Our Towns and Cities - Financing of Public Infrastructure

[Jonathanr]

This guy, Chuck Marohn, is on a campaign to rebuild and reorient the way we perceive, plan, design and finance local infrastructure. I actually find it an interesting study, since the American (Australia is very simlar) model of infrastructure development is very much centrally planned, state-financed pork barrel stuff, and future maintenance obligations are being piled up in order to allow the existing maintenance to be financed by the revenue from the expansion.

No matter what your view on the statism-voluntaryism continuum, there will always be a place for collaborative infrastructure development in some fashion. Interestingly, this early collaborative mode of development produced much different results in the very early days, most likely because the funding for development and maintenance of infrastructure had to be drawn directly from the local community. Once the Feds (or even the greater state body politic) gets involved, the opportunities for ponzi financing (through borrowing) becomes irresistible. I think we are witnessing the collapse of this pursuit as we speak.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this interesting TED talk video;