Though, it makes me wonder how much better cities fair, as I’m not so sure they’re doing much better being able to afford covering the costs of all their crumbling infrastructure.
That’s going to depend on density. Higher densities means more people paying for the same amount of infrastructure, leading to better affordability.
It’s also going to depend on the type of infrastructure - car infrastructure scales hilariously poorly, while transit generally becomes better when you add more riders.