Over the past 50 years, Pittsburgh and other similar cities have tripled their developed areas while the region's population remains flat. That's a lot of additional infrastructure - roads, sewers, power, water and gas lines - to maintain without new revenue to maintain it.
Strong Towns has referred to this as the "growth ponzi scheme" and it's only going to get worse as population growth slows in this country.
To me it adds up. I live in the a city that's sprawled without growth. I see the lifecycle
1. Used to be a dense city with most houses being doubles, and 3-5 story apartment buildings.
2. Built area has tripled since 1970 into mostly SFH suburbs, but population is the same
3. Outside the very newest suburbs, infrastructure has decayed tremendously. Taxes haven't really increased, the only time sewers or roads ever get repaired is with grants from the feds.
It happened to the city and now it's happening to the post-war suburbs.