As for how they were originally funded, idk. Don’t think they ever really asked residents what they wanted back then. Now there’s much more accountability, which is good but has drawbacks and costs.

That could be. I mean, it was a democracy, but post-WWII it was much more about prominent members of the community who commanded the trust of whatever faith or industry group. Before then there was some upheaval, and I'm less clear on the zeitgeist.

Then again, people definitely wanted handouts in a way that's passe now. In Alberta there was "purple gas", which was artificially cheap but only farmers were allowed to burn it, and that's how they got the agricultural vote. Invisible public works projects wouldn't have helped with that.

Low taxes are like a religion here. I kind of feel like if we were starting over, we'd stick with outhouses forever because nobody wants to raise the tax rate for silly things like "sanitation".

So now they have much more stringent standards, which in turn means projects are more expensive. Add onto that the growing complexity - installing a water main down a street in 1980 when you have overhead hydro lines and no other utilities to work around is much easier than installation in a crowded right-of-way with buried gas, hydro, storm sewer, sanitary sewer, and existing water main that needs to continue to service residents.

That makes me wonder how things will look in another century or whatever. If we're paying for debt accrued by the original designers, are we subsidising the future by building neat and well-though-out infrastructure now?

I mean climate, but not specifically global warming, just the fact were a planet with finite resources.

I'm arguing with a degrowther elsewhere here, but you've clearly thought through all the details. On a planet with a growing population, is less architecture really how that should look? When I think degrowth, I think forcing people to be poorer, basically, but they'll still need a place to live. In the long term, I expect housing prices will start to collapse as population goes into decline, and a lot of our more outlying settlements will become ghost towns, but work will continue in core areas.