Such concentration is not done for free. In the first place, it is necessary to extend sewage, garbage and water systems, police and fire protection, sidewalks and street lighting. The costs of providing these services to the expanded urban areas runs into many thousands of millions of dollars. The growing urban population had to be moved to and from work, requiring the extension of transit systems and the building of expressways requiring countless dollars. The cost of social breakdown has to be included, since big city people are at least twice as likely to suffer from mental, social or family problems than rural people.
Crime is at least three or four times greater in the major urban areas.
Both these problems cost us a fortune annually. Then there are the environmental problems created by vast population concentrations and the inevitable pollution caused by motor vehicles. As any environmentalist will tell you, these costs are astronomical. The state-sponsored building programme were also a job magnet, attracting rural workers to the cities who then stayed on as part of the expanding population. And without the state-built expressways there would be few suburbs and little 'urban sprawl' that has eaten into our farmland.