You’re making the mistake of looking at total spending, not per capita or per economic growth. It’s not surprising that cities spend more on infrastructure in

You’re making the mistake of looking at total spending, not per capita or per economic growth. It’s not surprising that cities spend more on infrastructure in total, but they spend a lot less on infrastructure per capita. Better still, they tend to have more economic activity per public dollar spent. The point is to be efficient with public dollars and generate the maximal economic activity per public dollar. In this way things like public transit blow rural and suburban roads out of the water. Measuring traveling speed is silly. What matters is time spent to get to services, jobs, food, and similar. You measure this based on time and cost, not distance and speed. Oh, and ultra dense cities can offer more choices for short distance travel. I can get my commute down to 12 minutes by bike or 8 by electric scooter. This reduces wear and tear on the roads a lot, and packs more people per lane mile of road, meaning that my economic activity costs the public less in terms of infrastructure cost. This doesn’t work in low density suburbs (at least not in America). While I can’t speak to your country, I can say that the vast majority of public subsidies in the United States actually flow to suburbs and not inner cities. Without federal largesse, suburbs would stop being a middle class expectation and return to being an ultra wealthy luxury.