Is American city/infrastructure growth a Ponzi scheme?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I've run across Strong Towns before. It makes sense as presented, and matches much of what I see in, for example, the awful suburban sprawl of Denver (and the inadequate attempts to keep up with it). It also echoes much of what I think has gone wrong with our society, where we've let corporations and market forces shape us in ways they find convenient, but which are not beneficial to us as individuals or as a collective. (To be very clear, I'm am not suggesting any sort of deliberate conspiracy, just that we've been too eager to follow "the money" while ignoring the impacts that doing so has.)

So it's certainly appealing to me, and its not obviously wrong (yet), but I haven't personally seen the evidence for it being right the way I have with, for example,  global warming, vaccines or opposing Republicans.