Yeah, I think that's the correct analysis. Having lived in Houston a few years, one thing that I think happens is that without geographical constraints, and with the way things are currently funded, it's easier to just keep moving out. Where I lived in the 1990s was a "new" suburban area of Houston, but already by the 2000s there were abandoned stores, because if a store moved out of a building, sometimes another store moved in, but often it was easier to just build a new to-order building another mile south on the freeway, instead of renovating an existing one. With no constraints, you can just keep moving out another mile every year for decades. Same with suburbs; why renovate a 1970s house if you can just move another mile down the freeway and build a new one? Especially given the cheap construction that's been used for the last 50 years...
Part of that I think is also because some of the costs that incurs aren't properly charged. There was a proposal in Houston to charge developers for the cost of new infrastructure. For every 10,000 new homes built in a new suburb, for example, you can estimate what new capital infrastructure they'll need: on average 1 elementary school, 0.5 high schools, 1 fire station, 1 police station, X miles of roads, X miles of sewers, etc. (whatever the real numbers are). Add the estimated cost of that up, divide by 10,000, and charge that as a per-house assessment on new developments. That proposal failed, though, so new developments' indirect capital costs are subsidized by homeowners in the older areas of the city.
We've got nearly the same problem in Dallas. For decades the development has moved further north into the Ex-burbs and bedroom communities.
The interesting component is how the development gets financed in a Ponzi-esque scheme. Suburbs are built out with municipal bonds, which subsidize the build outs of services (schools, police, fire stations, roads) while keeping property taxes low. Once the suburb is completely built out, the taxes double or triple to pay back the bonds. Then the next suburb just north or south of it is built with more new bonds and the cycle continues.
Part of that I think is also because some of the costs that incurs aren't properly charged. There was a proposal in Houston to charge developers for the cost of new infrastructure. For every 10,000 new homes built in a new suburb, for example, you can estimate what new capital infrastructure they'll need: on average 1 elementary school, 0.5 high schools, 1 fire station, 1 police station, X miles of roads, X miles of sewers, etc. (whatever the real numbers are). Add the estimated cost of that up, divide by 10,000, and charge that as a per-house assessment on new developments. That proposal failed, though, so new developments' indirect capital costs are subsidized by homeowners in the older areas of the city.