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.