I mean the problem isn't those who don't want to live in cities nor is it those who want to live in cities: the problem is the suburbs, which is where those two meet. People who aren't in and do not desire an actual rural lifestyle where one has a standalone home on a large plot of land in the middle of nowhere, but also don't want a condo. They want their own little plot of land, with a small yard, and a standalone home.

And like, same. That's also me.

But the problem is the actual costs of that style of home are incredibly, heavily subsidized by the cities they surround and indeed even the rural areas they border, because suburbs are just... a bad goddamn way to house people. They're incredibly inefficient, basically require your own personal car, require the most infrastructure build-out for the smallest population, require the largest footprint of services over the largest area to serve the smallest number of people, etc. etc.

And like, I don't think it's unreasonable to say if you want to live this way, that's fine, but then you need to actually pay for it. Your property taxes need to reflect how much it actually costs to serve your property, to build the huge number of roads needed to access it, to maintain those roads, to maintain the electrical grids, to maintain the water and sewage services, to bus kids to schools, etc. etc. etc.

And yeah that's going to make suburbs WAY less appealing because they're going to be fucking expensive but like, the alternative is, again, everyone wanting that, and not paying for it. The dense urban centers they surround absolutely hemorrhage money supporting the suburbs around them.

Around where I live (greater Boston metro) most of the tech jobs are actually out in the suburbs/exurbubs. There were basically no tech jobs in the city ~20 years ago any longer. (It's mostly only changed with the establishment of of satellite offices of some west coast companies.)

With respect, it doesn't matter. Suburbs cost far more than they bring in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

I don't know. My town has a budget. We argue over property taxes at town meetings. We argue over enterprise zones like distribution centers that certainly aren't going in the middle of large cities. We argue over school spending that tends to be lower than in large cities. No one is wiping out highways that connect large cities to other places.

Urbanization decreases costs.

How much does 160 acres of land cost in rural Kansas? Maybe $500,000? How much does 160 acres of land cost in Manhattan? Maybe $800,000,000?

Urbanization decreases some costs and increases others.