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One problem with suburbs is that they don't generate that much economic/tax revenue to support their infrastructure compared to the denser mixed use land in the city proper. Let alone the business districts.
At my hometown - during communist times there were quite a lot bedroom communities and when I moved they were deserts economic wise. Right now some of them are quite vibrant -due to somewhat Laissez-faire situation after the fall, a lot of land left by the planners, and because a lot of shady interests built there business districts, bars, restaurants and all other kinds of business. But they were quite dense to begin with - one of the biggest had 300000 people living in 10 square kilometers in Large Panel System buildings. If they were single housing units - there wouldn't have been enough land for anything.
So you need proper planning for everything - to have spare land for any kind of use. The problem is that people really like their single houses and are quite reluctant to change it. And unfortunately YIMBY-sm just doesn't have answer to that.
Is that a problem? I was happy the small town we moved to only provides basic services, police, fire (volunteer), school and plowing in the winter. We've few business and fewer restaruants. Most everyone has a well and septic.
My presumption is that TPTB would find something silly to spend money on given a chance.
That there's a baseline of self reliance is not a 'problem'.
Depends on what infrastructure people want. If everyone has septic tank, you don't need central sewage. If people want central water treatment, but don't want to (or can't) pay the taxes for it, then you have problems. There certainly are examples of sprawling suburbs (or cities with lots of suburban area) that either go into bankruptcy or depend on state/federal bailouts, or where the low-density areas of a city are effectively subsidized by the higher-density ones.
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I think that the issue is that people don't want a small town life in suburbs, they want big city life but with low density. Not that it is not achievable - London was doing quite ok with the row and semi detached houses build around the communities it had devoured, but those houses are tiny and quite densely packed with very small plot of land as the backyard.
That may be true for some. It's not been my experience. I'm happy to have small town life in the exburbs. Big city life is why we moved away from the big city.
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It's the central thesis of the "Strong Towns" blog, and it's become gospel by repetition. A look at just about any municipal budget will show you it isn't so.
The Strong Towns champions are all 3x - 5x the size of my small town.
Maybe it doesn't scale.
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