It was a US-specific thing created by massive post-war infrastructure investment (read: suburban sprawl) and cheap automobiles. This entire problem more or les

It was a US-specific thing created by massive post-war infrastructure investment (read: suburban sprawl) and cheap automobiles. This entire problem more or less resolves to the cost of land. It became effectively super-cheap post-WW2 for the aforementioned reasons. Now we've run out that runway and will face rolling bankruptcies across all sorts of municipalities due to infra maintenance costs.