groups to extend toward each other.
Using the “incremental launching” process, a bridge deck is pre-assembled off-site and then pushed from one side of the gap to the other side. In other words, the bridge does not get constructed from both sides and reach completion by meeting in the middle. Similarly, in metaphorical bridge building, one common misconception is that people must always meet in the middle. That’s not the case. What we see in the metaphorical process is that sometimes bridges must be built from one side of the gap to the other. This is what Latasha Morrison is promoting as she guides White Christians to abandon their old ways of inaction and complacency and build bridges toward Black Americans whom they’ve oppressed for centuries.
Finally, in the rehabilitation process, crews reconstruct or restore existing bridges that have become dilapidated. Much like in real-life renovation, metaphorical bridge building often involves the renewal of decrepit bridges that have become difficult or impossible to traverse.
No matter the method, bridge builders must first measure the length of the proposed span before deciding how to proceed. At the same time, they must assess the nature of the soil that will ultimately support the bridge’s foundation. Then they must construct a firm foundation from which to erect the bridge. Lacking an adequate foundation, bridges can sink into the ground and become unusable, defeating the ultimate purpose, which is to facilitate exchanges between current and future generations. There’s always a risk that the bridge will fail if it’s not properly designed. A bridge collapse is, of course, devastating from a human, economic, and political perspective, which simply underscores the need to get it right in the first place.
Likewise, metaphorical bridge builders need to assess the status of the social, political, and cultural situations they face before proceeding with their projects. They must understand history, honor it, and learn from it to ensure they’re constructing a bridge that will last.
“The type of bridge you’re going to build . . . has to be a function of where you’re building it,” said Pinar Okumus, a structural engineering professor and member of the board at the University at Buffalo’s Institute for Bridge Engineering. “For example, steel bridges tend to be lighter than concrete bridges, so if you try to build a heavy concrete bridge on a soil that cannot support it, then your foundation would be terribly expensive.”
History is full of examples of bridges revolutionizing society:
The Brooklyn Bridge’s opening in 1883 marked the first span between Manhattan and Brooklyn, greatly improving transportation and paving the way for them to merge five years later.30
The Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, was initially built sometime before 966 and reconstructed after a flood in 1345. It became a vital connecting route for the region, provided a place for locals to sell goods in shops overlooking the river Arno, and survived World War II as an “everlasting symbol” of hope for the city.31
The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, built in China in 1968 during dictator Mao Zedong’s oppressive Cultural Revolution, enabled easy transportation for people who previously had to cross by ferry and for trains that previously had to be disassembled and loaded onto boats to make their way across.32
There are countless others. The point is that bridges enable dynamic change. They breed engagement. But building them requires sophisticated design, engineering, material sourcing, and plain old-fashioned hard work. “Sometimes when people hear the term ‘bridge building’ . . . they don’t think it’s going to be hard, they don’t think they’re going to be uncomfortable, they don’t think they’re going to be challenged,” Morrison said. “It’s going to be difficult. It’s going to be uncomfortable.”
To be clear, this book will not commit the sin of false equivalence – that is, the tendency to give equal weight to two sides that do not deserve equivalent consideration. As such, I will not suggest that everyone needs to meet squarely in the middle. That’s because in some cases, one side is right and the other side is wrong, plain and simple. Moreover, I don’t want to suggest that bridge building solves all our problems. It simply sets the stage for us to achieve progress through new policies, for example.
Rather, this book serves as a forensic dissection of the bridge building strategies employed by leaders who are going against the polarized grain. It seeks to illuminate the ways in which people are overcoming gaping divides in areas such as politics, race, religion, class, and culture – and how we can apply those lessons to our lives and to the institutions that govern society.
And I say “overcoming” because bridge building is a journey that’s never truly complete. It’s a process – a lifestyle, if you will. After all, bridges need maintenance almost as soon as they are constructed. They get potholes. They rust. And they become obsolete if we neglect them.
As I considered whom to feature, I decided not to write about anyone particularly famous. That way you won’t have preexisting opinions about them. I also thought it was critical to feature a diversity of voices because we can’t learn how to build bridges effectively without listening to experienced people from a broad cross-section of backgrounds who have approached the process from many different angles. Similarly, I decided to feature people from a wide range of sectors, including government, faith, nonprofit, business, education, and journalism. Each person’s expertise is vital, just as the builders of physical bridges have a wide variety of experiences in areas ranging from environmental assessment to material science to structural integrity.
“Everyone within that system is important, and it’s important that they communicate with each other and bridge that knowledge gap that exists between them in a very seamless manner,” said Atorod Azizinamini, a renowned bridge engineer who chairs Florida International University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “If one area fails, it can cause the complete collapse of the bridge.”
Despite its transformational qualities, bridge building often attracts considerable resistance – sometimes legitimate, sometimes not so much – from environmental activists, budget hawks, developers, and locals with not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome. In many cases, that’s because bridges promise to disrupt the status quo for people who previously benefited from or preferred social isolation.
But new bridges are often necessary despite the risks and despite the opposition they engender. They’re the only way to reach the other side. After all, nobody changes the world from the isolation of an island.
Exceptional bridges transcend the basic functionality and economic vitality they were designed to provide. People take trips to see great bridges. They walk across them, take pictures of them, and depict them in artwork. Great bridges capture our imagination. They are feats of engineering. “That’s why there are so many beautiful designs out there,” said Azizinamini, who was honored by the White House in 2015 for making the nation’s bridges safer.33 “People identify a location, a community, a city by that bridge.”
When we build bridges, entire societies are often transformed.
“If I tell you, ‘San Francisco,’” Azizinamini said, “what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”
Notes
1 1. Gabriel Sanchez and Edward Vargas, “73% of Democrats Are Wearing Masks to Fight Coronavirus. Only 59% of Republicans Are,” Washington Post, May 15, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/15/73-democrats-are-wearing-masks-fight-coronavirus-only-59-republicans-are/.
