The US faces a huge housing shortage, outdated transportation systems, a dearth of affordable childcare, and an urgent need for substantial clean energy. But why haven’t we been able to build out all of the things we so acutely need? 

Fortunately, these problems are not without solutions. We just need to find them. And for this series, How They Built It, we have. 

Vox has sent some of the country’s best reporters on infrastructure and policy to discover how places are pulling off these deeply transformative projects, ones that can feel so out of reach in much of the US. 

In Sweden, for example, the country has found a secret to making appealing, factory-made modular homes a substantial part of its new housing stock. The sprawling city of Bogotá, Colombia, home to 8 million people, created some of the world’s best urban bike infrastructure. Uruguay made childcare a universal right — and enabled a national system to actually provide it. Here in the US, creative compromises finally just brought the country’s largest renewable energy project online. And on the banks of the Tennessee River, Chattanooga has spun up affordable internet as fast as that in many global tech capitals (operated as a local utility!), which is helping to recharge its economy. 

Our How They Built It package gathers these important success stories and profiles what made them work. In the process, we illuminate lessons that more of the US can extract, to speed the country toward creating a much better future for all of us. 

This series was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting.

• The fix for America’s terrible internet is hiding in Tennessee
• Sweden builds houses and apartments like Lego sets. Why don’t we?
• How the biggest renewable energy project in US history finally got built

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