ROI on even a 2 story parking lot is a lot longer than the one and much more expensive than double the price.
Paving is cheap, easy and other than drainage design is pretty straightforward. Put in drainage, grade land, put down bedding material for the asphalt, put down asphalt and curbing, paint line install signs.
A multi-story garage needs a ton of engineering, concrete and rebar and is custom to each location. Because you have a lot of weight in these structures
If you look at amusement parks that have parking garages most of them are land locked or purchasing new land for parking is so expensive it’s cheaper to build a garage
(Please note I’m am a layman about construction, there is probably a construction person or engineer that can explain it better just a theme park fan that likes reading about how the engineer rides and have occasional tumbled over into parking engineering which is a fascinating topic of how much engineering goes into it)





I’m hoping the Iranian people can come out of this a better country. But you are totally correct in that the US did this for the oil not the people.