[dworin]

It's not about abundant capital - it's actually easier for American cities to leverage the bond market to raise capital now than it was in the 19th century. The bigger issue is labor and regulation. The people working to raise Chicago were frequently immigrants, either from other countries or from farms, working long hours, with little pay, and with questionable safety standards. Thanks to regulation and labor organization, workers on civil engineering projects are much less likely to fall off a building or have one collapse on them, and can afford to live much more comfortably. But that means it's much more expensive and difficult to undertake a large project.

Same goes for regulation. Notice that the whole reason Chicago needed to be raised was so they could drain run-off. So where do they drain it into? The Chicago River and Lake Michigan, which became toxic cesspools until very recently. And those shop owners didn't have much of a say while they were hoisted into the air. Regulation and democratic involvement are really annoying when you want a large capital project to go through, but they're really important to you when that large capital project is something that's being done to you.