Are Programs to Help Dislocated Workers Effective?

This paper talks about the effectiveness of job retraining programs for displaced workers. It is a fairly long paper so I've cut quite a bit out of it to present the highlights. If you are interested in this topic, I encourage you to read the entire paper (and also "Does job training pay off?" cited below):

Just how effective is our expanding public system for helping dislocated workers?, by Ronald A. Wirtz, Minneapolis Fed: Take two aspirin, and find a new job in the morning. Historically, that's been the advice to workers facing layoffs. Grab your bootstraps. Pound the pavement. Good luck. ... But as globalization continues apace, so has society's anxiety over the job dislocation commonly associated with it. ... Layoffs are “very traumatic” for workers ... and many are having trouble adjusting to new realities of employment. After being laid off, some workers will “sit on unemployment waiting for the world to snap back to normal.” It rarely does, and many workers find themselves ill-equipped to compete for new jobs that come close to replacing their old salaries. ... Is this gut-punch a fatal blow ... While the immediate effect of layoffs on individual households is surely great, most economists argue that such job dislocations are actually a backdoor wellspring of economic growth. Layoffs allow the economy to reallocate resources (including labor) from mature, declining firms and industries to growing, healthy ones. This job churn—the many jobs lost, and new ones found—ultimately makes the U.S. economy more competitive and, in turn, prosperous.

But that claim rests on a matter that doesn't get a lot of attention: our ability to rechannel dislocated workers ... to new job opportunities that are advantageous for both new employer and dislocated worker. Traditionally, dislocated workers have had to find their own way to the next job opportunity. But as the economy's job churn has increased over the last decade, ... What's evolving slowly ... is a public system of job-matching services for those workers not able to do it on their own. Government programs for these workers appear to be improving ... But they've also been hit with stinging and evidently well-founded criticisms about their tepid performance and questionable long-term effects. Equally important, ... redundancy becomes an issue: Public programs are offering services already available from a rapidly growing and sophisticated job-matching industry in the private sector.

Typically, dislocated workers need or seek help in three basic areas: wage insurance, which acts as a temporary fill-in for lost job income; job search, which includes hands-on activities like resume writing, interview coaching and career counseling; and skill training, which improves job-matching prospects. Each of these areas draws public and private responses of varying degree and sophistication. Wage insurance ... has been handled almost exclusively by the public system since Congress created Unemployment Insurance in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act. ... The only wage insurance offered by the private market comes in the form of severance pay, which typically goes to a small minority of laid off workers. Workers in need of other job services—specifically, search and training—will find a variety of private and public options at their disposal. For example, job Web sites like Monster.com have exploded with the advent of the Internet, complementing traditional job-search standbys ... Private staffing agencies (otherwise known as temp firms) also help unemployed workers find their way to the next job...

On the public side, myriad government programs help workers search for and obtain new jobs. This safety net is truly a bureaucratic morass of programs, resource streams and guidelines. Funding is modest at best and, it turns out, so are results—likely one reason that the majority of workers bypass such programs. The largest program geared specifically toward permanently laid off workers is the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), ... The program got its start when Congress passed the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 at the behest of President Kennedy, who sought redress for thousands of workers laid off as a result of growing automation.

(That same year, the Trade Expansion Act began the tradition of helping workers displaced by foreign competition, offering cash assistance and training through the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. TAA remains in force today and is the next-largest program for dislocated workers, but eligibility is narrow, limited to those who can prove dislocation by foreign competition. The program has received particularly poor evaluations from a number of government agencies and academic studies.) ...

Even with these caveats, the WIA deserves praise for the simple reason that before its creation, no comprehensive effort was made to help dislocated workers of all stripes get back on their feet. Still, it's difficult to say how well the WIA is performing. Virtually no evaluation is given to core and intensive services. Maybe more important, the utility of publicly subsidized worker training—still the programmatic heart of the WIA—is not quite the slam-dunk it might seem. Most evaluations lean toward positive, but just barely (see “Does job training pay off?”). ... [T]he WIA has often met or exceeded its performance benchmarks, ... But ... [t]hese results were not much better than those achieved by workers receiving only core and intensive job-search services. Job training apparently had little independent effect. ...

Other important program aspects remain largely overlooked in terms of evaluation. Two industry experts ... pointed out that programs are often heavy in infrastructure (like staffing and office space), leaving little money for training. The state source pointed out that retraining costs per job placement can reach into the thousands (averaging $4,500 in the source's state), despite the fact that many clients typically received just three to four weeks worth of training. “You know those people aren't getting that [full monetary] amount of training. ... It's ridiculously expensive.”...

Some argue that large pieces of public programming for dislocated workers are redundant, given the wide job-matching services offered in the private market. ... For now, private and public systems each have a different client focus, revealing something of a tiered service market. Staffing agencies ultimately work for employers... Lower-skill and other “not readily marketable” workers end up in public programs. ... Still, there are enough similarities between one-stops and staffing agencies to suggest the possibility of greater overlap in the future. ...

The WIA is currently up for reauthorization, ... One of the main proposals is to simplify the funding labyrinth for programs serving dislocated workers, a maze not uncommon to programs that develop over the course of decades. ... Once you add up the various funding sources from this confusing labyrinth, “there's a good pot of money out there” for dislocated workers, according to Golembeski. ... The problem, he says, is that his office spends “an awful lot of time” coordinating these many funding streams because each comes with its own eligibility requirements and program rules. The WIA reauthorization is proposing ... to fuse funding streams and eliminate idiosyncratic guidelines ...

Whatever changes are made in coming years to the WIA, anyone expecting a perfectly designed public safety net for dislocated workers doesn't have a good sense of the countless moving parts and circumstances that public agencies have to deal with but have little control over. For example, layoffs in rural areas are particularly challenging for any government program, given stagnant job growth and generally lower wages. If they're unwilling to move, workers have to wait—for a long—time, in some cases-for new job opportunities. Numerous program officials also acknowledged a certain amount of stubbornness and a sense of entitlement among workers when it comes to program services. Still, despite all the flaws and caveats, most people with experience in or knowledge of previous job training regimes consider the WIA a step forward. ...

I'm not ready to give up on helping displaced workers. As explained here, I beleive we owe it to those who are hurt, through no fault of their own, by the economic system we have chosen as it continues its never ending march toward greater efficiency. However, a fair reading of the evidence suggests that existing retraining programs have not had a large positive impact, certainly not as large as hoped. However, rather than conclude that these programs will not work, we can build upon the parts that do work, avoid repeating mistakes, and continue to try to find how best to help those who are negatively affected by the dispassionate and inevitable forces of globalization.

Comments

[cm]

The problem is, retraining generally only works for occupations that require fairly generic skill sets, and where job-specific training takes only up to let's say 1-2 years. This pretty much sounds like the definition of jobs that can easily be offshored, unless they have to be performed on a domestic location, in which case they are more likely than not service jobs.

Otherwise in e.g. R&D, but also more complex service jobs, the division of labor has become so complex, and educational requirements so high and specialized, that it takes 5 years of a college education (preferrably on a fresh highschool foundation) plus several years of practical work experience to become fully effective.

You can retrain a buggy whip maker to make transmission belts, or a coach upholstery maker to make upholstery on car seats, but good luck transforming a software engineer into a biotech researcher, or an electronics lab technician into a biotech lab technician. Or a manufacturing line supervisor into a software project manager, etc.

That's not to say that "low-level" jobs are fungible, and "high-level" jobs are very special, this is about lead time to productivity. And it is no accident that people typically go to college in their 20's, and not later. The capacity to absorb a lot of new stuff goes down, for one thing for physiological reasons, but also as people "settle" into and get used to a situation in life. I can probably recover most of what I learnt in school and college with small effort, but with many things I don't have nearly the level of working knowledge that I used to have let's say 15-20 years ago.

[anne]

There is little evidence that other than in response to immediate fierce local political pressure there is concern in this Administration for assisting dislocated workers.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/opinion/14mon2.html

November 14, 2005

Stonewalling the Katrina Victims

Public outrage is clearly growing over the federal government's woefully inadequate program for housing the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Last week a group of survivors filed the first of what are likely to be several lawsuits alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to live up to its responsibilities. The recovery effort has been subject to blistering criticism from conservative, nonpartisan and liberal groups alike.

The same basic question is this: Why did the Bush administration focus on trailer parks built by FEMA - which is actually not a housing agency - instead of giving the lead role to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has so much experience on this issue?

Many, including the Brookings Institution and the conservative Heritage Foundation, urged the administration to switch on HUD's famously successful Section 8 program, which gives families government vouchers to find decent housing in the private real estate market. That program worked well after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. But the White House - which seems less interested in conservative philosophy about how to make government programs work than with simply cutting the amount of money that gets spent on poor people - has been working feverishly to cripple HUD and destroy the Section 8 voucher program for years....

[me]

First of all, there is no job retraining benefits for IT, jsut manufacturing.

secondly, 3 years ago IBM sent my job to India. I am still waiting for economists to say what to get retrained for. The only jobs created in the US for the last 5 years are real estate.

[anne]

The most important assistance for dislocated workers is often to be found in a first or second degree. There can be significant opportunities through education, from accounting to teaching to ...

[cm]

anne: Sure, a laid off 40+ year old can spend a few years (?) to get an accounting degree. Then what?

Teaching requires not just subject-matter skills, but also psychology and personality traits working with kids & adolescents. Not everybody is for that.

And is it really that we have too few teachers and accountants? With teachers, I'd say the problem is more education funding, less staff scarcity.

One thing we may need is nurses for the upcoming wave of aging boomers. I worked in a nursing facility for a short while, tough job, also skill wise.

[ken melvin]

A few "new jobs" often replace a lot of old jobs. Even if the old workers were retrained for and given the new jobs, these would only be about one-fourth of the needed 'replacement' jobs.

[anne]

Higher education of course can be quiet expensive in this country, even if there is moderate assistance, and people have different tastes and backgrounds for education. As with health care the cost of college and graduate educations should be compared seriously with costs in other countries. But, assuming costs can be handled, quite an assumption in various instances, education is a prime answer to worker dislocation. Teaching or accounting simply came to mind, for no special reason for there are many many possible careers.

[anne]

Mark Thoma is much interested in education costs, and I am quite puzzled and annoyed at poor answers about why costs are so high here.

[anne]

About real estate related job creation, I am interested in the extent to which workers changed fields to work in a real estate related field and we will find how well the job creation in the combined fields holds over the coming years. I have long wondered and been hopeful about the degree to which real estate expansions in Europe could cut unemployment.

[anne]

The paper by Ronald Wirtz lacks enough narrow definition to be as useful as I would wish. Much more evaluative precision is needed for proper program or more likely partial program evaluation,

[Lord]

What growing, healthy areas have there been? Only construction, finance, real estate, and healthcare, and even these have been marginal at best. While retraining could be adequate for low level, low skilled people, it is much less effective for high level, high skilled people, as they already have a large investment in now obsolete education, training, skills, and experience. Further large investments make little sense since the period to recoup them has greatly diminished. It is a little late to get into the first three areas. Healthcare is really the only sensible possibility. Matching and training really aren't effective if reasonable jobs aren't available.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Retraining for what?

working at Home Depot?
working at Wal-Mart?
serving at Red Lobster?
mowing grass for rich people?

The economists and politicians who are in favor of creative destruction need to explain to the blue collar folks why the back end, i. e. creation of new valuable jobs, is not working.

Spending a day or two at the Toledo bankruptcy court should be mandatory training for an aspiring PhD in econ.

So 53 year-old former factory workers are supposed to mow grass for a living? Who needs training for that? They learned at the homes they used to own, before foreclosure.

Job training programs are crap, except for the government employees who run the job training programs. Any surprise there?

My blue collar and many of my white collar friends are taking a beating while Wall Street and Washington are drowning in lobster and fine wine.

Maybe we could all become lobbyists?

[save_the_rustbelt]

Oh, and let's not forget age discrimination.

Unless employers are really desperate (hiring nurse aides, for example) anyone over 40 is marked.

Sorta like the movie Logan's Run, the old folks evaporate.

[anne]

Please, I am not arguing but there are possible careers to read for with assistance. How about going to law school? How about becoming a dentist? Becoming an electrician, plumber, carpenter, designer? Getting a real estate license has been done so often, I am reluctant to mention this. Mortgage financing, also done? Nursing in all specialties? Why not teaching? We do need a more vibrant job market, but there are possibilities of all sorts for women and men of differing ages.

[save_the_rustbelt]

It is estimated that 1/3 of new construction jobs created since 2001 have been taken by illegals. Most roofing and carpentry in the southwest and southeast for certain (exclduing unions shops).

Having worked with several hundred nurses in various settings, I can tell you not many displaced factory workers have the emotional gifts to do that job, let alone the skills.

Law school? Many lawyers are barely getting by while the really good 30% are making a fortune.

[nicolasroys]

to anyone who got the temptation to say that job losses are causing so much troubles to workers that we should discourage firms to destroy job by increasing employment protection,...
I suggest to read the following :
---
Clark, A., F. Etilé, F. Postel-Vinay, C. Senik and K. Van der Straeten, 2005, “Heterogeneity in Reported Well-Being: Evidence from Twelve European Countries”, Economic Journal, 115, C118-32.
---

This article shows that the more rigid employment
protection is, the less secure workers feel !!!!!!
A simple explanation is that in countries where employment protection is rigid, job losses are really costly because it is really hard to get out of unemployment.

[anne]

Mark Thoma:

For a paper that Olivier Blanchard does not cite, consider this effort by Enrique Garcilazo and myself, published in the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review in 2004. Using a new data set, we completely undercut arguments linking European unemployment to the national labor market institutions of large countries.

To get the paper, click on the link at my name below.

Title: Inequality, Unemployment and the Policy of Europe, 1984-2000

Abstract:

This paper reconsiders the problem of unemployment in Europe at multiple geographic levels and through time from 1984 to 2000. We employ a panel structure that permits us to separate regional, national and continental influences on European unemployment. Important local effects include the economic growth rate, relative wealth or poverty, and the proportion of young people in the labor force. As part of this analysis, we assess the relationship between pay inequality and unemployment in Europe, following the insight of Harris and Todaro (1970) that pay inequalities influence job search. With our own panel of inequality measures derived from Eurostat’s REGIO data set, we find that higher pay inequality in Europe is associated with more, not less, unemployment, and the effect is stronger for women and young workers. There are modest country fixed effects for the UK and Spain, but large effects are found only for small countries. These are all negative, a fact that may be due partly to large past emigration in some cases, and partly to strategic wage bargaining in others. Apart from this, distinctive effects at the national level are few, perhaps indicating that national labor market institutions are not the decisive factor in the determination of European unemployment. Changes in the European macro-environment are picked up by time fixed effects, and these show a striking pan-European rise in unemployment immediately following the introduction of the Maastricht Treaty, though with some encouraging recovery late in the decade.

James Galbraith

[anne]

http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/papers/utip_25rv3.pdf

Unemployment, Inequality and the Policy of Europe:
By James K. Galbraith and Enrique Garcilazo

Galbraith@mail.utexas.edu garcil@uts.
The University of Texas Inequality
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78713

[nate]

education and retraining may be expensive due to lower interest rates in the early 2000s. may - not sure

some retraining opportunities are darwinian and not available to people stigmatized by job loss.

some retraining opportunities are not open to older people because the schools or individuals in the admissions process view that, on average, older people will not make as much money and donate to the school like younger students.

retraining and education has become in many instances a for-profit enterprise for the school. see the # & proportion of "private" universities in rankings. schools profit from students. students who do not look like they can return the $s many times over, who can not buy admission, or who do not come from the most desirable constituencies are
1. ignored
2. shut-out
3. directed toward short term solutions
4. steered toward jobs to serve the school and not the student

moving on, i do not think training alone is enough. there has to be relocation assistance and encouragement. tax incentives might help.

strengthening families is another way to deal with this, as well as diversification of employment within a family.

the legal system helps a little bit as well. workers in big layoffs are supposed to be warned at big organizations. there are other things.

[nate]

cartels and collusion may be another reason costs may be high in education (schools do not want to get stuck bidding for students)

http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj14n3-9.html

the relative lack of globalization in education may result in less competition and higher prices for educaiton in the U.S (intl competition for higher ed in U.S. not as stiff as intl competition for the U.S. textile industry)

[ken melvin]

Training more people as nurses, lawyers and whatever would be a great idea if we needed more nurses, lawyers and whatever. If we don't, it means that some nurse, lawyer, or whatever is going to either lose their job or not be able to get a job. The only jobs created by training people are those of the instructors and administrators.

[cm]

anne: "I have long wondered and been hopeful about the degree to which real estate expansions in Europe could cut unemployment."

Huh??? This from you? Well, as somebody pointed out, real estate (construction) produces shelter and/or venues for other activities, but then not really anything other than that, no?

My gut feeling is that we don't have substantial lack of either in Europe. Au contraire, there are a number of "available" buildings.

The only way RE can create "gainful" employment (as opposed to just employment in name) is external financing, i.e. full circle back to foreign-facilitated US debt buildup. Somebody has to feed all those mouths that are engaging in marginally useful activities.

[cm]

Lord: I would try to stay away from the highly judgemental "low level people" thing.

Otherwise, not only do older people have a shorter "amortization" period, but older/experienced people are difficult to deal with, not because of the age, but because of experience => confidence => no-crap attitude, and from the other side difficulty "motivating" them and steering them in specific directions (diminshed manageability). Also no BS about "career opportunity". Hence age discrimination, which is rather a misnomer for "more-life-experience-than-is-good-for-business discrimination".

[cm]

save_the_rustbelt: What say you to my perspective on "age discrimination".

Perhaps I should have said "proxy" not "misnomer".

[cm]

nicolasroys: But in the end it comes down to "musical chairs". When there is enough "business opportunity", employers will hire.

The question is not, do employee protections impact hiring, it is do they impact business opportunity?

The answer is not obviously yes. Obviously to me, that is.

For example, consider that Europe does not nearly have the debt culture of the US. Hence it is much more dependent on exports. The level of exports provides a ceiling on domestic hiring & internal demand.

[cm]

ken melvin: Not sure whether we need nurses now. We will need nurses not too far into the future, when the boomers get elderly. OTOH, we "need" anything only when somebody is willing & able to pay for it.

[anne]

What Europe has is highly subsidized education; what Europe needs are lower interest rates or at least an experiment with lower interest rates. I think housing or real estate has been a remarkable spur in Australia, Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, America, France.... What puzzles me is the seemingly relatively little employment effect in France and Spain. If real estate development is not a boon to a country, that what is Bilbao?

[anne]

CM, you are always thoughtfully interesting and I think carefully before midly disagreeing :)

[save_the_rustbelt]

CM:

I actually like to hire older workers, because of attitudes, work ethic, etc. I know I am different for many, and some jobs (pouring concrete) simply require younger workers. For the most part, I think age discrimination is rampant, although misguided.

By the way, we do need nurses now, as the average age is about 48 and few nurses "work the floor" past 55, due to the physical demands.

My problem is this. If the federal government is going to build our economy by speeding up creative destruction, what happens to the victims of the process?

The economic and social fabric are tearing. The backlash could be ugly.

[ken melvin]

Discrimination whether on the basis of age, race, education, religion,..., is both a means of determining and justifying distributiion.

[save_the_rustbelt]

"to anyone who got the temptation to say that job losses are causing so much troubles to workers that we should discourage firms to destroy job by increasing employment protection,..."

No one wants to change us to a European system, and no one wants to return to making buggy whips.

Can the richest nation in the world provide some safety net for displaced workers? So far, not much.

[ken melvin]

As profits go more and more to the wealthy, how is wealth to be distributed? Taxes. With the demand for labor so low, it has be taxes. The tax money could be used: to hire people to improve infrastructure, teach, produce art, etc., i.e., to make the nation better, more wealthy; as a means of distributing wealth.

[cm]

anne: There is another thing about (central/western) Europe that I did not mention -- its inhabitable area is much smaller than the US, and its population density quite a bit higher. A buildout of low-density housing like in the US, with its space/environmental requirements for streets, freeways, elctricity, water, and waste infrastructure will not work physically to begin with. And no amount of cheap money can buy more of it.

That's also one reason Europe hs stricter environmental regulations -- there is a much smaller buffer of environmental resources to go around and it has to be more stringently protected.

Also much of the regulation is because living of that many people in so little space and "environment per head" has to be more strictly regulated, or will end up as a polluted gutter. Limited transport infrastructure (not much space for that many cars) too.

All of the above also shapes social structures and mindsets.

[anne]

CM

Arguments you make about limits to real estate and related infrastructure development are important to consider. I have no full counter for the time, however New York City has not begun to run out of development potential and Paris is obviously poorly developed as a widening circle is extended to the suburbs. I always have trouble accepting the idea that we are running out of work as opposed to having policy that does not allow for significant work stimulus. Paris, Madrid, Stockholm are surely not nearly finished cities.

[ken melvin]

Slums are prime development areas, so broken sewer mains, antiquated water lines, pot-holed streets, ...

[anne]

Think what a park means, a museum, a library, a theater. Think of better housing, better communications and transportation systems of support; better energy and water and sanitation systems. Think of a continually improving school system. Look at what Stockholm or Melbourne represents in continual development. I watched a Whole Foods market open in a difficult neighborhood and there followed a marked change for the better that continues still. New York is not finished, nor Boston, then why should Madrid be finished or Berlin?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/international/europe/17bridge.html?ex=1261026000&en=d2dccf1bbda57a80&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

December 17, 2004

Above the Clouds, the French Glimpse the Old Grandeur
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

MILLAU, France - Higher than the Eiffel Tower, longer than the Champs-Élysées, the Millau bridge is a triumph of engineering, imagination and will.

For President Jacques Chirac, the soaring butterfly of steel and concrete that spans the Tarn Valley is nothing less than an "audacious" work of art and a symbol of "a modern and conquering France."

No matter that the man who designed the bridge, the world's highest, is Norman Foster, a 69-year-old British lord and perhaps Britain's most famous modernist architect.

The engineers were French. And in a country yearning to recapture some of its historic grandeur, its official opening on Thursday brought a spirit of giddy celebration to this remote region of southern France.

Construction workers on the project whistled and waved their hard hats in a sign of welcome to maiden voyagers. Drivers waved back, honking their horns long and loud. Tourists and truck drivers got out of their vehicles to take pictures, oblivious to the security guards who ordered them to move along.

"This is a work of art that touches all of us," said Thomas Ercker, a foreman who worked on the project for more than two years. "There is only one time in your life you can do something like this. I am convinced that we've created a jewel. I have goose bumps all over."

Patrice Ficheux, the head of a road security company from Lyon, drove four hours with his wife in their 1959 vintage Jaguar to be among the first to cross.

"I wanted to give my car an adventure in the mountains," he said after making the brief crossing. "I had this wonderful feeing of security, as if someone were holding an arm around my shoulder."

Slender, graceful, even fragile-looking, the gently-curving bridge was built in only three years, the product of computer design technology, global satellite positioning and lighter, high-tech materials that shortened the timetable and cut costs.

The deck for the four-lane road is made from a new high grade of steel instead of concrete. Transparent aerodynamic windscreens protect vehicles from high winds and let travelers savor the rugged landscape.

The pale color of the construction allows it to blend with the sky, giving it a transparent feel. At its highest point - 1,125 feet from the bottom of the valley to the top of the pylon atop the tallest pillar - the bridge is more than 50 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower.

"It had to be very light, very delicate, but immensely strong," said Lord Foster by telephone from London. "The driving experience is close to flying. The trip across the valley is like that of a bird."

Millau (pop. 22,000) is best known as a traffic nightmare on an uncompleted highway route from northern to southern France. The 15-mile stretch up and down the valley can take three hours in the summer, breaking the spirit of even the toughest road warrior....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/travel/17millau.html?ex=1279252800&en=2618a22842fa7d75&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

July 17, 2005

A Soaring Bridge Puts an Ancient Town Back on the Map
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

A DELICATE butterfly of concrete and steel, the Viaduct of Millau soars across the sky as if eager to proclaim that no bridge on earth is taller. Yet its arrogant daring can surely be forgiven. It took a feat of engineering and a leap of the imagination to span the rough, rugged Tarn Valley in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southern France.

The result is breathtaking.

The gently curving structure dominating the skyline is best appreciated from a distance. When it comes into view, its appearance is always a surprise.

My favorite perch is a wooden bench at the edge of Peyre, a tiny medieval village a few miles away. From there, the curved white suspension cables of the bridge blend so easily with a blue sky that when the sun is just right, the cables magically disappear, one after the other.

But from almost any angle, the Millau bridge radiates energy. On the approach by car on the A75 from Montpellier, for example, the bridge suddenly sneaks up from around a curve. On the drive along the winding road to the cheese-making town of Roquefort, it abruptly hovers overhead. (The bridge links two sections of the A75, which connects Paris to Béziers, nine miles from the Mediterranean, via Clermont-Ferrand.)

The bridge is more than 50 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower (1,125 feet from the bottom of the gorge to the top of the pylon atop the tallest pillar), with a sweep of one and a half miles.

Its architect, the British lord Norman Foster, used light, ultramodern materials to give drivers crossing the bridge the feeling of flying over the valley. He insisted that the roads used to haul materials and equipment during the three-year construction be covered over so the bridge would be surrounded by unspoiled terrain.

"We want to be like Bilbao and its Guggenheim Museum, so that everything in our town turns toward the bridge," said Jacques Godfrain, the mayor of Millau, who has written a novel about the bridge, "Les Ponts, Le Diable et Le Viaduc" ("Bridges, the Devil and the Viaduct"), published in 2003.

Since it opened last December, the bridge has begun to rid the sleepy region of its reputation as a way to somewhere else. Even for France-weary visitors, the area offers intriguing possibilities for discovery. Some of the sites are little known. References to Peyre (population, 100), four miles west of Millau, for instance, cannot be found in most guides. Besides a magical view of the bridge from the village, there is the long-closed Romanesque troglodytic church of St. Cristofol built into the side of the sheer cliff, and a communal medieval bread oven. Wild lavender bushes line the road. A sign leading into town warns visitors of bats....

[anne]

The question here is imagination.

[cm]

anne: Yes, I fully agree with parks and cultural/educational/living facilities that work and are pleasant to use. That, however, is "social infrastructure", not "real estate". When most people say real estate, the connotation is usually frivilous construction for short-term profit, or taking cuts from trading, managing, and maintaining properties.

The current way of building bedroom communities in the US is even (physically) unsustainable in the US due to traffic patterns and energy demands, and anonymity caused by people living away from social infrastructure.

In addition it is fueled entirely by debt issuance, which will come home to roost, the debt service draining our future of funds to be invested in social infrastructure. Because make no mistake, the creditors won't invest the paid back interest it there.

[cm]

And anne, as they say, they don't make more land, and neither do they make more rivers into which you can dump waste, or forests/vegetation that produces the oxygen that you breathe and soaks up rain water, protecting your city from flash floods.