transformed from a blighted area into the world's most valuable real estate. How could you be negative about urbanism seeing that? Housing in cities was also relatively cheap because cities used to be less desirable than suburbs.

If I were to summarize, "Triumph of the City" is factually correct. Just as the statement: "coal power plants are a triumph of engineering, providing cheap, reliable, and accessible power".

Edit: another important thing that he's missing is the end of the population growth. So now it's a nearly zero-sum game: a new housing unit in Manhattan means one more dilapidated house in rural Ohio.