As a member of the public, what price do you think I ought to place on your running pipe and wire through my property?
You can, of course, find perfectly usable building sites that have no public access at all.
Friend of my father's bought such a "landlocked" site years ago. He used to go down in the country and climb a nearby hill on public land to look over at it from time to time.
The other landowners refused to grant him an easement to access his lot.
At some point most of us simply do not have the resources to afford our own self-sufficient island and have to put up with the neighbors. That $12,000 fee is cheap by standards elsewhere.
That didn't include any hook up fees. Those were extra. All it did was pay for planning leeches at city hall. He had the option of paying a $1,500 to private reviewers in order to expedite. That kinda shows you the real cost.
If Americans want to price their kids out of single family homes, make a lot of unneccessary hurdles. There are bureaucratic critters eager to help. Our parents managed just fine without 6 month of plan review (translation: sitting in a stack). Somehow, everyone feels the need to micro-manage the activities of their neighbors with heavy-handed and expensive cockroaches at city hall. It's almost to the point where I cheer someone going postal.