Infrastructure repair and the race to green

From an amusing piece by E.A. Hanks at the Huffington Post:

New Yorkers are beginning to realize that our city is being held together with scotch tape, a wish, and pure luck.

Two days ago, the entire city was brought to a standstill because of rain. A lot of rain, but rain nonetheless. Subway lines and commuter trains were down the majority of the day. Streets were gridlocked in bumper to bumper traffic, but not because a bread truck was taking its sweet time dropping off ciabatta. Infrastructure is the hottest trend these days, hotter even than the new celebrity couple RoGo (Rove and Gonzales), but it's worth all the attention it's getting. It's what keeps us running. Our bridges, our refrigerators, our water all depend on an up to date infrastructure.

New York is in major need of an overhaul. All the hype might be about systems and facilities at the moment, but it's not for nothing. Pre-war buildings may have charming decorative touches, but a city with pre-war plumbing is pushing its luck.

City planner Robert Moses may have thought that the future of New York was behind the wheel of the automobile, but the New York of our future must be on the front line of efforts to build sustainable cities. And green, too. We must use a combination of a some of the toughest and most dedicated urban workers on the planet and the greatest urban planners to make our city run smoothly, efficiently, and "greenly."

New York, are you gonna let Portland, Oregon kick your ass? Seriously?

Discuss over there.

Aug. 11, 2007 Posted in elsewhere.