Across the U.S., millions of people lack reliable and affordable water, transportation, energy, and broadband access. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought these underlying infrastructure failures into sharp relief; for Americans who can’t afford their bills, electricity and water shutoffs have become an immediate public health hazard.

In some cases, these critical infrastructure gaps are the result of decades of underinvestment and poor maintenance. In others, they represent a much more direct legacy of harm and deliberate racial and economic exclusion. Many of our existing infrastructure systems—originally designed to foster growth—are now limiting economic opportunity, damaging the environment, and hurting our health. This is especially true for lower-income households and communities of color.

However, within our current pandemic-induced economic crisis is an opportunity to address these structural inequities.

Dealing with our legacy infrastructure assets will require a sequential approach. First, Congress should include dedicated funding for local and state governments in a short-term relief package to support expanded public engagement, strategic planning and analysis, and community-led infrastructure experiments and temporary installations. This funding can both fill major state and local capital planning budget gaps and help communities—the end users of infrastructure—drive the discussion around what should stay and what should go in a post-COVID-19 future. The second phase should provide larger-scale project capital as part of a medium- to long-term federal investment agenda to enable the removal of legacy assets and clear the way for community-led, equitable, and climate-smart redevelopment.

Below are the four key funding areas that can form the building blocks of the proposed approach. All four activities, in sequence, can help policymakers and planners move away from the knee-jerk instinct to seek shovel-ready projects and instead jump-start a sustainable recovery.

Read the full article about rebuilding infrastructure by Shalini Vajjhala and Joseph Kane at Brookings.