"Infrastructure is key to powering spatial fixes. The railroads and streetcar, cable car, and subway systems speeded the movement of people, goods, and ideas in the late 19th century; the development of a massive auto-dependent highway system powered growth after the Great Depression and World War II. It’s now time to invest in infrastructure that can undergird another round of growth and development. Part of that is surely a better and faster information highway. But the real fix must extend beyond the cyber-economy to our physical development patterns—the landscape of the real economy.
That means high-speed rail, which is the only infrastructure fix that promises to speed the velocity of moving people, goods, and ideas while also expanding and intensifying our development patterns. If the government is truly looking for a shovel-ready infrastructure project to invest in that will create short-term jobs across the country while laying a foundation for lasting prosperity, high-speed rail works perfectly. It is central to the redevelopment of cities and the growth of mega-regions and will do more than anything to wean us from our dependency on cars. High-speed rail may be our best hope for revitalizing the once-great industrial cities of the Great Lakes. By connecting declining places to thriving ones—Milwaukee and Detroit to Chicago, Buffalo to Toronto—it will greatly expand the economic options and opportunities available to their residents. And by providing the connective fibers within and between America’s emerging mega-regions, it will allow them to function as truly integrated economic units.
Obama allocated $8 billion towards high speed rail in his 2009 budget. It’s a start, but a disappointingly modest one. Depending on who’s doing the estimating and how high speed a system is envisioned, the price tag for a fully modern, truly national high-speed rail system runs somewhere between $140 and $500 billion. That’s a lot of money, but measured in 2009 dollars, Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System cost $429 billion to build—which makes it look like something of a bargain.
High speed rail is just one solution—we will need many more if we are going to encourage our cities to become more densely developed, more innovative, and more economically vibrant. But we won’t find solutions if our pundits, politicians, and business leaders are still caught up in parochial arguments about debt and deficits, and how to bring back the housing industry. We can’t neglect the present, but we also have to think beyond it. If we keep spending on the old economy and our old ways of consumption and living, a new, post-industrial society may still emerge, but it will take longer to do so and it may not be one that most Americans will want to live in.
Richard Florida is the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and the author of The Great Reset (Harper Collins) and The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books).
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