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OK so the reason why US cities have no money is that they have grown horizontally instead of growing vertically and horizontal growth means high infrastructure cost. That's all very well, but I still dont understand why it happened. Does anyone know why US cities expanded horizontally instead of following growth patterns similar to Europe?

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They expanded after car ownership became widespread. The older the city the more compact it is generally.

The federal government gave cities money under the condition that they spend it on infrastructure. They did this to grab the money in the short term and their backwards accounting practices allowed them to ignore the long term costs, which are catching up to them now.

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