> And so to pay for the repairs, the city then builds yet another neighborhood in the same strategy to collect the initial tax revenue. It’s effectively a Ponzi scheme.

> When it crashes, you get Detroit.

> The gist is that many low-density spread-out suburban neighborhood with large, expensive infrastructure are a huge cost center for a city. And since most North American cities build this way, we have a lot of cities that are “functionally bankrupt” or will be soon.

Huh? Wasn't Detroit's problem that it was too dependent a small set of labor-intensive businesses in one industry that have been in a long term secular decline (as foreign competition as increased) while simultaneously becoming more automated?

Also, when city infrastructure needs to be repaired, don't they just assess specials on the affected properties? Metro areas can expand as you describe, but many/most cities can't (because they're boxed in by adjacent cities (i.e. suburbs)). For instance, the only buildable land left in my very suburban city are a couple of defunct golf courses. New construction activity mainly happening two cities away to the south.