I think you're on the right lines, that people just have no clue how much infrastructure there is in the modern world and even building it as cheaply and as easily to maintain is a burden in the trillions of dollars.
The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR resolutely condemn the mistakes made in architecture, design and construction, as contradicting the line of the Party and the Government in this matter, causing significant damage to the national economy and hindering the improvement of the housing and cultural and living conditions of workers.
When designing and constructing buildings and structures, architects and engineers must pay primary attention to issues of economics, construction, creating the greatest conveniences for the population, landscaping, apartments, schools, hospitals and other buildings and structures, as well as landscaping of residential areas and neighborhoods.
In order to avoid excesses and amateurishness, our architects and engineers must become conductors of everything new and progressive in design and construction. Construction must be carried out according to the most economical standard projects, developed taking into account the best achievements of domestic and foreign construction, based on industrial production methods.
Soviet architecture should be characterized by simplicity, strictness of forms and economy of solutions. The attractive appearance of a building and structure should be created not by using far-fetched, expensive decorative ornaments, but by organic connection of architectural forms with the purpose of buildings and structures, their good proportions, as well as the correct use of materials, structures and details and high quality of work.
The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR believe that decisively overcoming shortcomings in design and construction, and the rapid and complete elimination of excesses in architecture will make it possible to save significant funds and direct them to the further expansion of housing, cultural and domestic, industrial and agricultural construction, as well as to the expansion of work on the improvement and landscaping of cities and towns.
Post WWII USA did it first. The massive expansion of roads and single family housing post war in the US, coupled with the baby boom demanded some of the largest growth in infrastructure seen in the world. We did it fast and cheap and ugly.
You don't need some vast conspiracy of communists saying build it ugly to control the people. You just need lowest contract bidding.
Pre-WWII USSR did it first, actually: they had a huge apartment building effort since the late 20s all throughout the 30s in the cities due to forced urbanization and industrialization. Most of it was obliterated during the WWII. Then, of course, there was post-war reconstruction of 1945-1953; and only then they got this post-1955 Khrushchevka style of buildings, with no design, no paint, no decorations etc.
or, we should try to figure out why building costs so much money. 90% of the current NYC subway system was complete by 1960. in 2017, just 3km of track took 10 years and costed 5 billion dollars.
There's been a billion studies on this, I suggest you go read them.
One of the bigger ones is property costs over/under the stuff we're building. One of the other ones is community interests in preventing it from happening. This second one is one of the bigger issues. NIMBY can stop you in your tracks, and unless you go full authoritarianism on them, it's not easy to stop. Then add in cost disease and you start seeing there is no simple solution.