[emathias]

Originally Posted by ardecila

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First, a fine-grained neighborhood has a grid of small blocks or an otherwise tight, connective pattern of streets. A street grid has lots of total street length, most of which will be lightly-used by design. Back in the 1800s when a street was just a strip of dirt devoid of buildings, it wasn't a big deal to put in a street grid - it was a loss of developable land, but improved the value of all the subdivided parcels by ensuring access. Today, when a large parcel has new streets platted, city governments require not just a "strip of dirt devoid of buildings", but new roadbed, curbs, sidewalks, sewers, water mains, fire hydrants, street lighting, and trees. In a downtown development, add in duct banks for underground power and telecommunications. All that stuff is very expensive.
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Your comments remind me of this article about Omaha:

Omaha’s Answer to Costly Potholes? Go Back to Gravel Roads

OMAHA — After living more than 40 years along a road plagued by potholes, Jo Anne Amoura was excited to see city crews shred her block of Leavenworth Street into gravel.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great. We’re going to get a new street,’” Ms. Amoura recalled. “And then we waited and waited and waited.”

Fresh pavement never arrived. Only after the asphalt had been ripped out almost three years ago did Ms. Amoura and her neighbors learn that their street had been “reclaimed,” Omaha City Hall’s euphemism for unpaving a road.

“It’s really kind of like living in the country in the city,” said Ms. Amoura, 74. Her neighbors sometimes hauled wheelbarrows full of scattered gravel back up the hill after big rainstorms. And her house, she says, is regularly smudged with dirt blowing in from the street.
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