I fear it's inherent to our current interpretation of democracy. Individuals have very few incentives to look past their own lifetimes (and those incentives are almost entirely summed up as "their children"), which tends to downplay even projects that are only multiple decades. If it doesn't improve my life in 5-10 years why would I care one way or the other?

And if someone tries to propose something longer term, it'll get shot down by someone who says "how about not and we spend the money on partying instead" or the equivalent.

More and more I feel that we have to "sneak" long-term projects past people without them noticing.