One of strong road’s arguments is that denser neighborhoods bring in much more tax revenue compared to strip malls and stroads. Take a classic, large mall. You could instead house hundreds, maybe thousands of people in the same space, as well as scores of small businesses. The tax revenue there would be much higher than if most of the space is a parking lot that, on average, is rarely fully utilized.

The main point of their argument is that strip malls and stroads and suburbia is unsustainable because it can’t generate enough tax revenue to support its infrastructure.

I think this means that entities do stand to gain from better planning, but it’s over the long term. You can’t build it in a year and expect it to be immediately full, but you can expect it to survive the long term (unlike the mall).