It's simple: there is so much money in our political system (and there always has been) that unless you're donating to a candidate / party machine, your pet pro

It's simple: there is so much money in our political system (and there always has been) that unless you're donating to a candidate / party machine, your pet projects don't get done. This means a lot of things that matter to average citizens like roads, schools, parks, etc. don't have anyone championing them -- unless there are investors who want to build up the area and want to externalize some of their costs. So they make a small investment in getting some friendly candidates elected to city council or smaller county positions to ensure the access to the various groups they need to lobby to get their projects approved. In return for this investment, they get 100x in public money. What it also means is that unless your project (or collective projects as often the case in gentrifying neighborhoods) promises a big return, it's not gonna get done. What's more is that so much of our infrastructure is so old and in such poor condition that it's often cheaper to just build new stuff in another area than it is to rip out what's already there and replace it. In Philadelphia where I live, large parts of our water and sewer infrastructure date back to the early 1800s.