For whom? Many people love the suburbs and hate cities. I know many people who know work 3 days from home and only commute to work 2 days per week.
If the suburbs are fiscally unsustainable, what about rural?
What's your plan? Pack people in high-rises? Even if they don't want that?
It's difficult to say how much demand there is for that kind of thing if we've made it illegal in so many places.
I don't doubt that many people have a preference for more suburban type places, but even those could be a lot more flexible and adaptable. A 4-plex here, a corner store there... that's not big city stuff. The city I live in is about 100K, and we have corner stores from back when they were legal when it was more like 10K.
Inner cities and commercial areas tend to support suburban neighborhoods.
The cost per resident is much higher in low density areas like suburbs.
Rural areas get around this by not providing services. Most rural districts don’t provide garbage, water, sewer, recreation, fire, transit or any of a bunch of other services that people expect in suburbs.
Denser areas bring in more tax revenue with fewer miles of infrastructure. There are good Strong Towns articles about this.
Rural areas have the same problem, but often the houses are on wells and septic tanks. The roads are simpler and cheaper and can get by with less maintenance.
I'm not sure it's so simple. Yes, a mile of underground services (water, sewer, etc) in NYC serves orders of magnitude more people than a mile of underground services in some suburb.
But, digging up a mile of underground services in NYC also costs billions of dollars, whereas a similar dig out in the suburbs can be done by a few people and a small digger in far less time and doesn't cost much because there's nothing near or above it.
So yes, in fact, the “plan” is to pack people into high-rises—because that’s all they’ll be able to afford due to their relative energy efficiency.
Having denser housing in some places does not mean replacing all housing with high density.
There are a lot of density options between single-family home suburbs and high-rise towers. Look up "missing middle" housing.
The biggest offenders are actual urban areas that should be cities but try to act like suburbs. Let cities be dense, and it will actually take some pressure off of the suburbs. People who work in cities end up living in suburbs even if they don't want to, and then commute in every day and clog up the roads. Most US major cities are still well below major European cities on residential density.
If you want rural to remain rural and suburbs to remain suburbs, then let town centers and metro cities fill in density for those who want to live there.
Got an example?
US cities are generally fairly low density. That pushes more people to the suburbs, or low density suburb-like development at the edge of the city, driving up prices there and adding commuter traffic that the city pays to handle.
If people want to live in the suburbs that's fine, but given housing prices in most cities I think there is greater demand than supply for residential there.
https://www.sparefoot.com/moving/city-guides/4385319-visuali...
Really any city that you can think of that's surrounded by a spaghetti tangle of highways full of commuters every morning and evening, which is most of them in the US.
With appropriate land taxes suburbs can be happily fiscally sustainable.
Oddly, the claim is usually made by people who say that public transport is necessary and rarely comment on the fiscal sustainability of public transport.
Other than Amtrak, which counts subsidies as revenue, not transit system in the US has a farebox recovery ratio of above 55% and most are around 20-30% .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
This was also before Covid and the dramatic rise of WFH.
In the US and much of the developed world transit use is down by at least a quarter due to increased WFH. This is making US transit systems even more fiscally unsustainable.
In the morning, a decent chunk of them get in their cars and drive into the city. The roads that need constant expansion, upgrades, and repair are the ones in the city or between the city and the suburb.
The suburb residents vote against things that might cost them money but reduce the burden on roads not paid for by the suburbs.
Yes, commuting has dropped, but it’s not gone. The major highways between my suburb and the nearby city are still constantly clogged and forever under construction.
It's hard to run a local restaurant when the houses are all evenly spread out and going out to dinner means a 30 minute car drive. Thus the proliferation of chain franchises in these areas.
Can you point me at a few suburbs (not out in the wilderness) where it actually takes a 30 minute car drive to get to a restaurant?
I have difficulty picturing that such a place exists, but maybe I'm wrong.
> ...[no] transit system in the US has a farebox recovery ratio of above 55% and most are around 20-30% .
There are a tiny handful of roads in the country that bother to even attempt to recover their operating costs. Overall, I'd bet that the road system in the US has a "farebox recovery rate" of low single-digits at absolute best.
That doesn't mean we should shut it down.
Publicly-accessible transit systems are a public good... one that delivers far more value than can be easily accounted for.
I can’t even remember the last time I paid a toll.
As a side question: when I buy gasoline for my backup generator am I paying the 'toll' for that generator to drive on the road?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being...
So the recovery ratio is more than 200%.
This has data for the US.
https://www.newgeography.com/content/006415-transport-costs-...
I also expect that you don't have any idea how much of the total road-maintenance funding comes from that tax, and how much of it comes from other sources.
(It's also... odd... to start off talking about tax and revenue policies in the US, and then suddenly switch to an entirely separate country (given that the US is uniquely car-centric and politically fucked-up) but whatever.)
And when cities do decide to upzone, they tend to centralize high density towers in one part of the city.
There are countless studies on why suburbs are just one big ponzi scheme. Strongtowns is an advocacy group that is trying to show more light into this issue.
Most of the tax revenue comes from downtowns where there are more density and more economic activity. Meanwhile a lot of the infrastructure cost are sunked into the suburbs that contribute little to the total tax revenue. The situation is even worst in California due to prop 13.
That's what life was like back when we lived in Italy a few years ago. It was pretty good in a lot of ways!
When we moved here to Oregon, we landed in a rental with a big, beautiful back yard that didn't see much use.
"Kids don't need a big yard to play, they need other kids" - and living in a denser area provides more kids.
That's not to say no one should have a yard or anything, just that it's really not all that it's cracked up to be.
Have you been to San Francisco? Addicts and homeless take over all parks. While I emphatize with their difficult situation, I don't want my child exposed to that.
> "Kids don't need a big yard to play, they need other kids" - and living in a denser area provides more kids.
Out here in suburbs,lots of kids (since most families with kids move to the suburbs) and many parks and none of the problems of a dense city.
As a 20-something I want(ed) to live in a dense city for the parties & people & bars. As a parent of a child, I want to be as far as possible from a dense city.
The high amount of homelessness may have something to do with the housing shortage.
But those that don't have that as a priority, or can't afford it, should also have options.
Nobody is suggesting turning all suburbs into high-rises. But we need variety and supply in the market, so that people have choices that suit their lifestyle and income. Including the option to live closer to where they work to reduce the traffic on your roads.
Define "decent sized":
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Westminster+Ave,+Toron...
Or perhaps something with less square footage:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
At a density that can support public transit, cars are optional (not a necessity), you still have a (back)yard, and can have a garage (attached to a laneway). The above was how things were often built pre-WW2:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
These places now cost quite a lot now because urban living is cool, but in roughly 1960-90s they were relatively cheap because all the WASPs moved to the suburbs because 'downtown was for immigrants'; one particular neighbourhood linked to above was >90% Polish during the time period:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roncesvalles,_Toronto
Just to the east of this neighbourhood is Little Portugal (and then further east China Town, and a little north Little Italy), and to the west a large Ukraine community used to be concentrated (with a smattering of Lithuanians).
The numbers in 2021 of preference :
19% Urban, 46% Suburban, 35% rural.