In his recovery plan, US President Joe Biden aims to renovate 32,000 km of road, 10,000 bridges, for more than 2,000 billion dollars.
Joe Biden presented in Pittsburgh his stimulus package, more than 2,000 billion dollars . And this is the second plan, the second Biden plan. Because there has already been an envelope of 1.900 billion released in the form of checks to support the purchasing power of Americans. What is striking is the strength of the symbols that the new president wanted to use to push through this vast investment plan of 2,200 billion dollars over 10 years .
He plays on himself as an old president, battered by life, a la Roosevelt and he chooses a region which is an old glory of America, in the process of recovering thanks to new technologies, to announce this plan. Pittsburgh is a working class land, it is America of blue collar workers. It is called the Rusty Belt, the belt of rust . In the 19th century, it was a rich city, driven by the metallurgical industry and the industrial revolution.
But the iron has rusted, the city has fallen asleep. It’s striking when you arrive in this city, you see a series of large ocher metal bridges that tie into the city. You are on a highway where the road is damaged and the corpses of truck tires unrolled like ribbons are lying on the side of the road.
Pittsburgh fell like a stone in the 20th century. America won. But for 20 years, it’s also a city that relies on a very good university, Carnegie Mellon, and the city was one of the first to offer free wifi in the streets.