Amazing that with so many words, none were devoted to a major objection towards suburbs - the increased costs of servicing lower-density living is usually not bourne by its inhabitants.
I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc.
The extent of this subsidy varies greatly from place to place, but that is the primary cause of urban-suburban tension.
I'm confused... What subsidy do you speak of exactly? Please, guide me through your reasoning here. You say suburbians are demanding some sort of subsidy? Lowering your quality of life? How?
My word, really, you'll definitely have to come up with some backing behind your comments, please. Because blaming people with such direct and specific words such as "demanding/getting subsidy", and "lowering quality of life" simply by virtue of them not choosing to live the way you deem the most "efficient" is quite arrogant.
>"I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc."
Way to turn around the blame here. You've taken a purely simple, innocent action such as "choosing to live in a quiet, less-populated area, away from traffic", into some hostile, directed act. You then claim that them doing so is justification for you to actually vote against them or their way of life. I don't see you mentioning what that voting or politician will do to fix this supposed problem, but I can bet you that whatever it is, it's more hostile, directed, and purposeful than what you claim these people did to make you vote that way in the first place.
Not the original commenter but I will outline a couple of specific areas where suburbs are receiving subsidies in excess of the urban centers they surround (at least in the US). I will say up front that it is my impression that suburban living is more subsidized than the urban alternative but I am not a scholar of such things and don't have any proof.
1) It is pretty clearly documented that suburban development is much more environmentally impactful than urban infill development. If nothing else, the non captured externalities of this environmental impact acts as a subsidy to the suburbs.
2) The mortgage interest tax subsidy is non-proportionately paid to suburban home owners than to urban ones.
3) On a per rider, and a per trip basis, suburban mass transit is more subsidized than urban mass transit (you will notice that suburban transit systems always want to use "per mile" statistics.)
4) By nearly every economic statistic you can find, urban centers generate more productivity than suburban ones.
All that said, you can definitely find lots of subsidies that are disproportionately paid from suburban areas to urban ones, but even the ones that seem obvious (subsidized food, crime, education, etc) are actually trending towards suburban subsidies.
There are economies of scale involved in building infrastructure for many people. If you have a low population density in an area (like a suburb) you can't collect enough tax to pay for the infrastructure (which is more spread out, while there are fewer people to pay for it). That money has to come from somewhere. In the article it's Federal grants. Where do you think the money for those Federal grants comes from?
Suburbs are fundamentally unsustainable. There are not enough people there to pay for the infrastructure. That infrastructure is more expensive because it has to cover a larger area to serve a given number of people.
A major subsidy to the suburban lifestyle is free parking[1]. In heavily urban areas like New York, the space required for parking is priced (mostly) according to the market. In less dense cities with a higher percentage of car owners, street parking is often free when it should not be. Free parking causes three main problems:
* Tons of street space is provided by the public for parking that would otherwise be used more efficiently.
* Parking spots become scarce, causing drivers to waste a lot of time and cause extra congestion while searching for parking spots. It's nice for people who have more time than money, but taxpayers can't collect that wasted time.
* Because voters have an expectation of unlimited free parking, local government requires new construction to include parking spaces so the additional residents don't consume existing street parking. This increases the cost of construction and wastes space, and it reduces the possibilities for land use. You can't have dense communities when half the space is consumed by parking garages.
In my experience, every urban street in Australia is full of parked cars. It wasn't like this when I was growing up and we would ride up and down our cul-de-sac or kick a football, but now that same street would have 12-20 cars parked within a one block segment at any given time.
People can afford more cars and would rather make use of the public space for parking than fill their driveway or have to shuffle cars if they're parked behind one another.
I leave my second car parked out front because it's slightly more convenient than using my double driveway (crammed to get kids in the car when two cars are parked there), and because I have a pool table and table tennis table in my double garage. I am a part of the problem!
It depicts the denser, more urban, and/or more populated counties of Washington State contributing more and receiving less from the overall state pool of revenue than less populated, rural counties. (The graphic frames it as Democratic-voting versus Republican-voting but the population difference is also similar.)
Here are some examples from my own time living in an urban setting versus the suburbs:
- Road packages are always a given and almost never subject to a vote unless, as in the case of Washington State, someone bothers to get an initiative or ratification on the ballot. Urban mass transit, like buses and light rail, always come with a vote. So transit has to clear the legislature, the governor, and then the people. That presupposes that the legislature actually does anything. Roads only get stuck with the first two and "building the future" is wildly popular.
- Going back to roads for a second dip: Road funding for rural and suburban areas tends to be at the state level. A highway through Okanogan or Ferry counties is paid for by King county residents. In contrast, cities in King county tend to fund their road needs through local taxes--usually through the much-hated vehicle registration tax--and have to do so in a series of piecemeal ballot votes. So rural areas get taxed once, urban areas twice or three times depending on how many taxing jurisdictions are at play and how much roads versus transit is needed.
- Services which would be inefficient to fund through direct charges, like sewer systems or electric, get paid for at the state or county level and the urban areas pay into those pools but get little back.
In Texas, there is a saying that "build the houses and the roads [or electric lines or what have you] will follow." I have lost count of the number of times my electric bill in my former residence went up because the poles-and-wires company needed to serve more far-flung suburban sprawl.
There is a lot to be said for taxing ourselves as a society to pay for our shared good. Education, clean water, sanitary sewers, transportation; all good topics. The problem comes with, as inevitably happens, those folks in the suburban and rural areas both declaring that they "did it all by themselves" and also denying the urban areas the ability to tax ourselves to build what we now need.
Is it an intentional act by the individuals who move to the suburbs? No, but it sure feels that way when the ballots are cast.
Generally, state legislatures provide representation in proportion to districts rather than population. Urban centers often represent a large portion of a state's population but only cover a handful of districts.
... yes, this is not a direct explanation, but you can extrapolate how subsidies arise for the suburbs when calculated on a per capita rather than per district basis.
> Generally, state legislatures provide representation in proportion to districts rather than population. Urban centers often represent a large portion of a state's population but only cover a handful of districts.
This was often true -- up until the 1960s. However, under the rule laid down in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), state legislative districts were required to be apportioned so as to provide "substantially equal state legislative representation for all citizens".
I think a sweet spot are neighborhoods ~10-15 minutes from city centers. You usually get a nice mix between city benefits and suburban ones.
Once you get further than that your total transit time starts to grow compared to the average time you'll spend at your destination (i.e shopping, eating, going to a show, whatever). A good ratio for me is about .25 - i.e if I'm going to spend a total of 30 minutes in transit and I have a reason to stay ~> 2 hours then I'm likely to go.
The distance 10-15minutes equates to varies by place and I imagine the transportation options can also move the dial as well.
Whether this works or not depends a great deal on the size and geography of the city you're talking about. Where I grew up outside of Seattle, we could get from our very suburban home in Bellevue into downtown Seattle in about 20 minutes, close to your range. Where I live now in London, on the other hand, it takes 45 minutes to get into the center and I would still consider my zone very urban, with few or none of the benefits (space, isolation, safer neighborhoods, etc) that suburbia brings.
When I have children, I fully intend to move back into the suburban ring around a mid-sized city where I can regain those benefits without cutting myself off from civilization entirely.
Don't suburbs have a negative connotation outside of the states? I mean, Europe they can at least be peaceful (well, except France), but in Asia its where the poor people live who can't afford an apartment in the city.
The article and discussion make me wonder about Portland, OR where I live. The city and metro area have become more population dense over time. In fact, the population of Portland per se has doubled since the 1970's while its boundaries haven't changed a bit.
Cities in Oregon have been constrained by "urban growth boundaries" since 1973, the idea is preventing sprawl and encroachment on farm land. That guarantees population increases will require "infill" and that's exactly what's happening.
This is a polar contrast to Phoenix, AZ, which happens to be the place I grew up in. Even as a kid it was easy to observe the immense sprawl associated with the region's inbred suburban culture.
The article's commentary about the sharp edges of development in the Phoenix area points ironically to a similar-appearing phenomenon in the Portland area. There are a number of roads a few miles from the center of the city where one side is jam-packed with dense residential construction, and the other traditional farm land stretching to the horizon.
It gives another meaning to the phrase, "keeping Portland weird".
I wonder if the suburbs will see a resurgence when it becomes a haven for those who need a bit more area for agriculture, or more solar to sell or work in micro-manufacturing. Also self-driving cars for travel and package delivery could find a healthy niche.
The article reports, "Mr Angel also finds that almost every city is becoming less dense. In 1920 Chicago squeezed 59 people into each hectare of land; now, by his reckoning, it manages just 16. The urbanised area of Mexico City is about half as densely populated as it was in 1940. Beijing’s population density has collapsed from 425 people per hectare in 1970 to just 65 people per hectare, or about the same as Chicago at its most crowded." That's certainly true where I live. The city that defines my metropolitan area had its peak population during my lifetime the year I was born, and has been losing population each year since until quite recently. Now the city is regaining a bit of population, and some of the inner-ring suburbs where I grew up (but not all of them) have embraced "new urbanism" and are as densely populated as they have ever been, but even many of the inner-ring suburbs are losing population, while the metropolitan area continues to grow as the children who grew up in the inner ring now bring up their children in bigger houses on bigger lots even farther away from the city. This is generally happening everywhere as countries reach a certain level of economic development. The story of Taiwan, the other country where I have lived long-term, was leaving the countryside for cities during my childhood, but there too (in a national context of birthrates below replacement, and thus an eventually declining population) the core cities are beginning to empty out as the surrounding suburban cities grow, and housing development is spreading up hillsides and into other areas where there is more space for yards and larger houses for ever-smaller households.
Beijing has a density of 150 people/hectare in built up areas, which is less than Tianjin, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, but still pretty respectable by American standards.
Beijing municipality includes a lots of rural land (and suburbs) which brings the density down a lot, but I would hardly call those urban areas.
Suburbs also have specific connotations when it comes to race and class divides. Accurate or not, they are seen as promoting monoculture, relative to cities. I think a lot of discussion of suburbs vs cities, is influenced by these connotations.
the presentation or site engineering that went into the story is really great! it's wonderful to see data design used to enhance rather than distract from the story.
as far as intimation/subtext that suburbs are ultimately good, i disagree BUT i'm really appreciative of how the article is laid out in terms of substantive content.
Hating "suburbia" is actually a deeply suburban stance. The upper-middle-class, isolationist people who are now crowding into Williamsburg are the same sorts of provincial people that their forebears (the artists who can no longer afford to live there) fled suburbia to escape. That suburbia's biggest haters are (in origin and mindset) quite suburban is actually ironic rather than just sarcastic.
All this said, it's somewhat subjective what is a "suburb" versus what is a legitimate (and possibly charming) small town. And while Los Angeles is a large city, it's sprawling and ugly and has no moral high ground over some town adjacent to Philadelphia or Boston that happens to be "suburban" because it has a different city-name on its postal address.
All of this said, car culture is objectively bad. Suburbia was supposed to make it possible for middle-class people to save instead of throwing their disposable income away for the benefit of urban landlords, but over time the car (through escalating costs and the catastrophic time loss of traffic) became the new landlord. The clearing and leveling of forests to build tasteless, cookie-cutter houses is also objectively bad. The environment doesn't have a vote, but it should, because I'd rather have a healthy environment than 4600 SF of unneeded housing space for everyone. Suburbia gets such a bad rap in the U.S. because it's done wrong, both in terms of aesthetics and in terms of ecological footprint.
I agree broadly, but I feel obliged to stand up and defend Los Angeles here (needless to say, I am biased; I used to live there but do not currently).
If you have lived in a big city but have not lived in Los Angeles, it is not reasonable to use your experience to model Los Angeles. It is much more like a loose federation of nearby townships than it is a city like New York City. This is as much a cause is it is an effect of car culture and freeways; the two feed each other and cannot be meaningfully separated into cause and effect as far as I am concerned.
There are parts of "LA Metro" that I find charming, and parts that I find terrible. But there is nothing that I would call representative of the whole. Downtown vs Santa Monica vs Redondo vs San Fernando vs Eagle Rock vs Alhambra etc. Treating LA as a monolith is not a useful approximation. (to be clear, I spent a substantial amount of time living in major cities across Europe and the US, including London and San Francisco, so I'm speaking with a moderate amount of diverse experience).
> It is much more like a loose federation of nearby townships than it is a city
I'm finding this same pattern in the Bay Area too (moved to Mountain View last spring). Does this match your experience? I've never explored LA.
In any case, the many-small-town structure is kind of disorienting coming from a another city with a central, lively downtown, but I can also sort of see an appeal that the locality has. People who live in e.g. Mountain View or Palo Alto or Redwood City feel like they have a nice, small-town "main street" nearby in a way that most suburbs don't. Done right, small federated towns are not necessarily a bad way to scale. (Putting housing-density issues aside, of course; Mountain View in particular has a really nasty supply-constraint problem now that more and denser apartment buildings would go a long way toward solving.)
That said, there are things that you can't find in your own town, so you rely on the regional federated structure for those things, and then you have transportation issues because (i) it's less efficient to cover the decentralized area with mass transit than to build a spoke-and-hub system around a real downtown, and (ii) regional political coordination to build/improve systems like Caltrain/BART is much harder when you have a distributed governance structure. (Does LA have similar problems with coordinating city governments?)
So I think I prefer the 'single big central lively downtown' model better but both models are interesting, IMHO.
You touch on many things I have thought about for years :)
I think the Mountain View / Palo Alto / Sunnyvale area mirrors the San Gabriel valley structure pretty closely (with Palo Alto ~= Pasadena, Menlo Park+Atherton ~= San Marino, Sunnyvale+Mountain View ~= Glendale+Burbank). So in that sense they are similar in one particular region.
On the other hand, LA downtown is surrounded by confederate townships. San Francisco is in some sense a city on a hill. Similarly, there is nothing like the Venice / Santa Monica / Malibu cluster providing "coastal" political influence to the city. There is no way that, e.g., Pacifica or Half Moon Bay would ever be able to be first class citizens in local politics the way that Venice/Santa Monica/Malibu are in LA politics.
Continuing the contrast, the LA area doesn't really have anything like the East Bay.
I could go on and on, but I will leave it at that for now. I do think that anyone who thinks they have an opinion on LA, but hasn't lived there, should take a moment and think that maybe it really is different from their expectations or previous experience of large cities.
Edit: one could, I suppose, say that Long Beach is, in some sense, analogous to the East Bay. They are parallel in an economic and social class sense, but I still think the East Bay is much more of a cultural component of SFBA than Long Beach is of LA Metro.
I have lived in West LA for a couple of years, but spent most of my time in Australian 'cities' like Canberra and Darwin, but am also familiar with Sydney and Melbourne.
Large suburban cities without freeways suck (poor/incomplete public transport is assumed). Look at a map of Sydney or Melbourne and LA at the same scale. Compare the density of freeways. I really value the convenience that LA's grid of freeways provide. To have a car based suburban city without freeways seems the worst of all choices.
> Hating "suburbia" is actually a deeply suburban stance. The upper-middle-class, isolationist people who are now crowding into Williamsburg are the same sorts of provincial people that their forebears (the artists who can no longer afford to live there) fled suburbia to escape. That suburbia's biggest haters are (in origin and mindset) quite suburban is actually ironic rather than just sarcastic.
It's a false dichotomy. Manhattan is not the only way to build a dense city. It's not the most pleasant way to do so, either, but neither is it even the most unpleasant.
There are ways to build dense cities that people can afford to live in and actually enjoy living in. What there's not a lot of is political will to implement these ways of doing things, because location is assumed to be a zero-sum privilege people should pay for instead of a public good people should share.
> Manhattan is not the only way ... neither is it even the most unpleasant.
> There are ways to build dense cities that people can afford to live in and actually enjoy living in.
This is a subject that deeply interests me. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on what you consider viable alternative models; personally, Manhattan and its satellites seem the closest to a realistic (if obviously flawed) design strategy for achieving livable density.
The article talked a lot about the leftist/statist hatred of suburbs, but never gave the real reason why. Suburbs aren't dense enough and humans are the scourge of the planet.
It's overall a greater tax on society resources to maintain suburbs than dense urban housing. Just the total mileage of roads, waterways, gas pipes that need to be built out and maintained pretty much forever.
That's just the tax money. From the personal perspective a mandate of car ownership (and until recently oil purchases) is ridding consumer of disposable income that could be spent somewhere else.
But it is their willing choice to live that way. And they pay taxes, just like the rest of society. Remember, we're all equal under the law, so they say.
Next thing you'll be telling people "No, you can't have only one person per apartment/room, you have to share with at least 3 people in bunkbeds. One person per home/room is 'too great a tax on society's resourced to maintain'.".
Yes, that's a slippery slope. But one that points out the futility of arguments such as yours. Namely, that you've drawn an arbitrary line where you find convenient. And along with it, you've conveniently neglected to acknowledge that other people would have drawn that line further, or closer.
> Yes, that's a slippery slope. But one that points out the futility of arguments such as yours. Namely, that you've drawn an arbitrary line where you find convenient. And along with it, you've conveniently neglected to acknowledge that other people would have drawn that line further, or closer.
There'a quite a bit of distance between "you're drawing arbitrary lines" and "you have been free-riding due to use not properly including previously externalized costs, which will now be properly accounted for".
The suburbs are predicated on cheap land and petroleum. If you're able to continue the suburbs model while the price of both increase, more power to you. I'd rather have my tax dollars finance public transit vs limited use suburban roads though, thanks.
I'm not sure... Probably not directly (if you could even quantify it). However, lemme ask you this: Do sick people pay more taxes because they use more healthcare? I hope not.
But, now that I think about it. I think they do, especially if it's represented by a usage tax. Say fuel levies, or property taxes.
> I'm not sure... Probably not directly (if you could even quantify it). However, lemme ask you this: Do sick people pay more taxes because they use more healthcare? I hope not.
A) Sick people are not making a deliberate lifestyle choice.
B) Public healthcare is something provided by public decision-making and majority vote.
Therefore, frankly, if the public decides it yields greater public benefit to pour taxes taken from urban areas into improving urban areas rather than into subsidizing the suburban minority of the population, that is our democratic right.
It's also important to note the actual population shift taking place: it used to be in the USA that most people lived in either rural areas, outer suburbs, or inner suburbs, with the center cities containing only a minority of the population and lacking a plurality of economic productivity. Everything was genuinely more spread out.
Nowadays, things have developed away from the post-WW2 pattern and back towards the pattern of the Industrial Revolution: heavy urbanization of the population and the economy. Most people now live in either the core cities or the inner suburbs, and so does most of the economic value-creation.
Which means that there's an entirely legitimate reason why urban issues are back on the agenda!
Now, the stick up our asses we city-dwelling types have got, is that thanks to various aspects of the districting systems, our vote counts for less than that of a rural-dweller in deciding what to do with our own damn tax money.
>"A) Sick people are not making a deliberate lifestyle choice."
Most likely that is the case, yes. But you can't know for sure, as there are many actual life-style choices out there that negatively or positively impact health, and as a consequence, individuals' level of healthcare need.
>"B) Public healthcare is something provided by public decision-making and majority vote."
And we've also, by majority vote, decided that people should live where they please. And by majority vote, we've elected and chosen representatives that represent that. Let's not argue democracy here by claiming that healthcare is somehow more "democratic" or more "democratically chosen" than housing and urban-planning.
>"Therefore, frankly, if the public decides it yields greater public benefit to pour taxes taken from urban areas into improving urban areas rather than into subsidizing the suburban minority of the population, that is our democratic right."
Isn't that why we're discussing this? The public already chose and/or allowed people to live freely and in areas they choose. Not only that, but they've given tacit permission (by virtue of democratic vote) to representatives and government officials to plan the way they have, and that includes suburbia.
>"Nowadays, things have developed away from the post-WW2 pattern and back towards the pattern of the Industrial Revolution: heavy urbanization of the population and the economy. Most people now live in either the core cities or the inner suburbs, and so does most of the economic value-creation."
I don't see how this has any relevance or bearing on where people are allowed to live. Just because you deem it most efficient to optimize "economic value-creation" by packing people into as small a space as possible (seemingly against their will as they're picking suburban living now), doesn't make it the right way, or the moral way.
>"Now, the stick up our asses we city-dwelling types have got, is that thanks to various aspects of the districting systems, our vote counts for less than that of a rural-dweller in deciding what to do with our own damn tax money."
That's unfortunate. You should really get that fixed up. But let me get something a little clear, as I'm not 100% aware of the voting issues in America. Are you saying that individuals that live in suburban areas are part of a separate district? And their vote counts more than yours? That honestly doesn't sound very "democratic" to me.
I don't see how this has any relevance or bearing on where people are allowed to live.
No one's said "allowed to live", but where they've chosen to live. People choose to live in the suburbs for private garaging, private gardens, larger spaces, distance to neighbours, etc. No one's saying they're not nice things - I have them where I live - just that they cost more in terms of utilities/etc.
And we've also, by majority vote, decided that people should live where they please. And by majority vote, we've elected and chosen representatives that represent that.
The original point (that you were arguing poorly against) was that those living in denser areas could press their elected officials for adjusted distribution of taxes based on these sorts of costs.
I pay a water bill at my home (suburbs) and at my office (dense CBD). Even though my home uses a great deal more water (showers/baths, washing dishes and clothes, irrigation), my water bill at home is cheaper. A significant portion of water bills where I live are based on property value, and a smaller component on actual water use. So even though providing water to CBD offices and residences is probably much cheaper, that is not reflected in the pricing.
If humans are the scourge of the planet then it's difficult to see why population density is of value. There must be something else at play. Density simply improves the availability of goods and services. Some of the more snide ( myself included ) might accuse those "liberals" of simply preferring a wider variety of restaurants - sort of the Anthony Bourdain school of liberalism :)
Suburbs are a compromise with positional land rents ala Ricardo/Henry George. People who want to make more humans will probably always head there.
While I can more or less understand the distaste for automobiles, I doubt they're going anywhere. And it might even be possible to have suburbs as an artifact of public transport - Bourdain did a show on The Bronx, which according to his show ends at a relatively rural setting.
I get more than enough "culture" through my cable wire in the form of cable TV and Internet. That includes Anthony
Bourdain :) As a practitioner of live music since Carter was president, pardon my cynicism w.r.t. "culture".
"If humans are the scourge of the planet then it's difficult to see why population density is of value. . . . Density simply improves the availability of goods and services."
I don't follow. Density does not merely improve _availability_ of goods and services. It improves the efficiency of providing those goods and services (besides other efficiencies). So to me it seems that density is of value, and that applies whether or not humans are the scourge of the planet. Using resources efficiently = Good. Wasting resources = Bad.
On another note, I would add that getting all your culture from the internet and tv is probably not the best thing. The cocoon of your car separates you from having to experience street/neighborhood culture firsthand. Not a good thing in my book. Far easier to detach yourself from people you see on tv than people you walk by on the street.
Density does not necessarily improve efficiency. It makes for a wider variety of ...restaurants. I might have agreed with "efficiency" before the logistics revolution of the last thirty years. If there had been actual efficiency then there would never have been suburbs in the first place. Suburbs were a (perhaps cheap) trick of finance, but ... there they are. Suburbs are a triumph of land rents avoidance.
I have plenty of exposure to "street" culture. It's hugely overrated. The term "tinpot" comes to mind - remember "Billie Joe Must Die"? That's an extreme case, but... You used to be able to go into the Five Spot and hear Ornette Coleman, or catch Buddy Emmons jamming at one of the downtown Nashville bars.
Not so much any more.
Converting that to mass market is the real test. I did a hugely unscientific and completely informal test when I was living in a downtown space - "Why do you like it here?" When we culled the things they said they liked ( museums, theater, live music ) but didn't actually do, it came down to ... bars. Or restaurants, once you don't want to be seen as a reprobate any more.
(Cable) TV is a much better resource than it's given credit for ( BookTv is great ) - but you have to be picky. The internet? Mixed at best. Books are the best, but they don't make 'em like they used to.
as a libertarian, I hate suburbs because the only reason they exist is massive subsidies. If suburbanites had to pay for the highways leading to their suburbs, nobody but the richest could afford them, instead I have to pay because you want a yard.
Not to get into a political thread, but last time I looked highways are actually one of the most difficult to attribute to subsidies (ie usage taxes pay for most/all/more than the usage of the highways so it is hard to say one way or another where subsidies go).
usage taxes (gas tax and what have you) emphatically do not even begin to cover the cost of maintenance alone, let alone the land cost, the initial construction cost (billions), etc.
I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc.
The extent of this subsidy varies greatly from place to place, but that is the primary cause of urban-suburban tension.