It bodes poorly for the environment if people are increasingly moving from denser cities to sprawling suburbs. This is in many ways a self-inflicted problem of high-cost cities, but it should be a national priority to reverse this trend.
It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably cheaper. It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case. Car centric suburbs aren't just terrible for the environment, terrible for safety and terrible for transportation; they're…
Building a high-rise condominium downtown will always be more costly and expensive than a plot of single-family homes in the 'burbs. Car travel is only getting cheaper in the suburbs with solar and EVs, while subways and trolleys are getting more and more expensive to build in big cities.