Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 32
• Support afordable child care and school infrastructure that will allow parents (primarily women) to return to work; and
• Expand access to services that help keep residents and workers healthy; for example, funding community health clinics
can deliver lower-cost, accessible services for a community’s uninsured and hard-to-reach populations.
Ongoing Infrastructure Defciencies and Needed Improvements for
Resilient Communities
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the State of California a C- in its 2019 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,
which reports the conditions of 18 categories of infrastructure systems that afect local and regional economic development
initiatives.13 In practical terms, economic development professionals, community stakeholders, and elected public oficials
generally think of the term “infrastructure” to include roads, bridges, the electrical power grid, water, and wastewater treatment.
Because successful businesses require adequate infrastructure services, a community’s infrastructure status is a critical factor
in business location decisions. But a limited focus on traditional infrastructure is too narrow to address a community’s economic
development needs in its eforts to recover from fires, floods, pandemics, and other natural or human-caused disasters.
Going forward, communities should add social and business infrastructure systems to the foundations of essential
infrastructure systems to improve the economic wellness of residents, community members, and their families. The essential
social infrastructure systems that have been neglected and ignored for decades include broadband services that can deliver
internet access for all residents; adequate, safe, and afordable housing; equitable access to transportation services, childcare
and pre-school education; and access to health care services. Both structural and social infrastructure must be in place to
improve a community’s economic wellness. These social infrastructure systems are described in the following sections.
A limited focus on traditional infrastructure is too narrow to address a community’s
economic development needs in its eforts to recover from fres, foods, pandemics, and
other natural or human-caused disasters.
Broadband
Broadband is a critical infrastructure system required for businesses and residents to access the internet and the flow of data
that supports the 21st century economy. Broadband internet services are delivered by several technologies, summarized below.
• Fiber optic technology carries massive amounts of data at high speeds using pulses of light through strands of
fiber encased in cable. Businesses that utilize and transmit large amounts of data typically need access to fiber optic
technology.
• Wireless broadband (Wi-Fi) connects a home or business to the internet using radio signals instead of cables. The
current state of the art Wi-Fi technology is 5G, which is not as fast as fiber optic but suficient for most home and business
use.
• Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) transmits data over traditional copper lines. This technology has become relatively
obsolete for business use.
• Cable delivers high speed internet access over the same coaxial cables that deliver pictures and sound to a television.
• Communications satellites provide internet access and are ofen the best option for rural areas where other services
are limited or unavailable.
13
See https://infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/california. The 18 categories of infrastructure systems identified by ASCE include aviation, bridges,
dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, ports, public parks, rail, roads, schools, solid waste, stormwater, transit, and
wastewater.
24
CALED | Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook
