海角大神

Hear the word 鈥渋nfrastructure鈥� and 鈥� if you don鈥檛 go and find a new conversation partner 鈥� you might be treated to a lamentation about the state of U.S. roads and bridges, power grids, pipes, and digital networks.

The word evokes revitalization, expansion: fresh pavement and rebar to ease physical connections; broadband to ease virtual ones, serving rural students and digital workers who鈥檝e fanned out to far-flung 鈥淶oomtowns.鈥�

The $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that the Biden administration announced last week does lean into building. It鈥檚 ambitious, and has met with both praise and dismissal. Christa Case Bryant reports today on what鈥檚 perhaps unexpected about it, politically.聽

Another element of the plan amounts to unbuilding. The creation of the interstate system meant the bisecting by blacktop of many communities of color, ripping their social fabric. Such moves have not gone unchallenged. Some populations seen as being 鈥渟acrificed鈥� for others鈥� transportation needs have brought to bear civil rights legislation to keep new projects鈥� bulldozers at bay. Others have used grassy installations to patch imposed divides.

President Joe Biden鈥檚 proposal earmarks $20 billion for . That鈥檚 a kind of intentionality that Ben Crowther calls a good start. Mr. Crowther runs a program called 鈥淗ighways to Boulevards鈥� at the Congress for the New Urbanism, which welcomes what it sees as the start of a thought shift.聽

鈥淭his is the first time that we鈥檝e seen highway and transportation infrastructure considered through a social lens,鈥� he told The Washington Post, 鈥渁s well as a transportation lens.鈥�