Madlyn McAuliffe

When you hear “infrastructure,” most people naturally think of the physical built environment — roads, bridges, buildings. There’s a lot less emphasis on other kinds of infrastructure that are equally as important, like civic infrastructure.

Getting around any megacity as dense and vast as Cairo, Egypt can be a challenge, even for the most able-bodied, well-traveled and well-informed commuter. The plethora of options for transport modes and routes has made it difficult to decode and accurately predict commute times in many places. Let us take the case of Nour, a hypothetical 26-year-old resident of an East Cairo suburb.

The view from Georgia Avenue just as people began to arrive at Open Streets DC. Photo by Madlyn McAuliffe/WRI If asked what they were planning for Saturday afternoon, most residents of American cities wouldn’t say dancing in the middle of the street. Yet on October 5, that’s exactly what many did during Washington’s first ever Open Streets Day, which closed the normally busy Georgia Avenue to all cars for half the day.