Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?
&gt; If we made the assembly of steel, concrete, and asphalt cheaper, do you think suburban mayors would stop demanding we build them big box interchanges?<p>I generally agree with many of Strong Towns&#x27; arguments, but this really seems to miss the mark.  The reason why major infrastructure projects like regional&#x2F;urban rail systems, tunnels, etc are so expensive vs other <i>developed</i> countries isn&#x27;t due to the cost of commodities like concrete or steel.<p>It&#x27;s due to the lack of sufficient domestic expertise in designing, managing, and building such large scale works.<p>Because we don&#x27;t build that scale of project frequently in the US, when we do it, we don&#x27;t do it as efficiently.  A recent example would be the use of the incorrect grade of steel in San Francisco&#x27;s new Chinatown subway line.<p>OTOH, we have huge amounts of experience building big box stores,  parking lots, and freeways, which are the sort of infrastructure that  the Strong Towns perspective says (correctly IMO) that we don&#x27;t need so much of.<p>We need to build infrastructure with higher utilization, which therefore doesn&#x27;t need to rely on what Strong Towns describes as the Growth Ponzi Scheme, but unfortunately that&#x27;s exactly the sort of infrastructure that we are not very good at building.