Omaha suburbs complaining about potholes, city converts them to dirt roads. No money to fix roads.

[Clouseau2]

11. Suburbs are expensive to maintain

I googled a bit and couldn't find the article, but I remember reading somewhere an article where the author had analyzed the cost of maintaining the roads in suburbs (more expensive than in urban areas due to lower population density) and determined that taxes were far too low to cover the costs.

His conclusion was that what's happening (I don't remember the logic he used to come to this) is tax money from newly built areas is being used to maintain existing roads. This will eventually collapse on itself and depends on ever more roads being built to keep everything from falling apart because people do not want to pay the taxes to maintain expensive suburb roads.