Foundations 19 – Infrastructure Space

Concluding panel

A new political framework

The concluding panel is always the climax and the closing of the Forum: The experts sum up and discuss the insights of the keynote speeches and the findings of the workshops. In Detroit, under the leadership of Rolf Soiron, the debate was conducted by Maria Atkinson, Arab Hoballah, Rahul Mehrotra, and Edgar Mora Altamirano – along with the plenum. “If we conducted at interview with everybody in this auditorium,” Rolf Soiron opened the discussion, “there would be three state- ments. Number one: Infrastructure, however you define it, is indis- pensable for the well-being of our civilization. Number two: Radi- cal changes are needed in the way we look at infrastructure and in the way we handle it. Business as usual is no longer possible. And number three: There are areas of infrastructure where we are run- ning out of time for finding good solutions.” He wanted to make sure that everyone understood the full import of these three state- ments, so he offered two figures to illustrate the proportions: The

From left: Moderator Rolf Soiron, panelists Maria Atkinson, Arab Hoballah, Edgar Mora Altamirano, and Rahul Mehrotra.

56