Public values theory: three big questions

The "three big questions" of the title include: What is 'public value'?; Is public value different from the aggregation of private values?; Is it possible to identify and evaluate public values? The author provides qualified responses to each of these questions and then turns to the issue of public values and infrastructure, suggesting that infrastructure provides an especially useful laboratory for studying public value. First, infrastructure issues force an engagement of both public and private values and decisions about the nexus of the two. Second, infrastructures provide a good vantage point for studying both empirical and normative 'publicness'.