About Build

At long last, America is reimagining and reinvesting in its infrastructure. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 is improving the safety and efficiency of cities, states, and the nation, stimulating long-term economic growth, and strengthening the United States’ global competitiveness. 

But, as economist Sadek Wahba argues in Build: Investing in America’s Infrastructure, the problems facing American infrastructure cannot be solved with government spending alone. Wahba places the challenges facing U.S. infrastructure in a global, historical context, exploring why our systems work the way they do, and how alternative models of investment and regulation might improve our methods of infrastructure procurement. 

Through a series of case studies that bring us across the country, around the world, and through history, Build examines the private water providers of colonial New England, the ports of New Amsterdam, the Works Progress Administration, the Karegnondi Water Authority in Flint, Michigan, the broadband deserts of the American south, and much more. Drawing on decades of academic data on infrastructure outcomes as well as his own experience as leader of an infrastructure investment company, Wahba offers a series of policy recommendations to address the challenges we face – offering an impassioned argument for allowing the private sector, and public-private partnerships, a greater role in reviving the grandeur of American infrastructure.

BUILD Explores

  •  Why the infrastructure crisis is not over – and what we can do to fund US infrastructure permanently

  • Infrastructure entrepreneurs in the Wild West – the private railroads of early America 

  • Who poisoned Flint, MI? The difficulty of regulating government-owned assets

  • Chicago’s nadir, and its rebirth, through infrastructure. Who can own a bridge?

  • The pitfalls of state governments: Governor Ed Rendell’s fight to privatize the Pennsylvania Turnpike

  • Why are few U.S. airports privately owned and run? The collapse of St. Louis’ effort to privatize Lambert International and the missed opportunity

  • Ports are almost always public-private partnerships. How are they regulated?

  • Is broadband a luxury or utility? Public-private partnerships in telecommunications and electricity generation

Why BUILD Now?

As the U.S. enters a new era of strategic global competition, it needs to move beyond 20th century approaches to infrastructure investment. We must think big and embrace innovative infrastructure solutions. Build: Investing in American Infrastructure arrives at a critical juncture: The historic infrastructure investments of 2021 set the country on a promising path, but there is much, much more to do if the U.S. is to reach and remain at the forefront of global development models. Build lays out what needs to happen.