r/MURICA • u/HoneydewNo9941 • 13d ago

Suburbs

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I can never get over how American suburbs look like. Every time I walk through one I wonder why they cant be accomplished more around the world. The yards, the safe feeling, and the homes. (I think Chile tried to replicate a bit) I just think it’s one of the beauties America has.

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u/lampstax 13d ago

Isn't that why it is the 'American dream' ? To have the financial stability to be able to afford these 'impractical luxuries' ?

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u/SkippyPurple 13d ago

When I say insanely impractical, I mean ecologically unsustainable. Single family households shouldn’t use the amount of power they do, but we don’t care and design them anyways.

You can have whatever opinion on that you want, but that’s just the fact of the matter.

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u/Genghoul100 13d ago

And yet it has been sustainable for the last 150 years.

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u/Any-Seaworthiness186 12d ago

They’re actually not sustainable. American cities are funding the suburbs through tax revenue from denser neighborhoods.

A mixed city is sustainable. Suburbs in itself are not.

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u/Genghoul100 12d ago

And yet they have been sustainable since the 1880s. Suburban homes are more valuable than inner city homes, and thus pay more in taxes. You are welcome to live like a sardine, but others do not.

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u/Any-Seaworthiness186 12d ago

Suburbs haven’t been built at a large scale until after WW2. Cities before that had more mixed zoning.

Suburban homes generate significantly less tax revenue than terraced housing or even denser suburbs with smaller lawns. They generate more taxes per house, but not per sqft since there’s less utilized footage. One home with a big lawn is going to generate less revenue than two homes with smaller lawns, and especially much less than terraced housing and apartments. They also require higher infrastructure maintenance costs, spreading out infrastructure over larger areas.

Nobody is saying single family homes are inherently bad. People are just pleading for more diversity because that’s more economically sustainable and has various other benefits such as walkability or the freedom of choice.