Above: A collapsed bridge in Washington State, 2013. Credit: Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times, via Associated Press

Here is a brief excerpt from John Schwartz’s insightful review in The New York Times of Rosabeth Moss Kanter‘s latest book, Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead, published by W.W. Norton & Company (May 2015). To read the complete review, check out other resources, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

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We seemed to be going in circles.

In the winter of 2012, I was in Nanjing, China, on a journalism fellowship. On our first trip out of the city to see shiny new technology centers, stadiums and university campuses, we repeatedly passed what appeared to be the same subway construction site: a gigantic bridge crane, earth-moving equipment and swarms of men working around a long trench. Was our driver lost, or was this the Chinese equivalent of “Groundhog Day”? In fact, multiple crews were completing segments of each line simultaneously so that the extensive system could be completed within a few years. I couldn’t help thinking of New York City’s Second Avenue subway line, decades in the making and still unfinished.

Can America move forward without Chinese authoritarianism but with common purpose and will? Those qualities were once in plentiful supply, as the interstate highway system shows. Restoring the nation’s drive is the theme of “Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead,” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor and corporate leadership guru. When our bridges crumble and our roads are clogged, when buses don’t get people to their jobs, when goods can’t speedily reach markets — and when we can’t agree on the kinds of big projects that could untangle such jams — the economic promise of the nation dims.

This is not just a book about repairing our ailing roads, bridges and railways. Kanter’s ambition is broader and deeper: She wants Americans to address the fundamental issues of how our cities work. In books like When Giants Learn to Dance (1989), Kanter taught corporations how to be nimble in times of change. Now she wants to get the country’s citizens to do the same: to hop on a bike or take mass transit, to find ways to reduce our dependence on cars. Her recommendations, if realized, could make America more efficient and more environmentally sound, with greater economic opportunity and the health benefits that will flow from these investments.

But getting there requires leadership. Kanter lauds local officials like Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and former Mayors Manny Diaz of Miami and Michael Bloomberg of New York, who accomplished things with energy and persistence — and without getting bogged down in political wrangling. “Infrastructure has no ideology,” she writes. “Bridges either stay up or fall down.” (Kanter has nothing to say about politicians like the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, whose administration’s best-known infrastructure innovation involved punishing political enemies by blocking traffic lanes to the George Washington Bridge.)

How to pay for her ambitious agenda? Kanter champions public-private partnerships like the one that built the billion-dollar Port Miami Tunnel, which takes trucks moving back and forth from the port without snarling downtown traffic. Thirty years in the making, it nonetheless shows what can be done.

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Here is a direct link to the complete review.

To learn more about Kanter and her work, please click here.

John Schwartz has covered climate change, infrastructure and other topics for The Times. He is the author of Oddly Normal: One Family’s Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality, a memoir, published by Gotham Press (2013).