It's there, but here's more evidence and data to back up the assertion that suburbs are a net drain on city finances, with more cost than tax revenue from properties: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/16/where-did-the-...

This article isn't saying suburbs are a drain on cities. It's saying that cities have overextended themselves because of skewed incentives imposed on them by government policies (the main one being printing money to fund real estate development). The solution to that is not to abolish suburbs. It's for the government to stop imposing skewed incentives.

The article explicitly highlights modern car centric development as not paying for itself.

My man is using a strategy I fondly refer to called "burning the head in the sand"

That general tax pool is funded by people who live in suburbs, so the argument is wrong.

Strongtowns is intersting, but they look at a few outliers and make the case those problems apply to all towns.

And by people who live in urban areas who don't get the benefit, since they also pay property taxes that are sufficient to pay for their infrastructure. It's a subsidy for the suburbs.