Neglected infrastructure and weak leadership are eroding the economic viability of major cities.

The Platform for Commerce is the underlying infrastructure upon which a city or region is built. It consists of seven major layers developed over the past 5,000 years: ports and docks, roads and bridges, railroads, the telephone network (voice only), the power grid, airports, and the broadband network (high-speed wireless, fiber, and satellite).

When this infrastructure is strong and resilient, it provides a durable foundation for regional economic viability and long-term sustainability.

As we move deeper into the age of artificial intelligence and robotics, each of these infrastructure layers becomes more—not less—essential. The demands placed on them are increasing, not plateauing. The Platform for Commerce must now support massive data centers and emerging technologies that will define the next phase of economic productivity.

And yet, some leaders in major American cities appear not to grasp the stakes. Critical infrastructure layers have been allowed to stagnate—left idle, underfunded, or simply neglected. These are not optional upgrades deferred for budgetary convenience; they are foundational investments required to sustain economic viability. Without them, decline is not a risk—it is an inevitability.

Consider the introduction of electric vehicles roughly a decade ago. Their rollout exposed a fundamental weakness: many cities lack a power infrastructure capable of supporting widespread electrification. Reliability, redundancy, and resiliency—the “three Rs”—are not abstract ideals. They are prerequisites for a functioning power grid in the 21st century.

No city can realistically offer its citizens a choice between charging an electric vehicle and running an air conditioner overnight. The expectation is simple: both must work, seamlessly and consistently.

The same structural deficiencies extend into the commercial real estate sector. More than 95 percent of commercial buildings are now technologically obsolete. In many downtown areas, low occupancy rates are not a temporary consequence of shifting work patterns—they are a permanent recalibration. Buildings that cannot meet modern standards of resiliency and connectivity are unlikely to regain profitability.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the workforce in 2020, a bifurcated model has emerged. Remote work is not a passing phase; it is an enduring feature of the labor market. As a result, property owners and management firms face a stark choice: invest in intelligent infrastructure—particularly power and broadband—or accept the long-term erosion of occupancy in an oversupplied market.

These same requirements—reliability, redundancy, and resiliency—apply equally to the network layer of the Platform for Commerce. High-speed broadband is no longer a luxury amenity; it is core infrastructure. Without robust digital connectivity, commercial buildings cannot compete in a global, data-driven economy. Upgrades to both the power grid and communications networks are no longer optional—they are baseline requirements for participation in a modern economy.

In 2024, while working on a plan for a next-generation AI data center, I reached a clear conclusion: cities must dramatically improve the resiliency of their power grids if they hope to host these facilities. The scale of demand is unprecedented.

As I noted in a previous analysis, “New demands for a tenfold increase in power, combined with the use of GPUs that consume ten to fifteen times more power per chip, have transformed data center design into an entirely new science.” This shift has profound implications for site selection, both urban and rural. Only locations capable of sustaining this level of energy demand will remain competitive.

What happens when a layer of infrastructure is neglected? It does not simply degrade—it becomes a liability. Some systems evolve into what can only be described as MPBs: Monuments to Patronage and Bureaucracy. These are no longer engines of economic activity but drains on public resources. They employ more people than necessary, deliver less value than promised, and steadily erode regional competitiveness.

The Chicago Transit Authority has, at this point, become emblematic of this problem.

So what is the solution? It is not simply allocating more funding. Without structural reform, additional money will be absorbed into inefficiency. The real task is diagnostic: identify the failures that have degraded performance and correct them with precision.

In Chicago’s case, rudderless leadership has undermined the transit system’s ability to fulfill its core function—moving workers and consumers efficiently into the city’s economic center. As service deteriorates, so too does confidence. And when confidence declines, economic activity follows.

Chicago is hardly alone. Cities like New York and San Francisco face similar transportation challenges, rooted in governance failures rather than resource scarcity. Oversight bodies often operate at a remove from the systems they manage. Board members rarely experience the consequences of their decisions firsthand.

There is no meaningful practice of “Management By Walking Around.” There is, instead, a persistent disconnect between leadership and lived reality.

The consequences are visible—and increasingly difficult to ignore. Incidents captured in widely circulated footage reveal not isolated breakdowns but systemic dysfunction. The impact is not merely reputational. It is economic.

When commuters feel unsafe, they avoid public transit. When consumers hesitate to travel downtown, they spend elsewhere. The cumulative effect is measurable: fewer workers, fewer shoppers, fewer diners—and, ultimately, less revenue circulating through the city’s core.

One particularly telling example underscores the urgency. The incident in question did not occur late at night, when ridership is sparse and expectations differ. It took place on a Monday morning at 7:35 AM—the very moment when a city’s workforce should be moving efficiently toward its jobs.

The question is unavoidable: how much economic activity is being lost—not in theory, but in real dollars—because the infrastructure designed to support it has been allowed to decay?