Any way that's not why I'm writing I'm writing this post because I've been thinking about infrastructure (can you imagine how dull my life must be?) and then today I read this marvelous article in NYT on Public vs. Private infrastructure. It sure isn't pretty but basic infrastructure is what makes cities great and every city I have lived in has a crumbling infrastructure. Atlanta's water system, San Francisco's schools and roads, when I left Tampa it was so busy growing that the infrastructure hadn't caught up yet. Sort of makes you long for early to mid 20th century when civil engineering was kind and social infrastructure got nothing...
Here in London, I'm still having trouble understanding how these things are funded. They don't have bonding as I know it from the US - central government shares our revenue to local authorities who get work done (or not). They have privatised everything so its a very strange quagmire. As fully realised in this week's cock-up concerning net work rails in ability to get the line work finished on time to re-open Liverpool Street Station. They seem to have split up the companies which maintain and deliver the rail lines from the companies which run the trains. No overhead wire engineers available over the holidays so no line from Rugby to Liverpool Street. Good thing no body was at work last week!
Anyway back to infrastructure, I suppose it was always this - before it was privatised the service was crap, now its privatised the service is slightly better than crap but the infrastructure is weak and failing.
As and aside, despite all the great papers here I miss my Sunday morning coffee and NYT ritual, either in the sunny spot in front of my place in Dogpatch with my neighbour's or in Henry's back yard.
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mum!
3 comments:
you really are a planner! so tell me, the water planner, is water also privatized there? who runs that?
water is privatised, too, but I understand its at a municipal level. So I pay a company names Thames Water for my house water. Which changed owners right when I moved here.
Weirdly they do not have meters at every house, many just pay an estimate based on size of house, number of residents and god knows what else. They send me a bill all the time with an estimate which is miles above what I'm actually using so I have to go and do a reading and call them back, then they adjust it.
The system is really leaky. I presume its still running on primarily victorian infrastructures like many other big systems. So 2006 was a drought and water was pouring out of leaks everywhere. Last year was really wet so it wasn't in the papers all the time but I assume still leaky.
Just catching up, which I do every now and then. my thoughts on reading about infrastructure: I realized when I went to New Orleans post-K that planners talk about infrastructure all the time but it wasn't until then that I really understood what the word meant. When an entire support system is gone--not just water and roads but postal delivery, grocery stores, hospital beds, all the things that we very much take for granted having available to us--when they're all gone you really know it. the simplest every day tasks become gargantuan; I guess that's the reaction of a typical westerner when visiting less developed places. but that's not to mention the social infrastructure that I really never think about and that is destroyed there forever--as our friend Barry says, the cashier that you saw every week, the person who sat next to you in class; you don't know what happened to them you just know you'll never see them again. not to mention all the actual friends and colleagues who have left.
A couple of weeks ago Liz went with me to NO for her first post-K visit; believe me it is so much better but she was shocked. and this is 2.5 years later! Her remark was "and I think I'm having a bad day when the Starbucks line is too long"
didn't mean to go on a ramble but just had to share my infrastructure thoughts . . .
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