This is literally what American HOAs are becoming.
No wonder they're popping up everywhere!
They are in all new developments in most states because the suburb model is financially unsustainable (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0 for the argument why), so, if you want to build a nice new development, the town/city is going to say "Who's gonna maintain that little park? Who's gonna cut the grass in the green spaces? Who's gonna sweep the streets?" etc. Not to mention, every amenity outside individual homes (clubhouse, pool, playground) etc. needs to be maintained. Cities can't afford to take them on as public parks, and the individual neighborhoods whose home prices paid for their construction don't really want them to be public either.
And the developer needs to have an entity with which all these responsibilities will vest when they're done building, so, HOA needs to exist.
The alternative is either no shared amenities of any kind, or trying to get the whole city to approve paying for the perpetual maintenance of a new public park when building a new housing tract. Good luck getting that passed, since most existing residents (besides the ones in the next tract over) would say "F that, I'd never go there, why should my taxes pay for it?"
Old water pipes have been the financial downfall of many suburbs.
Odds are you don't have a lot of heavy fright coming through, so your roads don't need constant replacing. You likely don't have bridges that carry heavy freight, those are a maintenance nightmare.
But once all the buried pipes need replacing, suddenly all the roads need tearing up, and that is expensive.
The best amenities? What does that mean, specifically?
> In reality, since suburbs have low crime, the policing is cheap.
Are you sure?
"The average spending on police for jurisdictions with more than one million people was 10 percent in 2017. The average for jurisdictions with fewer than 50,000 people was 13 percent."
- https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
> But somehow the large city next door, with billions in debt and all the jobs (and thus the payroll taxes) has terrible services and terrible schools.
Not sure what that has to do with the sustainability of suburbs.
> I think you just don't like suburbs and will twist your logic into knots to claim a rational reason for it. Truth is, you just don't like suburbs. Most people do, get over it.
That has nothing to do with whether what they are arguing is correct or not.
Is your suburb growing at present? If so, and if your taxes are as low as the typical place, your town is enjoying the fun part of the cycle. Same as Bernie Madoff's customers were happy with their returns for years. When they stop building, it's a matter of time before the city will have to choose between skimping on all the things that make it nice and neglecting roads and pipes, OR, raising taxes.
> the large city next door, with billions in debt and all the jobs (and thus the payroll taxes) has terrible services and terrible schools
That's because most of those cities are run by idiots, elected by the people who vote for all the goodies, borrow whatever it takes, but also don't raise taxes. Almost no cities levy payroll taxes (meaning, taxes non-residents such as commuters from your suburb have to pay) though.
PS: I live in the suburbs, and would never go back to the city. I like it here. That doesn't change the plain fact that under most circumstances, suburbs aren't financially sustainable in the long term.