Infrastructure

Graying in the suburbs: A Blueprint America special report

A large number of older Americans are living in car-dependent suburbs, but what happens when it’s time to take their keys away? Maria Hinojosa reports.

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Boomtown! The great suburban demographic shift

The needs of suburbanites today is very different from those of suburbanites during the great urban exodus of the ’50s, but infrastructure has not kept up. An interview with the Brookings Institution’s William H. Frey.

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Building for health

This week on our Karr on Culture podcast: Can better urban infrastructure make Americans healthier?

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For high-speed rail, a tale of two governors

President Obama’s vision for high-speed rail has been rejected by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Republican, and embraced by Illinois governor Patrick Quinn, a Democrat.

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Rail politics: Freeways aren’t free either

Governors in two midwest states killed a light rail project, saying it was too expensive for taxpayers. But improving roads instead is going to cost them.

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Rail politics: The choice for voters — spend or save our way out of the recession

The demise of the largest public works project in decades illustrates the stark political choice many voters will make next week: either spend our way out of the recession with big projects like high-speed trains and tunnels or save our way out with good old fashioned belt-tightening.

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Hard times then, hard times now

Much has been made of the similarities between today’s economic downturn and The Great Depression. Pundits have, for example, labeled the current era “The Great Recession.” And the facts seem to bear that out. Fifty-five percent of Americans in the workforce have lost their jobs, suffered a pay cut or seen their hours reduced since […]

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