True, it’s crazy -but I think the reason why is simple: corporations and local governments, alike, could quickly build things in the past because no one had any reason to say otherwise. We’re better than that nowadays, but the red tape is the cost we had to pay to get there.
In other words: it's thanks to history. Click here to see how.
Cost-benefit analyses weren’t used much in the real world until the early-mid 20th century, and public relations as a profession is also younger than you’d think. That means developers had fewer stakeholders to please and less pressure to treat business decisions as a logical, evidence-based science. Combine that with how the flow of information was much less in sync with how things “really” happened before the internet (or TV or radio, even), and I’m sure you can picture how hard it was to hold motivated robber barons accountable. People outside of the direct ecosystem of the transit market didn’t know they could be informed about these issues in the first place, let alone feeling the need to be informed about it or to get involved.
Then there were planners like Robert Moses, the man who treated New York City like his personal savegame of Cities: Skylines. He played a part both in brilliant civic achievements like bringing the UN Headquarters to Manhattan as well as more sinister acts like deliberately bulldozing and isolating minority neighborhoods using highway plans. Even smaller cities could still get away with building cheap bridges that can rip itself apart, for example, because there was no way or motivation for anyone to stop them.
The United States has a history of taking advantage of (and bringing down) workers (and sometimes whole communities of them) from redlining to school districting, and atoning for those mistakes demands equity analyses. Rail giants rigging prices and otherwise acting like monopolies led to antitrust laws that came with tons of safety standards. Pesticides wiping out ecosystems led to, among other things, NEPA’s passage while anger over the teardown of the original New York Penn Station helped bring about the National Historic Preservation Act. …et cetera, et cetera.
TL/DR: The trials and tribulations of the people who came before us, I think, informs the work that has to go into public development. It used to be easy, but then people learned about all the consequences.
