lizzzyyy100

 "China is set to build 70 international airports in ten years, while Britain prevaricated on a single runway." ( Tony Blair,  a utobiography ) The legacy countries of what used to be called the industrialized world seems to have a terrible time getting major public works projects done: A brand-new $6 billion Berlin airport is sitting idle for $16 million every month because it hasn't been able to pass the fire protection inspections since its completion date in 2012(!), six years after ground-breaking.  Berlin: For five years a complete airport without people and planes The Second Avenue in New York was so long in the making with so many stops and starts that one doesn't even know what to count as the  begin of construction. The first phase got completed now, but with a cost of $ 2.7 billion per mile of rail people wonder if the second phase that is slated to cost $ billion will ever be built.  Baltimore's Red Line light trail project was estimated to cost nea...

The debate about whether the suburbs are dying has been going on for some years with convincing arguments for yes and no. But the accelerating demise of  America's large retail brands puts the debate into overdrive and fills mainstream media with alarm. Are the suburbs really dying? NPR's Morning Edition was asking this question this week again in light of Business Insider 's series titled "The Death of Suburbia". An ever larger mass of big-box corpses is littering the uniquely American commercial corridors of America where gas stations, fast food joints, car dealers and big boxes ferment into that universal ugliness which the writer and sprawl observer Howard Kunstler euphemistically dubbed the "geography of nowhere." Ailing mall in Baltimore County (Photo Philipsen) Gloom is setting in. The suburban retail corridors are used to a high rate of mortality and short life expectancy.  But the death of the big boxes is even more existential than the death of...