the suburbs aren't just there for [that specific suburban kind of] racism reasons, "developments" are the modern frontier town, "cheap" land made into planned towns, damn the wildlife and terraform everywhere into Cleveland, Ohio. it's still a colonization and extraction project[, same as the last 400 years]
my city recently put up a 45 minute presentation about how they need to find the capacity for a 40% population increase by 2051, thanks to an edict from the provincial government.
they had a handy set of scenarios showing how much land we'd need to steal from our neighbouring townships to reach that goal, with different ratios of greenfield development and in-town intensification.
there wasn't a single case where we could get away with leaving the borders as-is and still have room for the extra schools and places of employment. meanwhile, doug ford is screaming about the scourge of fourplexes! the sprawl must continue