Tag Archives: infrastructure

Why Portland’s Public Toilets Succeeded Where Others Failed

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For the residents of Portland, Ore., taking a whiz in a public toilet is not just a matter of necessity. It’s an act of civic pride.

That’s because the city is home to the Portland Loo, a unique, patented outdoor bathroom that inspires such worship in its fanbase you’d think that Steve Jobs himself had designed it. This adoration comes despite the fact that the 24-hour loo was built to be as inhospitable as possible. This toilet does not want to be loved, but in Portland, it is No. 1 (and, presumably, sometimes No. 2 as well).

[Source: The Atlantic Cities]

The design definitely solves most problems that plague the public toilet.

Infrastructure in India: Infrastruggles

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For the past half decade India’s infrastructure industry has enjoyed a Sea Link moment; a blast of growth when one could imagine that the private sector could deliver all the new roads, bridges, power stations and airports that the country needs so badly. The government says the boom will continue. Over the next five years it predicts that infrastructure investment will reach a new high relative to GDP, with some $1 trillion spent, half of it by the private sector. The trouble with this rosy prediction is that the balance-sheets of many Indian infrastructure firms are as potholed as the roads they resurface.

[Source: The Economist]

After the tremendous growth India enjoyed in the past decade, hope it has something more than malls to show for.

Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure: A National Study of Employment Impacts

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Overall we find that bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located. Pedestrian-only projects create an average of about 10 jobs per $1 million and multi-use trails create nearly as many, at 9.6 jobs per $1 million. Infrastructure that combines road construction with pedestrian and bicycle facilities creates slightly fewer jobs for the same amount of spending, and road-only projects create the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1 million.

[Link to Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure: A National Study of Employment Impacts]