Nothing betrays the adolescent nature of American society — its heedless emphasis on the present moment; its revulsion at the very idea of long-term thinking — than our decaying infrastructure. Not surprisingly, things decay faster in New Jersey, where Hudson waterfront piers and other structures less than twenty years old are crumbling into the river.

Hoboken’s tale is a variation on themes heard around the country — politicians who preferred cutting ribbons on new projects to taking care of old ones, governments that spent their way into debt even when times were relatively good, and new executives taking office and finding that things were much worse than they realized.

There have been similar problems in other towns along the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, conceived as an unbroken strip from the Bayonne Bridge to the George Washington Bridge, but they have been most pronounced in Hoboken.

“It seems almost criminal that it’s come to this,” said Helen S. Manogue, president of the Hudson River Waterfront Conservancy, which promotes the walkway project. “It seems like nobody allowed for what a brutal environment the river is to build in — not the towns, not the developers, not the engineers.”

If you want to know where all this will be taking us, if we don’t decide to grow up and take responsibility for the future, you can always watch Mike Judge’s Idiocracy.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 at 10:30 am.