Contrary to what he says, pretty much none of the cities follow this pattern. Infrastructure maintenance is not a significant cost in most cities budgets, and the only cities that really have any significant problems with it are the ones that are decaying altogether for non-infrastructure related reasons (eg. main employer left, and people are leaving too).

Do you have anything I can read which contradicts his point on the cost of infrastructure spending? I'd like to see the counterpoint to his thesis.

I made a comment a while ago to that effect:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22909240

His thesis falls apart already if you do a back of a napkin calculation.

Here is another case study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22913531

Is maintenance not a significant cost because the infrastructure doesn't need maintenance, or is it not a significant cost because the infrastructure is left to decay?

Pick a few towns at random, look at their budgets, look at their road quality in Google Streetview, and see for yourself. I would love to hear of any examples of infrastructure costs killing cities, but I simply couldn't find any.