The Brookings Institution’s Robert Puentes takes a look at infrastructure procurement and reaches exactly the opposite conclusions as the Antiplanner. Puentes says that successful infrastructure needs 1. visionary leadership; 2. public sector expertise; 3. standardization; and 4. public-private collaborations.
To the Antiplanner, all of these goals and recommendations are exactly wrong. My recommendations would be: 1. get the incentives right; 2. rely on user-fee driven processes; 3. let hundreds of flowers (or at last 50) bloom; and 4. gradually turn infrastructure planning and management to the private sector.
Leaders follow incentives. No matter how visionary the leaders are, bad incentives will lead to bad outcomes. Get the incentives right and the visionary leaders will follow.
