Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power<\/em> (MIT Press, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo the authors, repairing infrastructure doesn\u2019t just mean filling in potholes. Henke and Sims discuss processes big and small, involving both physical structures \u2014 the roads, pipes, and buildings that most people associate with infrastructure \u2014 and the social structures intertwined with them. The book explores examples of tangible and intangible infrastructure including Louis XIV\u2019s Versailles, New Orleans\u2019 levees, public transit, the Panama Canal, Colgate\u2019s Trudy Fitness Center, and even the internet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Biden plan also takes a broad view of infrastructure. In addition to structures like highways, bridges, and airports, it includes money for the electrical grid, high-speed broadband, replacing lead pipes, and building day care centers. That has drawn some criticism, but Henke thinks it makes sense. Investing in electric vehicles and their charging ports, for example, will be critical for building a country that\u2019s better prepared for climate change. \u201cIn a way, that\u2019s infrastructure. But it\u2019s not the roads, it\u2019s not the bridges,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No matter what you\u2019re trying to fix, Henke and Sims\u2019 case studies show that repairing something can raise questions of power, perception, and privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of those stories is about the San Diego\u2013Coronado Bridge. It stretches more than 2 miles across the bay to connect San Diego with the wealthy city of Coronado. When the bridge was constructed in the 1960s, it ran right through a Mexican-American neighborhood on the San Diego side called Barrio Logan. Over the years, artists from San Diego and beyond painted dozens of striking murals on the bridge\u2019s support columns. The site, called Chicano Park, would eventually become a National Historic Landmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not the end of the story, though. In 1995, state engineers decided the San Diego\u2013Coronado Bridge\u2019s columns needed retrofitting with steel jackets to protect against earthquakes. But that would mean covering up the murals. Engineers \u201cthought they were trying to solve a technical problem,\u201d Henke says, \u201cbut were enmeshed in this set of politics and controversies about how to best fix this bridge at the same time that you would preserve an important landmark and source of cultural pride.\u201d Eventually, the engineers found a solution that would make the bridge safer while mostly sparing the murals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow do we really know when something is broken? Who gets to decide if something needs to be fixed?\u201d Henke and Sims write. Systems of infrastructure can determine who has power and who doesn\u2019t \u2014 and the way infrastructure is repaired can reflect, or even change, where that power lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s one takeaway at the end of our book, it\u2019s that we want people to be reflective about repair,\u201d Henke says. \u201cSo that when you\u2019re investing this money, it\u2019s not just going to reproduce some of the problems of the past.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s glad to see that the Biden plan explicitly lays out the same goal. \u201cToo often, past transportation investments divided communities,\u201d states a fact sheet about the infrastructure plan, which aims to remedy historic inequities (citing I-81 in Syracuse as one example).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just that they want to rebuild bridges and roads,\u201d Henke says, \u201cbut they want to do it in a way that helps support communities that have been disproportionately and negatively impacted by how those structures were built and maintained in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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