Is Chicago really that much worse than other similar cities like milwaukee or minneapolis? whenever I go to those (which, to be honest, isn't often) the streets don't seem _that_ much better.

In Milwaukee there just isn’t enough tax dollars to pay to fix the roads, replace lead pipes, upkeep for museums, parks, police, fire etc. Some of this is pension problems, so of it is likely government spending more than they had in the 50s for large public projects that now need complete rebuilds with no funds to do so.

Infrastructure spending in Milwaukee is $70M/year, when fire department is $120M/year and police is $300M/year. That's where the real costs are, not where Strong Towns say they are.

I think the overall Strong Towns message doesn’t only speak about infrastructure. It’s generally an argument against spending large amounts of money today on projects that benefit the town of the future that will of course never stop growing; or that this fancy, expensive new project will stimulate the growth we need to pay for it later.

Milwaukee in the 50s and 60s is an example of this. They built a lot of amenities and expanded infrastructure with public funds.

The growth stopped or reversed and there is no money to maintain the same level of services and amenities today. Thus underfunded parks, roads, pipes and museums. Aka, not a strong town but one struggling along.

This entire article and every comment can be summed up with the following sentence:

"Women need to have more babies because our entire economic model is built on growth and doesn't function without it and one of the best ways to grow is increase the population so you increase the taxable base."

You can slice it up however you want. You can bitch and moan about feminism if you're a woman, you can bitch and moan about men's rights if you're a man, but the bottom line is we need a lot more people to pay for all the tab we've run up.

Freezing temperatures, salt, snow plow usage, heavy vehicles and more road usage, and inability to fix properly due to heavy road usage would explain that.

Does work in other countries with similar specs, so it's hardly a technical limitation. It's money, public money, and therefore politics.

I do wonder about US roads. Is it a reliance on the oil industry to build asphalt based roads?

Are they intentionally not meant to last?

Also, with regards to the US interstate system - why is it designed in such a way that any maintenance required a dramatic decrease in travel throughput?

Could it be designed to be functional in ‘maintenance’ mode?

America tends to like to do the cheaper thing and get the biggest number. Extra large pizzas made mostly with cheap vegetable oil and bread, lots of square feet with the cheapest drywall, materials and bad design, etc. Maintenance mode capable roads I would guess would cost as much as a road with one more lane, so they just build another lane instead of keeping one in reserve.

You either need to stop asking questions in bad faith or spend 10min reading about road construction on Wikipedia (hopefully the latter but this is the internet so...). The US doesn't really do things much differently than anywhere of similar climate with regard to road construction since climate dictates construction techniques. Asphalt is pretty universal.