Physical Infrastructure as a Challenge for Farsighted Thinking and Action

Developing and maintaining adequate physical infrastructure poses perhaps the greatest challenge for overcoming the widespread problem of shortsighted decisions. Highways, seaports, airports, and other physical infrastructure projects may require a decade or more to construct, and the resources required to maintain these structures often must be secured for many decades. Shortsighted perspectives can lead to the following problems: Desperately needed physical infrastructure development may be postponed indefinitely because the benefits seem too far into the future. The design and construction of the infrastructure project may be compromised in order to provide earlier benefits. For example, some large-scale highway construction projects employ many hand laborers at the expense of the quality and promptness of completion of the road. Poor materials or poor construction techniques may be used in order to reduce short-term costs. Maintenance funds may be neglected at the outset of infrastructure use, and fail to be provided thereafter.