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Re:We've Built Cities We Can't Afford by yaacov on Saturday April 18, 2020 @01:35PM (#22909400)
Seattle is one of the most prosperous regions of the US. Even so, your suburban lifestyle is probably subsidized by people who live in more urbanized parts of the metro.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...

That said, I agree that total collapse of municipal finances is unlikely outside of particularly poor exurban areas.

Re:We've Built Cities We Can't Afford by xyzzyz on Saturday April 18, 2020 @01:52PM (#22909569)
There is not much urbanized part of the metro to speak of. It’s all suburbia, even in the city itself, 75% is zoned for single family houses. Given that my property taxes are 10 times what Strongtowns thinks it costs to maintain the streets, I seriously doubt I’m being subsidized by anyone when it comes to infrastructure.
Re:We've Built Cities We Can't Afford by ghaff on Saturday April 18, 2020 @02:03PM (#22909671)
A lot of people assume that urbanized metros imply a lot of high-rise residential. But take a place like Somerville in MA. It's one of densest cities in the country outside of the environs of NYC and there's not much high rise construction generally and a lot of the city is standalone houses.
Re:We've Built Cities We Can't Afford by katbyte on Saturday April 18, 2020 @02:05PM (#22909685)
What about the fact there are two of the largest tech companies in the world headquartered nearby? The downtown most definitely subsidizes suburbia.
Re:We've Built Cities We Can't Afford by xyzzyz on Saturday April 18, 2020 @02:17PM (#22909803)
Microsoft practically built a whole suburban town far from Seattle and made it its headquarters. It subsidizes suburbia because it is suburbia.
Re:We've Built Cities We Can't Afford by Aloha on Saturday April 18, 2020 @03:29PM (#22910398)
Workers from Boeing 'built' the suburbia that Microsoft moved to, most of the housing in Redmond predates Microsoft.