I noticed the author is a civil engineer. Asking a civil engineer if you need more infrastructure spending is a lot like asking a barber if you need a haircut or asking an orthodontist if your kid needs braces.
If that's the case, then the author's conclusion (that we need much less infrastructure because we have so much that it's absolutely impossible to maintain it) is even more interesting.
Indeed, Marohn (the author of TFA) has been attacked by other members of the civil engineering profession for his criticisms of it (going against established "dogma" as he puts it).
You know when a mechanic has a sign out front that says "free brake inspection", how often do you think he says "brakes look great, no work needed"? You should only take advantage of a offer like that if you already suspect something is wrong or in the case of a orthodontist when you think your kid needs braces to begin with.
No, it's more like if you go to a surgeon, he may suggest a surgical remedy because that's where his expertise is focused. Same here: a guy writing for this site is likely to focus his research on denser urban planning as a solution, and we should bear that in mind.
The funny thing is, I've watched his talk and he basically says "there is no solution". We've kinda screwed ourselves already, and whatever option we choose is going to hurt. But although we're in a hole, we do have the option to stop digging.
Perhaps surprisingly, I'd consider Charles Marohn to be less focused on denser urban planning than one would expect. His message is more that whatever we do, we should ensure that the tax base is enough to support the infrastructure we do build. It's fine to have people on farms in rural areas, but we shouldn't be running miles of paved road out to their houses.
And I think he's made a really good point before, which is that sparse, auto-oriented development, and development that depends fundamentally on endless growth for funding is actually a radical departure from how people have built villages, towns, and cities for pretty much all of human history. It's not something that was really intentional, people just copied what they thought seemed to work in Detroit and didn't think too hard about it. The cost-effectiveness of dense development, whether urban or rural, is pretty well proven at this point.
