Those costs aren't really all that high, and are easily outweighed by the dramatically lower costs in the suburbs. Everything is cheaper there, land, buildings, repairs, goods and services.
Cities might look good in this narrow measure, but costs are higher and wages are higher, which means cities consume far more goods.
Suburbs also tend to produce more thing in real (i.e. not monetary) terms. They have far more manufacturing, more farms, more backyard experimenters who go on to invent things.
You can't learn, on your own, to be a mechanic in a city, in a suburb you can simply get an old car and mess with it. Same with tons of other fields, in a suburb you can just try it out, in a city you don't have room for that.
Without suburbs cities would fall apart - but the cities don't really realize that. Cities have higher income so they suck in everything suburbs produce, but cities don't really produce anything of their own, it's all internal services.
> Those costs aren't really all that high, and are easily outweighed by the dramatically lower costs in the suburbs. Everything is cheaper there, land, buildings, repairs, goods and services.
He's talking about infrastructure cost (how much it costs your municipality to provide the services that you use, like the roads) while you are talking about cost of life (how much it costs you to pay for other things that you need, like food or getting your car serviced).
On the infrastructure front, suburbia simply cannot compete with cities. Infrastructure cost is bound to be more efficient where people live in more densely populated areas. The length of pipes that a municipality needs to lay down in order to serve a single family home in the suburbs is the same as a whole 6-story building in the city (the diameters of the pipes might differ). On a per-capita basis, there's no contest.
A particular factor in the funding of suburban streets is that the initial paving is often subsidized by the federal government. Once the streets start crumbling down after ~20 years of usage, then the real cost hits. Here's an explanation by Not Just Bikes:
I think you might be using a very narrow definition of "city". There are tons of small cities around the country where you can choose between a downtown apartment, a townhome in a development, separate small house on a half lot in a canopied neighborhood, or a big house with a half acre of land, all within easy biking distance of the city center. And even those 1000 sq ft houses on half lots can and do hold the old car that you want to be able to wrench on.
Cities might look good in this narrow measure, but costs are higher and wages are higher, which means cities consume far more goods.
Suburbs also tend to produce more thing in real (i.e. not monetary) terms. They have far more manufacturing, more farms, more backyard experimenters who go on to invent things.
You can't learn, on your own, to be a mechanic in a city, in a suburb you can simply get an old car and mess with it. Same with tons of other fields, in a suburb you can just try it out, in a city you don't have room for that.
Without suburbs cities would fall apart - but the cities don't really realize that. Cities have higher income so they suck in everything suburbs produce, but cities don't really produce anything of their own, it's all internal services.