How about we make suburbs pay for the infrastructure they use? Most suburbs have urbans level of infrastructure with a tax base that is not enough to maintain it due to the lower density, and end up being paid for by city centers. Is that also fine?

Suburbia's ability to exist is currently funded by all of us. Small cities across the US are literally just sitting in a ponzy scheme of debt. The basics:

1. When you develop new stuff like a suburban neighborhood or one of those roads that has fast food restaurants and gas stations on it that are copy pasted all over our country, you get money from various different sources.

2. Federal > State > Local all fund this based on the idea that it's an overall good thing to develop stuff. So the Local cost is a small fraction of the total.

3. Cool. It's built now and once stuff is built then that's it right? No.

4. Maintenance. This doesn't rear its head until around 10-15 years later. Federal, and maybe State, have nothing to do with this cost. The Locals are responsible. OK! Well lets take all that month the new development made us and maintain it... But wait... the taxes don't even cover the costs. That McDonalds doesn't actually generate that much for the Local gov due to the ENORMOUS amount of space it takes up with a parking lot. Those Suburbia taxes won't even replace the roads.

5. Ponzy. Welp we gotta get money from somewhere.... So we build MORE Suburbia and MORE giant parking lot fast food restaurants, take that lump sum from Federal/State funds, use part of that to maintain our existing debt, and kick the can.

This is who pays for Suburbia. The only places that generate a net positive for a Local gov are city center-ish types. You know that nice little shopping area that has lots of different food/shop options that people flock to to walk around. That's probably net positive. That downtown Main St zone of a small city that's mostly dead now? Believe it or not even THAT is probably still net positive. The ugly road littered with nothing but shit food and gas stations? Paid for by the above. The asphalt hellscape with dots of corporate feed troughs (Applebees, Longhorn, Olive Garden, etc)? Paid for by the above unless they circle a shopping mall that covers them.

*The other guy seems to have deleted his post that this was responding to