Suburbanization?

Question

Is suburbanization considered an urban problem? If it is how so?

Answer 1

Because of urban planning and the concept of city limits, the answer is yes.

The people who live in the suburbs of a city might not actually live within its official city limits, so they're not paying taxes to that city.  Yet they're likely travelling into the downtown core to work and using the services provided by the city.  They're basically getting something for nothing.

A fantastic example would be the construction of Nationals Park in Washington DC.  While the baseball team represents the city of Washington, a fairly substantial portion of the team's fans live in nearby places like Arlington, Alexandria and Bethesda.  The public funding for the new stadium however, only came from Washington DC - meaning that the poorer urban neighbourhoods were paying for the suburbanites to enjoy baseball games.