Throughout American history, infrastructure investment has played a critical role in economic development. As the nation moved west, the building of canals and turnpikes, followed by construction of railroads, expanded the field of economic opportunity. Later, investment in electricity and telephone networks facilitated the development of vast expanses of the American landscape that had previously been left behind. More recently, the national interstate highway system and now the continuing build-out of broadband telecommunications networks have enabled the de-clustering of many business endeavors that were once confined to large central cities.

Infrastructure is one of the basic building blocks of economic opportunity. The standard infrastructure package of the economy includes highways, airports, harbors, utility distribution systems, railways, water and sewer systems, and communications networks.

In today's network-centric, innovation driven economy infrastructure also includes university and lab facilities, technology and training centers, export processing facilities, and research parks. These infrasystems - integrations of facilities, technology and advanced socio-technical capabilities - have emerged as key drivers of innovation and the locus of future higher-value industries and higher-paying jobs.

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