How U.S. Infrastructure Plans Shrank in Ambition
President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure law departs from the sweeping national build-outs of the 20th century, but we still need big visions to meet the future.
"The Panorama of the City of New York,” a 9,335-square-foot scale model of New York City, is housed at the Queens Museum.
Photographer: David Lefranc/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
When we think about the big infrastructure plans of America’s past, we think of large-scale maps with grandiose plans. The seminal U.S. interstate highway map that emerged from the Eisenhower administration, for example, governed decades of coast-to-coast road construction.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in November, is different. Its $550 billion in new infrastructure spending will be more about rehabilitating what we have than building more. In a small way, the bill also seeks to tackle the destructive and tragic impacts of earlier infrastructure building, nodding to the need to address damage to communities of color that had been divided by projects like urban expressways.