> often on a ring road built specifically to avoid the city

I wonder who financed the ring road. Curious that we don't build ring roads where there's no cities.

> If the only “new” penalty is they can’t go see the pro sports team in person without paying a lot of taxes

The new penalty should be "you want to live in 100 km radius of a city - you chip in for infrastructure it builds the more the further you are". It's no accident that suburbanization doesn't happen in areas where there are no big cities nearby.

> Plenty of people want to live in the suburbs precisely because they want nothing to do with the city center.

Sadly you can't have suburbs without a city center somewhere nearby.