It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband...
The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial.
But this country has an infrastructure crisis.
— the New York Review of Books
Elizabeth Drew considers several recent books on American infrastructure, with an eye to both the material reality and the political system producing it. She concludes that fixing our infrastructural systems "may require even more widespread paralyzed traffic, the collapse of numerous bridges, and perhaps a revolt in parts of the country that have inadequate broadband."
"In other words, we may well need to incur more chaos and ruin and even deaths before we come to our senses," she writes.
Unfortunately, in the US, while infrastructure is falling apart everywhere, certain contingencies bear the brunt of this more heavily. The ongoing crisis in Flint, Michigan brings into sharp focus the socioeconomic and racial undercurrents of infrastructural collapse.
Interested in related issues? Check out these links:
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