Strong Towns is talking about tax income vs tax expenditure efficiency (dollars received vs benefits realized). It is easily possible that receiving more money does not necessarily correspond to improved quality of life, if those funds are spent on projects that don't enable local prosperity.

The evidence strong towns presents is not convincing. They take rural towns far from cities and claim that towns issues represent suburbs. They cherry pick suburbs that have issues and claim it represents all. Nowhere do they apply statistical or scientific rigor.

Suburbs have existed for more than 100 years. They have rebuilt their roads many times. They have installed modern things like telephone, running water and so on over the years.