Infrastructure Patterns

Where the Rain Falls

The government has just launched a new website, Invest.gov, designed to provide visual markings of new infrastructure projects across the states and territories.

As Transport Topics reports, the site also “documents private investments of more than $100 million that the administration said its policies helped to spur.”

Aside from having a color scheme that hints at some hybrid of Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks uniforms,  we were struck by how much the dotted infrastructure projects resembled a map of precipitation amounts throughout the nation.

Visually, it’s fairly striking how similarly the amount of projects and precipitation match up. Note in both images the density of green: along the west coast, down through the heartland, and blanketing pretty much everything east of the Mississippi River.

Note also the lighter investment and precipitation in Arizona and New Mexico northward through Montana and the Dakotas.

When they finally caught Willie Sutton and asked why he robbed banks, he reportedly said, “Because that’s where the money is.”

So, when it comes to our two maps, maybe the answer is “Because that’s where the people are.”

Yes, Montana and the Dakotas have people. It’s just that there’s greater population density on the coasts and through the Midwest and in the South.

That translates: We want to grow crops where there’s more precipitation. And more people equals more roads. More roads means more traffic, and that means more need for infrastructure construction and repair.

With a bunch of asterisks. For example: zip code 89005, where Hoover Dam sits, has a population of 14,875 people. Hoover Dam impacts people and communities hundreds of miles removed from that zip code.

At one point or another, the country is connected in similar ways. Which is why an infrastructure project in Boston can and does have a very real impact all along the eastern seaboard and destinations ⏤ let’s say a freight delivery? ⏤ to the west.

Yes, let’s definitely say a freight delivery.