US states and major metropolitan areas are the comparable entities to the countries and cities mentioned in the article, and those have significantly worse infr

US states and major metropolitan areas are the comparable entities to the countries and cities mentioned in the article, and those have significantly worse infrastructure than their counterparts in Europe and Asia. Western european countries and cities industrialized even before US states and cities. They just had very different development priorities, that were formed partly around their historical pre-automobile population density. But it turns out that the US model (low density sprawl) has a much higher per capita long-term maintenance and replacement cost. In many cases, that cost outstrips the infrastructure's productivity in the long term. For more background on this: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ Of course the US has plenty of neglected infrastructure in high density areas, too. That's a complex subject, having to do with decades of urban disinvestment.