alt Hacker NewsThe other thing people often forget is that the 'land value' is also a measure of the city's well-being.
Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost very little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money.
Those big, wide areas out towards the fringes? They generate next to no tax income and cost a lot to maintain.
The urban subsidizes the sub-urban. The sub-urban lifestyle would be completely impossible without the ultra-dense urban centers. If planners and citizens don't keep that in mind, you can easily end up with an insolvent city budget that is bleeding from maintaining all the utilities and roads stretching out to the exterior.
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Most true suburbs aren't within the big city limits, so I'm not sure your point is well-founded. For example, in the DC area, the suburbs aren't even in the same state as the city and yet the suburbs seem to be thriving.
The Bronx is sub-urban? As someone else noted, Manhattan and The Bronx are totally different in ways that probably has little to do with population differently.
Utilities and roads out into the suburban may be underpriced, but there’s a dark side to cities too. The suburbs and rural areas are often where people can afford homes.
I’ve had this hypotheses for a long time that the car is, at least economically, only incidentally about mobility. In reality it’s a tool for obtaining leverage in the real estate market.
Without sprawl urban landlords would have a captive audience and would extract all surplus. See: the law of rent.
I have a related hypothesis that the car drove the mid century middle class explosion in the US and some other countries, not by providing car jobs or any of the other conventional mechanisms but by allowing people to escape the law of rent.
Telework does this today for those who can use it, allowing people to leave high cost cities where good jobs are concentrated. The car did that until we reached the scaling limits of sprawl.
Also why I am a huge fan of Georgist taxation. Unfortunately we are moving in the opposite direction, taxing productivity and investment and wealth instead of taxing land and rent.
So, what policy do you change after you learn that economic activity always concentrate on a small part of the city? You go and outlaw a natural law?