>>1967520>>1967518>>1967529Roads are built to capacity of commuters and to withstand heavy freight, both of which are paid for in large part by the taxpayer, not their consumer.
A good chunk of money that pays for roads people drive on came from your income tax, not the tax at the gas station. So even when you're not driving much, you're paying for others who drive more (suburbanites).
Most of the cost of transport of goods is also borne by the taxpayer, it's not on the price tag. This makes it cheaper to shuffle around goods over a wide area, making the transport of goods (to suburbs) essentially subsidized.
Electricity, water and sewage is more expensive to build and maintain in suburban and exurban areas, while mostly not being reflected by the taxation on suburban residents.
Then you got zoning, parking minimums, mallification of downtowns and downtowns pretty much developing to be explicitly hostile to it's own residents, etc.
So, why would you live downtown in a shoebox made expensive trough artificial scarcity and pay tax that mostly benefits suburbanites who, most likely, want your local community turned into a parking lot? Shit, I wouldnt.
