This is a simplistic take. European and East Asian democracies build infrastructure far faster and cheaper than the U.S. Often with even more stringent safety regulations and higher standards of quality.
The question we are tasked with answering is: why?
Basically all of them, and at 1/2 to 1/10 of the cost. Spain, Italy, the Nordic countries, and Turkey are all much more efficient at building infrastructure than the US.
Spain is the outlier for fast/cheap/good, but I hear that even Italy has gotten its act together, and the recent Rome subway was done quickly and cheaply. The Nordic countries also have a good reputation. England is pretty bad/comparable to the US in speed and cost.
I'll bite. He is probably talking about Hongkong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China. They all build infra much faster than the US. If we move south, then Malaysia and Singapore also build very fast. For Europe, France builds much faster than the US, but it is more centralised.
Tokyo standards for residential are legendarily low. People demolish and rebuild when they buy a home because nothing is built to last even a moderate amount of time.
Obviously (or I guess not so obvious since I am writing this) that is because of a different density of workers, architects, general contractors, engineers for vastly different biomes in the United States than in Europe. Europe has way more people (more than twice as dense) in a similar geographic area (far less diverse features) so the data and practices honed by one are more efficient and have greater economy of scale despite all of the red tape we share. Nothing really that interesting.
Or you can just go with the simple stupid answer of corruption as if Europe isn't its own cesspool.
I don’t think this is obvious or even necessarily true. Europe has many things going against it as well, language barriers, split markets, generally being quite a bit poorer than the US. Moreover it doesn’t explain the performance of East Asian countries at all.
I don’t know that biome relevance is particularly relevant given that major US cities are not usually where major weather extremes happen. We are not talking about skyscrapers in Death Valley or Nome.
What do we actually need to build? We have plenty of buildings to shelter people, but use them roleplay career professionals. More than enough roads and highways.
Plenty of farmland. Maybe could use some hospitals.
A real need to rebuild post-world wars seems to have become some mind virus we have to constantly crank out mega projects.
Can we get over the ridiculous hallucination we need to “drill baby drill” and grind through all the resources to goto Mars? You and I will be dead before that’s tenable let alone implemented… can we let the future sort itself out a bit?
Why do we still buy into the story of post-war shell shocked paranoids who spent decades huffing leased gas fumes, expropriating the world from everyone else dropping democracy bombs.
Decades of television as a carefully curated propaganda pipeline has messed the last generation up.
Population is expanding in many US cities faster than they are building houses. With houses we need to build schools, stores, parks, offices, and a long list of other things that an expanding population will use more of.
Old infrastructure wears out, and often it fails to meet modern standards and should be replaced (ex old houses often cannot be insulated to modern standards, old bridges we now realize were not built strong enough). Many have for various reasons concluded that some of what we have built in the past was a mistake and so we should tear some things down to replace with something else. (ex replace highways with mass transit)
While we don't need to build or rebuild everything we did in the past, there is still a lot of things that if we would build our life would be better.
esperent|2 years ago
You just basically named two continents and said they build faster than the US and you're accusing someone else of simplistic takes?
Which European country builds infrastructure faster than the US?
pchristensen|2 years ago
Alon Levy is the most accessible source for this kind of cross-national comparision. https://transitcosts.com/ and https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/03/we-gave-a-talk... is a good place to start.
klooney|2 years ago
https://pedestrianobservations.com/ and the less feisty https://transitcosts.com/ are the canonical sources on comparative infrastructure costs.
etblg|2 years ago
throwaway2037|2 years ago
ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago
I remember staying at the Shinagawa Prince, three years in a row, and it overlooks that big-ass office park, on the other side of the station.
One year, I look out, and there’s a huge empty lot.
The next year, there’s a steel frame, for several buildings.
The next year, the lights are on, and the buildings are obviously occupied.
Also, their standards are very high. They weather massive earthquakes, quite well.
drchickensalad|2 years ago
cpursley|2 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-txmGH11sh0
https://www.rbth.com/travel/335939-moscow-metro-big-circle-l...
And this is all under massive sanctions and a less democratic and more corrupt system.
hoseja|2 years ago
soperj|2 years ago
rootusrootus|2 years ago
birdyrooster|2 years ago
Or you can just go with the simple stupid answer of corruption as if Europe isn't its own cesspool.
AbrahamParangi|2 years ago
ClumsyPilot|2 years ago
Ah yes, Norway and Greece are known for having the same climate.
The temperature range is literally 100 degrees Centigrade - record in Greece ks 48 Degrees C
Record in Norway is -51 degrees
bobthepanda|2 years ago
bradDonniger|2 years ago
Plenty of farmland. Maybe could use some hospitals.
A real need to rebuild post-world wars seems to have become some mind virus we have to constantly crank out mega projects.
Can we get over the ridiculous hallucination we need to “drill baby drill” and grind through all the resources to goto Mars? You and I will be dead before that’s tenable let alone implemented… can we let the future sort itself out a bit?
Why do we still buy into the story of post-war shell shocked paranoids who spent decades huffing leased gas fumes, expropriating the world from everyone else dropping democracy bombs.
Decades of television as a carefully curated propaganda pipeline has messed the last generation up.
bluGill|2 years ago
Old infrastructure wears out, and often it fails to meet modern standards and should be replaced (ex old houses often cannot be insulated to modern standards, old bridges we now realize were not built strong enough). Many have for various reasons concluded that some of what we have built in the past was a mistake and so we should tear some things down to replace with something else. (ex replace highways with mass transit)
While we don't need to build or rebuild everything we did in the past, there is still a lot of things that if we would build our life would be better.