Being married to a civil engineer who spends his days working with mass transit, stories in the news about infrastructure tend to grab my eye. This recent article in the NYT about the human cost of ignoring maintenance is worth reading for its argument alone (notably echoed by a one Mr John Oliver), but the point about only responding when there’s a crisis sounds eerily similar to debates closer to my research —
“My biggest fear is that once this is no longer in the headlines it will fall by the wayside,” said Stephen M. Gensemer, a Maryland lawyer who represented Ms. Dean in a financial settlement with the state. “It concerns me that we have this focus on our aging infrastructure only when you have pieces of concrete falling on a motorist.”
Moral of the story, regardless of discipline: build (and maintain) resilient infrastructure. Please.
Amanda Cellini 