Allison Arieff is the editorial director of print for MIT Technology Review.

I feel like all of America looks at infrastructure kind of the way a negligent homeowner looks at their house. “Yeah, the roof’s kinda leaky, but we’ll give it another year.” Invariably what happens is you’ve waited too long, your whole house floods, your insurance premiums go up, and it costs you three times as much to fix your roof–because you waited. Writ large, that, to me, is how we deal with infrastructure. We just wait and wait, people fight over it, it gets more and more expensive, something happens, and then it’s an emergency, and the labor costs are more expensive. And people rush, and they make mistakes. There’s no regard for it. There’s no respect for how important it is.

Notes and references from this episode:

@allisonarieff - Allison Arieff on Twitter

MIT Technology Review - home page

SPUR - home page

“Allison Arieff: Riverfront Q&A” - by Stu VanAirsdale, Sactown Magazine

Adam Neumann’s latest big idea? To become America’s biggest landlord - by Lauren Aratani, The Guardian

“The future of urban housing is energy-efficient refrigerators,” by Patrick Sisson, MIT Technology Review

“Los Angeles Enjoys Its New Bridge a Little Too Much,” by Shawn Hubler and Soumya Karlamangla, NY Times

“What Happened to the Great Urban Design Projects?”, by Allison Arieff, NY Times

This Bridge Will Not be Gray, by Dave Eggers and Tucker Nichols

“The Magic of Empty Streets,” by Allison Arieff, NY Times

“Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That,” by Allison Arieff, NY Times

Joan Brown retrospective - SFMOMA

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