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Some planners and economists consider the street hierarchy to be financially wasteful, since it requires more miles of street to be laid than a [[grid plan]] to serve a much smaller population.
While housing unit density and, consequently, population density affects the per capita cost of infrastructure, it is not inextricably linked to the street network pattern whether hierarchical or uniform. Theoretically and historically a [[city block]] can be built at high or low density, depending on the urban context and land value; central locations command much higher land prices than suburban. The costs for street infrastructure depend largely on four variables: street width (or Right of Way), street length, block width, and pavement width. These variables affect the total street length of a neighbourhood and the proportion of land area it consumes. Street length increases costs proportionately while street area represents an [[opportunity cost]] of land unavailable for development. Studies show that regular, undifferentiated grid patterns generally incur infrastructure costs about 20 to 30 percent higher than the discontinuous hierarchical street patterns, reflecting an analogous street length increase {{citation needed|reason= Referencing "studies" and making quantitative claims without citing anything|date=January 2016}}.
In suburban areas subject to [[property tax]] caps such as California's [[California Proposition 13 (1978)|Prop 13]], the enormous per-capita expenditures required to maintain streets mean that only houses costing over half a million dollars can provide enough property tax revenue to cover the cost of maintaining their street hierarchies. In areas with low developer [[impact fee]]s, cities often fail to provide adequate maintenance of internal and arterial roads serving newly constructed subdivisions.<ref>"Fresno May End Low-Fee Policy for Developers," ''Los Angeles Times'', 23 August 2005</ref>
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