Mega-projects is a topic that I have been exploring ever since the beginning of my fall semester this year. My previous IDC class, science and technology in New York, delved into this topic, so reading this introduction by Altshuler was relevant to my previous studies. Mega projects in my opinion are always two sided, because ultimately any public development project has to have some financial incentive so that the government can keep going. In his introduction, Alshuler seems to highlight both the business and public side of megaprojects.
Altshuler breaks down the benefit of mega projects to either the major investors or the public. Ever since the 1950’s there has been a trend of focusing more on tactics to “lure major investors” rather than focusing on public infrastructure development. There wasn’t enough information to understand as to why the 1970’s resulted in more difficulty for the government to pass mega projects, however I would like to explore that time frame. I really liked the way Altshuler broke down the concept of interjurisdictional competition by explaining that the government needs private/business investors to continue on this growth coalition. I didn’t realize that governments don’t make profit from essential public facilities such as mass transit and convention centers, and that is why they focus often on more profitable public facilities such as sports arenas.
The issue with government taking profit from mega projects is that there is a thin line of actually serving the community or servicing companies. For instance, in my previous class we looked into hydraulic fracturing for natural gas across America. While gaining natural gas is great for the US economy and is often backed by the US government, this heavily influences the residents of the area where the fracturing takes place. We watched a documentary called Gasland in my class and it was shocking to see the negative health effects this process had on the residents and how little the government and companies did to help/minimize the situation at hand.
However of course there is a non-cynical view, which looks at government growth initiatives as benefit to the public and not for public profit. For instance the public housing project in St. Louis, Missouri called Pruitt-Igoe, was a megaproject that was originally intended to help the people, however as we learned in class it wasn’t a successful project. While the government had only intentions to help the lower class out and to rid St. Louis of the slums, but not having any business/private investors giving them money back, the government stopped the funding of this project causing it to go to shambles and breaking down the city of St. Louis. I believe there needs to be a fair mix between investors and public infrastructure development in this government
Overall, this was a well-written introduction that was easy to follow and applied to all of the things we have learned this semester. In a democratic government there are a lot of players when it comes down to the decision making process, so often I feel the original intent to help the public is lost to corporations that infiltrated our government system. I am interested to see what course my research on Times Square goes.
