Arlington, Mass.[1] has 46k people in 5.5 square miles, population density of 9.1k people per square mile, 9.1k taxpayers paying for a square mile of services.

Lafayette, Louisiana[2] (the city from the video I linked) has 121k people in an area of 56 square miles for a density of 2.1k people per square mile, but a metro area population of 478k people over a metro area of 3,400 square miles with a density of 140 people per square mile of services.

Arlington has a median family income of $131k, Lafayette has a median family income of $54k (both from the same Wikipedia pages). Just the urban parts - roads covering 5.5 square miles in Arlington vs 56 square miles in Lafayette, but they've got a quarter of the population density who are less than half as wealthy paying taxes to maintain them. I don't know how it's funded for roads in the 3,400 square miles of suburban area.

Watertown has 35k people in 4 square miles, Lincoln has 7k people over 15 square miles with a median family income of $202,704 - these hardly seem to fit "sprawling car dependent suburbia"? I haven't looked very hard because internet argument, but I'd be surprised if the 7k people in Lincoln have their own dedicated fire service, hospital, ambulances, sewage works, dump, salt gritters, dual carriageway highways for moving cities worth of vehicles, and so on public services that a big city with 20x the population would need, which Lincoln likely shares with other places or just doesn't have.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Massachusetts

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette,_Louisiana

I checked the "walk score" for several of my friends' addresses in Lincoln. They were in the range of 3 to 7; Lincoln is absolutely a car-dependent suburb, as is Wellesley, Newton and the rest of that list (with the exception of the center of Arlington and select parts of Watertown).