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These here city folk don't much care for our kind.

Nevermind the shirk for the value of diversity—both geographically and functionally—they've optimized the life out of life and gosh darn it, so can you.

Sure, subsidize things they like—green tech, social reeducation, space travel, even their subscription streaming movie platforms—but those backwards folks out in the boondocks really gotta go.

All 125 million of em.

I'll be honest, I've lived all over the country in some of the most diverse, varied places. And despite the trope of the knuckle dragging country folk, I've never met a more bigoted bunch than city dwellers.

Nobody is talking about forcing anyone to do anything.

You know something I really like? Lobster. You know what would be great for me? If the government made a program to subsidize lobster farming and distribution, so that lobster cost $3/meal instead of $20. If it cost that I would probably have Lobster 5 times a week!

But, it doesn't, so... I don't eat that much Lobster. I still love it though, and there's nothing wrong with that! Nobody should force me to stop eating Lobster.

When you stop subsidizing suburbs, will you also stop subsidizing the flyover states? How about the impoverished? Medicare for unhealthy people? Education? Fire departments?

Like, what is your "I don't care for subsidies" threshold?

> Like, what is your "I don't care for subsidies" threshold?

People that have a higher standard of living than me seems to be a reasonable cutoff, why should I live in a small apartment but pay for your gluttonous lifestyle in a McMansion?

I'm all for a bit of wealth redistribution, but from poor to rich is the wrong direction.

> McMansion

This is a mock term from detractors.

Many large homes cost less than a condo. A mortgage on a home you own is sometimes less than rent in the city. For something you'll never own.

I don't get what your gripe is. You can even build a large home with your own hands if you have the skill and time. It's not like it's some unnatural thing that is going to lead to the collapse of civilization.

> People that have a higher standard of living than me seems to be a reasonable cutoff

> why should I live in a small apartment but pay for your gluttonous lifestyle in a McMansion

This strikes me as jealousy. I'm glad you're not making decisions for the rest of us.

This planet is a stochastic mix of people trying lots of different things. Most of it is harmless. Live and let be. You're not going to solve the world's problems by pointing fingers. Humanity isn't going anywhere.

You might think this is a gotcha, but in reality this is a question with a very easy answer: we should subsidize things with positive externalities, and not things with negative externalities. Suburbs have negative externalities (pollution, infrastructure cost, social isolation). Caring for the poor and sick, educating the young, and putting out fires all have positive externalities.

I don't think this is a "gotcha". I asked for a threshold, accepting that there are varying costs and benefits.

I think that your justification is lacking, however. As though there are no positive externalities for suburban living (there are), or even negative externalities for the other items (there are).

I'm not sure I trust your assessment when you identify only negative externalities to suburban living, frankly.

> Like, what is your "I don't care for subsidies" threshold?

When the thing being subsidized has no benefit to society.

'Subsidizing' the impoverished is helping another human being, and is always worthwhile. Healthcare for all is enlightened self-interest because I do not know what future illnesses I may have, and what they may cost, so I'd rather have everyone subsidized than risk myself not having access to future treatments.

Education and the public fire departments help build better societies.

But what benefit do car-based suburbs give to society as a whole? Can you least three benefits that we can discuss?

Sure:

- suburban areas largely "subsidize" the cost of education, which far exceeds the cost of roads and utility infrastructure subsidized by the cities. The quality of schools in suburban areas is also largely higher than in cities.

- suburban areas have anywhere from 1/7 - 1/3 the crime rates of cities—even accounting for socioeconomic factors—which reduces personal and social harm. There is also vastly faster emergency response in suburban areas which save lives and stop culprits.

- mood disorders (anxiety, depression, etc) are about 40% more common in city dwellers then suburbanites, and that's strongly linked to the differing environments.

If the cost and quality of education, reduction of crime, and mental health aren't benefits to society as a whole, I don't know what is.

Please understand, I do not suggest that city living is "bad". I do, however, suggest that diversity of living environments is good, for the individual and for society as a whole.

The first two points probably have less to do with the the design of suburbs, but can probably be better attributed to income/wealth:

* https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/the-ur...

I live in Toronto, Canada, and we probably have as much variation with-in the city as between the suburban and urban areas given that different neighbourhoods with-in the city have different average incomes.

Access to green spaces does help help in many ways, but that may be countered by the lack of activity in car-centric areas:

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/the-publi...

Further, lower density building necessities eating up more land for the same population than higher density. You're paving over the very 'green' land that is providing benefits in the first place.

And 'urban living' also exists on a spectrum: it is not necessary to design things as scrunched together as (say) Manhattan. Brooklyn and Queen's (for example) can support walkable neighbourhoods with useful public transit (and cycling), while having SFH, garages/lanes, backyards, etc.

I'm less against 'real' rural living than suburban design. The post-WW2 suburbs just seem to be the worst of both worlds.

> You know what else is subsidized? Farms. Should we stop paying for them?

[…]

> Don't force everyone to live in a city. It's not unlike the bicyclists trying to tell everyone they should bike instead of drive, which simply isn't going to work for most of the people in this country.

What practical benefit(s) do the suburbs bring to society? Why should society pay the costs of them when they are so wasteful from land use, health (due to all the driving), climate change, etc?

Farms have been subsidized for years, even before the modern car-based suburbs were invented: urban dwellers paid higher prices for telephones and electricity to build out the infrastructure in rural areas in the early 1900s.

But there is no practical reason to subsidize car-based suburbs when you can have (detached) single-family homes, with backyards (with garages/lanes), that are built at densities that can support walkable neighbourhoods and sustain transit. Especially since lot sizes have been shrinking for years and many modern suburban homes are no bigger many urban ones; see this 2019 Cheddar video:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKwOyA-pOTY

Remember Kozmo.com? I do. For those who were too young for the first Internet bubble, Kozmo.com was a company that was a delivery service for convenience stores. It was great! You want a candy bar at 3am, just order one and someone will bike it right over. Rental VHS tapes? (this was long before Netflix even mailed DVDs) No problem. Pack of cigarettes? No need to leave the house.

It was fantastic and convenient and everyone loved it. Unfortunately, it was also wildly unprofitable so it went out of business.

Yes, it can be very nice to enjoy things that burn through more money than they generate, but those things simply are not going to last, no matter how much you like them. No matter how much they are a "pattern of life". That which cannot sustain itself, dies.

> You know what else is subsidized? Farms. Should we stop paying for them?

Not a valid comparison. Farms get subsidized to prevent supply and demand swings from creating price shocks and people starving to death. Not because growing food for people to eat is a fundamentally unprofitable endeavor.

The Heritage Foundation claims that farm subsidies are not for national security.[1] From this we can conclude that the purpose of farm subsidies is almost certainly national security. Which is a good thing, because farm subsidies fail to prevent hunger as you claim.[2] Om the other hand, it seems to be less for security than as "socialism for the rich"[3] given how the money is funneled.[4]

[1] https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/farm-subsidies-vs-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_for_the_rich_and_cap...

[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/fa...

With the exception of sports facilities, all of the things you mentioned have positive externalities. Even the most staunch (good-faith) libertarian should be in favor of public funding for hospitals because of the common welfare effects that the market is otherwise blind to.

Suburbs are exactly the opposite. It's not just that they're expensive, it's that everyone on planet Earth is worse off for them existing. There is absolutely no rational reason for the government to subsidize things that have negative externalities.

> everyone on planet Earth is worse off for them existing

This is hyperbole.

Suburbs are not negative externalities. They work to the benefit of the massive communities living within them.

People can raise their kids with large, private lawns. Have pools, cook outs, outdoor activities. Lots of private space to relax.

Hasn't Covid taught us that suburbs have tremendous merit? Cities are cramped and lonely hellscapes during the pandemic.

Beyond that, the objective function for society is not to cram as many humans into a sardine can as possible. If we were trying to optimize life on earth, life would be rigid and unpalatable.

> Hasn't Covid taught us that suburbs have tremendous merit? Cities are cramped and lonely hellscapes during the pandemic.

I thought we learned the opposite. With offices closed city centres weren't quite so cramped and living in the inner city during a harsh lockdown gave me quite a few more social options than those in the suburbs. I could go for a walk (leisure or shopping) and catch up with most of my social circle, we could meet in parks and at times had larger groups gathering for drinks. In the suburbs there was much less overlap between people due to the lower density.

> the objective function for society is not to cram as many humans into a sardine can as possible

One of the major points Strong Towns tries to get across is about zoning, there's no need to be crammed in like sardines, this is just an artifact of strange zoning laws that don't allow much more ideal densities like 3-6 story brick buildings that are reasonably spacious.

You're right, it was hyperbole.

Everyone on planet Earth who doesn't live in a suburb, plus many of those who do, except for some people who make their living servicing the inefficiencies of suburbs, is worse off for suburbs existing.

Better?

To be fair, the people who live in the suburbs aren't generally worse off for living there, assuming they enjoy that lifestyle.

To me, though, that's the biggest thing that puts the lie to the suburban lifestyle thing. Most of the people who want to live there don't want any more people moving out as soon as their neighborhood is finished, because they know it'll just mean more traffic congestion, noise, pollution, etc., and the things that attracted them to the suburbs will be diminished. The suburban pattern just doesn't scale well.

Sadly that is one of the easier problems to fix. Just build on a grid of small streets (or if you don't like grids, an interconnected web of curvy streets is fine too) and don't live giant gaps and the whole thing scales a lot better. The financial and environmental impacts are harder problems to solve.