Community Input Is Bad, Actually

private landowners would reject most major projects if they were asked to pay for them. They would reject them because they would lose money. If we’re going to believe in the power of infrastructure spending, if we’re going to have faith in the improved efficiency of the market that results from taxpayer investments like these, we should use the fe

That all urban development has been locked into path dependency on an economic concern now millennia out-of-date is surely a cause of unimaginable waste and inefficiency.

The projects that today most urgently need salvaging are low-income housing projects. Their failures drastically affect the everyday lives of many people, especially children. Moreover, because they are too dangerous, demoralizing and unstable within themselves, they make it too hard in many cases to maintain tolerable civilization in their vicinit

By 1940, most urban planners had come to understand that roads were not good per se, that a highway was not an unqualified boon for mankind. By the early 1950’s, much of the general public appeared to understand this, too, even if the press did not.

People on the site would have to be removed—evicted, dispossessed, thrown out, relocated—and removal would rend the fabric of their lives. The lives of those near the site might not be rent but they would certainly be altered, for the physical environment which did so much to shape their daily existence would be altered, not only in dramatic ways s