mswas, I find almost all your arguments utterly specious. I hear these handwaving arguments about the evils of the suburbs over and over again, and usually they are offered with no evidence, as though they are self-evident.
For example, you say the suburbs are less efficient. You cite increased energy costs and travel times. You say suburban dwellers impose externalities on others as a way of denigrating their choices.
I have yet to see any proof of this. I will grant you that the average suburban home uses more energy. I am not at all convinced about transportation costs. When I lived in the city, I had to travel a fair distance to accomplish just about anything. I still had my car, and used it just about as much. In the suburbs, I live within a mile of just about every kind of store and service I need. I rarely travel further than that except for traveling to work (and I used to have to drive to work when I lived in the city, too).
As for externalities, my car was broken into a half dozen times when I lived in the city. Multiple insurance claims, which everyone had to pay in the form of increased overall premiums. Since I’ve lived in the suburbs, it has never happened again. I’ve had friends who live in the city who have been robbed and had their apartments broken into and vehicles stolen.
What is the density of police officers in the city as a percentage of population, and how does that compare to the suburbs?
Why isn’t cost of living a good measure of efficiency? Cities are more expensive to live in (and would be even more expensive if the population pressure wasn’t eased by the existence of the suburbs). That means if you want to maintain the same standards of living for the population, you need to pay them more. For example, teachers in New York City earn a median salary of about $55,000 per year, as compared to about $44,000 for the national average (and I’ll bet the average is even lower if we excluded all the large cities). That means it costs more to educate children in the city, or the children get worse education because they can afford fewer teachers.
That’s inefficient. And you can’t separate economics from energy, because clean energy is simply a matter of money.
Then there are the externalities from concentrated pollution in the cities, from the added cost of disaster plans, evacuation plans, increased risk of disease and pandemic, terrorism, etc. And let’s not forget the cost of the congestion, and the fact that the mass transit you like is generally heavily subsidized.
And you keep trying to divorce ‘efficiency’ from ‘desire’. But you can’t. Other than a haunch of meat and a cave to live in, everything we have and do is pretty much optional. Life is about desires and choices. If it weren’t, I’d suggest that you get rid of all your windows. After all, they’re energy inefficient. Whatever space you live in, I’m sure you could live in one half as big. I spent two years in college living in a 350 sq foot bachelor apartment, and another year living in a 200 sq ft dorm room. Really, that’s all you need isn’t it? I hope you’re not being ‘wasteful’.
As for the isolation of the suburbs - that’s a laugh. Around here, the stores in the city core put bars over their windows when they close. Children are kept off the streets, especially in the evening. You can’t walk more than a block or two without being accosted by a panhandler or feeling uncomfortable by the gangs of menacing teens. The last time I rode the transit at night with my daughter, some teens jumped on the train, being chased by a uniformed security guard. Then they stood beside us and chatted in an never-ending stream of profanity while giving everyone around them a ‘screw you’ attitude if you dared make eye contact.
I lived in the city for several years, and never met a single one of my neighbors. I live in the suburbs now, and kids play hockey in the street, I know all my neighbors, we share tools and have barbecues together and our kids are friends. My wife and daughter just got back from a bike ride around the neighborhood - something you don’t want to do for fun in the inner city. But we’ve got lots of green space here, bike paths, a small lake with geese and ducks on it, and life is great. Isolation my ass.
If you like living in the city, more power to you. If I were 25 years old and single, I might do it again. I’m not going to criticize your choices, and I would suggest that maybe you shouldn’t criticize mine. Or if you are going to, bring a better set of arguments, because your current ones are severely lacking.