Infrastructure as Identity Politics

When bridges, pipelines, and transit lines become stand-ins for values, identity, and moral positioning, debate shifts from “Does it work?” to “What does it say about us?”

Activists and political actors leverage these projects as cultural symbols—turning technical questions into identity battlegrounds. The result: compromise becomes betrayal, and facts about cost, efficiency, or safety take a back seat to the optics of belonging and opposition.

The CORE Take: If you let the conversation get framed as identity instead of infrastructure, you’ve already ceded the argument.