The big metros are more efficient (dollar-wise) and have a lower environmental impact than small towns. Small towns, in the US, are already subsidized by big towns, at least economically.
Depends for who. When a studio apartment in a big metro costs as much as a house in a small town, you need to shell out much more for a comparable level of comfort.
I know a couple who paid literally half per unit area just because they chose live a few kilometres from the city, not in it. They both work partially remotely, so ultimately the savings will be greater than the cost of transport, especially now that interest rates have gone up so much in this region of the world.
And that doesn't account for GP's immigrant case at all.
You've also called out Watertown, Arlington, etc as modern American suburbs before but their density ranks well above major cities. But that's because they're not modern American suburbs. They're classical Streetcar Suburbs that predate the car and that's a very different thing.
However, if you continue to object to calling them suburbs of Boston, then look at Carlisle, Dover, Lexington, Lincoln, Sherborn, Sudbury, Wellesley, Weston, Winchester, and on and on. None of those Boston suburbs are even hurting for money, let alone "insolvent".
Can you expand on that (or link to more) ?
A cursory glance shows that the densest urban centers have the lowest carbon footprint. The suburbs are much higher, with affluent suburbs often being more than twice as high. Only some very rural areas approach levels as low as the cities.
As always through history, politicians and bankers plunder the country with taxes and interest. This wealth is then distributed by them, from the big cities, but that doesn't mean that the wealth originated there.
In the past you could certainly say that urban areas give back just as much or even more, when factories where concentrated in cities. Today the factories are not only in the cities.
The country side can be self sufficient, the city can never be. Thousands of trucks deliver excess goods from the country side to the city every day. Saying that it is the city that supports the country side is fancy accounting.
Where on earth did you get this impression? I have lived in both small rural towns and large cities, and this is hogwash.
Concentration will always happen, and it will always happen to the benefit of rural areas, who will pay a premium in order to access the goods and services that are most efficiently produced in urban areas, in the same way that the high-density areas will pay a premium for the agricultural outputs of the rural areas.
Therefore, as far as this goes:
> The small town can exist without the big city, the reversal is not true.
This is only true for values of "exist" where small towns are reduced to primitive subsistence farming. If you live in a rural area in the US and enjoy modern comforts like an iPhone, you have the cities of Shenzhen, Los Angeles, and whatever your regional rail hub is to thank for getting it into your hands.
Agreed! Both cities and rural areas benefit from each other, but I'm not confused as to what structure is dependent on the other. Cities don't produce their basic necessities and cannot exist without the rural areas. My response was to the poster claiming that rural areas are dependent on cities, when it is clearly not so.
> Farming villages are not all producing their own fertilizer from scratch, nor are they all manufacturing combine harvesters from locally-sourced iron
This iron and fertilizer is certainly not coming from the cities, but I know each region will have their niche. That's why I separated agriculture and raw materials production in the post.
> And agricultural areas are dependent on transport hubs
These hubs can and do exist without the cities. More and more of these are constructed outside of the cities because they are an inconvenience to the city populace. I think we will see the world moving even more in that direction. Especially modern delivery shopping has completely revolutionized how goods are acquired in rural areas. People who had to go to town to get things they needed now order online and wait for the truck to come around. If they order fertilizer or a combine harvester, those goods have probably not been in any city on their way from producer to customer.
> Likewise, facilities for essential high-skill services (e.g. advanced medical care) cannot sustainably be housed in every hamlet in the world.
Yes, I know of whole cities that are centered around hospitals and health care. It's one of those high skilled services that just have to be very centralized to be effective.
> This is only true for values of "exist" where small towns are reduced to primitive subsistence farming.
Who said the small town has to be cut off from the world?