I am interested in efficiency in all aspects of personal and community life. I believe the infrastructure of a city has a direct and powerful impact on the efficiency of all individual and business endeavors within or through the city, and therefore should be a focal point of (re)designing and (re)engineering cities.

The reading and lecture focused my interest on infrastructure by clearly demonstrating the importance of roadways, building systems, internet connection, and power distribution on the social hierarchy and sense of “place.” By eliminating or degrading one of those four subcategories of modern infrastructure, one is monumentally increasing the challenge of social and economic progress in that area. Although infrastructure inequality is commonplace, and in some ways necessary, for our capitalist society (imagine Penobscot, Maine, a village of 1200, with the same level of infrastructure as New York City) I believe there are basic cost- and effort-effective methods to improve infrastructure in most cities.

My own experience in cities stems from my hometown of Moline, Illinois, population ~45,000. Although Moline is a smaller city, we are part of a group called the “Quad Cities” (a misnomer, since there are five major cities). The greater Quad City region encompasses nearly 250,000 people, and, being the largest population for more than an hour in any direction, likes to think of itself as a larger city. I’m not sure how the infrastructure in my “city” compares to Portland or even New York, though I look forward to investigating it throughout the semester!