Suburban sprawl is stifling the US economy

Re:Suburban sprawl is stifling the US economy by prostoalex on Sunday March 29, 2015 @03:45AM (#9284174)

Once it's built out, a portion of society is forced to dedicate their careers and extract public funding just to maintain the existing status quo of the infrastructure.

Consider what a large city budget could be spent on if a large portion of it didn't go towards maintaining the roads, maintaining the streetlights and accompanying infrastructure, and hiring extra police force to properly cover the expanded driving area.

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Re:Suburban sprawl is stifling the US economy by hippich on Sunday March 29, 2015 @04:59PM (#9286446)

What exactly you would expect city budget to be spent on, if city would eliminate needs for supporting infrastructure? Also, why having more infrastructure is automatically bad?

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Re:Suburban sprawl is stifling the US economy by prostoalex on Sunday March 29, 2015 @06:27PM (#9286717)

This is the matter of personal preference, but parks, libraries, schools, playgrounds, beautification projects, public transport, water quality, the list goes on. If nothing else, property tax reduction.

> Also, why having more infrastructure is automatically bad?

Don't think it's that absolute.

Think about tax dollars collected from a given square mile vs tax dollars spent on a given square mile. Suburbs tend to decrease the former and increase the latter, high-density projects tend to move the money in the opposite direction.

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