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Reader's view: On infrastructure, Duluth can learn from Italy

I recently finished a two-week "villages-of-Italy" tour that made me reflect on street-repair and other infrastructure issues facing Duluth. How have Italians managed to preserve buildings and streets (many paved with bricks and/or stones) that a...

I recently finished a two-week "villages-of-Italy" tour that made me reflect on street-repair and other infrastructure issues facing Duluth. How have Italians managed to preserve buildings and streets (many paved with bricks and/or stones) that are not only centuries old but, in some cases, millenniums old? And here we are in Duluth preparing to tear up Superior Street's bricks after just 30 years.

What do Italians know that we don't?

Moreover, Italy has clean tap water; sewers seem to work; despite having more cigarette smokers, there are fewer discarded butts; and recycling canisters are attractive and color-coded so even children can identify glass, paper, plastic, etc.

Italian roads were seemingly without potholes, providing pleasant, smooth rides - even through the Alps. Signage was excellent; rotaries were standard in both villages and larger communities. While traffic can be heavy, with narrow, winding roads, there was no observable road rage.

All this, again, invites the question: how do Italians do it? Who makes the decisions and is then responsible for appropriate execution? Is it superior product and/or craftsmanship? Whence the funding and the costs for such infrastructure challenges?

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The Italian emphasis seems to be on preservation versus our push in the U.S. for "new and improved." Duluth's infrastructure process seems haphazard, lurching from one idea to another. I am not an advocate of central planning, but might we not learn from others to be more efficient and innovative with relation to Duluth's infrastructure challenges?

Tom Wheeler

Duluth

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