Fun fact: Inner-city areas are subsidising suburbs – to the tune of hundreds of millions every year. A great video lays out this big fact that’s hidden in plain sight.

---

Ahhh, the wide open spaces of the suburbs… Where the roads are generous, it’s easy to find a carpark, and you can have your very own lawn and back garden.

Suburban areas aren’t just lower intensity in terms of homes and land-uses per hectare, they’re also lower revenue for their city. But they still need all the pipes, power, roads, footpaths, culverts, streetlamps, retaining walls and so on – all paid for by the city (i.e., the public – that’s all of us).

All the same costs, for many fewer people living, working, doing stuff per hectare.

Suburbs are being propped up by the densely-populated, multi-use areas in the same city jurisdiction. It seems obvious when you think about it, but we generally don’t.

And when we do think about the cost of infrastructure, we’re usually thinking about short-term immediate costs, like “no we can’t put meaningful numbers of homes on this amazingly central land because the current pipes can’t cope with peak hour sewage”. Growing outwards with less density – into greenfield – looks cheaper because it is initially more straightforward: only grass and birds are disrupted when building its infrastructure, rather than busy city streets.

But medium- and long-term, the costs of lower-density suburbs will make you gasp.

And it has really important implications for how we grow: some kinds of growth are affordable, medium- and long-term, and some kinds aren’t.

Check out the maths in this superb short video – and spot the NZ city!

What do you think this means – and should mean – for the ways we live, and how we pay for it all?

---

Image: Aotea, new suburb in Porirua (Talk Wellington)

Tags: Development, infrastructure, infrastructure funding, intensification, rates