Departments

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infrastructure

  • SOURCE: Vox
    11/12/2021

    What's in the Infrastructure Plan for Animals?

    Collisions between wildlife and vehicles are bad for animals and dangerous and costly to people and governments, too. The United States may take steps to catch up with technology to mitigate them. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    8/30/2021

    A Conflict Among the Founders Still Shapes the Infrastructure Debate

    by Susan Nagel

    "The lack of a clearly defined constitutional role for the federal government in funding infrastructure improvements left it to the men who had been competing to enrich themselves to figure out what role the national government ought to play."

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    7/13/2021

    How the Meaning of Infrastructure Has Changed Over Time

    by Peter A. Shulman

    Economists who have criticized the broad working definition of "infrastructure" in the Biden bill need to consider the history of the term, as "the means to build something greater." 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    6/28/2021

    The Hidden Stakes of the Infrastructure Wars

    by David Alff

    Debates over what counts as infrastructure are nothing new and reflect a history of conflict over who should benefit from public works and competing ideas of the scope of government.

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    6/29/2021

    Infrastructure Spending Has Always Involved Social Engineering

    by Erika M. Bsumek and James Sidbury

    Infrastructure projects have always created winners and losers. Historically, communities of color in America have been more likely to suffer harm from them. It's therefore entirely appropriate to make justice concerns a part of a proposed infrastructure bill. 

  • 6/20/2021

    Powerline Politics in the 1970s and Today

    by Tyler Priest

    Environmental activists have forged anti-pipeline alliances with rural landowners using the issue of eminent domain. History shows that this might boomerang if farmers oppose the new electric transmission lines that will be needed to implement green electrification. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    4/26/2021

    Infrastructure Isn’t Really About Roads. It’s About the Society We Want.

    by Erik Klinenberg

    The word "infrastructure" has always been sufficiently capacious to include all kinds of systems necessary for the operation of society. If anything, Biden's plan needs to be bigger, and incorporate the civic infrastructure of elections and public knowledge and the social infrastructure of schools, parks and libraries. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    4/14/2021

    How Domestic Labor Became Infrastructure

    Writer Moira Donegan argues that including funding for care workers in the infrastructure bill is eminently reasonable; feminist intellectuals for decades have argued that this work is essential to the broader economy, so funding it and supporting it makes sense economically and to recognize the labor of women. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    4/6/2021

    The Meaning of the Democrats’ Spending Spree

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Joe Biden supported a balanced budget amendment in 1995, ran as the "establishment" candidate in the Democratic primaries, and has been a regular advocate of bipartisanship. So why is his administration proposing the massive American Rescue Plan Act, and showing a willingness to act without securing Republican cooperation? A tour of recent history can explain. 

  • SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
    4/7/2021

    April 6, 2021: On the Republican Party

    by Heather Cox Richardson

    Since the time of Lincoln, the Republican Party has been part of a bipartisan understanding that expanding the nation's infrastructure – meaning investing in all sorts of supports to economic and social activity – has been a boon to prosperity. That commitment is fraying today. 

  • SOURCE: The Metropole
    4/5/2021

    The Myth And The Truth About Interstate Highways

    by Sarah Jo Peterson

    A historian with experience in transportation planning takes a close look at the way that canonical texts in the highway planning field have erased the politics of road building and the way that the interstate highway system was always tied to urban land use planning and urban renewal. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/29/2021

    Government has Always Picked Winners and Losers

    by David M.P. Freund

    Government action has always been tied to economic growth, and always involved policy choosing winners and losers. Policies proposed by the Biden administration as part of the COVID recovery aren't inserting the government into the market, they're changing the parties favored by government policy. 

  • SOURCE: Common Dreams
    3/15/2021

    The U.S. Government Should Promote the General Welfare

    by Lawrence Wittner

    The preamble of the Constitution states that the federal government was established "to promote the general welfare." The Democratic Party, for its own good and that of the nation, must aggressively seize that mantle now. 

  • 1/13/2021

    Trump's Nero Decree

    by Frank Domurad

    Adolf Hitler coped with the realization of incipient defeat by ordering the destruction of vital infrastructure in Germany as vengeance against a people who had, he believed, failed him. Donald Trump has been taking a similar approach to the nation's infrastructure and the COVID response (except for the border wall). 

  • SOURCE: Places Journal
    11/15/2020

    Reservoir: Nature, Culture, Infrastructure

    by Luc Sante

    A four-part series of essays and photography examines the creation, maintenance and consequences of the reservoirs constructed to supply water to New York City, including the complex divisions and connections among urban and rural communities.