You are talking about liking something that has tax revenues that cover mere fractions of the costs incurred. How much would you like it if your property taxes were 50% higher? 2000% higher?
The article covers sweeping statements & accusations, ignoring local realities. If a particular town made a bad deal with a developer, that's not the same category as those that made a good deal; a big screwup can skew the average when lumped in among several successes. Ranting about sewer maintenance doesn't apply to a neighborhood that doesn't have sewers (mine has backyard septic systems/fields; your offal is your problem), and likewise for public water vs private wells. It's a solvable problem: should taxes be higher? if so, raise them accordingly and look for alternate solutions like encouraging domestic self-sufficiency.
It's a paperwork problem. Much of what the article describes involves carefully negotiated & balanced deals, followed later with absurd & overbearing demands for "improvements" - no surprise the latter are "unsustainable". Build a community with suitable roads and lawns designed to balance them ... then demand a >50% increase in road width, destroying lawns and vastly altering traffic dynamics? Build a suitable sewer system, then vastly raise & over-engineer requirements, then have to accommodate normal repairs to the absurd new requirements? Yeah, that's not going to work. The problem isn't suburbs, it's overbearing overpowered know-it-alls who don't have to deal with consequences of their unilateral declarations.
"Here’s what he means. The way suburban development usually works is that a town lays the pipes, plumbing, and infrastructure for housing development—often getting big loans from the government to do so—and soon after a developer appears and offers to build homes on it. Developers usually fund most of the cost of the infrastructure because they make their money back from the sale of the homes. The short-term cost to the city or town, therefore, is very low: it gets a cash infusion from whichever entity fronted the costs, and the city gets to keep all the revenue from property taxes. The thinking is that either taxes will cover the maintenance costs, or the city will keep growing and generate enough future cash flow to cover the obligations. But the tax revenue at low suburban densities isn’t nearly enough to pay the bills; in Marohn’s estimation, property taxes at suburban densities bring in anywhere from 4 cents to 65 cents for every dollar of liability. Most suburban municipalities, he says, are therefore unable to pay the maintenance costs of their infrastructure, let alone replace things when they inevitably wear out after twenty to twenty-five years. The only way to survive is to keep growing or take on more debt, or both. “It is a ridiculously unproductive system,” he says."
Taken in context, the quoted sentence is specifically talking about the development/expansion of a town beyond its current financial means. In other words, the town builds out its infrastructure and is banking on an influx of new homeowners (taxpayers) to help with the maintenance of the infrastructure. When that doesn't happen, that's when the tax revenue/liabilities ratio dips below 1.
Also, if you go to the Strong Towns[1] website that Charles Marohn helped start and read the Mission Statement and their Quantification of a Strong Town, nowhere does it talk about population density or converting suburbs/towns into cities.
You mean like these?
http://www.strongtowns.org/the-cost-of-auto-orientation/
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/4/the-lost-opportu...
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/11/adding-insult-t...
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/18/residential-mat...
He absolutely is talking about density. The tax bases of low density suburbs, compared to the maintenance costs that they require, are inherently disparate.
The costs of building greenfield infrastructure is low...low enough that developers willingly pay the infrastructure development fees in exchange for the right to build. But the taxes used to maintain the infrastructure do not cover the costs, and by that time the developer is off the hook. So they bring in new developers, which bring with them new taxes and more deferred maintenance, which brings solvency in the short term and bigger problems in the long term. Suburban-density development is a ponzi scheme, inherently unsustainable, and it is a theme that he refers to extensively in his writing.
As for the last article, that one does talk about residential housing. I will agree that the article does talk about urbanization as the natural progression of town maturation. However, note that the article talks about progressions/increments (i.e. going from a house to a duplex, from a duplex, to a row of houses, from a row of houses to an apartment building) and not skipping those progressions (going straight from a house to an apartment building). In fact, the article specifically outlines that the changes must be natural, be compatible with the neighborhood, and must fit in. Overall, Marohn's more concerned with adding value to properties than increasing population density. He even goes as far as to specifically address our topic of discussion. I quote:
"I am going to pause now before going on to the next step and reiterate something important. I know there are those of you reading this right now, sitting at the kitchen table of your nice single family home, saying, "There is no way on God's green earth that I'm going to allow a set of row houses across the street from me. Who does this Strong Towns guy think he is?" Fair point, and the reality is that most neighborhoods will not grow beyond the single family stage. That's okay too, at least as long as the public infrastructure and services stay scaled to that investment level." Emphasis mine.
He states that what's tantamount is responsible spending.
Really it sounds like the whole article could be sumarised by saying many suburbs have taxes that are too low. The article's author worked in a town with poor planning; there are plenty of large cities with poor planning.
This is really a non-story playing up to many of the prejudices common to HN.
In some areas of Minnesota this could most certainly be the case.