By Cindy Wallis-Lage, Dean Oskvig, and Martin Travers (May 1, 2012)

The once cutting-edge infrastructure that allowed the United States to harness its productive capacity and dominate the 20th century is lagging. The authors of this article argue that the United States must develop more efficient, sustainable, and advanced infrastructure to remain globally competitive. And communities must do the same to retain businesses and attract new ones. To overcome hurdles for advancing infrastructure, a greater understanding is needed of the nexus of water, energy, and telecommunications and how these sectors are intertwined. No lasting improvement to one of these elements is possible unless it is coupled with improvements to the others.