Taking Up the Challenge: Dealing with “Redundant, Abandoned, Idled, and Neglected” (RAIN) Infrastructure

Five-year plans and new deals, Wrapped in golden chains, And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain? With the passage and signing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in November 2021, what could be timelier than an examination of the issues surrounding “redundant, abandoned, idled, and neglected” (RAIN) infrastructure? This Symposium Issue of Public Works Management & Policy was conceived on the premise that the physical artifacts of infrastructure no longer needed by society can be a liability or asset (or sometimes both) and several informative case studies are presented herein that describe how the issue has been addressed by different sectors and nations. There are existing and past programs in the U.S. that attempted to address aspects of this issue from environmental clean-up to adaptive reuse of surplus facilities. However, due to the disparate nature of what is covered by the RAIN umbrella, there is no single approach that could be considered a “solution.” The purpose of this brief essay is to provide some context on the scope of the problem, how the U.S. has addressed related issues in the past, and some thoughts on approaches and priorities for dealing with individual cases going forward. First, RAIN is not a new issue. At various times in the past, the U.S. has confronted military bases no longer needed for national defense, contaminated sites from the U.S. nuclear weapons program, abandoned coal mines, surplus school buildings, and