California’s Fire Recovery: A Test of Our Broken Building System

The interstate highway system, massive dams, the race to the moon—these are the projects that once defined America. Now, that can-do spirit often seems buried under a system where even necessary projects struggle to get off the ground.

Professor Marc Dunkelman, a fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, is one of many academics who recently wrote about our country’s difficulty in building the critical infrastructure we need in his new book, “Why Nothing Works – Who Killed Progress and How to Bring It Back.”

Dunkelman points out that infrastructure projects in the US cost way more than in other developed countries. The extra cost isn’t from materials or labor; it’s the “soft costs” of a long, objection-filled decision-making process that can kill a good project.

“We’re not building big things anymore. That’s because we’ve created a system where there are so many vetoes. No one has the authority to sort of say, here are a whole bunch of costs and benefits to doing this big thing, said Dunkelman.

Dunkelman recently sat down with Jon Switalski of Rebuild SoCal Partnership to talk about the reforms that are needed to enable California and the country to build the roads, bridges, water, and transportation systems that are crucial for a thriving economy.

Find full episodes of the LA Times Studios podcast “Rebuilding LA” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.