'Build back better': infrastructure policy's post-pandemic promise

‘Build back better’ epitomises the pandemic-recovery rallying cry for infrastructure. This chapter explores the role of infrastructure as a public management panacea for disruptions on the scale of financial depressions, wars and pandemics. It surveys historical approaches to infrastructure investment for the purposes of economic stimulus, before introducing crisis-response literature as a means to highlight the tensions between short-term crisis response and long-term infrastructure outcomes. The case of Australian infrastructure policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is presented as an illustrative example of how public managers and policymakers, especially those involved in community engagement for major projects, experienced infrastructure-as-crisis-response during the pandemic. The chapter offers novel research findings from two major national surveys to open new understanding of the relationship between infrastructure and resilience, offering insights for future crisis response.