To me, though, that's the biggest thing that puts the lie to the suburban lifestyle thing. Most of the people who want to live there don't want any more people moving out as soon as their neighborhood is finished, because they know it'll just mean more traffic congestion, noise, pollution, etc., and the things that attracted them to the suburbs will be diminished. The suburban pattern just doesn't scale well.
Sadly that is one of the easier problems to fix. Just build on a grid of small streets (or if you don't like grids, an interconnected web of curvy streets is fine too) and don't live giant gaps and the whole thing scales a lot better. The financial and environmental impacts are harder problems to solve.
This is hyperbole.
Suburbs are not negative externalities. They work to the benefit of the massive communities living within them.
People can raise their kids with large, private lawns. Have pools, cook outs, outdoor activities. Lots of private space to relax.
Hasn't Covid taught us that suburbs have tremendous merit? Cities are cramped and lonely hellscapes during the pandemic.
Beyond that, the objective function for society is not to cram as many humans into a sardine can as possible. If we were trying to optimize life on earth, life would be rigid and unpalatable.
I thought we learned the opposite. With offices closed city centres weren't quite so cramped and living in the inner city during a harsh lockdown gave me quite a few more social options than those in the suburbs. I could go for a walk (leisure or shopping) and catch up with most of my social circle, we could meet in parks and at times had larger groups gathering for drinks. In the suburbs there was much less overlap between people due to the lower density.
> the objective function for society is not to cram as many humans into a sardine can as possible
One of the major points Strong Towns tries to get across is about zoning, there's no need to be crammed in like sardines, this is just an artifact of strange zoning laws that don't allow much more ideal densities like 3-6 story brick buildings that are reasonably spacious.
Everyone on planet Earth who doesn't live in a suburb, plus many of those who do, except for some people who make their living servicing the inefficiencies of suburbs, is worse off for suburbs existing.
Better?
Suburbs are exactly the opposite. It's not just that they're expensive, it's that everyone on planet Earth is worse off for them existing. There is absolutely no rational reason for the government to subsidize things that have negative externalities.