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Cities and Infrastructure:
Synthesis and Perspectives
ROBERT HERMAN AND JESSE H. AUSUBEL
The subject of this book is infrastructure, the built environment in which
we live, the way we use it, and how it may evolve in the future. Cities
are the summation and densest expression of infrastructure, or more ac-
curately, a set of infrastructures, working sometimes in harmony, some-
times with frustrating discord, to provide us with shelter, contact, energy,
water, and means to meet other human needs. The infrastructure is a
reflection of our social and historical evolution. It is a symbol of what
we are collectively, and its foes and functions sharpen our understanding
of the similarities and differences among regions, groups, and cultures.
The physical infrastructure consists of various structures, buildings, pipes,
roads, rails bridges, tunnels, and wires. Equally important and subject
to change is the "software" for the physical infrastructure, all the formal
and informal rules for operation of the systems.
Reflecting on the history of human endeavor, we are impressed by
the creative achievements expressed through the arts, and engineering
and science. The infrastructure is a dramatic statement that embodies
all of these aspects. Many of the most esteemed, valued, and visible
achievements of mankind have been in the domain of infrastructure:
the watercourses and gardens of Babylon, the lighthouse at Alexandria,
the roads and aqueducts of the Romans, the Suez and Panama canals.
The control of water resources constituted the principal problem of
early Chinese history, as agriculture was afflicted by frequent floods
and droughts. The maintenance and repair of the canals and dikes of
the large river valleys were the central administration's main duties and
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ROBERT HERMAN Al!,rD JESSE H. A USUBEL
became symbolic of a well-organized and efficient government (Witt-
fogel, 19581.
Walls encircling towns were once perhaps the most important infra-
structure for many settlements. Walls were built to provide security and
at the same time served to control access to a city, allowing inspection
of incoming travelers and collection of tolls. Gate taxes were a major
source of income for medieval towns, and building and maintaining walls
required tremendous financial outlay and technical efforts. The greatest
engineers, such as Leonardo da Vinci, were extensively employed in the
design and construction of walls and fortifications. Remarkably, as re-
ported in the chapter by Lynn Hollen Lees and Paul M. Hohenberg in
this book, the population of the cities that built some of the greatest
structures was that of a small town by modern standards (see Table 3-1,
p. 781. For example, the populations of the great cathedral cities of the
Middle Ages Cologne, Milan, and others-were typically only about
50,000 souls. The populations of the cities of the Italian renaissance-an
era unsurpassed in building achievements were less than 150,000.
Many of the symbols and landmarks of U.S. history, the turnpikes that
carried the wagons west, the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the
Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges, the great dams of the Southwest and
Northwest, the interstate highway system, the skyscrapers and subways
are infrastructure. Many of the heroes of American history, including
Morse (telegraph), Bell (telephone), and Edison (electric power) are fath-
ers of infrastructure systems. Matching the heroic and visible legacy are
the little-noticed and often unattributed accomplishments of infrastructure
systems, especially improved public health connected to supplies of fresh,
clean water and prompt removal of wastes.
Both public and economic welfare have been motives for infrastructure
development. Spurred by a severe yellow fever epidemic, Philadelphia
was the first large U.S. city to construct a municipal water supply system
(1779-18011. The first modern urban sewerage system was constructed
in Brooklyn in 1857. According to Joel Tarr (1984), water supply rep-
resented a situation in wh h a number of interests, such as businesses
and industries, homeowners, fire insurance companies, and those con-
cerned with public health joined to demand the construction of large public
works in order to secure more adequate water supplies at reasonable cost.
City boosters considered waterworks crucial in the competition between
municipalities for population, trade, and industry.
How vital is infrastructure? One need only think of what life is like
when each person is individually responsible for disposal of all wastes,
carrying messages, collecting and purifying water, and gathering fuel.
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CITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
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The range, safety, depth, and variety of contacts we commonly now
experience are in large part functions of the quality of our infrastructure.
What are "public works" and what are private works? In the United
States we sometimes identify infrastructure only with public works. In
this book we examine both the conventional public works, such as roads
and bridges, and the privately owned or managed infrastructure. The
historical and international perspectives developed in this book effectively
downplay the differences between the two. In some countries, telecom-
munications systems are a government-owned utility; in some countries,
private. There are private and public water companies. There are private
and public power companies. Often, a new, young infrastructure system
is introduced by private enterprise and then becomes publicly regulated
or owned as it matures into an indispensable "utility."
Infrastructure systems are systems for the delivery of services. As such,
the underlying questions are how broadly and explicitly should cost be
distributed? Who has ownership and control? Institutional arrangements
are a means to an end, and the ends for infrastructure systems are such
features as quality, flexibility, adaptability, reliability, and cost-effec-
tiveness. In different countries and regions at different times, one or
another form of ownership and governance for infrastructure may be pref-
erable. Some networks and facilities tend more naturally toward monop-
oly, and so in the United States these have typically come under government
management or regulation.
As a society, we should strive for a high level of access for individuals,
groups, and organizations for the services available through infrastructure.
To generalize the stated goal of the early days of the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company, we should strive for universal, affordable service
with regard to water supply and wastewater removal, energy, and trans-
port, as well as communications. In part, infrastructure is designed to
overcome uneven distribution of natural resources. As Cesare Marchetti
points out in Chapter 7, infrastructure enables us to extend our range and
control over our lives. Infrastructure is often in the foreground when we
speak of the quality of life, and images of infrastructure, whether positive
ones of aesthetic structures or negative ones of time spent waiting in
queues, are central to our image of healthy cities and societies.
There are choices to be made with respect to infrastructure. Anyone
flying over North America and Europe immediately notes the drastically
different configurations of settlement. Like the diverse solutions for the
design of local area computer networks discussed by Dean Gillette in
Chapter 10, each infrastructure system at the outset may be realized in
many different forms. But infrastructures also quickly grow rigid and
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ROBERT HERMAN Al!iD JESSE H. A USUBEL
costly to modify. We could benefit considerably from better understanding
of the implications of alternative designs from technological and social
perspectives.
What in fact is the state of the infrastructure? Is it deteriorating more
rapidly than we are restoring or replacing it? Are systems being expanded
rapidly enough to accommodate likely demands, for example, for growth
in passenger and cargo air transport? The essays in this book suggest that
in truth we do not know well the condition of our infrastructure. Simple,
partial physical inventories are available for some components of the
infrastructure. For many key systems, and for many cities, we are unable
to specify much at all. Our diagnosis of the vital systems of cities and
the nation remains primitive, and therefore the basis of most forecasts is
questionable.
Some claim that the infrastructure of the United States is in a critical
stage of decay. Is this so? In our view, the quantitative data and evidence
are strong in a few areas and less clear in many others. A need and a
question are raised by this judgment. The need is the deceptively simple
one for more documentation of the historical and current performance of
infrastructure. The question is the relationship between chronological age
and quality of service provided. The relationship between age and decay
is by no means clear-cut or linear for all infrastructure systems. It depends
on several highly variable factors, including quality of original design,
defects in construction, climate, and how facilities are used.
Some old infrastructures, whether physically sound or not, simply have
no use with respect to their original function. If technological generations
come quickly, as in telecommunications at present, designing and building
systems and devices for a short life span may be appropriate. The fact
that tens of millions of telephones built decades ago could still work today
has little value because they lack the features that are now desired by
consumers. With some old roads, the problem may not be age but other
characteristics, such as width. With power plants, the problem may not
be a decline in the quality of service they provide but that we have not
determined how to relicense plants for another generation of operation.
Moreover, some infrastructure elements, such as churches and many public
buildings, given proper maintenance, appear to improve and increase in
value with age. Infrastructure may not routinely mellow with age like a
fine violin, but we should be cautious of drawing dramatic conclusions
from listings simply giving the age of structures.
On the other hand, the mentality of producing goods that are expected
to be used for only a short time is almost certainly self-defeating in many
infrastructure areas. Why throw away roads or houses? As John S. Adams
points out in Chapter 6, new housing for the poor in the United States is
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CITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
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usually cheap and thus has built-in susceptibility to early decay and demise.
Good engineering and design can change this prospect. To illustrate, some
housing that was thought to be cheap when constructed, such as much
nineteenth century English working-class housing or the row houses of
Baltimore, has proved to be long-lived or at least readily adapted to new
uses.
Although we must not assume too much about the link between aging
and decay, there is a clear need for more widespread adoption of a life
cycle approach to infrastructure systems. In the final chapter of the book,
Gregg Marland and Alvin M. Weinberg make a telling case for this
approach by asking three fundamental questions about a variety of infra-
structure systems: What actually is the characteristic longevity of a given
infrastructure? How long could it last? How long should it last? For all
our sociotechnical systems there is birth, growth, development, and then,
to varying degrees, senescence and death. As argued by W. Brian Arthur
in Chapter 4, we do not appreciate sufficiently the importance of the early
life history of systems, the time during which they take on a relatively
fixed character. Neither do we appreciate the extent to which the growth
of systems, and patterns of substitution among technologies for such infra-
structure needs as energy and transport, are predictable. In their chapters,
Cesare Marchetti and Nebojsa Nakicenovic provide striking examples of
how well-documented life histories of infrastructure systems may enable
us to forecast future infrastructure needs and how these needs are most
likely to be met.
There is another simple yet compelling reason for taking an approach
that emphasizes the full potential of a system through time and not merely
the short-term investment decision. As Marland and Weinberg observe,
sites for infrastructure are virtually eternal. The process of siting, design-
ing, and building infrastructure facilities, whether airports, sewage treat-
ment plants, incinerators, power plants, roads, or prisons, is characteristically
long, often measured in decades. In turn, the function fulfilled at the site
endures for generations and, not infrequently, centuries. The needs for
infrastructure to supply energy and communications, for example, never
end; specific components, systems, and technologies used are of course
replaced eventually. It is time to achieve a better balance in our thinking
about how to build systems, with an emphasis on both how the systems
decay and how to maintain them.
Cities and the systems that serve them suffer both acute and chronic
disease. Throughout human history many cities have been abruptly de-
stroyed by wars and natural hazards, such as earthquakes and volcanic
activity. We need to understand better the built-in attributes of infra-
structure systems that lead to potential vulnerabilities from these forces
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ROBERT HER1tIAN AND JESSE [I. AUSUBEL
and such events as power failures and major accidents with hazardous
materials. It is possible to build resilience to disasters into infrastructure,
although it sometimes requires costly outlays and also foresight about
where evolving vulnerabilities lie. Some formerly devastating problems
are now largely under control; fire, for example, was once the scourge of
cities, but firefighting and improved engineering and design of structures
now effectively keeps fire damage at an acceptable level.
The chronic diseases that afflict our roads, pipes, and other facilities
should be a simpler matter to treat effectively. Much of the decay is
apparent and predictable, and long-term strategies are feasible. We have
usually reserved long-term efforts for the building of systems, such as the
30-year plan for the development of the interstate highway system. Such
plans should be pursued more frequently for the maintenance and retire-
ment of systems as well.
It appears that there are opportunities to be more systematic in the study
and management of waning infrastructures. Marland and Weinberg (see
p. 191) propose a framework for succinctly characterizing the causes of
decline of bridges, dams, roads, and power plants. Could this framework
also be applied to harbors, canals, railroads, post offices, and lending
libraries? What are the relative roles of misuse, overuse, abuse, crime,
neglect, and obsolescence in the decline of systems?
We should not underestimate the possibility of finding pleasing new
uses for old infrastructure. Most harbors no longer serve the purposes for
which they were designed in the nineteenth or early part of this century;
movement of cargo is being widely replaced by housing and parks as the
main waterfront uses. Canals in the United States are now largely used
for recreational boating. Railroad tracks have been superseded by bike
paths, and railway stations by restaurants. The Gare d'Orsay in Paris, a
monumental infrastructure achievement of the railway era, has become
France's museum of the nineteenth century. What will become of post
offices, public libraries, and, eventually perhaps, airports?
An interesting trend in transport and energy technologies evident in
several chapters in this volume is that infrastructures appear to be decaying
or losing their share of the market for which they compete at progressively
lower rates. Is this because each new system is larger in its fullest real-
ization than the previous dominant mode, and thus more lives must be
changed each time we abandon, decommission, or reduce a system? Al-
ternatively, are we as a society tending toward preserving all systems in
parallel as a form of sociotechnical insurance?
This book queries whether we are asking the right questions about the
waxing infrastructures as well as about those that are waning. Nakicenovic
and Thomas Craig present compelling evidence that we are not yet ade
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CITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
quately coming to grips with the likely dimensions of the air transport
system, not only today, but as envisioned 10 or 30 years in the future.
Harvey Brooks and Dean Gillette outline a comparable series of issues
about the communications infrastructure, which continues to grow vig-
orously but perhaps without sufficient careful checking against social
goals.
Demographers emphasize the need to take into account demographic
and behavioral considerations in infrastructure planning. The changing
age profile of the U.S. population is predictable with considerable accuracy
extending decades into the future. We know, for example, that the greatest
percentage growth in U.S. population will be in those who are very old,
that is, over 85. Our planning should reflect this and other demographic
trends. We also need to understand better the mutual influence of behavior
on infrastructure and of infrastructure on behavior. What should be done
about "crimes" against the infrastructure: misuse, abuse, vandalism, and
destruction? To what extent can we educate people to use the infrastructure
more respectfully? In turn, what is the influence of infrastructure on
antisocial and criminal behavior? Is it true that beauty defuses anger? How
much stress might be relieved by more efficient and reliable provision of
services such as transport?
The topic of behavior also raises the most fundamental question: what
are the objectives of infrastructure? What is being maximized, minimized,
or made adequate? Leonard Duhl (1986) has argued that we should ex-
amine the city from the point of view of human requirements. He urges
us to build the "healthy city," defined in large part as one that learns
from its experiences and uses the experiences to create a better quality of
life. Many of our cities fail this test.
It is clearly a continuing challenge to represent the interests of users
with regard to quality, safety, and satisfaction in the design and operation
of infrastructure systems. The builders and operators of systems tend to
provide the dominant vision, often with goals of maximizing system ef-
ficiency or size in ways that may not match users' preferences. A difficulty
in this regard is the lack of detailed information on performance. However,
there are vexing questions about how even to measure the economic
productivity or social contribution of, for example, a bridge or a road
system. In addition, how do we measure the quality of infrastructure
services, such as air transport? It is universally agreed that we would like
the time spent engaged with the infrastructure to be of a high quality, but
how is this quality defined, measured, and denominated? The quality of
a system is the result of an intimate interdependence among the various
parts of the system itself, the provider, and the user. We have examples
of infrastructure services, such as water supply, for which quality is gen
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ROBERT HERMAN AND JESSE H. AUSUBEL
orally uniformly high to all customers, even in the poorest urban areas.
In the same jurisdiction, however, waste removal services may be highly
variable in quality.
We tend to characterize infrastructure too little in terms of the individual.
How do those in different segments of the population view infrastructure?
Infrastructure for transportation appears quite different to the young, the
old, and the handicapped. Access to water and sanitation remains a prob-
lem for the homeless. At what cost can high-quality infrastructure be made
more friendly and accessible to larger fractions of the population and
remain so? What are the social implications of alternative designs of
infrastructure systems? Infrastructure, whether a village well or domed
stadium, can be an organizing element in social life, and we would benefit
from seeking to understand the transformations that will accompany shifts
in infrastructure.
It would be helpful in allocating resources to infrastructure to have
better and more readily available quantitative information on the inter-
action between infrastructure and individuals. For example, what is the
time budget of individuals with regard to various forms of infrastructure?
What fraction of the population at different times of day on average is in
the air, in automobiles, on the telephone, or directly using water? How
do these patterns of use vary from city to city and culture to culture? It
would be informative to know the distribution of the labor force over the
various infrastructure systems, how it differs between societies and how
it changes over time. How is the labor force in infrastructure in different
societies divided between construction of systems on the one hand and
operations and maintenance on the other? Have there been changes over
time in the proportion of the labor force working in communications,
sanitation, water supply, energy, or transport?
It would be interesting to have more comparative data on effort and
expenditure with regard to various infrastructure areas. How many worker-
hours does it take to supply a gallon of fresh water in different cities and
countries? How has the time and human effort required to secure and
distribute water changed over the years? How many cubic feet of trash
are removed by a given amount of individual effort in different countries?
How many square feet of building area exist per person in different coun-
tries? How many communications of all kinds are transmitted per unit
time by each person in different cities and societies? How do per capita
water and energy use and travel vary? Data responding to several of these
questions exist, but it is our impression that these data have not been
effectively applied in many infrastructure studies or designs. A compar-
ative, quantitative social science of infrastructure could be useful in in-
dicating paths to improved performance.
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CITIES AND INFRASTR UCTURE
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Improved performance will certainly also come from technology. Prob-
ably the most widely appreciated cluster of technological innovations for
infrastructure came in the second half of the nineteenth century. Such
breakthroughs as steel building skeletons, elevators, electric lighting, in-
door plumbing, central heating, telephones, and underground transpor-
tation had a profound influence on the built environment. Will there be
a comparable burst of innovation in coming years? "Hard" technological
advances might be foreseen in transport (larger and faster aircraft, mag-
netically levitated trains). Hazardous waste is an area in which there is a
desperate need for technical solutions that could be widely accepted with
a high level of confidence. The "utilidor" for infrastructure elements has
been proposed as an interesting extension of a packaging concept that is
widely and effectively used on a smaller scale in modern building design.
But perhaps the current era will be remembered more for advances in
enabling technologies, such as synthetic materials for a full spectrum of
specifications, and applications of operations research to a range of systems
from auto and air traffic control to elevators.
Just as integration of technological and behavioral aspects of infra-
structure is critical, so too is examination of interactions of various
infrastructure subsystems. In designing, building, repairing, or re-
searching portions of the system, we too often forget the important
interactions among system elements. Sometimes financial, political, or
technical constraints lead to compartmentalized thinking and manage-
ment of portions of the system. How tightly interlocked are different
infrastructures? Railroads, coal use, and the telegraph grew together.
So did autos and highways, oil use, and telephones. Could air transport
have developed without radio and other high-speed telecommunica-
tions? In fact, it appears that transportation and communications systems
may advance in tandem.
There is a complex and changing mix of competition and dependency
among infrastructure systems. The airplane and the automobile compete
for intercity passengers but are also jointly necessary to make most
trips between given pairs of destinations. We have numerous instances
of specific solutions for example, siting of airports without appre-
ciation of landside needs that are put in place in a way that inevitably
creates problems that surface later to haunt us. We are confident that
research on specific infrastructure problems will be improved consid-
erably when performed in the broader context, and a series of such
efforts will eventually provide deeper insights and vision into the com-
plex overall problem.
Institutional, legal, and political issues are never remote from systems
so central to social organization and power. Technically feasible "fixes"
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ROBERT HERAIAN AND JESSE H. A USUBEL
such as interbasin transfers of water and development of nuclear power
in the United States are either simply not socially acceptable or are blocked
by political and economic concerns. Several authors, especially Brooks
and Royce Hanson, stress issues of authority and legitimacy. Indeed, the
concept of a "public utility" is at the intersection of all social interests.
What conclusions can we draw about the infrastructure from the chapters
in this volume and the efforts associated with their production?
· In the near term, the preference for incremental improvement will
almost always be dominant, and, in fact, the question of how to attain
higher levels of efficiency within the existing system should always be
asked. However, the challenge of infrastructure is more one of "portfolio
management," and the corresponding need is to make investments that
will generate yield on all time scales, from months to generations and
centuries.
· Some major systems are clearly inadequate to meet current or pro-
jected demand. The most obvious are air and road transport and waste
disposal. Adequate steps are not being taken to accommodate even con-
servative projections of increases in air travel. Other transport problems,
such as parking, are almost totally overlooked. We have 120 million cars
in the United States today and may have twice that many in several
decades. Where will they all be housed? Are there ways to prevent the
levels of congestion and delays in suburbs and outlying areas from ap-
proaching those of center cities? Vision is also lacking in waste disposal.
Will there be a national infrastructure for hazardous waste? Will water
supply and waste disposal be safely and effectively integrated?
· The organization of research and development in infrastructure is
deficient. The emphasis is too heavily on solving narrow problems; in-
adequate efforts are going into research that embeds specific problems in
an intelligently defined context or that looks at connections between var-
ious elements and problems. Much could be gained by linking the research
and development systems for different modes within areas such as trans-
portation and energy, as well as between areas, for example, transportation
and communications. Experimentation by practitioners is also not used as
it might be. In wastewater management, for example, there may be as
great a need to encourage knowledgeable practitioners to experiment as
there is for academic research. A major question is how to do meaningful,
fundamental research on large, real systems. The importance of the de-
velopment and understanding of historical data about infrastructure must
also be emphasized.
· Several areas of research in engineering and science offer promise
for many infrastructure systems. Operations research can be especially
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1
significant in the areas in which there are questions of traffic and trans-
portation. Materials research and associated fields, such as sensors and
nondestructive evaluation, may contribute to better and less costly system
construction, perfo~ance, and maintenance. Telematics is both an infra-
structure and-through the use of such concepts as the global positioning
system and intelligent highways a means for improving the use and
operation of other infrastructures.
· Finally, we wish to stress not only the social and engineering chal-
lenges but also the tremendous intellectual excitement available in studies
of cities and infrastructure. The chapters of this book demonstrate that
this is a rich field for creative thinking. Paradigms, perspectives, and
methods from many fields, including several areas of engineering, physics,
operations research and systems analysis, economics, geography, soci-
ology, demography, law, and history are represented in the book, and
every author ends with fascinating, unanswered questions.
Let us now turn to a review of, and commentary on, the contributions
that follow.
Suppose a Martian geographer or sociologist came to Earth and wanted
to develop a taxonomy of human settlements and to describe the general
characteristics of their temporal evolution. The chapter by Robert Herman
et al. is such an effort to develop an objective, dynamic characterization
of cities. It is an empirical attempt to use basic principles to find sets of
small numbers of objective variables to describe actual cities in space and
time. These variables in turn are used to generate a taxonomy of cities
whose features follow similar tracks in time and that may thus be useful
. . .
In prec action.
Herman and coworkers develop a history of the infrastructure of the
city of Austin, Texas, and perform a comparison among contemporary
features of eight U.S. cities. Some remarkable and intriguing facts emerge:
water consumption per capita in Austin has remained constant since 1950;
energy consumption per capita continues to grow exponentially; and the
number of residents for each restaurant has held steady at roughly 600
since the turn of the century, notwithstanding the much-discussed emer-
gence of a service society. A second area of discovery is that there are
underused data resources for infrastructure studies. Quantitative exami-
nation of such sources as city directories and yellow page telephone books
are one pleasing example. It would be fascinating and valuable to extend
the analyses undertaken by Herman and coworkers to other cities in the
United States and to cities in other countries to understand what is truly
invariant, what is culturally dependent, and what is inherent in different
stages of city development.
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ROBERT HERMAN AND JESSE H. A USUBEL
Lees and Hohenberg provide historical and sociological perspectives
on how cities have grown in the Western world. They stress that cities
are open systems, whether their main role is as the dominant central place
of a system of settlements or as one among equally significant cities in a
network. In fact, the single best descriptor of a city is dependence; a city
cannot be a closed self-sustaining entity. Connectedness is thus the essence
of systems of cities, and the systems may take various forms. They can
be maritime empires or urban leagues united in trade. Leicester, for ex-
ample, was one link in a chain of cities stretching from the north of
England to central Italy that was organized in the Middle Ages around
the production, processing, and marketing of wool.
Lees and Hohenberg illustrate that city growth is neither uniform nor
automatic, but consistent patterns are linked to structure and function.
Urban systems do not require compactness or symmetry, since transpor-
tation and communication technologies allow many feasible configura-
tions. There may be some boundary conditions, however. In his chapter,
Marchetti proposes that the ability to travel between any two points in
roughly one hour defines the limits of a city. This does not accord with
the traditional city planner's definition of a city based on administrative
or geographical boundaries. Lees and Hohenberg, in turn, note that the
distance measured in time of travel between cities of a given size or
rank tends to be more or less uniform.
Lees and Hohenberg also discuss the dynamics of growth and change
of cities and their infrastructure. Growth is not uniform in time; there are
periods of explosive growth. An interesting example is the development
of capitals, for example, in Spain and Italy. Capitals can continue to be
oversized because of their political dominance, well after economic jus-
tification has declined. Indeed, the desire for glory or the need to maintain
public order in crisis often leads to physical improvements. The econom-
ically paradoxical size of political capitals may be explained by viewing
them as capitals of information.
Arthur asks how history affects the pattern of cities. Do chance events,
including seemingly small occurrences, play a significant role, or does
necessity determine what unfolds? For example, is it accidental that Silicon
Valley developed as it has, or was it inevitable based on certain natural
resources and other endowments? Arthur argues that cities become ac-
cording to what they are; a mixture of economic determinism and historical
chances, not either alone, forms the evolving patterns we see.
Arthur also proposes that cities exist in large part because of agglom-
eration economies. Most firings need to be near other firms in their own
and other industries for supplies or as consumers of their products and
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services. Thus, there is a self-reinforcing attraction to existing and growing
agglomerations.
Cities we have inherited depend partly on needs for services that arise
at particular geographical locations, but also result from where skilled
people happen to go. Determinism alone cannot explain city patterns
without reference to chance events, coincidences, and past events. Without
knowledge of these circumstances or those yet to come, Arthur argues
that we cannot predict with accuracy the shape of urban systems in the
future.
Thus, our infrastructure both records our past and shapes the present
and future, except that early events or fluctuations act to push us into
particular states or structures that the system eventually "locks into."
With regard to infrastructure, we become locked into both particular spatial
configurations and also technological choices. Sometimes we may settle
to our later regret on local optima found with respect to restricted boundary
conditions. For example, early historical competition among railroads in
England resulted in adoption of narrow gauges that were better in handling
turns but inferior in speed and comfort. The main reason for the eventual
dominance of narrow gauge was not technological superiority; rather,
George Stephenson simply built more narrow gauge in the early compe-
tition with the wide gauge of Isambard Brunel, and conversion from broad
to narrow gauge was easier than the reverse. In the mid-19SOs a series of
minor circumstances appears to have acted in favor of light-water nuclear
reactors over potentially superior competing alternatives. Arthur's argu-
ment about the importance of early decisions in the life history of systems
has profound implications for infrastructure.
Martin J. Beckmann presents an economic model of urban growth.
Consistent with Arthur, Beckmann argues that cities are characterized by
increasing rather than constant or diminishing economic returns as the
scale of an organization or operation grows. His conclusion is that under
reasonable assumptions, the prediction of economic theory is that the urban
sector must always grow relative to the agricultural sector and that this
process will continue in the future. Substitution of services for industrial
production as the main function of a city does not change this. The
implication is that there is no end in sight to the increase in city size. The
growth of "giant cities" such as Mexico City may confirm Beckmann's
theoretical viewpoint.
Adams discusses the evolution of urban infrastructure at national and
local scales. He identifies a series of epochs characterized by different
transportation technologies: wagon and sailing vessel; steamboat and early
railroad; long-haul trains; automobiles, trucks, and airplanes. Adams stresses
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the complementarily and synergy among modes of transport, in contrast
to Nakicenovic and Marchetti, who stress the struggle for survival among
them. At any given time, a city or individual is dependent on several
modes, and in combination they provide services that could not be offered
by a technological monoculture.
An interesting question is whether communication will become the next
"epochal" infrastructure. In fact, communication has traditionally been
associated with transportation, though it now may receive greater attention
in its own right. Letters and packages have been carried by wagons, sailing
vessels, pony express, trucks, and airplanes. Is there a qualitative differ-
ence between traditional and modem means of carrying information, that
is, between the mails, telegraph, radio, and new lightwave communica-
tion? Is the epochal designation earned by the growth of infrastructures
that are dedicated exclusively to transport of information and not goods?
Adams points out the difficulty faced by planners in the transition
periods between epochs. "A group of urban planners in 1880 might have
been fairly successful at outlining growth patterns for the ensuing 20 or
30 years, but how would such a group have fared in 1920, when their
experience with the characteristics of a rail-dominated transportation net-
work was about to become obsolete?" (p. 111)
Like Hanson and Brooks, Adams faces the question of who should pay
for infrastructure. One issue is the extent to which one mode of transport
or one sector should subsidize another. More generally, there are questions
of distributive justice and fairness. In this context, he raises the key
question of how we can take the economic temperature of a city: Do we
look at bond ratings? Should we measure the change in number of jobs
within its boundaries?
Adams also reviews the availability, condition, and cost of housing
units in the largest cities and urban/suburban dynamics. Housing, unlike
some other infrastructural elements, is never obsolete in a broad sense,
though it may be dated in style, deteriorated in quality, or lacking some
modem technological features.
Marchetti approaches the question of infrastructure at both its most
global and most fundamental levels. From biological thought, he borrows
He notion that the goals of infrastructure are range and control. The final
objective must be to have the whole earn comfortably and efficiently as
one's territory, and this requires a hierarchy of complementary infra-
structures for transportation and communication. Marchetti argues that
there is limited range for substitution between transportation and com-
munication. Rather, each feeds the growth of demand for the other.
In the area of transportation, time and money are allocated by individuals
to different means of travel to maximize range. People in all societies in
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CITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
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fact travel on average about 75 minutes per day, hence Marchetti's notion
of a city as a spatial configuration that can be traversed in about one hour.
Ancient cities satisfied this definition, and the majority of modern cities
do as well. Naturally, means adequate to distances are required. Ancient
Athens was a pedestrian city, whereas Peking had public wagon trans-
portation from a remarkably early date. Indeed, any agglomeration that
cannot be traversed in about an hour must fragment into several entities,
according to Marchetti's view. The introduction of air shuttles in many
corridors like Boston-Washington and San Diego-San Francisco is co-
agulating these into a functional unity. To make genuine cities of the
megalopolises that are developing in various urban corridors in Japan, the
United States, and Europe, Marchetti suggests that very rapid magnetically
levitated trains will come into commercial operation around the year 2000,
providing a sort of super-subway. To achieve the true global village,
aircraft that can travel between major cities in one hour are a necessity,
and indeed research efforts are under way on hypersonic airplanes that
could in three or four decades provide an "Orient Express" shuttle service
between, for example, Tokyo and New York.
Marchetti emphasizes the extraordinary regularity and universality, and
hence predictability, of infrastructure development. The growth of the
network of telegraph wires in the United States (Figure 2 in Chapter 7)
is one of many examples of a perfectly consistent process; the smooth
curve shows none of the social, political, and industrial conflict that must
have accompanied this growth. The spread of railroads and subway sys-
tems throughout the world can also be successfully analyzed as a single,
global process, with each city or country falling into line with military
precision. Marchetti also discerns pulses of growth arising from techno-
logical innovation, "long waves" that have periods of about 50 years and
characterize the transformation of infrastructure.
Nakicenovic provides a complementary characterization of the evolution
of infrastructure systems for transportation and energy in the United States.
A logistic substitution model organizes the data on these systems according
to market share and overall growth into a set of patterns that have probably
not been appreciated in the past for their remarkably steady behavior. The
successive roles of horses and automobiles mesh with astonishing preci-
sion, as do the life cycles of canals, railroads, roads, and air routes (Figures
14 and 15 in Chapter 81. His analyses also bring out the parallel and
interdependent evolution of the systems for transport and energy.
Extrapolating Nakicenovic's analyses leads to significant predictions.
On the one hand, no breakthroughs in transport are required for the rest
of the century, rather improvements must be made in those systems and
technologies currently in place. On the other hand, to handle predicted
.
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ROBERT HER1hIAN AND JESSE [I. AUSUBEL
increased demand for air transport, around the year 2000 stretched jumbo
jets carrying 1,000 people will be needed. Alternatively, supersonic or
hypersonic aircraft carrying about 300 passengers could contribute sig-
nificantly toward meeting the projected demand for intercity transporta-
tion. Nakicenovic also concludes that in the United States only about half
of the eventual number of road vehicles that will saturate the country are
currently in use. In 50 more years some 300 million road vehicles are
projected for the United States. Like Marchetti, with whom Nakicenovic
developed the theoretical underpinnings of the approach presented in Chap-
ters 7 and 8, Nakicenovic argues that natural gas will be the fuel of choice
for a new pulse of growth in the world economy; considerable expansion
and extension of the gas pipeline network thus lies ahead.
Craig discusses air traffic congestion in a detailed case study. All trans-
portation analysts are predicting growth in the volume of air traffic ac-
companied by continued and often worsening congestion. Indeed, the
major problem with travel infrastructure for the rest of the century will
be in aviation. As Craig points out, innovative engineering and manage-
ment will be required in relation to both air and ground traffic control.
The so-called landside problems of the air transport system create massive
and largely unresearched issues of how to process astonishingly large
numbers of people through hubs, and how to connect the air transport
system to other modes of transport. The airport can be regarded as es-
sentially the location at which autos meet aircraft, and these "intermodal"
connections are generally ignored by research organizations and funding
agencies that tend to focus on the pure problems of each mode, like
highway paving and air traffic safety, rather than the links between modes.
What will be the great cities of the air? Historically, cities have always
emerged with each new infrastructure. The growth of Chicago and Berlin,
for example, was intimately connected to the growth of railways. What
cities will emerge as the highest-level hubs in the continuing expansion
of aviation? Amsterdam? Singapore? Brasilia, which, like a 1951 Buick
LeSabre, has an automotive heart but a shell designed to look like an
airplane? We also wonder when airports will begin to be recognized as
the new city centers, as they become central places for more and more
. . . .
socioeconomic achv~ty.
Gillette examines the conjunction of computers and telecommunication
devices that makes up the telematics infrastructure. The integration of
these systems became possible for widespread applications in the 1970s.
It is a metaphor for the entire structure of society: to what extent are
processes and knowledge centralized or distributed? What are the topol-
ogies and flows of data? Gillette points out that this system is still in the
early, turbulent stage of growth that we recognize as the subject of Arthur' s
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analysis. Alternatively, this is the variable, undetermined part of the growth
curve in the Marchetti-Nakicenovic perspective. Telematics is a system
in which many variants are competing. In time, certain structures will
emerge and dominate for better or worse.
Can the pace of innovation in telematics be maintained by existing
institutional arrangements? In contrast to areas such as water supply, in
which it is generally held that progress toward better systems will be
costly, in this instance it is believed that better systems will cost less.
Components of greater capacity and lower cost are certainly in the offing.
Although telematics will develop primarily on the basis of technology,
Gillette also raises a number of social issues, such as privacy and intrusion,
that may be created by or constrain the technology.
Brooks points out that telecommunications infrastructure is a different
problem from all of the others addressed in this book. It is not a problem
of decay or lack of investment. The problem is the shortening of the life
cycle of the technologies and what to do in the face of the richness of
opportunities. Moreover, substitution among communication technologies
does not seem to be as significant as symbiosis. The question is how the
technologies fit together. Indeed, customers are interested in the service
and do not concern themselves with whether their voice is carried by
copper or silicon. Yet, certainly there is competition within communication
technologies, with copper wires, satellites, and optical fibers or electrons
and photons battling for niches and market share.
Distributive effects are of central importance. What is the relation be-
tween high technology for a few and the service available to the many?
Is there a trickle-down effect? Are developments in communications tech-
nologies a force for hierarchy or equality? Will they allow or encourage
dispersion over forces for centralization and economies of scale? Will
telecommunications attain a pattern of hubs and spokes similar to air travel
and tend to reinforce the hierarchy of urban centers? In turn, what will
be the impact of modern telecommunications on the configuration of the
city itself?
Brooks reports that Japan is experimenting with regional development
centered on the telecommunications infrastructure. The Japanese are build-
ing experimental cities of about 200,000 people with wideband commu-
nication, videotext, and interactive systems. An interesting question raised
by Brooks is whether there are meaningful ways to assess the volume of
service in telecommunications. Is saturation in the offing? Do we have
insatiable appetites for transmission of information in contrast to areas
such as water, energy, or transport in which saturation annears to be a
valid concept, albeit at high levels?
--r r
Hanson stresses the importance of the changing context in which our
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ROBERT HERMAN AND JESSE H. A USUBEL
infrastructures operate. In the case of water supply, we need to be as alert
to problems arising from outside the systems as we are to internal ones.
Hanson emphasizes that at least two external factors, the pollution of
groundwater and the climatic changes caused by man-made emissions of
greenhouse gases, may be critical. By expanding an energy infrastructure
for burning coal, oil, and gas, the main sources of greenhouse gases, we
may be undermining our planning for the water infrastructure.
At the same time Hanson notes that forecasts of water demand have
not been reliable; estimates have often been overblown. We noted earlier
the finding of an almost constant level of per capita demand over four
decades in Austin. In addition, estimates of costs to replace water supply
systems based largely on age have been unreliable. The age of water mains
is not firmly correlated with failures, as Marland and Weinberg also
discuss.
Water was perhaps the first infrastructure around which civilizations
were built, for example, the hydraulic civilizations of Mesopotamia and
China. Water is unique and of primary importance. It has often been a
reason for, and an instrument of, war. Hanson proposes that there must
be real progress in technology (for example, desalinization) and in insti-
tutional arrangements for its distribution or there will be conflict. In the
United States there is enough water overall, but not locally and every-
where. In many other parts of the world, especially where watersheds are
divided between two or more nations, the outlook for adequate and eq-
uitable distribution of water in the context of a changing and perhaps
deteriorating global or regional environment is not encouraging.
In the area of wastewater, Bernard B. Berger similarly stresses the need
for a systems view. Planning needs to be more and more comprehensive.
There are some extraordinary successes in this area, for example, Chi-
cago's Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP)- a sewer and water overflow
system that makes use of underground storage reservoirs. We speculate
that such systems will be adopted by other cities over the next century so
that, like subways, they are integral components of most major cities.
There are enormous political and financial obstacles to constructing such
systems, however, and in the meantime there is an urgent need to work
on various related aspects incrementally.
Large, bold solutions for waste disposal are not only expensive but
inappropriate in some situations. In addition, the technical "solutions"
of one generation may not be acceptable, scientifically or otherwise, for
succeeding generations. For example, Berger reports that the view that
"dilution is the solution" is no longer held; neither is it acceptable to use
sewage sludge as fertilizer, because of fears about toxic substances.
Cities have been the innovators in waste disposal. One concern is how
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CITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
19
the increasingly dense but less politically organized populations that are
filling so many areas, for example, coastal regions, will address problems
of wastewater treatment. Will higher levels of systems integration, for
example, regional plans, become necessary?
C. William Ibbs and Diego Echeverry describe the need for and ex-
amples of technological progress in the construction industry. There is
tentative evidence that productivity growth in construction industries is
lower than in other industrial sectors in the United States. Factors such
as complexity, uniqueness, and size of projects, managerial complacency,
poor labor-management relations, and governmental regulations have con-
tributed to the absence of an innovative environment.
At the same time there has been an explosive growth of competition
among firms from many countries for infrastructure projects in all parts
of the world, including the United States. A large number of vendors are
available to do infrastructure work on a global scale. Historically, certain
technologically advanced countries have designed and built (or supervised
the building of) infrastructure systems. The British, for example, were
responsible for building railroads all over the world, from India to South
America, in the nineteenth century. Now many more nations appear to
have skilled construction enterprises, and it may not be necessary to be
a world economic power to compete for such contracts.
Ibbs and Echeverry identify several promising areas for research that
could contribute to improved infrastructure in many modes: materials,
monitoring and sensing technologies, nondestructive evaluation and test-
ing, construction methods, robotics, management approaches, and data
bases for management.
Marland and Weinberg discuss the longevity, mortality, and morbidity
of infrastructure systems. Rather than dwell on the decay and death of
systems, they point out that a surprising number of systems live longer
than anticipated and thus give free benefits to future generations. This is
true of some dams, power plants, bridges, and roads. Their chapter is a
first attempt at a deeper demography of infrastructure. Many more such
studies are needed. Marland and Weinberg identify three factors that
determine the lifetime of infrastructure. Systems wear out. They become
too expensive to maintain so that maintenance and replacement are not
feasible. They are superseded by better alternatives.
Marland and Weinberg also note the permanence of routes and the
eternity of sites. Even if roads and plants decay, their routes and the sites
on which they are located appear to have immortality. It is easier to widen
roads or add to sites than to obtain territory for new infrastructure. The
man-made backbone of our society is probably well established and un-
likely to change.
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ROBERTlIERilIAN AND JESSE H. AUSUBEL
Marland and Weinberg hypothesize that immortalization and future
uncertainty make for smaller, more decentralized units. If the perception
of obsolescence is strong, then the amount that is worth spending in the
first place is limited. Research and development in materials should lead
to longer life without additional capital investment. In what cases should
we design for immortality? Marland and Weinberg conclude with the
fundamental observation that we should design in a way that structure and
life expectancy are optimized for an evolving role, incremental change,
and periodic replacement.
The chapters in this book show vividly that the overall problems of the
physical infrastructure and the human activity associated with it present
both an overwhelming and an inviting task for researchers and practicing
engineers. We are confident that creative into. ds can be effectively made
immediately in thinking globally about the area. It is also imperative to
move toward a style of infrastructure research in which more effort goes
to thinking about the meaning of specific questions concerning smaller
problems considered in broader contexts. The infrastructure appears as a
system with fractal qualities, reproducing its essential features in a hier-
archy of levels ranging from the global to the individual. Ultimately, we
would like to attain a unified appreciation of the functioning of the entire
infrastructure system and understand where it is headed. To use the phrase
employed by Lees and Hohenberg, we would like to understand cities as
systems and the systems of cities.
Such an appreciation requires a broader and deeper education for many
more individuals who study, design, build, operate, and manage infra-
structure systems. More of our engineers must also be historians and
sociologists, and more of our city planners must understand fundamental
trends and insights deriving from technology and the behavioral sciences.
It is our belief that the stronger forces in U.S. culture continue to move
our society in directions that emphasize self-reliant, and sometimes at-
omized, structure. Our overriding goals are often to provide great auton-
omy and higher levels of consumption for the individual. Inevitably, much
of our group character derives from the summation of the resulting in-
dividual behaviors. There are many positive features to this trend. For
example, it contributes to the development of an infrastructure that pro-
vides considerably better for the aged and the handicapped. At the same
time, to use Thomas Schelling's (1978) phrase, there are unwanted macro-
consequences from micromotives. Indeed, we believe this is the essence
of the problems of the infrastructure systems that are in crisis in the United
States. For example, everyone is free to have a car and drive where they
choose, and at liberty to make traffic jams. The central challenge is to
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CITIES AND INFRASTR UCTURE
21
improve the imagination and effectiveness with which we address longer-
term, collective needs and retain a balance with individual possibilities.
The infrastructure is us. Like a seashell or a coral reef, it is an expression
of the organism, a history of our lives and the technological and social
evolution of our societies. It is a genetic reminder that we are what we
were and will be what we are. We should not allow the infrastructure to
develop only on the basis of individual utility and short-term measures of
cost and benefit, or narrowly measurable attributes that are tractable with
current analytic tools. We require longer-range goals of a creative and
inspirational kind that blend technological and aesthetic considerations.
The future quality of life is to some considerable degree in our hands
when we debate decisions about infrastructure. Are beautiful structures
ever obsolete?
REFERENCES
Duhl, L. J. 1986. The healthy city and your health. Health Promotion 1(1):55-60.
Schelling, T. 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: Norton.
Tarr, J. A. 1984. The evolution of the urban infrastructure in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Pp. 4-66 in Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure, Royce Hanson, ed. Wash-
ington, I).C.: National Academy Press.
Wittfogel, K. A. 1958. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
air transport
