Author: Kimberly J. Brown (Journalist)
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640120696
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
"A bridge shouldn't just fall down," Senator Amy Klobuchar said after the August 1, 2007, collapse of the Minneapolis I-35W eight-lane steel truss bridge, which killed 13 motorists, injured 145, and left a collective wound on the city's psyche and infrastructure. On her way to a soccer game with a fellow teammate, Kimberly J. Brown experienced the collapse firsthand, falling 114 feet in her teammate's car to the Mississippi River. Although terrified, injured, and in shock, she survived. In this sobering memoir and exposé, Brown recounts her harrowing experience. In the aftermath of the disaster, Brown became both an advocate for survivors and an unofficial whistle-blower about decaying infrastructure. She details her investigation and correspondence with Thornton Tomasetti engineers, including the false official account of the collapse and the eventual revelation of its real causes. In addition, she chronicles the ongoing decay of America's bridges and the continuing challenges faced by leaders to address infrastructure problems across the country. After nearly a decade of research into the collapse and her active and ongoing recovery from psychic and physical injuries, Brown shares her experience and answers the questions we should all be asking: Why did this bridge collapse? And what could have been done to prevent this tragedy?
Author: Mariana Valverde
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100061042X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 167
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Book Description
This book provides an overview and assessment of infrastructure’s legal and governance underpinnings. Infrastructure is often thought of as a term referring only to the physical entities – pipes, cables, utility poles, highways, airports – that facilitate the transmission of water, gas, telecommunications and electricity, as well as enabling both private and public transportation, and serving to house more or less public services such as health care and schools. However, infrastructure planning and implementation are not reducible to bricks and mortar. The complex process requires drawing from and sometimes re-inventing or recycling legal tools, from construction contracts to financing ‘deals’, which are often taken for granted by both practitioners and urban studies scholars. These are as important today as they were when the first railway lines were built, and to a large extent they remain just as invisible: the avalanche of drawings and photographs of planned or in-process fancy buildings tends to hide from view the behind- the-scenes negotiations and decision-making that had to happen before construction could start, and which in some cases continue afterwards. This book does not ignore the material and nonhuman aspects of infrastructure. But, focusing on the legal and governance underpinnings of infrastructure projects, via a series of key terms that refer to hybrid legal processes, the book offers an important socio-legal supplement to the current ‘infrastructure turn’. This book will be of interest to students in the areas of socio-legal studies, urban sociology, urban studies, urban geography, planning, public law, and contract law, as well as practitioners involved in infrastructure projects.
Author: Pierre Filion
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487523610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Most new urban growth takes place in the suburbs; consequently, infrastructures are in a constant state of playing catch-up, creating repeated infrastructure crises in these peripheries. However, the push to address the tensions stemming from this rapid growth also allow the suburbs to be a major source of urban innovation. Taking a critical social science perspective to identify political, economic, social, and environmental issues related to suburban infrastructures, this book highlights the similarities and differences between suburban infrastructure conditions encountered in the Global North and Global South. Adopting an international approach grounded in case studies from three continents, this book discusses infrastructure issues within different suburban and societal contexts: low-density infrastructure-rich Global North suburban areas, rapidly developing Chinese suburbs, and the deeply socially stratified suburbs of poor Global South countries. Despite stark differences between types of suburbs, there are features common to all suburban areas irrespective of their location, and similarities in the infrastructure issues confronting these different categories of suburbs.
Author: Henry Petroski
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632863618
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
A renowned historian and engineer explores the past, present, and future of America's crumbling infrastructure. Acclaimed engineer and historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from both historical and contemporary perspectives, explaining how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Petroski reveals the genesis of the many parts of America's highway system--our interstate numbering system, the centerline that divides roads, and such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights--all crucial to our national and local infrastructure. A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, and Petroski reveals the complex and challenging interplay between government and industry inherent in major infrastructure improvement. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity.
Author: Robert W. Poole
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022655760X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
A transportation expert makes a provocative case for changing the nation’s approach to highways, offering “bold, innovative thinking on infrastructure” (Rick Geddes, Cornell University). Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, with exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America manages its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, short-changing maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits. In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways.
Author: Edward L. Glaeser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680058X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
"Policy-makers often call for expanding public spending on infrastructure, which includes a broad range of investments from roads and bridges to digital networks that will expand access to high-speed broadband. Some point to near-term macro-economic benefits and job creation, others focus on long-term effects on productivity and economic growth. This volume explores the links between infrastructure spending and economic outcomes, as well as key economic issues in the funding and management of infrastructure projects. It draws together research studies that describe the short-run stimulus effects of infrastructure spending, develop new estimates of the stock of U.S. infrastructure capital, and explore the incentive aspects of public-private partnerships (PPPs). A salient issue is the treatment of risk in evaluating publicly-funded infrastructure projects and in connection with PPPs. The goal of the volume is to provide a reference for researchers seeking to expand research on infrastructure issues, and for policy-makers tasked with determining the appropriate level of infrastructure spending"--
Author: Scott Myers-Lipton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317253175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
In Obama's America public works is once again a part of the national dialogue. Today it is offered as a solution to the economic downturn and to the public infrastructure crisis. This timely book examines the reasons for the economic crisis facing Main Street, and connects them to why the nation has structurally deficient bridges, weak levees, poorly maintained dams, and dilapidated schools. The book goes on to analyse the history of US public works, updating lessons from the New Deal, to understand the most effective way to organise a modern US civic works project, based on a civic works pilot project for the Gulf Coast. One chapter features new contributions by Howard Zinn, Angela Glover Blackwell, and other leading scholars and thinkers weighing in on how an US civic works project might solve our economic, infrastructure, and environmental crises.
Author: Brigitte Pellerin
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1770701346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147
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Book Description
With a unique blend of candour and humour, Down the Road Never Travelled chronicles the arduous journey Brigitte Pellerin and her fellow researchers undertook in their attempts to track a tax dollar through one government spending program. Imagine coming home one evening and announcing to your significant other that the only way to truly understand how government worked was to study it from the ground up - to literally look into the sewer lines, leaking water mains, pothole-ridden roads and collapsing bridges of Canadian cities. This was Pellerin's goal when she embarked on an investigation of the Canada Infrastructure Works Program (CIWP), a government initiative that promised to repair the country's crumbling infrastructure and create jobs for Canadians. The task, Pellerin believed, would be relatively easy: to determine whether the government did what it said it would under this program. How hard could that be? As it turned out, it was nearly impossible.
Author: United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on National Security
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 1104
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Book Description
