There was an article posted on HN about a year ago, which said that most/all urban areas in the US (and I suspect in many other countries) cannot afford to main

There was an article posted on HN about a year ago, which said that most/all urban areas in the US (and I suspect in many other countries) cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure and are just buying time before major problems with water/sewerage/roads etc. I can honestly imagine that any local authority who might apply for e.g. $50M to build a bridge do not make sure they can either amortize that cost over 50 years to replace it or otherwise add a reasonable amount of yearly expenditure to make repairs as needed. Concrete seems particularly bad since it is very hard to "repair" and the knowledge of how to build it properly only 50 years ago was poor. Lots of major concrete structures have not lasted long.