Infrastructure 20090808

In 2005, the City of Ottawa embarked on a social infrastructure project to examine the social elements of public infrastructure.

"Infrastructure is generally conceived as 'hard' infrastructure such as primary roads and water treatment plants. More recently there has been a great deal of interest and discussion about 'soft' infrastructure like hospitals, community and recreational facilities, public spaces, social housing, volunteer networks and community based agencies. The term 'infrastructure' is increasingly coming to include this 'soft' or 'social' infrastructure. This is because such infrastructure increases social cohesion in urban cores, resulting in stronger municipal and national economies."

The goal of the study was to determine how investment in social infrastructure, particularly housing (which is identified in the project's research backgrounder as a key infrastructure in shaping the perception of the quality of places), contributes to the competitiveness of cities.

The research backgrounder also ponders the question, "Why do governments feel compelled to invest in certain forms of infrastructure but leave or re-designate others for private provision?"

Perhaps one possible solution is where the municipality's governing body sits on the political spectrum and the range of use a particular infrastructure asset has. Consider both "soft" and "hard" infrastructure assets like a toilet and sewer, for example. Consider, also, the municipality as a collective of taxpayers concerned (less or more so depending on where the municipality's governing body sits on the political spectrum) about the collective's well-being. An entire city block or neighbourhood of single households ties into a common sewer thereby justifying the collective's expense to create and maintain the "hard" sewer infrastructure to dispose of the collective's waste safely. However, if the collective is more conservative-leaning, it is perhaps more difficult for it to justify the expense of collected taxpayer dollars on the "soft" private-use, single household toilet initiating the sewage, despite the fact that clean, properly operating sewage disposal means overall healthier, and thereby perhaps happier and more productive, members of the collective.