Is your lifestyle subsidized too? How do you know?
I suspect that even people with strong opinions have little understanding about infrastructure costs and who is subsidizing what. I’m unwilling to take this on faith - it seems like there need to be financial deep dives.
I live in the suburbs of NYC. All of NYC's drinking water is stored in our backyards. So much so that the NYPD patrols this area, 90 miles outside their geography.
The math has certainly not been done. There are no cities without suburbs. For food and water.
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell like this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Your comment would be (mostly) fine without that bit.
> because of style of community they want to own their home in?
No, I do not care about their choices, provided they are willing to bear all costs from it. The problem is not living in the suburbs. The problem is affluent people that have their lifestyle subsidized by poorer people living close to the city center.
Also, it's virtually impossible to claim that people want to live like that in the US, because most places have zoning laws that simply forbid the emergence of any other alternative. Suburbs in Germany are smaller, less dense versions of the urban center, but they are not devoid of life. They are still walkable, they still have local shops, they do not make cars a requirement for everyone, kids do not need to be driven around anywhere, etc. You can bet that if more people in the US could come to visit they would rather live like that than in the traditional cul-de-sacs/picketed fence developments from American Suburbia.
The laws that maintain roads for personal car use? Those are genuinely popular laws, not some sort of spooky corporate conspiracy. You anti-car cycle fascists can't seem to comprehend that your cause is unpopular.
I suspect that even people with strong opinions have little understanding about infrastructure costs and who is subsidizing what. I’m unwilling to take this on faith - it seems like there need to be financial deep dives.