I was browsing through Vishaan Chakrabarti’s new book, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for Urban America, and I was struck by a diagram outlining the annual US Federal infrastructure budget. Here it is:

It comes as no surprise, but it’s still a good reminder of how heavily subsidized roads and sprawl are. So the next time somebody argues that suburban sprawl is a natural market outcome, remind them of how much government encouragement it took.