You mean the same exact problems urban areas have? Read about San Francisco’s sewer issues, state of roads, and how 1 mile of tunnel costs over 1 billion dollars. Read about NYC’s water issues and how one tunnel supplying water to the city is in disrepair.
Infrastructure needs maintenance everywhere. The problem with suburbs is that the maintenance is more expensive per capita. They work great while they get subsidies as used to be policy. Then it becomes more expensive.
Whether the local government is acually fixing stuff is somewhat different issue. This one is about it being overall more expensive when they finally have no choice but to fix it.
> The problem with suburbs is that the maintenance is more expensive per capita
This is the kind of thing people parrot because it sounds nice. But unfortunatly, this isn't actually true. Suburban maintenance is usually cheaper per capita than urban ones, in the real world.
Cities tend to need higher-quality infrastructure, which drives up costs. (Cities bury power lines in conduit underground which is expensive, suburbs string them from sticks in the air, which is cheap. Cities bury storm water drainage which is expensive, in suburbs a ditch in your yard is all the stormwater infrastructure needed which costs almost nothing, etc). So even though suburbs have less people-per-foot, the infrastructure costs are drastically cheaper despite the per-foot distances being higher.
The electric company can string up a neighborhood of 50 single-family homes (trunk and individual line replacement) without much fuss or trouble, just two guys and a truck. But the logistics to run a brand new power line for a brand-new apartment building with 50 units in it in Midtown Manhattan is way more complicated, time and labour intensive. (They might have to close down a sidewalk or entire street, they have to dig up chunks of the road, check for a dozen other things buried underground, the buildings are so close together they need to know the foundational stability of every other thing nearby, etc)
My assertion is that some progressives just want people to live in cities even if those people are willing and able to bear the supposed additional costs of living in suburbs. They see any extra consumption by another as an attack against the environment or as inequity.
Much of the additional costs are actually borne locally: water, sewage, roads, garbage. With increased installation of solar panels, even electricity is increasingly borne locally.
Also, given the inefficiency of large bureaucracies and the costs of scale in the US, it is somewhat unclear to me if urban areas are really lower cost per capital compared to suburban areas. Look at the Central tunnel project in SF.
I have seen people arguing to change zoning so that walkable city kind of building is legal. Because in many places, zoning excludes mix of houses and businesses. You have to have houses only place and then businesses place. That is pretty much opposite of what you claim. Maybe in some later step they someone would try to make suburbs illegal, but right not, the issue is "make walkable pleasant city legal".
Second, your claims about price are purely theoretical. As of now, suburbs require more money and dont have all that many solar panels.
I never claimed that suburbs were cheaper. Look at the comment by another party above. It conflicts with what you just said about suburbs being more expensive per capita. It would be better to have better data on this. Links please.
I just claimed that perhaps people should be free to do as they wish as far as living in suburbs vs cities.
You then claim that many places do not allow mixed use. I assume that this is part of your freedom argument. Guess what. Many of the smaller towns in the Bay Area have already changed zoning to allow this. My city did this.
The real conflict, at least in the Bay Area, is between the part of tech trying to limit salary cost by limiting housing prices and the part of tech (and non tech) who have already bought and want their housing prices to rise. It is mostly a zero sum game.
It isn't about equity and environment. If it were, then the part of tech trying to limit salary cost would actually lower their consumption and would actually contribute towards those less fortunate.
In reality, a very small percentage actually cared about the less fortunate. You should see how often volunteering was cancelled due to lack of participation. Happened multiple times in multiple large companies.
Also, very few people in tech even think about limiting their consumption. How big are the houses of the C levels? How many people bought Teslas, new houses, etc upon IPO?
Both sides are mostly act out of their self interest. Inequity, environment, character of neighborhood, quality of life, etc are mostly false warriors in this battle.
Housing owners want ever increasing housing value and all the associated amenities: quality of life, cultural events, fine foods, trips, etc...
Tech owners want to basically drive housing to as low as possible. Think Singapore or Japan.
Well, COVID-19 resolved this conflict of tech vs tech. Welcome to remote work which means that companies can hire anywhere.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sea-Cliff-Mansion-Tumble...
https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/new-central-subway-direc...
That Central subway is probably going to be roughly 10 years late.
I read the roads are better now after 650M dollars.