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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

In some cases, suburbs raise much more capital

In some cases, you may be right.

It is much more the norm that new development gets sweetheart deals waiving all sorts of taxes and fees (which would ordinarily fund the infrastructure costs the local government is about to be on the hook for because of the new development), on a mentality that it's the only way to attract development.

Which then means somebody else has to pay more to cover those infrastructure costs, because the people using the infrastructure aren't paying for it.

This same pattern repeats with both business and residential development, all over the country.

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While I agree with you, I am not sure this is specific to suburb vs city. Infrastructure costs are borne by the citizens of the areas, regardless of the density of the area. Or are you saying somehow inner cities are providing more infrastructure for suburban companies w/ tax breaks as opposed to the inverse?

Cities tend to already be built up. There are streets, water/gas/electricity/etc. already there, and redeveloping doesn't require 100% of the infrastructure to be run out there and built from scratch.

Expanding the suburban sprawl means going to places where that infrastructure isn't already there, which means adding all of it and adding the burden of maintaining it. And when you then waive the taxes that are meant to pay for the infrastructure, where does the money come from? Out of somebody else's pocket.

On the other hand: try fixing anything that goes beneath the surface in certain cities. There's pipes, cables, subways, shelters everywhere it seems.

People from New York might have some further input here.

It's true that most cities don't have records of everything that has been buried beneath their streets, although I don't know whether the additional costs of finding the appropriate items and the occasional unintended damage to other bits of infrastructure outweigh the increased costs of having to deal with far longer pipes/cables/whatever.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-10/nobody-kn...

This is not true at all. Rural and suburban areas receive an incredibly disproportionate amount of tax dollars for infrastructure compared to urban areas.

Here is an article with some actual numbers from Halifax, Nova Scotia:https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

Some of the tables are pretty revealing in there.

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