(Featuring Secretary Rodney E. Slater, Partner, Squire Patton Boggs; Congressman Bill Shuster, Senior Policy Advisor, Squire Patton Boggs; Caren Street, Principal, Squire Patton Boggs)

https://www.afire.org/podcast/restructuringinfracast01/

Much of the way a city works depends on where you are, and ultimately, where you want to go. And this place—where you want to go—is the source of critical questions about our lives within cities:

How can I get there? Can I afford to live there? Is there a job for me there? Am I safe there, and do I have a fair chance?

While many of us knew that our urban spaces weren’t working equally well for everyone, disparities in access, affordability, and opportunity have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and the list of questions between here and there has doubled in size. Meanwhile, builders, owners, operators, and city leaders have an obligation to find answers—while also trying to ask questions of their own.

Some are looking to President Biden’s infrastructure agenda as a potential source of solutions for more accessible, equitable, and economically successful cities. But anyone paying attention to the events at street level since the emergence of the pandemic understands that conditions and opportunities in urban contexts are complex, multilayered, and occasionally difficult to quantify.

As the current infrastructure agenda continues to evolve in legislation, AFIRE Podcast host Gunnar Branson recently sat down with Secretary Rodney Slater, Congressman Bill Shuster, and Caren Street of Squire Patton Boggs—infrastructure policy leaders with combined decades of deep local and national experience—to talk about the state of US infrastructure, and where cities can (and should) go next.