Panel 1: Civic Infrastructure
of control, I think it’s a fundamental problem in the US that there is no regenerated public funding that is aimed at competitive economic advantage. We have 34
to find a way that there is not surplus transportation being reauthorized every six years, becoming victim to great ideas every single time it gets reauthorized. We need to secure it and understand that it’s a multi-decade assault. Sarah Williams Goldhagen Let’s focus on that for a minute because that’s something that public-private collaboration could do well. The question is who is going to take on the blame? I mean Felix Rohatyn is trying to do this with this National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) thing, which I don’t think is going anywhere, but… Marilyn Taylor We need to reorient our thinking to mayors who are true leaders and can actually collaborate with the other elective leaders in the regions to make this work. Sarah Williams Goldhagen The commitment now is going to come from mayors, who have a long-term tradition in pushing the development in their particular cities and regions. Guido Hartray Millennium Park, though it’s an interesting and problematic example in terms of how it was done, has actually created a public space in Chicago, a city where very little space is shared by the city as a whole. Now that’s something that is sort of a rediscovery in Chicago, but I think it wouldn’t be a new discovery to a European city. In a European public-private partnership the public has a much stronger hand and I think therefore they can get the public partnership to work for the private but also for the fundamental common good as well.