Sometimes you need to stop maintaining things. Towns rise and fall because the economy changes. If there's no economic activity bringing money into a town, it should eventually disappear. You need the political courage to stop wasting money on propping it up. Some bridges, pipes, roads, and trains shouldn't be repaired or replaced. They need to be closed if dangerous, and allowed to disappear into history. If holdouts want to keep living in their dead town, good for them, but don't make the rest of us pay for it.
So you're saying that NYC's infrastructure (the city in the article's opening paragraph) is crumbling because there's no economic activity bringing money into the city?
