"Forget a bigger stimulus or a smaller deficit—we need to blow up the fundamentals of our economy."
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/economy/76961/richard-florida-reset-recovery-economy-future

We need 'Megaregions' because suburbanization makes US economic growth unsustainable – the US needs a new spatial shift towards the development of megaregions created by a High Speed Rail System.

"From New York's Pennsylvania Station, you can catch a northbound subway train toward the Bronx. Thirty-nine minutes later, it will pull into Pelham Parkway, a dozen miles away. But imagine, instead, that you could hop aboard a Next Generation High-Speed Rail train and in thirty-nine minutes pull up in Waterbury, Connecticut. The aging industrial town would be more swiftly accessible from midtown Manhattan than much of New York City."

That's the alluring vision Amtrak unveiled on Monday morning. The national railroad passenger company imagines a high-speed network that, by 2040, would whisk travelers from New York south to Washington or north to Boston in just 94 minutes.

It's the highlight of an ambitious, $151 billion plan to rework its northeast corridor to meet burgeoning demand.

The price-tag alone makes the plan implausible.

But for the beleaguered rail corporation, which Mitt Romney and Congressional Republicans have suggested privatizing, the vision amounts to an argument for its future relevance and unmet potential."
Could rail lead to a revival in Waterbury, CT?

One promising model is Ciudad Real.

The sleepy Spanish town, nestled midway between Madrid and Seville, boomed with the arrival of the high-speed AVE trains in 1992.

Residents of the two larger cities, drawn by cheap housing, relocated to Ciudad Real, and the surging commuter traffic led to a tripling of rail service. Even better, businesses relocated to the city, lured by the combination of an attractive town, low rents, and easy access to big markets.

Ciudad Real built a gleaming regional hospital, and its fledgling university developed a striking national reach.

Waterbury has much of the same raw potential.

The Brass City sits tarnished by age and neglect, but the charming business district and attractive housing erected during its heyday could easily be restored, and its abandoned factories re-purposed.

In 2010, the census reported a median home value in the city of $156,600. That's not far below the national average, but roughly a third of the figure for the New York Metro area, and a fifth of the median in Manhattan.

Nor has that gap gone unnoticed. Even without convenient transportation, the city has recently attracted a sizable community of ultra-orthodox Jews, lured north from New York by Waterbury's urban density and cheap housing."

Full story:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/07/how-high-speed-rail-could-revitalize-northeast/2576/

Obama's Infrastructure Plan
(Who says the president has no Plan)
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/economic-policy/Documents/20120323InfrastructureReport.pdf

Falling Apart and Falling Behind
http://www.bafuture.com/sites/default/files/Report_0.pdf

High Speed Rail Affirmative
http://debate-central.ncpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/High-Speed-Rail-Affirmative-NCPA.docx.

Housing in cities is unaffordable for average workers to live.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification