Development Tasks for Civil Engineers

Most civil engineers learn to work and, somehow, live with economists at some point in their careers. Often this is not a pleasant experience. I was fortunate to work with a large variety of engineers in different disciplines, and with business and administrative people in transportation, energy, and urban development, before getting to really work with economists, but when it finally happened, it was an experience that lasted for the rest of my active professional life.

The first thing that strikes you in meeting economists is their eloquence: they really know how to express themselves and how to formulate an argument, and the good ones can spot an erroneous conclusion faster than you can say “approximately.” Economists tend to focus on the bottom line and are excellent at questioning things. Many of them like to discuss systems and most love to measure things: “How do you measure and know this is better?” They simply ignore what they cannot measure.

However, the economists I have worked with and for have a keen interest in how events in different places are related: the interrelationship of things, like supply and demand, sensitivity to pricing and to other variables (which they call “elasticities”). The logic of systems is the strength of many competent economists, and that’s why many of them are good conversationalists. They also are familiar with some of the best restaurants and can be good company for dinner: a real pleasure to be with, and great sources of information—particularly about rumors on latest developments, proposed changes in government policy, reappointment of ministers, and such. The best among them are interested in almost everything, have a good head for numbers, and also are interesting people. But don’t let that fool you: they often don’t have a clue about how things work; they rarely have an understanding of design, do not usually care about design, think it’s just another form of planning, and probably consider the design process as one of those necessary chores for technicians, unworthy of intelligent people.

This lack of appreciation for design is among the characteristics we must handle with tact and consideration when we have an opportunity to cooperate with economists in the development process.

Bankers like working with economists, indeed many bankers are economists themselves by training and are perhaps the preponderant employers of economists, believing in them more than any other professionals and depending on them for most forecasts, projections, and advice on investment decisions. But good bankers have great understanding and respect for the work of engineers. To me, however, there was a side to bankers I could barely see as an employee of a bank: the money management side of their work, the problems of liquidity and risk, and the political influences.

But the good bankers are even more pleasant to be with than economists; they are great conversationalists, bound to know the very latest joke about the issues of the day, and, of course, old customers at the best restaurants in town. If they take a liking to an engineer or want something really important, they may even invite him or her to their club for lunch, or (better) to their private dining room in the bank.

Working for bankers in the development field is challenging, interesting, and well-remunerated. There probably is a great difference between private and public banks and I have only worked for the World Bank (formally called the “International Bank for Reconstruction and Development”), located in Washington, D.C. (although not part of the government). The World Bank is a part of the United Nations “family,” was established about the same time (1947), but is an autonomous international entity and has its own board of governors (representing each one of the member countries), who meet once a year and who appoint some twenty executive directors who meet as least once a week, and used to approve all basic policies and each major lending operation. Unlike the United Nations, it does not vote “one nation, one vote,” but rather by capital contribution. When I joined the bank it had a staff of 2,500 and had grown to about 6,000 by the time I left.

During the sixty years of its existence, the bank experienced many changes. It began with a principle focus on post-war reconstruction. By 1960, its primary activities had shifted to development work in the poorer countries. The development focus initially was on elementary education, agriculture, intercity transportation, electric power and flood control/irrigation; cities were considered “overdeveloped” and a problem too tough to tackle, so no lending with an urban development focus was allowed (except for portions of water supply and sanitation). By 1970, the World Bank began to recognize urban growth as an important element of country development and environmental concerns began to be involved. But then, in the 1980s, the bank changed to a production orientation: lending targets were established (by country, sector, etc.) and met, promotions were related to staff performance in meeting these targets, and the character of the bank changed. After the mid-1980s, “structural adjustment loans” became prevalent: these were loans made to governments to implement policy changes on such subjects as taxation privatization, import-export duties, and social issues in areas where governments had difficulties. The official rationale was that these policy issues were more important than projects, but they also facilitated large loans that were disbursed quickly, without the delays associated with engineering and design construction issues. I had retired by the 1990s but remained sufficiently in touch to know that the role of engineers in the World Bank continued to be reduced, so their function was limited to resolving procurement conflicts and ensuring that the general standards of projects were acceptable in international practice. With the turn of the century, the bank was drawn into what they called a “war on corruption,” which so far has not been won by anybody.

In an article describing the World Bank’s “mission creep,” Jessica Einhorn (2001 p.33) observes: “Although the bank has changed dramatically with the times, its mandate has expanded continuously toward more complexity, against ever more grandiose ambitions.”

The complex and interesting history of the World Bank’s operations in projects and programs is covered in many publications available through the World Bank’s Information Center such as Investing in Development by Baum and Tolbert, and Infrastructure at the Crossroads: Lessons from 20 Years of World Bank experience by Sierra (see Suggested Reading).

Working for a bank for a decade or two does not make a civil engineer into a banker. It is an activity, however, in which you learn to talk like a banker, look like a banker, and sometimes are mistaken for a banker. That causes confusion on occasion.

Politicians are great people to work with, particularly when they think you are a banker. In the engineering consulting field, I never had much contact with politicians and remained the tongue-tied designer of interesting projects, unable to inspire or empathize with “the public,” and totally inferior to architects who could invent, design, and promote monuments for mayors, governors, or presidents with astounding political appeal, regardless of economic or other justification. All that changes, amazingly, when engineers are introduced as members of a team of bank staffers. At that point, there is a different tone, a new kind of rapport, even cordiality to which few engineers are accustomed.

This can be a pleasant change, but it has a flip side: you really never know whether the consensus or agreement you reach with other engineers (those on the borrower’s side) is real, or whether they simply want the bank’s money. It’s a little like the beautiful rich girl who asks, “Does he really love me?” Apart from that, I enjoyed the openness, versatility, and eloquence of politicians, even those with a legal background, of whom there were many (politics can really have a humanizing effect).

The mayor and city administrators I had the opportunity to work with, from Bogota, Columbia, to Sao Paolo, Brazil; from Istanbul, Turkey, to Karachi, Pakistan; and the Chilean port cities of Valparaiso and Valdivia, all were incredibly impressive persons, dedicated servants of their citizens and cities, flexible as conditions—political and economic—changed, but steady in their pursuit of objectives and respectful of the professional opinions of engineers, architects, and economists. Never once have I experienced political pressure to change or shade engineering recommendations made by myself or bank-financed consultants on major infrastructure projects. In matters of timing, yes, but then that is the politician’s prerogative! Some may fuss about wording, without changing the substance of an engineering report, others may prefer to write their own press release (which you don’t get to clear) but when the public is informed, when an engineering report is released to the press, that’s always the politician’s choice! No matter how strongly an engineer may feel about his or her findings, no matter how enthusiastic he or she is about that brilliant design solution, the politician decides when it gets circulated, cleared by somebody, or released to the press.

Engineers, economists, bankers, and politicians often need each other and depend on one another to move infrastructure and urban projects from idea to reality. Getting along within the group is often crucial.

The antagonism between private and public sector interests has become so prevalent lately that it may constitute a real problem, not necessarily because of any real conflict, but because of fear of conflict. This may present a major obstacle to rational development in the future, one I believe needs to be addressed with great caution, not confrontationally.

Private interests have an understandable fear of stifling over-regulation or government control, and public interests often fear scandal or intimidation by damaging rumors and bad publicity. This is not always visible, but frequently results in poor interchange of ideas, refusal to share data and otherwise cooperate, or to disclose difficulties which may embarrass politicians or entrepreneurs.

In emergency situations, such as post-war or post-earthquake reconstruction work, I have seen public agencies of various sectors cooperating beautifully with each other, even where they had been unaccustomed to doing so in the past; however, when vitally interested private sector parties could have been invited to collaborate, there was extreme reluctance to include them. The various government agencies concerned with damage repair and planning for reconstruction after a disaster were so preoccupied with their workload and the possibility of losing face by showing publicly there were disagreements among them, that the private companies, which could have helped, were never called in. In my view, this was often simply a matter of not being accustomed to private-public collaboration. Having begun my professional work in the private sector, and with clients in both private and public sectors, I could not understand this being a problem. It was not until I found myself working as a civil servant that I began to understand the public sector’s position.

Many difficulties in public-private collaboration also depend on national customs and traditions; some countries have general tendencies toward secretivity or customs that prohibit the sharing of information with “strangers.” In many places, an engineer from a different country (any foreign expert, for that matter) is not accepted until he or she is really known over time, has had occasion to prove both competency and character, and has established a basis of confidence on which clients can rely when they accept his or her advice. Considering the amount of sales effort to which some countries, particularly the less developed ones, have been exposed over the decades (and the amount of bad advice some have received from abroad), this is not surprising.

More recently, two events have further contributed to difficulties in private-public collaboration. One was the promotion by the World Bank and other development assistance agencies, of privatization, which began in the mid-1980s and is continuing to this day. After decades of effective support for public sector enterprises (port authorities, highway departments, municipalities, water and sewer departments, electric power and telephone companies) the focus on capital transfer and annual lending goals resulted in a preference for short-cuts via privatization and outsourcing, which I have never shared or understood. The slogan, “private better than public,” prevailed and, in some countries, met with success, but to my mind this has only been a partial success, and one achieved at a high price in many places.

Few people in Europe and North America are fully informed of the atrophy and disruption that has occurred in promising and efficient public entities, some which had taken a decade or longer to grow to their recent level of competency and strength. Nor is it generally known how difficult and financially disastrous life has become for the young consulting civil engineers in the private sector of such countries as Argentina, Chile, and Mexico where competent local private firms depend for a living on local work. These firms were supporting their country’s infrastructure development with work contracted to them earlier. By the year 2000, much of this work was being done by foreign firms brought into their country with foreign concessionaires building water supply, sewerage, and road systems.

Outsourcing major government activities and sub-contracting previously public responsibilities has blurred the border between public and private sectors in rich and poor countries alike.

This caused the well-known economist and philosopher John Kenneth Galbraith (2004) to comment in one of his last publications: “The accepted distinction between private and public sectors has no meaning when seriously viewed. Rhetoric is not reality. A large, vital and expanding part of what is called the public sector is for all practical effect in the private sector.”

Participation in the future development of cities and infrastructure systems by international lending agencies such as the World Bank could continue to be important globally. At this time it is highly uncertain (some say unlikely), however, that the institutions that promoted privatization so forcefully over the past decade will be able to regain their previous position on the high ground, as honest brokers in the development process. A large credibility gap has been created, which will be difficult to overcome.

Furthermore, the World Bank and other agencies like it (the regional development banks in Asia and Latin America) have by now lost much of the core of experienced and respected civil engineers who had been hired in mid-career and were able to establish colleague-to-colleague relationships with civil engineers in leading government positions in the less developed countries.

Those who believe civil engineers will no longer be needed in global development work are probably the same people who believe the future of civil engineering is limited to handling procurement issues and to ensuring that contracts for construction are carefully worded to eliminate the possibility of corruption. I believe the best chances of success in formulating a comprehensive approach to development that incorporates engineering design principles is country by country, one country at a time, starting from within. To explain how this differs from the conventional approach, I must first relate some bank experience.

Initially, the World Bank supported development on a project-by-project basis. Each project was assigned to a “Sector Department” for agriculture, industry, education, public utilities (water, power, and communications), and transportation. These departments had a staff of specialists to assist borrowers in need of help, to appraise the project and responsible agencies in the borrowing countries, help negotiate a loan, and then supervise project implementation. This was the project cycle described in great detail in Warren Baum’s book referred to earlier. The merits of each project were considered in the context of its role within the sector, and the role of the sector within the country’s economy. The framework of the country was defined in a country economic report, prepared by the bank at intervals of two, three, or four years for each member country in which lending was contemplated. The country economic reports reflected the findings of a group of bank economists who would visit the countries for a month or so to talk with government agencies and important private interests. These were called economic missions. When appropriate, project staff would participate in these missions and prepare sections of the economic report relating to their sector. This work with economists was very interesting for a civil engineer. My first experience in such economic missions was to look at the ports of Greece (1964), Venezuela (1965), and Trinidad-Tobago (1970).

In addition, each sector’s project staff gained knowledge of the country they were working in by sector missions. In the transportation sector, these were carried out mostly by bank staff covering railroads, roads, ports, river-transport, and aviation. Other sectors had support from United Nations agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization; the Industrial Development Organization; the Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; and the World Health Organization. In the transportation sector, there was only the International Civil Aviation Organization (aviation was not a loan activity for the bank until the 1970s). Increasingly, the transportation project staff was overloaded with assistance to borrowers and sector work, causing the bank to resort more and more to sector surveys by grant-financed consultants. On a countrywide scale, these began with Argentina, Columbia, and South Korea, and continued with several African countries. A large transportation sector survey for Brazil was carried out in two phases: the first phase covered five consultant’s contracts, one each for railroads and ports with maritime transport, and three for highway systems in various states. This was an exciting program, for which the Brazilian government established a special counterpart agency called Executive Group for Coordination of Transport Policy. These transportation sector surveys and related project feasibility studies allowed the bank to develop a sound rationale for lending in the transportation sector. The bank’s lending program for transportation in Brazil, following the year of the first phase of the Brazil transport survey, was over US$300 million (a large amount in the late 1960s). To handle the scope definition, consultant selection, contracting, and supervision of consultant services contracted by the bank for transportation projects, a separate Pre-investment Services Division was established, of which I was the head.

The success of the bank in the transportation and other infrastructure sectors (water supply, power, and telecommunications) caused concern about “inter-sectoral balance” and there was pressure from some sectors to ensure that financial and technical assistance resources would be used in accordance with the country’s own development priorities and in compliance with the overall economic policies agreed on between governments and the World Bank. This led to the idea of country pre-investment study programs. These programs were to be formulated during a country economic mission by the bank, in which project staff familiar with the country would take part. To assist the country economist with managing the diverse project staff on the missions and, later, to help supervise the process of pre-investment study program preparation, a pre-investment advisor position was established in the office of the vice president operations policy staff. I was given the honor of holding that position from 1969 to 1973.

The first pre-investment study program mission was sent to Colombia in 1970. It was headed by a dynamic economist from Yugoslavia and there were twenty-seven of us, including a number of staff from other agencies, the Pan American Health Organization (part of the World Health Organization) and the International Labor Organization. I am sure we succeeded in disrupting operations of the Colombia government for weeks, but we had wonderful cooperation in all sectors and much help from the resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bogota. The mission resulted in recommendations of about forty-nine pre-investment studies to be done over three years. For each study, data sheets with tentative scope definitions and budgets were prepared.

The next mission of this sort was to three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. These countries had been part of the East African Community and had many things in common, including a railway system and airline; also the World Bank’s project staff had worked in all three countries in most sectors.

This mission also took place in 1970. It was headed by an excellent British economist who was somewhat skeptical of the whole venture, but we managed to get along. Of course, shuttling back and forth between Nairobi, Kampala, and Dar Es Salam was disruptive for everybody. However, this mission too resulted in 133 recommendations on pre-investment studies for the three African countries combined.

In my mind, this pre-investment study activity was the closest the World Bank and UNDP ever came to what I like to call development engineering.

The Colombian mission’s report, including a summary of the proposed pre-investment study program, is available in its entirety in the book by Avramovic entitled, Economic Growth of Colombia: Problems and Prospects (see Suggested Reading). It was a heroic attempt by the World Bank, by the participating countries, and the UNDP to do the right thing in development support, based on where we were at the time.

These missions certainly mobilized the enthusiasm of government staff and support agencies, working on a rational, coherent, and interactive approach to investment coordination for each country.

Among the several lessons learned from the World Bank and UNDP co-sponsored pre-investment study programs in 1970 was that there is a self-reinforcing tendency of sectors in which agencies (government and private) have experience spending money for development, either through their own staff or with contracted consultants. When I visited Colombia two years later, the infrastructure sectors of transportation, power, and water supply had completed most of the studies in the program; some were proceeding with final engineering for construction, and others had applied for financing, based on completed studies. In the agriculture sector, the progress was spotty and irrigation studies were proceeding but much was left untouched. In the sectors of education, health, and other social services to which high priority had been given, there was little or no progress. Multiple reasons for this failure were cited: rotation of government staff was one, but the main reasons seemed to be the lack of focus on development within these sectors, and the lack of staff in the agencies specifically assigned to handle studies or consultants’ contracts. There was no opportunity in 1972 to investigate how helpful the Colombian National Fund for Development was in the execution of studies; this agency certainly was seriously involved during the 1970 mission and most helpful as a counterpart to the bank staff. It seemed to be established to respond to individual requests for support, not to manage a comprehensively designed multi-sector program of studies.

In Kenya and Tanzania, there was uneven but notable success in the implementation of proposed studies and some follow-up project financing was reported. Follow-up in Uganda was a total failure because of a change in government immediately following the 1970 mission.

The pre-investment study program activity of the World Bank stopped in 1973 as the project departments in all sectors were under pressure to produce appraised projects for board action, to meet lending targets for each country. Under World Bank President Robert S. McNamara, programming and budgeting had been introduced, and regional vice presidents were held accountable for meeting the agreed upon goals. The larger projects departments (Transportation, Agriculture, Energy, Water Supply, Education, etc.) were divided into five or six regional offices under the regional vice presidents, and a production mentality took over in the bank.

Increasingly, structural adjustment loans were preferred because they allowed disbursement of large sums of money on the basis of governments agreeing on areas such as fiscal policies, privatization, and foreign trade; funds were not delayed by cumbersome pre-investment studies, contract awards, approval delays, and construction problems. It all seemed like “smoke and mirrors” to me, and I managed to stay out of that sort of game in the bank. Fortunately, the bank remained active in some areas of interesting project lending in which I could continue doing hands-on civil engineering and transportation sector work for ten more years.

After 1973, I spent three years with urban projects in such interesting cities as Sao Paolo, Karachi, and Istanbul. Then I spent seven years on Latin American transportation, with major port-related projects in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay.

After retiring from the World Bank in 1984, I spent fifteen more years as president of PREINVEST, Inc., a small service company I established with half a dozen other retirees from the World Bank, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and economists and engineers from the U.S. government. Our objective was to improve the focus, quality, and efficiency of pre-investment work and (incidentally) help prospective borrowers from international agencies to get their money’s worth from consulting firms. We traveled a lot, had some fascinating and useful work, made very little money, but covered our costs and kept out of trouble.

Since 1999, I have had more time to think about the options available for adopting a rational, multi-sector design approach to development, which I decided to call development engineering.

In the context of a reasonably democratic society, this will require significant changes to the framework within which engineers, architects, and economists operate and cooperate with politicians, business interests, and others. A key component of such changes must be the adoption of a new process for pre-investment work, independent of election cycles and annual budgets, autonomous in its own management, and with an ability to mobilize the best and the brightest in each country, on a continuous basis.

Initiation of a new process for pre-investment work will need a new timeframe, new talents, and a new place in which to operate. All of this will, in practice, depend on a new mandate and an adequate budget. I am not suggesting the establishment of a new bureaucracy, ministry, or tentacle of an octopus. What I do suggest is that the timeframe in which we operate in country development is totally inadequate. Nothing significant can be done within a year, or a five-year plan, or a ten-year plan. This means that a disconnect from the normal political election process is imperative if development is to be designed rationally.

New talents can be attracted only to an entity that is durable, respected, and well-endowed with resources to guarantee job security, adequate professional recognition and compensation, independence of political fashions, and immunity to the temptations of monument builders and other peddlers of personality cults.

New places I call design centers should be national and regional, separate but interdependent. Above all, they should be in a neutral place, close enough to government and commercial action to be in touch, distant enough to be objective and independent. Design centers should create their own environment and style of operation to generate original ideas and sound, preliminary engineering designs in all relevant sectors.

The resources available to design centers should allow the use of satellite imagery, aerial surveys, geographic information, groundwater, surface water and soils data, weather, climate, vegetation, and all relevant infrastructure information. From existing government and commercial sources, data on agriculture, industry, and land ownership should also be available to the regional and national design centers; they should have access to knowledgeable people throughout their country and outside of it. Computer technology should allow staff to work without being bogged down in data accumulation. Their principal task will be design; to work with the terrain, the water, and the air, as best they can.

The teams working in these centers should be interdisciplinary, including civil engineers of all kinds, architects/planners, cartographers, sociologists, economists, biologists; representatives of business and labor, health, education, and social services. But the design professionals should be in the lead, setting the tone, pace, and direction of these enterprises.

To ensure cooperation and consensus among the participants, designers of development will eventually develop their own code of ethics, which will vary from country to country, but will always contain a statement of objectives and principles that ensure the preservation and optimal use of the natural, historic, and socioeconomic resources in their areas of responsibility, and some focus on the long-term validity and adaptability of designs.

This is different from the central planning organizations some governments now have and have had in the past, and the principle difference is the treatment of development as a design activity, which must have its own mechanism of accountability and internal control.

Our traditional forms of national government have grown out of the desire of societies to defend their land and collect taxes. Lately, representation of the public has been added, which complicates matters and makes evaluation of development more difficult. One bottom line may no longer be sufficient, as described eloquently by Robert C. Pahlke in his book Democracy’s Dilemma: Environment, Social Equity, and the Global Economy (see Suggested Reading). This is a most interesting discussion of development issues which I recommend highly.

In addition, engineers in development work must be aware of the objectives set at the turn of the century by countries of the United Nations family, through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set targets for the elimination of poverty and illiteracy, reductions in infant mortality, establishment of women’s rights and much more. Countries are reporting annually on progress in each category and armies of bureaucrats will be kept busy and supported economically by filling in forms with real or other data, which will be fed into computers for each annual report, possibly for the next thousand years.

You can even take a university summer course, International Program in Development Evaluation, at Carleton University, Canada, co-sponsored by the World Bank, to learn about each category of the MDGs and how to report them (http://www.ipdet.org/).

Measuring progress is important and will remain so in the foreseeable future, but it is only a small part of what we need, and it is not design. In order to do something worthy of our best effort, we must deal with all interacting sectors, and regard the country or region in which we live as our responsibility, from border to border, ocean to ocean. If we claim sovereignty, let us make the best we can in our territory, with and for our people, and, where necessary, with people from other places who may join us in our territory, or just pass through and leave again. Provisions for transient populations are something we are not good at and we shall have to learn how to deal with that better. In this context it will help to remember that we do not own this place. It will be there after we are gone and we cannot take it along, but we can do something about what we leave behind when we go. That should be a principal focus of development engineering in the future.

To succeed in changing the activity of civil engineers to the broader field of development engineering, the time and place must be right. This will not work for the very poorest countries, nor is it likely to be feasible in the very rich countries. In my view, the advanced countries that have been called “The Second World” are the right place to begin, and even there we must be careful in picking the most promising ones and the best time for each. There are three countries where I believe the time may be right to begin talking about the process.

I know these countries fairly well from years of cooperation on pre-investment studies for proposed urban projects and infrastructure development programs. In each, I worked with indigenous architects, engineers, economists, government officials, and private sector people with whom I collaborated closely and for whom I have a high level of respect. I am confident they have the enthusiasm, professional capacity, and dedication to participate in long-term developments that will shape the future of their country.

Furthermore, these countries share characteristics that make it particularly critical and promising to initiate a formative design process there in the near future. They all have major urban growth problems, with large cities in out-of-control sprawl, serious air pollution, and growing infrastructure deficiencies. Also, each country has vast undeveloped land areas, with little or no population and stagnant economies, where the construction of new urban centers, coordinated with prudent agricultural and forestry development, and with major preservation efforts, could accommodate growth without the aggravation of congestion and pollution problems in existing major urban centers.

Each one of these countries shares the tremendous asset and responsibility of precious ocean coastlines, thousands of kilometers in length, including some with the most beautiful, sensitive, and endangered marine environments in the world. Should sea levels rise as many scientists now predict due to climate change, these coastlines will present huge challenges for land management and protection.

Finally, each one of these three countries has a strong and intelligent middle class, a highly educated group of dynamic and successful individuals in the private and public sectors, and a large population of undereducated poor people, eager and able to work and, I believe, willing to participate in a major national effort to build up their country and share some of the enormous untapped potential that exists within their own national boundaries, just waiting to be awakened, nurtured, and shaped with the work, love, and care that only our own species is able to give to the land on which we live.

The three countries vary significantly in character, size, and population density, but are close in proportions of urban population and in levels of literacy (Table 1).

Chile is a beautiful, dynamic country along the edge of the continent; it has nearly half the Pacific coastline of South America, and a wide range of climates, ranging from the sandy deserts of Peru to the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego. With a population of 16 million on a total mainland area of 757 square kilometers, it is among the most critical cases needing a design effort to prevent damage to unique and fragile natural environments.

Mexico, with a population of 107 million and a land area of about 2 million square kilometers, is the opposite of Chile, geographically and, in some respects, culturally. The industrial ports program initiated by Mexico in the 1980s is among the most imaginative and successful coastal zone management programs I have seen. Though this port and industrial growth program is incomplete, it could lead to other similar attempts and development engineering in the coming years.

Turkey, with a population of 73 million and an area of about 1.9 million square kilometers has a long history and began what could be called a total redesign of the country in the1920s when Kemal Ataturk established a secular republic on the remnants of the centuries-old Ottoman Empire after World War I. The changes he introduced to modernize Turkey are so profound, that infrastructure developments and the movement of the national capital from Istanbul to Ankara, almost seem minor items. He changed the education system, the legal system, the dress code, and the script, freed the women of the harem and the veil, and separated church and state. It was a long and difficult process. I would be unaware of the difficulties of such change had I not lived there in my youth, and watched the process as a young foreigner, residing in Istanbul for nine years. President Kemal Ataturk was an Army general, but he must have had the talent and mind-set of a development engineer. He was an expert in country design. Turkey is now exporting civil engineers (to places like the United States) and major construction contracting services throughout the Middle East. The American Engineering School of Robert College, which I attended, is now thriving as a faculty of the new Turkish Bosporus University, turning out fresh talent, capable, I trust, of taking on development engineering.

Other countries may well follow the same process when they determine that the time is right.

Avramovic, D. (1972). Economic growth of Colombia: Problemsand prospects. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Baum, W. C., and Tolbert, S. (1985). Investing in development.The Word Bank, Washington, D.C. Galloway, P. D. (2006). The ${21}^{\mathit{st}}$ century engineer: A pro-posal for engineering education reform. American Society of Civil Engineers Press, Reston, Va. Pahlke, R. C. (2003). Democracy’s dilemma: Environment, socialequity, and the global economy. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Sierra, K. (2006). Infrastructure at the crossroads: Lessons from $20\mathit{\text{years}}$ of World Bank experience. The World Bank, Washington, DC.