Fast

Physical infrastructure projects before 1970 appear disproportionately among rapidly completed ambitious works, such as the Pentagon, built in 491 days, and the question is why. Marc Dunkelman investigated why Penn Station renovation efforts have repeatedly failed, while Philip Howard's foreword claims that US bureaucratic constraints changed in the 1960s. Ed Glaeser, reviewing Lynne Sagalyn's book on Ground Zero, notes that the Port Authority built the George Washington Bridge in 49 months in 1931. Mancur Olson argued that stable societies grow less dynamic over time, and Francis Fukuyama argued that interest groups have made the US a "vetocracy."