Move Lib/E: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead

by Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Heather Henderson (Reader)

In Move , Rosabeth Moss Kanter offers bold solutions to move our transportation infrastructure into a cleaner, faster, and more prosperous future. Americans are stuck. We live with travel delays on congested roads, shipping delays on clogged railways, and delays on repairs, project approvals, and funding due to gridlocked leadership. These delays affect us all, whether you are a daily commuter, a frequent flyer, an entrepreneur, an online shopper, a job seeker, or a community leader. If people can't move, if goods are delayed, and if information networks can't connect, then economic opportunity deteriorates and social inequity grows. We have been stuck for too long, writes Harvard Business School professor and bestselling author Rosabeth Moss Kanter. In Move , Kanter visits cities and states across the country to tackle our challenges-and reveal solutions-on the roads and rails, and in our cities, skies, and the halls of Washington, DC. We meet a visionary engineer and public servant spearheading an underwater tunnel in Miami to streamline port operations and redirect constant traffic from the city center. We see mayors partnering with large corporations and nimble entrepreneurs to unveil parking apps, bike-sharing programs, and seamless Wi-Fi networks in greener, more vibrant, more connected cities. And we learn about much-needed efforts-such as dynamic tolls on highways and fees based on vehicle miles traveled-to reduce our dependence on the outmoded gasoline tax in our new electric car age. It all adds up to a new vision for American mobility, where local leaders shape initiatives without waiting for Congress to act, and ambitious companies partner with governments to tackle projects that serve the public good, create jobs, and improve quality of life while providing healthy sources of investment. With unique insight and unrivaled expertise, Kanter gives us a sweeping look across America, revealing the innovative projects, vital leaders, and bold solutions that are moving our transportation infrastructure toward a cleaner, faster, and more prosperous future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Transport, Economics, Urban Planning, Technology, Audiobook

Audio CD

First published May 11, 2015

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

(I've rethought my gushing review a bit. The prescriptions Kanter makes for infrastructure are spot on. But my fear is that they might be used in other areas where big data can be, and is, applied wrongly, especially in the area of education. I recently read an article by an expert on Finnish education where they rely on small data—valuing individual relationships between teachers and students as assessment tools or balancing the doctor-patient relationship between big data opportunities to determine treatment options without destroying the small data connection between each patient and doctor. We must use to big data to serve societal needs, but we can't let it obscure small data in human connections. If we can do that, Kanter's ideas can be even more valuable if put into practice.)

Kanter’s argument in Move expands the definition of American infrastructure. She explains why grassroots advocates are needed to fulfill its promise to organize and motivate policymakers to make it a national priority. Creative, integrated, and responsive types of infrastructure are essential to address national challenges in the economy, healthcare, education, social mobility and quality of life. But, as Kanter makes clear, it is about much more than roads, rail and air travel. Kanter argues infrastructure must harness and integrate these with emerging modes of transportation by connecting them with innovations in communications and information technology.

“The average household spends 19 percent of its budget on getting around, according to the Federal Highway Administration.” Virtually everything we do is dependent on transportation. Infrastructure either makes life more efficient or maddeningly frustrating. The bulk of the book details the various options between these poles. These are centered mostly on urban settings. But, as Kanter makes clear near her conclusion, ideally solutions to these problems must be seen as regionally-based and the role of national policies should be to join together regions and the rural areas connecting them.

Transportation options are much more numerous than we might initially imagine. We can look to Europe, China and Japan to see how application of the latest technologies can be combined into seamless transportation options incorporating safe and efficient speedy trains, light rail, air travel, shipping, busses, automobiles (including shared and limited use), parking, bicycles and that old nugget, walking. In the United States there is no overwhelming national strategy to address transportation infrastructure. Although Americans have pioneered innovation in freight rail, air travel information technology and fuel-efficient cars, each happens in relative isolation. A great opportunity exists in the application of Big Data (in medical research and treatment as well as transportation infrastructure); the ability to aggregate and make sense of information overload to find positive applications useable and useful to people.

Kanter urges a focus on “action ranges along the three R’s: repair, renewal, and reinvention” but asks “where is the sense of urgency?” She rightly answers her question by citing obstacles in building cooperative political, regulatory and public-private partnership mechanisms to support planning, funding, and implementation of infrastructure strategies and projects.

I agree with Kanter that the biggest obstacle to overcome is the concept of silos—interest groupings that tend to prioritize issues from narrow, self-serving points of view. Silos can be based on political views, geography, economic interests, and generations. For example, in infrastructure: road builders may oppose rail interests; urban planners may dismiss rural priorities; or car drivers may oppose the creation of biker and pedestrians friendly zones. Kanter makes a compelling argument that every constituency must see beyond their trees and realize that everyone would be more successful by focusing on the needs of the proverbial forest.

Kanter concludes with six prescriptions, the last of which is for citizens to be informed and voice their priorities, not only in politics and government, but in the private sector as well. She notes that “Silos, narrow interests, and fragmentation mute outrage.” Interestingly, Kanter comes to much the same conclusion that Carl Sagan did when he wrote about the importance of civic education and engagement in the last paragraph of the last book wrote, The Demon-Haunted World : “If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if citizens are educated to form their own opinions, then those in power work for us…With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit.” These words kept ringing in my ears as I concluded reading Move. I’m convinced that by addressing the infrastructure issues Kanter illuminates, we might all experience “a certain decency, humility and community spirit.”

[Meepspeeps · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book got my attention. By p. 12 I wondered about reading further, given "the USA is better at entrepreneurship than at joint action that requires public leadership to forge consensus." Duh. I forged ahead and became quickly annoyed at repetitive references (e.g. Nigeria "third world" condescension) and the author's big ego phrasing "my student," my this, Harvard that. Early on she avers that it takes more than big government,* yet virtually all solutions or steps forward require strong public leadership and more notably, political will. On this point she excels: peeps have to insist that USA transportation infrastructure be updated and funded. She motivated me to learn more about her quintuple win: how many lives would be saved, what cost savings, what level of congestion reduction, what pollution reduction, what economic growth and job creation would occur in my local area if peeps here supported a coordinated and funded "mobility plan" across all transportation modes. But her featured example took 30 years! This is not motivating. If you want to suffer through sentences such as "public-private multistakeholder coalitions can set priorities, find synergies across efforts, and leverage existing assets," read this book. Otherwise, elect more millennials to public leadership positions and get MOVING!
*I define "big government" as politically active USA peeps using their voices, votes and $$$

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

We know this. We know that modern infrastructure in other countries surpassed the United States.

This book examines superior road, rail and air as well as digital superhighways and political will around the world. In the United States, the author looks at the institutional legacy that caused us to fall behind as well as some projects that ignited quickly and became successful, such as shared-bike programs in cities.

Countries that outperform the United States, the author writes, show great faith in their governments and allocate public money for public works at the national level. Other countries enjoy better systems because of their priorities and politics.

As one example of an outdated system, writes Rosabeth Moss Kanter, national defense goals sixty years ago shaped an infrastructure and transportation era whose legacy still defines American society. Maintaining that interstate highway system, imagined three generations ago, sucks dollars and life blood out of transportation budgets everywhere.

Chicago received comprehensive attention from the author. Like those in most cities, the streets in Chicago were designed decades ago and are ripe for reimagining. Gabe Klein became Rahm Emanuel's transportation commissioner four years ago. His new priorities put pedestrians first, followed by transit users and cyclists.

If only we could get away from politics, laments the author. In short, the American dilemma is politics, not money, she wrote. Investment decisions need separation from political calculations. It's a matter of leadership, concludes Kanter, who chairs the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard.

To create leadership for change, she suggests that we vote for people with a nonpartisan agenda for transportation and infrastructure. These new leaders need to understand Kanter's continuum of infrastructure action: repair, renew, reinvent. But, along with that, we need a sense of urgency to regain our leadership in the world.

Kanter is an author of best-sellers. But this book would benefit from the sharper pen of a reporter or journalist. Kanter's preface as well as her chapters about rethinking cities and political will stand as the strongest sections. Some interesting discussions in here, but too much of this is an institutional slog. Three and a half stars.

Move: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead can serve as a complement to other books that draw a practical vision as we rethink our cities: Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time and The High Cost of Free Parking. About a hundred years ago, urban America began evolving toward autocentric cities, a big planning and policy mistake. Here's an excellent book about how that happened: Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book after hearing the author speak at the conference of the Municipal Art Society in New York this year. While Kanter provides some good perspective on the role of new leadership in developing new paths forward for infrastructure in the 21st century, by and large the work rarely provides anything more than a generalized overview of transportation challenges. Ms. Kanter lauds praise on certain projects, leaders, and industries, while overlooking significant issues and drawbacks. For instance, she praises MBTA's Beverly Scott at length, though just this past winter Scott was removed from her position at MBTA following the well-publicized breakdown of Boston's public transit system following record snowfall. Kanter celebrates the freight rail industry as a model of innovation, sustainability, and "quintuple wins", although she herself states that 40% of freight volume is coal, and the recent boom in freight business has been driven by the shale oil boom in Canada. How can an industry that is so reliant on dirty energy be celebrated as innovative and sustainable? Kanter doesn't even mention the frequency of oil train derailments, leaks, and explosions, and the Lac-Megantic disaster is treated as a mere historical footnote. Her writing can also be contradictory- on one page, she suggests focusing urban transit resources on expanding service to underserved areas (such as building infill stations), but then immediately thereafter endorses building more airport-transit connectors, a type of transit infrastructure that fundamentally prioritizes wealthier travelers and businesspeople, and is infamous in the US for being intentionally designed to avoid serving low-income and minority neighborhoods. Kanter's writing on the importance of vision, innovation, and new leadership structures is certainly appreciated, but ultimately her contribution to the discussion on transportation challenges in this century breaks little new ground.

[Aaron Barnett · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problems of American infrastructure are quite numerous, and deserve far more attention than they get, and for that I applaud this book. However, there absolutely must be better treatments out there (If you know of one, please put it in the comments!). I attended, to my everlasting chagrin, an upper tier business school as an undergraduate, and the writing in this book reminds of all the intellectual shortcomings I witnessed there.

The most central problem is that the book presents quite a bit of data, but ultimately declines to take a clear position on what is best or how to proceed. Essentially, the message of the book is that we should do more of everything that works. In my view, however, more of everything means more of nothing in particular. That unwillingness to commit to a real thesis is very frustrating.

Secondly, the book is very focused on quantifiable, and for the most part, financial measures of success and failure. You will find long lists of dollar amounts and ridership numbers and miles of track laid. What you will not find is any treatment of the other factors at play in the deterioration of American infrastructure, specifically political and social factors. If you can't count it, it's not in this book. In my opinion, that will leave the reader with a severely compromised understanding of the issues, if they take this book totally at face value.

Third, there is a really credulous ear lent to the voice of industry, and little, if any, lent to other important voices, such as that of government. The author is clearly a person who moves in the higher levels of the commercial sphere, and is none too shy about trumpeting that fact. Executives of infrastructure companies are lent a very sympathetic ear for their thoughts, which are seldom questioned or challenged. I'm not here to minimize the role that private industry needs to play in revitalizing American infrastructure, but this book does not make any effort to counterbalance their claims and needs with those of others. The book is underpinned by an abiding faith that what is best for these companies will be best for America. That is idea that needs a lot of exploration and justification, rather than being woven into the fabric of the book without a second thought.

Finally, and this is more of a stylistic complaint, the writing itself lacks any sort of art or subtlety. Eight examples of a point are often used where three would do. Three adjectives are used where one well chosen noun would do the job. There is a feeling of," Well, we did the research to dig up this factoid, lets find a place to stuff it in there!"

Overall, the book may be interesting as a meta-study of what the mind of a management consultant looks like. I suppose you could also take it as a meta-meta-study of my personal frustrations with Business School, as a institution. But as an analysis of what is wrong with American infrastructure, and what can be done to fix it, I think this book falls short.

[Dylan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This feels more like 279 pages of the author trying to humbly brag to everyone all the people they know and boards they sit on, and thanks to that a book "criticizing" America's infrastructure policy ends up shockingly positive. At least in intended tone, the average reader will almost assuredly feel gross at the near publicist levels of flattery handed onto a few people here. You'd learn more in an afternoon Google search about both America, the world, and your local infrastructure issues and lots of good ideas on how to fix it than you do here and more efficiently than this boring, surface level writing will give you.

If you want more substance than that blurb I will provide here. I don't blame an author (writing in the mid-2010's here) for missing on predictions if the process is good and here it's extremely hit or miss. The miss on the impact of driverless vehicles? Understandable. The pumping up of a private bus service that rapidly collapsed in the US? Some techbro on Web3 levels of lacking critical analysis. Another great example is the waxing and waning on the potential of Segway. Somehow everything but the weird scooters fault it failed to revolutionize urban travel is amazing Content.

"Lead" in the title also isn't an accident. That's Kanter's bread and butter and it shows. Outside the absolute surface level thoughts on infrastructure or base level statistics thrown at the reader to try and get them to convince themselves there's some authority here the author always comes back to leadership (usually in someone she was schmoozing with at the C-Suite or high political levels). Not that it's inherently bad but it's marketed as an infrastructure book not a leadership one, I could've avoided my time if it was done as the later.

Outside that, the few phrases the author thinks are profound enough to repeat throughout have the depth of thought that attracts college freshman for reading an 1800's political thinker. You get the sense of her own self importance and confidence in solutions that would've been clear then weren't feasible and which have turned out to not be in the decade since. It simply drowns out the few good bits of thought in it to make it not a worthwhile use of your time. Surprising for someone who spends so much time in the last third here emphasizing presentation of infrastructure ideas to the wider public.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is full of dense research, but lacks any real pragmatic solutions for re-building infrastructure. The chapters are not organized well and text seems to meander causing the reader to lose focus easily. The final manifesto in chapter 7 does not discuss any issues of design which is a missed opportunity. As an architect, our cities are desperate for an investment in public infrastructure. We must expand the definition beyond roads and utilities and begin to consider civic buildings and landscapes as public infrastructure. This book seemed to promise more than it delivered. A renewed technical and economic approach to finance and politick infrastructure is only part of the approach. If we are to rethink, reinvent, and rebuild America’s infrastructure a multi disciplinary design approach is just as critical.

[Aliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important book, a broad topic but hard to read. It felt more like a recitation with not enough space to go fully into the stories behind the projects. Everything felt glossed over.
On the other hand maybe it isn’t necessary to mention Harvard university every page, or the accolades earned by the protagonists...

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full of generalities, cliches, name-dropping, and undisguised admiration of command and/or bureaucratic directed economies, this book has little to offer. A few good case studies, but otherwise a waste of time.

[AJ Fajnzylber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good background, not particularly insightful

[Timothy Liu · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book. There's some interesting facts and tidbits about infrastructure in there, but the author strikes me as too idealistic and unrealistic to take her ideas very seriously.

[Turgut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book! 👍

[Jake Small Reads Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Fred Fletcher-Fierro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw Ms. Kanter on the Daily Show and am interested in learning more about our infrastructure problems here in the US, and compared to other countries. "Move" reads like an encyclopedia. Yes it is full of facts but there is no narrative that compels me to keep reading. Also, "Move" is very wordy and reads slowly. My brain had to work overtime just to make it through a whole page without wanting to put it down.

There is plenty of boastfulness from Ms. Kanter in "Move" if as a reader your into that sort of thing. At one point in the book on pg. 31 Kanter writes, "We see even today the economic benefits of train and subway stations; I still regret not having bought investment property in a slightly seedy area about to get a subway extension." Sorry that you didn't make that investment Ms. Kanter. Your book would have been perfectly fine without stating how well off you and that people who live in that seedy neighborhood should be so lucky to have a subway station because of your investment.

I made it page 33 and stopped.

[James Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overall. Subject that doesn't inspire but is shown to be interesting and once getting into the details about what could be done and what other countries are already doing with transportation, it is actually kind of exciting. Sometimes the generic leadership/management lingo took over (e.g., synergy, innovation) which, I think, conveys almost no information. The book was also very optimistic, which is good for this subject and for its intended purpose, but I felt it would have been more beneficial to have a more balanced approach to some topics. For example, I was swayed by The Glass Cage's arguments about the problems in driverless cars. There's nothing there that can't be overcome, but there are serious issues that should be addressed in all discussions of this upcoming and inevitable technology. Nevertheless, I learned things from this book and that's my main goal in reading anything.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impulse pick off the library's new releases shelf. Kanter makes the world of American infrastructure very accessible. Her theory is that good infrastructure projects can produce what she calls "quintuple wins" - economic, social and environmental benefits. She surveys various modes of transportation and covers a lot of different kinds of innovation happening within them. The sections on freight rail, bus rapid transit, and the Miami harbor tunnel were particularly enlightening for me. The book was dry in places but definitely gave me some new perspective on infrastructure issues within my own city and region.

[Colette · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It's time to think differently. It's time to shape new expectations about who we are and what we can become. Let's take the idea that mobility is opportunity, and that we're in a mobility race, as an impetus to find common purpose. Let's start a national conversation with dialogues in every region to build support for action. And let's not delay. We don't want to be late for our appointment with the future."

[Samuel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Barely scratches the rust.

[Katherine Lavelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty good read for a book about infrastructure!

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important analysis of a critical topic, and a way to frame the issues that may gain traction.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great overview with a variety of examples of projects that have tried new approaches and the successful results that may serve to motivate future infrastructure investments.

[Du · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars. This book is really well done when you consider the amount of transportation and infrastructure related books available. It does a solid job of isolating issues and histories of various modes of travel. The downside for me is that there is a lot I've read and I find it hard to learn too much new. There is a very solid overview of the needs that transportation, or mobility as the author encourages us to reframe the realm as. This makes sense and I think that, in the long run is a positive call to action.