The Infrastructure Canard
1st December 2009
One of the principal arguments used against suburbanization is that its infrastructure is too expensive to provide. As a result, planners around the high income world have sought to draw boundaries around growing urban areas, claiming that this approach is less costly and that it allows current infrastructure to be more efficiently used.
Like so many of the arguments (a more appropriate term would be “excuse”) used to frustrate the clear preferences about where people want to live and work, the infrastructure canard holds little water upon examination.
People talk about ‘sprawl’ as if it were a bad thing. I hear ‘sprawl’ and think ‘comfort’. I guess that’s what they really object to.