In the Amazon Jungle or a California Subdivision, Sometimes Less Infrastructure Is More
Using Localized “Min-Frastructure” Prevents Costly Runaway Urban Sprawl
The need for more infrastructure is one of the few areas of genuine bipartisan consensus in the United States. But my experiences working in two rapidly urbanizing regions outside this country have led me to wonder whether there may already be too much of it.
Infrastructure is a double-edged sword. For every case in which it is desperately needed, there is another case in which it enables the rapid proliferation of urban expansion and its domino effect of deleterious land use practices.
One project in Ecuador, with which I’ve been involved over …
