These days, the two halves of Berlin are mostly indistinguishable; a recent Washington Post article suggests that infrastructure investment throughout eastern Germany has been so successful "that western Germans are grumbling and demanding equal attention for their comparatively decrepit bridges, roads and railways".
The Swedish government recently began a promising competition for a design that would replace a decrepit 1930s-era bringe in the heart of Stockholm with a seamless system of locks, roadways and shops.
The state's engineers and consultants -- haughtily, in the eyes of many residents -- declared the bridge decrepit and recommended that the state build a new one.
Put people to work repairing and rebuilding roads and bridges, decrepit schools and ancient sewer systems.
They envisioned a San Francisco in which the rich live in high-tech, self-sufficient, self-contained towers, above the decrepit city and its crumbling bridge, isolated from the amorphous city.
The story inspired a contribution to the exhibition by architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts that envisioned a San Francisco in which the rich live in high-tech, solar-powered towers, above the decrepit city and its crumbling bridge.
Tailbacks are up by a fifth, as many abandon trains for cars; then there is the decrepit state of roads and bridges, some of which are in such a state of disrepair that commuters are forced to take huge detours to avoid them.
In Helsinki, he asks to be driven to the point from which he can see across the Gulf of Finland to St . Petersburg a shimmering sight passingly eclipsed by the transit of a decrepit tramp steamer: The captain's bridge, and the row of cabins on the deck for crew members and occasional passengers, had been painted white a long time before.
And for the people who live there, this has resulted in decrepit commuter trains and buses, thousands of unsound bridges, 200 hazardous dams and one of the most inequitable public school systems in America.
