Probably true in general but, to the degree there are shared areas, someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious. Not really suburban but I have a relative who lives on a private road with other houses and (primarily) plowing and road maintenance needs to be dealt with.

I agree that "your lawn isn't neat enough" HOAs are generally a plague at least up to a certain point.

"someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious"

In most places, this is called the city government.

Ultimately this feels like the "low tax area" myth is getting exposed. You still need to pay for all the same things your taxes would otherwise pay for, but for some reason it's different as long as it's not called a tax.

Ok, how about "Other people in our city refuse to raise taxes enough to maintain things to our standards, let's make a coalition of neighbors that all donate monthly to pay for additional upkeep for our neighborhood instead of each negotiating individually with different landscapers etc?"

It's popular to shit on HOAs, largely because Americans (of which I am one) are allergic to paying taxes and being told what to do, but if you call it a "Neighborhood co-op" all of a sudden it's not clear why it shouldn't be allowed. Whatever happened to freedom of association?

So shared facilities for a group of private individuals have to approved by and ongoing maintenance provided by the a government (as long as they feel like it) or they're not allowed to exist?

In the absence of an HOA, what you're describing as "shared facilities for a group of private individuals" would be commonly considered a private club. The difference is most private clubs that are not HOA's are not tied to owning specific property. For example, my sister belongs to a private pool club in their neighborhood. They pay membership dues to the club which provides operating revenue for the pool facilities, but it's not tied to any property ownership.

Some things like beaches/pools/golf clubs/etc. can generally be policed with tokens/keys and so forth. That is not generally true of all shared facilities in a neighborhood. And I'm not at all sure the local government should be responsible for anything that residents should care to share on a communal basis. Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe. But now that's up to a broader section of voters.

>> Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe

Yes, this is how it works pretty much everywhere else. Even my rural hometown with <1500 people has an elected park board that is responsible for parks, the swimming pool, tennis courts, summer rec programs, etc.

And the 7K person town where I live in, there are some conservation lands (no idea how maintenance splits up between town and conservation/commission and other volunteers), along with other conservation organizations. But dog parks, playgrounds, etc. just don't exist.

In my suburban neighborhood the HOA mostly takes care of common areas. Things like community swimming pools, dog parks, tennis courts, sports fields, landscaping, etc... They also organize fun runs and movie nights and other seasonal events.

There's occasional drama, but mostly things just run fairly smoothly.