The town’s compassionate side serves as a different kind of preview, suggesting that ruins can play a powerful role in creating the more supportive futures we need. 

Historian Scott Gabriel Knowles proposes that we think of the “deferred maintenance” of public infrastructures as slow-motion disasters, which sustain the oppression of marginalized and underserved populations. 23 Summers, meanwhile, emphasizes the “debt burden on the next generation,” since the cost of fixing the world compounds over time.