The cost of supplying a household with water, and roads varies by a factor of five depending on where the household is.
The variable is , and the relationship is close to arithmetic rather than a matter of opinion.
A pipe laid down a street serves every house on that street, and the cost per house falls as the houses get closer together.
Low- development is therefore by dense development wherever charges are averaged across a .
That subsidy is rarely visible, because nobody ever sees a bill that varies by street.
Municipalities that have calculated it find the transfer substantial and politically impossible to mention.
The pattern extends to services that are not physical networks at all.
, postal delivery and ambulance response all cost more per household at low .
None of this establishes that is desirable, and the argument is often made as though it did.
Households choose low for reasons that are real: space, quiet and a garden.
The question is not whether those preferences are but who pays for satisfying them.
A charge that reflected the true cost of servicing a plot would not low- living.
It would price it, which is a different and much weaker intervention.
Cities that have introduced such charges report a modest shift in development patterns and a large shift in the public argument.
Once the number is on a bill, the discussion stops being about .
Opponents of frequently argue on grounds of character and are answered on grounds of housing supply.
Neither side addresses the other, and the exchange has been running unchanged for forty years.
The infrastructure figure is the one piece of the argument on which both sides could in principle be shown to be wrong.