China quietly builds, America noisily deliberates: why Barrington is not Beijing

CHINA, as anyone with a television now knows, builds big. This can have a huge human cost. For the Olympics, neighbourhoods were razed and families displaced. America, by contrast, scarcely builds at all, investing 2.4% of GDP in infrastructure compared with 9% in China. And on the rare occasions when projects are suggested, they are often met with noisy outrage.

Take the suburbs of Chicago. Barrington, Illinois is not Beijing. Last year Canadian National Railway (CN) announced that it would buy a suburban railway, an effort to divert freight traffic from Chicago. But in trying to avoid the Charybdis of the city, CN met the Scylla of suburbia. The Surface Transportation Board (STB), which must approve the deal, has never seen such outcry. On August 27th hundreds protested in Barrington. On September 9th the fight moved to Washington for a congressional hearing. A new bill would make it harder for the STB to approve a merger that does any local damage. Some call it nimbyism; others, democracy.

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Posted by boyang at September 11, 2008 10:24 AM