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[Applause] I am greatly honored to be here tonight of course with all of you but also with Alan Berto who is one of the world's great urbanists we'll just jump right in if you were to meet a 20-year-old Robert Moses before he set out on his career
what would you tell him ah yeah this is difficult question I would tell him infrastructure is important but infrastructure is there to serve people and just look at people before you look at infrastructure infrastructure is there as a as a tool
not as a purpose in itself and if you could send the young Mr Moses say to Indianapolis and away from New York City to do his business business elsewhere and he would have a happy life but New York would proceed without him would you make that choice
you mean making the choice for him you can give him a lucrative fellowship at Purdue University and he'll be very busy in Indiana and New York will go along at the track it was on well that will that will be his choice yes probably I will
try to convince him to go to Indianapolis what do you think of the argument that Airbnb is ruining either New York or some other historic cities if you look at Florence it appears that about 20% of central Florence is now Airbnb residences does this concern you
yes and uh this concerned me because normally I will say well so what but in fact it is not the case I think that this is a case where we have to to look at it a bit differently it reminds me a bit what happened in Switzerland at a
certain time where to to own a piece of land in Switzerland was becoming valuable for a lot of people because uh you know it give access you know a refuge let's say and uh Swiss farmers who wanted to you know expand their field to have some more C suddenly we're
competing with a Russian oligarch and uh obviously this is not traditional economics so although I will be rather less a fair I think this is a case where and indeed the Swiss government put a red line around certain area you can
still buy Foreigner I think can still buy properties in in Zurich or in Geneva but uh they they are not allowed to compete with Swiss farmers in buying land so I think I have no let's say I have not studied rbnb as much but I think it's a case where you have to look
at it that way that you you have a competition here uh in cities are tourism might be important and interesting but uh it's not a sense of City the cities are are the people if the people are gone from a city it's not very interesting why are so many
contemporary cities depopulating within the core so Paris is slightly depopulating I've seen data that Los Angeles and Chicago are slightly depopulating and Chicago is not about the Russian oligarchs right manhatt would be depopulating if not for new
arrivals why is that happening and is that some kind of failure of urban labor markets I I don't think uh uh densities has gone down in all those cities I don't think in the case of Paris at least that it is depopulated I think that you had a gentrification of central
Paris so people who used to live in 10 square meter or 12 square meter there are still some or two uh are living now is 120 square met so you have a loss of densities it doesn't mean a loss of population in this sense you know New
York had the you know Manan had the density which was two or three time higher than it is now I don't think you can say that manaton is depopulated but you have yourself moved to Glenrock New Jersey right yes what has gone
wrong in how would you say in my dotage in Manhattan will you find better food on the streets or the Avenues ah uh in the streets in the street definit yeah I think you have a more specialty restaurant in the streets and uh in the Avenue you have more
people who just um are transient you know pass by and uh are looking for faster food I think so if San Francisco and Oakland had an IDE building code they would bring you in to write it so there would be more freedom to build how much would rents be cheaper in the Bay
Area your intuitive guess yes yes they will be cheaper but how much not much why not no how much you say how much you want want me to give a figure how would you think about the problem would it be you would simply get more building and
more powerful economies of scale and rents would go up but more people would have productive jobs or could you actually make life there cheaper again so the poor could move in and be upwardly Mobile in economic terms I think that if you if you build Much More
Much More and You and regulation allows to have a variety of building uh and building size uh you could have a a way where the poor outbid the rich by consuming Less in a very desirable location this is what you see sometime
in Paris but by the way the ybi movement yes in my backyard will it ever come about there's been a lot of force behind the Y movement over the last year but not that many concrete victories is it simply the case that opposition will be
mobilized and the M will lose or does it have a future I think it has a future well this is uh what this talk is all about and your talk in general I think people have to to understand to learn what what is implied by freezing City the way they are you know and the cities
cities are alive because they change constantly as soon as you freeze City and this is what nimi is all about you freezing cities the city die you know that like a human being that you tie in a stret jacket but if we look around the
world we don't see that many traditional cities that have overcome nimi so Houston has done it Warsaw Poland has done it there was so much destruction people were happy to get rid of old communist buildings right but the so-called nice cities have any of them
overcome nimi and seen yimi win and if not why are you optimistic what will change I huh maybe I'm not Optimist I think that maybe in cities where you have U the house itself is not your only way of saving have a have a better chance of you know being
yimi then as soon as the only way you know if people perceive that the only way of saving money for their retirement is in their house you know their house is some kind of a ATM machine uh then they they will be you know they don't
want to a competition I remember in in Washington uh some years ago there was a letter to the Washington Post somebody saying how is it possible that uh in Fairfax County they allow more houses where my house has increased in value in
the last 5 year by only 5% so they thought that was a legitimate case uh you know if your house increase only by 5% then you should stop every other their houses so that your house will go so I think if people consider that this is one of their in a way I think it's a
question of property right we have a a system which decrease your property right within the boundary of your lot or your apartment uh you know you you cannot you see this morning for instance in the New York Times the somebody get fine
$155,000 because they install a dryer and a a washing machine in a basement so that's a decrease of property right and at the same time you increase the property right outside your boundary but it's a negative property right you are allowed to prevent people from building
what they want you so you know this this delusion of property right I think is a big cause of nimi or do we reverse it I don't know because in a way it seems very Democratic and legitimate to have a say about what your neighbors is doing
you know you say well I'm preserving the character of the the neighborhood well if uh the character of the neighborhood has to be preserved in Manhattan you know if it was preserved for 50 or 100 years ago uh there would be no manaton
would the political economy work better if building regulations were either done strictly at the state level or maybe even at the neighborhood or even the street level as opposed to city and county right should the scale be moved up or moved down what would give us a
better outcome I think it should be moved up and what do you think would happen then then the people who want in will have more say uh if you if you keep it at the at the street level I think uh the people who control it are the people
who who are living there and they against everybody want to move in by definition I have another very easy question for you as you probably know many of the switches in the New York City subway system date from the 1940s or sometimes even the 19 1930s how are
we going to fix that system if nimi is ruling how do we redo the Subways the Second Avenue line that was sort of started or planned in the early 70s and it just now opened what a year ago what's going to happen with the New York
City subway I think that that's one of the most terrible thing you know the the destruction of the of the transit system uh you know the the the den days in in Manhattan and in New York are such that you can have Mobility only if you're
relative large number of people are using Transit and you know some cities can work very well without Transit like Atlanta probably or Houston but that's not the case in Manhattan that will not be the case in Paris or or London so you have to maintain the transit system in
the same way as you maintain uh you know the the SE system and the water system uh I think that the the destruction you know the lack of Maintenance in uh the attention you know which has been given to the subway is equivalent of lead in
the water in Flint or things like that why is the Moscow Subway so wonderful because Stalin built it like everything else Stalin built right no he had a taste for architecture you have to realiz now some of your best known academic work is about the spatial
organization of socialist cities why were so many social cities so relatively empty in their centers or cores ah because uh because you know according to Marks uh land has no value only labor has value so if land has no value and you are in the center of the city where
a lot of people would like to live or work but this land has no value you are stuck with the existing building every time you want to move a building or or renew it you will have to ask to have a planner decided and it will be also a a
cash expenditure you know in a in a market City it's a price of land which Finance the development of new building automatically you don't it is developers or realize that the land is expensive and therefore they can build more who
are asking the planners please let us build an office building there or something if you are in a socialist country you know like I have seen China before the reform or or or Russia at the time I were in the in the early '90s you need the initiative of a a planner to
say we are going to build something new here they will have to compensate the not the owner but the user to move them somewhere else so to the States this is a a net cash expenditure to replace a low building by high building is a cash
expend expenditure that the city has to pay and where in the market economy of course it is done automatically in a certain way you know in a way uh the the system is reversed in a market economy it's the planners who are slowing down the transformation
where uh in a in a socialist economy the planners realize that it's not a very good use of land but cannot find the money to uh to change the land use if nimi is such a big problem might it not in some bizarre second best regard make
sense to put so much industry in the city center because as more growth comes people will be quite happy to get rid of it uh yes normally yes uh but uh you see what what happened with Amazon in New York uh not so long ago was an interesting now I don't know you should
should talk too much about that but uh you know I I think Amazon did a terrible had a terrible approach two cities by having them bit for each other because I'm absolutely convinced being an urbanist myself that they knew exactly
where they wanted to go uh in advance so uh that was a little unfair and the there was a a grassroot movement against High income people coming to the city I found that very disturbing uh because after all high income people create a lot of job for all sorts of income at
the same time you cannot you know in the same way as you should not exclude poor migrants from coming from the city I don't see any rational for excluding High income people either now the fact that the city limits so much the ex the
the construction of new housing you know in my book you see there is a chapter which which had the table of New York City Zoning and it shows the the incredible uh limit in the number of dwelling units which can be built block by block with completely arbitrary
numbers now uh on one hand you have higher income people coming to the city on the other hand the city is blocking the development of new housing uh and controlling also the the size of it you know privileging in in fact larger
houses than the demand so when higher income people come in yes certainly it will raise the rent but not because uh higher income people are greedy or whatever it's because the city is blocking the supply at the same time so you cannot have an increase in job and a
freeze in housing at the same time so the problem is not the people coming in the the problem is the city refusing to admit that uh they need to build more housing how well does the current version of Shanghai work as a city as a
city I think it uh it works relatively well in the sense that uh you know the the Chinese even well I say up to four years ago when I still could get the visa to go to China uh and uh you know up to four years ago I think that the Chinese at the local
level understood Market better than the blazio well it's a l bar but and uh you know why because they they were interested in the you know in the GDP of the city now it has also some drawback many mayors in China told me I'm the CEO of this
city uh and uh in a certain way it it created certainly also some problem with pollution thing like that but I think they were very very interested in uh in the way City develop I I remember in in sichan a city of about 600,000 where they they wanted to to
develop uh you know they had a high-tech industry they were doing flat screen they wanted to expand it but to expand it they needed top Engineers to do the research it was difficult to attract top Engineers from Shanghai or the east
coast to go to Sichuan in a relatively small City because so the the mayor say the only way we can expand this is to have very good education and good environment so we can as a selling point an engineer in Beijing or Shanghai or you know even Guang Joo uh will be
probably interested to live with his family in an environment where uh the air is pure the the garden are well maintained and the schools are very good so you see you you had a mayor here who understood really how to attract people
and how to grow the city how well does Shenzhen China work as a city uh and that's from basically nothing right right something that people forget about shinen the story of Chen I I Chen may I tell a little story absolutely uh you know I was in chenan probably in what in
84 85 maybe and uh the city at the time it you know it was basically not a fishing Village but it was a small town it has all together about 300,000 people and uh the mayor of chenan sure team of the World Bank was part of it a plan and
they say we want to build a city of 5 million and we do Finance infrastructure and uh I did a back of envelop calculation I say 300,000 to 5 million are you kidding you know try to do a city of a million and have maybe 2 million Will C infrastructure this is
completely out of the question so jenzen is now 12 million people so that that that's one one skeleton in my closet uh and but what people forget about shenzen a lot of people think that shenen was built the way Brazilia was built some
you know the government decid let us do this no shenen was a perimeter for the first time den shoping say we are going to have a labor market within this perimeter people are going to be able to change job they are going to have
salaries which is commensurate with their skills and their employers uh will be will be able to increase their salary or decreasing or fire them depending on what they need so what created the success of shenzen were the first labor
market in China and that's why in shenen you had people coming from all over all over China That's why many people in shenzen are speaking Mandarin and not Cantonese because this has attracted a lot of people who refuse were bold enough in a way to to or confident
enough to say we don't need the the big rce ball you know we can we are confident in our own skill and we can make it there are there are some books actually there's a novel uh called Northern girl uh which which is written by a Chinese who came from the north and
semis skill or and skill and she tell the story of it's a novel but I think it's very uh you know it explained exactly the point of view of migrants coming to a city raised in the context of China where you had this guarantee of
a job but you will stay all your life in the same job and and then people realize that if they were relying on their own energy they could do better than that so it's really the the success of Chen Zen is really the creation of the first
labor market in China will America create any new cities in The Next Century or are we just done cities uh need good location this is a debate I had with Paul rer when he was interested in shter cities and he had he had this idea that he he could create 50 shorter
cities around the world and my reaction maybe I'm wrong but my reaction is that they are not 50 very good location for cities around the world there are not many maybe maybe uh with uh woden belt maybe the opening of Eastern Asia you
know the central Asia maybe maybe the opening you know of the ocean route on the Northern you know following the pole will create the potential for new cities but cities like Singapore Mala uh Mumbai are there for good reason and there are I don't think there are that
many very good location or Greenland right oh yes yes yes what is your favorite movie about a city you mentioned a work of fiction movie I'll nominate Escape From New York Casablanca Casablanca because you know you know why Kazan because it's a it's a city I mean
you don't see you don't see the city very much in the movie but you see people coming in and uh well some want to get out too but uh but you see people coming in and and it's kind of a refuge you know it's a so that's that's what I find
interesting now as you know the Saudis are trying to build a new city neom one hears reports they're ready to spend $500 billion I'm not sure that's true but are you bullish or bearish on neom I'm bearish why you don't create City by
just uh putting concrete but Brazilia worked it's not perfect but it's a city yeah but it's a city of bureaucrats rather live in Brazilia than you know the people who went to Brazilia were not the same people who went to chanen you know they were they were
moved I will say even Manu military from from Rio Janeiro and yes and and the taxpayer of Brazil paid for Brazilia in Charlie nobody needs right mind will decide to live in Brazilia just by choice you know and uh you know it's it's one of
the worst performing you know not it's not my just my taste I mean it's a it's a worst performing City if you look at the number of AC you know deaths of pedestrian per per 10,000 people it has a world record if you look at the segregation by income you know the the
poor living at 30 km of the city with not very good transport system and the rich living in Charlie in the center uh it it is one of the worst record in the world in any measure you can have but of course it's a world heritage uh City and
uh you know for the the 50 years anniversary of the city uh I was invited by the committee who celebrate it and I told them but did you read what I wrote about was and uh and they say yes we we want to have several point of view so you see they they tant what will
urban renewal look like in a post retail world let's say online shopping continues to advance we have big boxes all over the suburbs now also in Manhattan what will we do with this space uh a l more restaurants and bars and maybe barber
shops barber shops yes I mean not that I need here's a question that's been bothering me for a long time I feel only you know the answer if I think about Ethiopia it has more than a 100 million people yet its second largest city is only about 400,000 people so you have
some countries where the distribution of cities follows unusual patterns so Thailand has an income more or less the same as Mexico but an urbanization rate close to that of Guatemala do you have a sense of what accounts for these cases politics uh you could say
the same thing about fance by the way Paris yes you know 12 Millions the next city well we claim from Mar we claim we are the next city 1 million the the people from Leon claim it too but the next city is about 1 million so you go
from 12 million to 1 million uh I think it you cannot you cannot change this you cannot have a plan we say oh let us develop smaller cities if if you have this pattern it's because you have a political system which gives such an
advantage to to the major city that uh this is where people want to go and uh if you are in a secondary City you are so much penalized that you know so unless you change the the system you know the political system you decentralize you know for instance French
decentralization uh you know which was done in the 70s 80s has not resulted in a change in the pattern of cities you know Paris is still dominant and growing and uh look at Russia also the the only city which is really growing is is
Moscow and I think it reflect a a political system and no I I don't I think that planners trying to spread let's say cities without a change in the the political system or even even the culture maybe you know centralization is a culture I mean in in the case of my
country France I think centralization is a is a cultural aspect it's not only political your own background coming from Marse rather than from Paris I brag about it normally but no maybe you should brag about it how has that changed how you understand cities uh
because High character I'm very tolerant of messy cities messy cities why might that be coming from you know uh when I was this you know when we were school children in Marseilles uh we were used to a city which has uh you know really there's
only one big Avenue the rest are streets which were created locally you know the vernacular architecture and in our geography book we had this map of Manhattan and our first reaction was the people in Manhattan must have a hard time finding their way because all all
the streets are exactly the same and and in in M we oriented ourself by the angle that the street made with another and some were very narrow some very very wide well not so wide but some were curved some were you know and that's the
way we oriented ourself and we thought Manan must be a terrible place we must be lost all the time now in the middle of all of these conversations we have a segment known as overrated versus underrated so I'm going to toss out a mention and you tell me if
you think it's overrated or underrated okay first cableways as a method of urban transport as used in K Rio laaz Mexico City medine kakas I have not seen the detailed numbers but my gut feeling that it's overrated why uh because cable
you know I used to do a lot of skiing and I know how much uh how much a kibble car can can carry and it's not that much Lor buer overrated or underrated ah as as a writer is underrated as a as an architect well more or less as a as an urban planner of course he's grossly
overrated and what's your best Lor busier story ah uh my best well you know I I met ler at at a conference uh you know in Paris twice at two conference and uh he was a at the time he was at the top of his Fame and uh he started the conference by
saying people ask me all the time what do you think how do you feel being the most well-known architect and you know in the world he was not a very modest man and uh uh and and he said you know what it feels it feels that my ass has
been kicked all my life that's that's the way he started his you know he was a very bitter man in spite of his success and his and I think that his bitterness is shown in his uh in his planning and some of his architecture Porto Prince hati overrated
or underrated if you look at the food it's underrated uh you know the culture is underrated it's it's a wonderful culture the the CR culture you know is is Wonder the CR language also is extremely rich it has a lot of poetry uh of course after the earthquake
it has never recovered I think and this is very sad uh I don't know if it will ever recover I don't know the it seems that uh the political system is unable to evolve it's probably slightly better than what it was when I was in PTO prin
at the time of baby do you know the the but uh but the city has deteriorated since that time and uh and the combination of the earthquake the deterioration also of environment due to you know of population and know deforestation you know deforestation in
Haiti you know that that's a time of dualer one of the main source of tax for the government was kerosine so kerosine was for the relatively wealthy people the the way of cooking you know you were the poor people then because the
kerosine was so expensive because of the high taxes we cutting every tree every bush in order to just to cook so you know this deforestation again was a man-made but you know a a systematic political things E Scooters overrated or underrated and will they
last I think they will last maybe in a different form but uh I I'm a big uh I'm a big fan of his scooter why are they better than segue which did not take off you only see it in the N our nation's capital right because because I could
see my scooter bringing my scooter here folding it and putting in my share I cannot put a segue in my share segue is just too too heavy the popular music group Limp Biscuit I have no my test in music uh like in literature stop in the 19th century the ideas of Hernando Doo
putting everything on a property register it's an excellent idea but it's not the only idea are you afraid that it will lead to more regulation more taxation more confiscation and aversion in essence of Chinese social credit system if we make
everything part of the formal economy in poor corrupt countries I think that uh I don't make such a difference between the formal economy and the informal economy as most people do my experience is that if you go in Islam where which is you know most uh
planners will con informal you you don't uh you have a market which works exactly like other Market you uh you have also expropriation you have also so I I don't I don't think that registering property in itself will create a bureaucracy which will kill the
you know again there are different way of registering property for instance the way it was done uh in the Kong in Indonesia where uh you know by the way another skeleton my closet uh the you know in Indonesia the World Bank
participated in financing the compound you know upgrading which was basically slum I mean former Villages which uh had to be you know provided with infrastructure and our theory in the bank was that you can do that only if you provide property rights to the
people who are living there uh whether they are squatters or not you just give them you know you survey their plot you give them property right and we insisted with the the government the Indonesian government that uh we at the beginning
we insisted that we will not provide infrastructure unless there was also a program to provide property right uh the Indonesian insisted that this will cost to much we did a back of envelop thing and that it did cost too much you know
to have a proper survey especially there were lots which were extremely small so we decided to go ahead and finance it because Indonesia was such a big client and the World Bank is still a bank you need to lend money you know at the end of the day uh so
eventually what we found is that when people had infrastructure they had a water meter they had water and they had a water bill and they will pay the bill and the bill itself was an address you know in order to have a bill you have an address the
bill was a proxy for a property title uh when some uh people made study about that they found that a property guaranteed by a water bill was discounted maybe about maybe 10% compared to a formal thing so you see I I don't necessarily make a you know I
think property rights are very important but it's a guarantee that you will not be remove without compensation but I don't make necessarily A a very you know strong boundary between formal and informal I think they can be a lot of property right which are just uh there
and and as effective you know you want property right for transaction and I think those informal property right could guarantee very fair transaction the same way as you know formal one do you love graffiti in the proper places why are so many cities in the new
world so violent if you take Arabic world before some of the recent Wars it was quite safe right so much of Asia not every part but so much is extremely safe yes Europe is relatively safe for the most part but the new world almost
everywhere has a higher level of violence and why is that I don't know I have noticed that I know it because you know I live in El Salvador uh but uh you know why they such violence for instance in a country like Brazil I don't know is it is it a
history uh that you know the long shadow of History uh I don't know yes I have no idea but it's it's it's puzzled me a lot because violence uh in cities really decrease the the the enjoyment the efficiency of City obviously what do you
think is the part of the world most likely to Institute a charter City not 50 just one the Middle East and why because they will have to deal with their Refugee problem and this not going to vanish and probably shter City will
be the only way to solve it also because the Middle East has a lot desert and uh a shorter C you know it will be difficult to establish a shorter City uh let's say in Bangladesh for instance where every land is cultivated and uh but if you have a large piece of desert
which has no uh alternative use uh I think it it will be good way of start you know a shter city and the demand is really the refugees you know you especially in the Middle East you have a mix of refugees with all sort of of skills you know some un skilled
but some highly skills and that will be perfect for shter City would you care to nominate a specific location for the land speculators in the audience uh this is Wall Street of course well C certainly not Saudi Arabia uh but probably Jordan seems to me or or maybe
even part of Syria if um I don't know if if there was some change of government now what about the idea of relocating parts of large cities so it's often claimed that Jakarta is sinking it's one of the world's largest cities it's
choked with traffic and the idea of relocating at least the capital city functions to Borneo away from java is that feasible if it's just few bureaucrats yes yes of course why not but it's more than a few bureaucrats inart right in you know Jakarta I mean
if we take jabot area the metropolitan area of darta now it's about 30 million people those 30 million people live together have developed relationship together you cannot move them I think it will be much more efficient to look at
uh you know maybe some part of Jakarta the part which is closer to the Sea you know the old Jakarta maybe have have to be sacrificed but moving jackart I think is impossible uh and it's not uh feasible what I fear with the new city
is that a lot of resources will be taken away from Jakarta and put in the middle of konton uh you know instead of uh you know involving again it's possible that Jakarta needs some kind of operation you know cutting a limb or something but
there are still many area which are completely viable uh you know the hill toar for instance are completely viable so it's possible you could have a translation some maybe 5 million people moving slightly uh slightly South you know from from the sea uh toward bogar
but I think that you know Bangkok had the same problem some years ago because for the same reason people were pumping uh water the water TBL so the the the the city was sinking and eventually they managed to stop that and uh So Bangkok
is still flooded from time to time it's not quite on the seaside the way Jakarta is but uh I think that uh I think that technology should be the solution for Jakarta I think that it will be a terrible mistake don't forget that Jakarta with all all its uh traffic jam
enormous traffic jam pollution and still is much more productive uh you know the productivity of people working in Jakarta is much much higher than than a city like bandong for instance which is is rather Pleasant to live in you know
the so so there is something about this agglomeration of people used to work together with different talents different thing which make it efficient I don't think you can translate you can move this efficiency in the new Brazilia in the middle of kont now you've worked
about 20 years for the World Bank let's say you were put in charge and you could reform the World Bank any way you wanted what changes would you make wow this is a difficult question uh and would it be harder or easier than moving Jakarta I
I I think that uh you know I I think that institution like the World Bank are like people they age and they deteriorate and at a certain time you have to bury them and then uh and then build a new one I I'm not saying by the way that the the the job that the World
Bank is doing still doing is uh is not useful I think there are a lot of useful thing but I think that creating a new one you know it's a bit like shter City let's say a shter while back yes how will self-driving cars change cities H
you you know I was extremely optimistic about self-driving car I remember being invited with Marines we were invited at Google twice and to disc precisely what will be the impact on cities of self-driving car and at the time what Eric olome I think was the the head of
the self-driving division at at Google's and when we ask him when do you think you know this self-driving car will be operational we find them in cities he he said well I have a daughter who is 10 years old and I think by the time she's
in the age of having a driving license I hope that uh the good Google car would be operational in the city so that was about 10 years ago uh and uh so it so I think that eventually it will come one of the most positive aspect of uh self-driving car is that they will
consume much less real estate because if you if you go on Fifth Avenue at 25 mil an hour which is uh the speed limit you you know you need about if I remember well 85 square meter of road because of the distance between two cars uh because
you you need a 2C reaction time if you have a self-driving car you could have a self-driving car within half a meter of each other so you save on real estate Urban transport is a real estate problem but would the road simply become clogged
so I would have a self-driving car and i' have a robot that does my shopping for me so I'd send my self-driving car to Whole Foods every four or five hours every time I wanted a snack and the roads would essentially become clogged and you couldn't use them
or is that not the equilibrium no you yes exactly you you will not because you will never get your food if the road is clogged you know but someone will clog the road right or is can we only have self-driving cars with congestion
pricing yes of course we will have congestion you know uh the roads you know the road the road is aite you know within the city uh as soon as it St is built you cannot expand the road system uh unless well you can have one or two tunnels from time to time but that's
better it so the only way to better use this road is to price it you know you in a way to control demand rather than Supply you know you cannot expend Supply you can expend the supply of housing as much as you want you cannot expend the
supply of existing road so so pricing yes is the only way to do it yes probably so that's why you food if you ask you know if you order your food every 10 minutes uh your food is going to be very expensive is there any good argument against congestion pricing for
Manhattan no uh uh the what bother me about the approach is that uh they are saying congestion pricing as a new tax on people uh you know it's not a tax it's it's a way of efficiency efficiently using road if you if you look at it as a
cash car it's it doesn't work you know it will you know it doesn't make sense at all uh you you have to you have to maximize the use of Road and so you have to price it differently depending on the hours I will even go to the system of
Singapore when you look at the discussion of pricing in manaton it's we far from it Singapore which now is going to price car not only different part of the city different price at different time but also how long you use a road that mean if you park your car in a
private parking you don't pay anymore you pay for really the use of the road I always I don't think I put it in my book because but I always say that uh roads Urban Roads should be should be priced like a cheap motel you know by every 10
minutes you you adjust Sur price depending on the demand and the thing and and the location and the day of the week how do you feel about congestion pricing for residents in cities so as you know the Chinese have a permit system hooku
system it keeps people out of cities but at the same time many millions of people violate the system but they pay penalties in terms of benefits and schools for their children so it's a kind of congestion tax for a city connected to the number of people rather
than a car good idea or a bad idea it's a terrible idea the way you sit in h the OS system is is clear uh it's it's just a tax on poverty because people come to the city to work and they will pay whatever tax so you you are just paying for for being
poor uh it's it's not it doesn't restrict people it has also instead of bringing their children very often they leave their children in the countryside because in the countryside you know the school will be free and uh and and then
that means again that young people who could be integrated in the city much faster if they came as children uh will come much later so it's a terrible system as all point of view I don't think it's a I don't think it's the equivalent of a congestion tax because
it doesn't uh Pro is doesn't prevent people from uh coming to cities and actually the Chinese economy city is working based on people not having huk if you if all the people having huko were kicked out and pushed back in where they belong in the countryside the
Chinese economy will collapse but Chinese cities are not that dense so if I'm Chinese and I say well without the permit system Beijing would be like Delhi and Delhi is in some basic ways unw workable in terms of pollution traffic not not because of density uh
because of deficient infrastructure yes and because of the Monopoly of the Delhi Development Authority on land develop Google sidewalk Labs is trying to build a smart neighborhood in Toronto this may or may not happen for or against well
you know I I have nothing against a real estate operation done by Google in Toronto uh I have a problem when they say that on a on a piece of land which is bad basically the size of Washington Square they are going to solve uh housing problem uh poverty transport
pollution uh I have a problem with that I think that the salesmanship again a bit like the Amazon thing the salesmanship was terrible uh you know if they were saying look we are going to do a real estate operation we are going to
monitor what is the real cost of for instance building five-story building in Wood whether it makes sense or not that's fine uh when I visited it you know Marin I visited it uh and uh you know few months ago and I see a lot of Gadget you know they call it smart I I
call that gadgets some are interesting some are probably very interesting if they but to it is at a stage where it's only if it's replicated at a city scale that it we will know if these gadgets are really interesting or not so I think they oversold it and it's going to
probably blow in their face that's my well facial recognition come to major US cities I don't mean in the 7-Eleven but done by the government on public streets yes I uh I am afraid we can't avoid it and how will this change cities well I
hope uh it it depends if we keep tab on our own government I think it's uh our control of the government we we cannot we cannot avoid when it technology is you know is invented you cannot disinvent it but why can't we avoid it
so San Francisco passed the law Banning facial recognition we could have the entire country or many parts if it passed such laws it reminds me of uh you know the the Japanese in this what 16th 17th century they ban uh firearms because they thought that uh it
was unfair for somebody was a good swordmanship to be killed by somebody with an acus with no skills and uh so they did they managed because they were in Island very well controlled to keep the technology out for some years and
then commodor Perry came with a you know I don't think you can disinvent uh technology I don't think you know if the you know you could say you could have a law which prevent the government from having cameras run by government but then you will have cameras run by
department store and you will see that the police have access to it eventually they will so you cannot disinvent it the the only way we can control it to preserve our freedom is is through precisely the the government using it and having extremely strict uh rules
about how to use it so that we don't end up like in China to have your your your personal files fed by by the picture taken in the street America is a much safer country than it used to be and our Bus and Rail lines are mediocre at best so why is
hitchhiking declined ah uh topic de to your heart lawyers lawyers why yes uh when I was in chiking you know when I was uh uh a student I was a chiking all over Europe and obviously sometime there will be an accident you know will be hurt it will
never occur to anybody to sue the driver and sometime you know I had you know I took I in in cars where the driver was completely drunk I mean this this happened and but it would have never occurred to my parents if I had died to
to to sue the driver and uh I think that came slowly probably from the United States and uh as soon as you know you are not as soon as you are liable for your passenger and then first it can be the accident after it can be something
else it can be uh you know all sort of things uh that the guy is smoking and you have inil the smoke or something like that uh and uh or that the guy drops you in the wrong place and U you get mugged and so you can sue the the driver so as soon as you do that you
completely discourage uh this uh freeloading I think it's a you know again the we will see that not only I think for we will see that for mountain climbing also I think uh you know there's a tendency before you know I have a lot of friends who died in
avalanche it will have never never occurred to anybody to sue the M you know the village or the mountain where the Avan took place and now it's a common thing I see recently you know in Italy there was a hiker who get he was alone he get lost uh the
family now is seinging the entire uh region because they thought that they didn't they didn't look for him fast enough you know they were tens of helicopters but they you know they say they didn't look at him fast enough I think that as soon as you have a
liability like that you destroy any any any initiative a personal initiative like like some you know eiking was a form of Freedom which was very and for for our final closing segment a question or two about the Alan Berto production
function uh what do you feel has been the comparative advantage you've brought to your work that has made you successful been born in 1939 I was brought up during the war so comfort you know I I could adjust I knew that you could adjust your comfort to
whatever is available and you don't die from it then uh the other advantage and for my wife and I was that we graduated at the time of decolonization and the lot of countries were absolutely desperate for people were just you know at you know the
minimum skill you have when you just get out of University you know I in my book I talk about even I was not graduated in Algeria two two years after Independence I was inspector the urbanism you know I was 25 years old uh nobody now
graduating from any school will be inspector theis not that I wish him to be inspector ofis 25 years old so you know the this idea that you graduate from a Western University City at the time of decolonization this give you an opportunity when I arrive in chandigar
you know I was 23 I have taken a year off from the de bzar and I arrive at the office of Pier janre at chandigar and I say you know I'm looking for a job he give me a job like right away you know okay it was 60 rupes a month but uh you
know it's uh it was a job and now a Frenchman going to aabad and say I'm looking for a job I'm 23 years old uh you know nobody will take him s mean he will be kicked out of the office right away but there were other people born in 1939 right so what is your unique skill
no not that many not that many and and my parents were not thrilled I tell you uh you know I was born three months before the war you know so started but but yes okay then we go back uh my my father had a had a cult of travel had traveled a lot himself and
uh he he always you know he will bring me when I was 13 14 years old he will go for his business to Italy for instance to Pal or bolognia uh I was 12 years old I guess he will give me a map of the city he will say you have to go there
there there there uh here you probably could have a good lunch and I meet you tonight at the restaurant with my clients here and so I will spend the day with my map going around and then in the evening my father will say okay this was
a paper map right not GPS it was it was a paper M there was no GPS it said you know you enter this church there uh what did you see on the west you know on the west of the you know on the left of the entrance so I better remember the torto
was there you know because uh so my father always told me you you know when you travel you don't look enough every time he traveled a lot they say I've not looked enough I've not looked enough and this was ingrain in me all the time and
uh me now another comparative advantage was to marry Mar and yes uh you know there are not many women when we had this nice job with a City Planning Commission in New York in in 68 68 yes 69 uh and I told her well this this happing for a job as urban planner in s
Yemen and she says great let's go uh you know I I don't know you know again uh I don't know if any woman will have that you know with such enthusiasm you know I didn't have to PR her anything she she was as enthusiastic as I was Alan Berto thank you very
[Applause] much and I recommend to you all his book order without design available on Amazon and those remaining bookstores in New York City we do have time for questions there are two microphones this is question time not to make a statement if
it is not a question I will cut you off we are here to hear our guest first question at the mic yes and I will take iPad questions as well uh should the largest business City also be the political capital in countries I never thought of that I
don't think it matters I don't know I would have to yeah that's a good question actually when you think of it I never thought of that uh you know it's difficult to imagine Paris not being the capital city but on the other hand or is it that the capital city
become a business City like say Washington for instance now I EXP expanded much more Beyond you know if you compare it to cbera or basilia it has expanded much more in I you you know I will think about it sorry I cannot answer this next question on this side
um I'm from Indianapolis Indiana the first example of the talk um growing up there I didn't think it worked very well but I'd love to know your opinion on how you think Indianapolis Indiana works and what you would do to make it work better
I never come in on City where I've never been or never worked so I have difficulties uh you know talking about Indianapolis in this case I think that uh every city have a chance but it's it's a chance I mean it's it's luck
sometime and they can develop or or or stagnate uh it's you know cities are are very much like like individual they we all have the same physiology but but we have different culture different but we have also different luck you know like being born in
1939 and so I I cannot really comment on Indianapolis again because I I never comment on cities I don't know next question from the iPad quote when you arrive into a city you've never been to what and how do you prioritize what to
see so uh before Google Earth I will just uh walk randomly through the city uh and usually start from the center and to have a cross-section toward the suburbs and I would just walk for hours and just as my father recommended look and with the idea that nothing in the
city is random that uh if you see a bers shop at a corner it's because the owner of the barber shop found that it was a best place for his business to be there and and if you see a tall building next to a short building it has a reason to
and you have to try to understand why it is there do not think you know one word I hate that the World Bank use all the time is report is urbanization is halfhazard there's no such thing uh urbanization you know is done by people and they have a very very good reason
for do it it sometime distorted by regulation or something like that that's true discrimination but you have to understand why it is it now after Google Earth uh then it's very different because now I look at an image of Google Earth and I select some neighborhoods in
advance that I want to visit which intrigue me why are they there they seems particularly dense or not dense at all or you know so so I will select I will rather than going at random I will select places based on my interpretation
of Google Earth next question at this mic the Irish government has introduced rent uh controls across Dublin to combat uh increases in rent over the last couple of years what policy prescription would you recommend as an alternative to
them well uh yes rent control sometime you know I I compare Market to gravity and uh gravity is always there uh sometime you want to counter gravity you know the the outcome of gravity is not always you know you know you want to break it for instance
you invent airplane or you invent helicopter or balloon that means that you understand gravity very well in order to uh to solve a problem if you look at uh so you you have some people uh who say well I don't believe in gravity and they invent flying carpet
the Flying Carpet has advantage on an helicopter plane that it doesn't pollute it's more comfortable uh it do nothing it's a you know it's land in your backyard and rent control is a flying carpet uh you see it's a as soon as you try to find a solution
to affordability and you look outside the market all the market work uh immediately you end up like somebody will say I want to invent airplane but I'm going to not take into account gravity uh you know you don't want to fly in this airplane so uh as soon as
you if you when there is a problem of affordability you know and and many cities now have this problem you you have some people who are very poor and cannot afford cannot afford a standard of housing which is above uh what is let's
say the minimum socially acceptable in this city uh so you have to establish how many of those people are there and usually uh if it is if it is more than two or three or 4% of the population you'll have to adjust what is minimum
acceptable socially acceptable standard for the rest of the population housing should be provided by the market Market I don't what do I mean by that I mean that if you look for a house and you have to be on the waiting list on 10 years to go on public housing or to go
on uh inclusive zoning you know the the hous is provided in New York by inclusive zoning you or you have a lottery inclusive zoning you have usually 120 units and you have a lottery you have 150,000 applicants this is not serious you know waiting list is not
serious a the market should provide the market means that there are people moving in and moving out when you are in a subsidized house you don't move you know if you are in rent control house you will never move because your subsidy is
entirely l so you have no market so you have no Mobility the idea of housing is mobility a different time of our life we want to move from one type of house to another and a different location if we have a system which tie the subsidy to
where we live uh we lose this mobility and it doesn't benefit anybody else my criteria for affordability is that not to look at very poor people which indeed if they have bad health or or bad luck uh you know the the the country should
take care of them I have no problem with that if they have subsidized houses but if if you have for instance a school teacher no no job is more indispensable to the life of a city than a school teacher if this school teacher cannot
get a decent Health within I would say 40 minutes commute from a school or air school there's something wrong in your system and it is not Ren control and it is not uh inclusive zoning which will solve the problem because for each of these solution uh they will have they
will have to be on the waiting list you know for R control the the school teacher will have to wait for somebody who is under R control or die even maybe not because rent control is usually inherited from uh so so you see we have to find a a solution for this and the
solution is usually uh uh increased Supply now increasing Supply means increasing Supply by removing you know absurd regulation uh I'm I'm not talking here by the way about fire regulation or or or sanitation regulation I'm talking
about regulation that the consumer can see how large is a house how large is a land it is using and what and this location uh users should be able to make trade-off between those three things and they are able to make it visually uh
user cannot make trade-off between fire good fire regulation and bad regulation we we don't know how to do that so I am not again it could be that some fire regulation or maybe overdesign or something but I have no opinion on that but I don't see that there is any
purpose in limiting uh artificially uh the the amount of FL amount of FL space the amount of land uh in a certain location you know most of our regulation do that they reduce FL ratio that mean that they force people to consume more land than they would
otherwise of if not they will be no reason at the same time they put a uh minimum floor space for apartment in New York now if I remember well it's something like 40 square meter or something like that I'm still metric here and and uh uh at the same time uh
they do not so they they force people to consume more land and more floor space than they will want at the same time they reduce the supply of land by not developing enough infrastructure or transport we have been talking about the deterioration of
Transport in New York City that affect directly affordability that mean that our school teacher will have to to leave at maybe an hour and a half from his school and so one way that means 3 hours uh you know the new proletariat now uh
uh in cities are not the people who are starving or have no clothes like in the during the the Industrial Revolution the new poar are the people were commuting three you know back and forth three hours or four hours a day I've seen case
in South Africa in Johannesburg where a woman was fully employed at a subsidized house so she was not poor by any standard uh and she had a regular job uh above the minimum wage but but she was commuting five hours a day air life is ring this is the new pooria this is uh
you know there's no possibility of having a family life all the advantage of a city disappear if you commute 5 hours a day so I think that here uh urban planners or or manager of cities I in you know sometime I use uh urban
planners as scapegoat I mean in fact anybody who is in involved in managing cities uh they they have a responsibility for that they should have indicators about this commuting time and standard of of Housing and affordability and when this thing deteriorate you
should take responsibility and the the only action they can have increase the speed of Transport expanded and increase you know let the people decide where they want you know to leave how much they want in terms of land and FL space
and this should not be regulated next question at this mic many of the examples in your book uh counter examples were from New York City uh whether it's uh the affordable housing lottery or trading f for say uh benefits like fountains or Parks um if tomorrow
you stumbled upon a magical genie give me three policy recommendations and they shall become law to maximally benefit the citizens of New York what would they be I will remove all Flor ratio restriction I will remove the minimum flow space and I will make sure
that no developer ever get a a holiday on property tax uh I think this is uh this is too convenient for politician it never appears in the budget you know it's just a decrease in the revenue and I think that part of the problem we have in
infrastructure is precisely that so I think that uh uh that that will be what I will I will recommend now uh does that have a chance to be you know again you you ask me something magic here so I'm answer magic a question from the iPad
quote I work for Uber tell me what you think we're doing wrong end quote I I don't I don't think C is doing anything wrong I mean uh maybe at the same time if they don't pay their driver enough they may run out of driver but then the market will uh will show us
that very quickly uh so I think that Uber has increased um increase again probably even increase affordability in a certain way uh because uh it has made some area of New York which were not you know again accessible to job in two or 3 hours
suddenly much less uh I uh I I see only now some people say well they are clogging Street you know so the the traffic has you know slowed down a bit wait a minute here uh if you look at the street of New York I I calculated it in my book I said
I don't I think something like 25% is used by cars which are parked fulltime free of charge you know so you in the street so if you are serious about congestion and the congestion created by Uber you leave the curb for loading and
unloading and you still have two lanes for circulation where in fact you have now only one lane and usually you have loading and unloading by the way not only Uber but Amazon and all thing and so you are blocking so again if really the concern is about congestion in
traffic please use a valuable space for traffic and not or or Pedestrian by the way or bicycle whatever but uh parking cars on street is a [Applause] scandal next question at this mic with Rising support for just Global authoritarianism is it possible to that
we could see a 21 century Robert Moses why are we not well yes definitely yes no we uh you know we should not unfortunately yes uh you know we should not consider that progress is a linear thing some of my colleagues even
think that the enlightenment might have been just a fluke in the history of the world and that within 20 years we may all be under regime which are authoritarian uh it's quite possible and then of course uh yes Robert Moses would
have you know I mean he was I mean let's say in you know after all yeah institution reacted to Robert Moses and and limited you know the the damage he did but he did some positive things too uh so in fact it's it's institution yes you're right it's institution and those
institution could deteriorate faster than we think I am afraid so we see that now in some country of Europe uh and uh as it it could happen here from the iPad should Central Park be larger or smaller smaller uh no it's it's just the right
size because the important thing of Central Park the same with you could say the same as the Avenue have the Avenue too wide or or too narrow in the street too narrow or should the block be longer it doesn't matter uh what matters was that when they establish the grid and
when they establish Central Park a little later they clearly established property right uh and they they separated what was public and what was private and that allow the market to work with a complete symmetry of information anybody even when
say 85th Street was just a fi everybody knew that it was 8 86th Street and they knew whether so anybody buying a lot there will have complete symmetry of information and this symmetry of information in the market is much more important than agonizing whether you
know an Avenue should be 30 m 35 M 25 eventually we will adjust if the Avenue are little too too narrow we will adjust to it we'll put congestion pricing uh and uh or we will expand the city further the important thing is to
establish you know we should not agonize on is it the right you know we should of course try to to have the right decision but we should not agonize on this thing the important thing is to have very clear property right long in advance so it cannot be
manipulated uh by people who move Street as they pay politician or something or whoever urban planners in order to move Street this is the most detrimental thing which can have uh happen to a city quick last question from this Mike the uh Rick Burns documentary about New
York City should that have been longer or shorter sorry sorry could you repeat I I the the PBS documentary 15 years ago now that Rick Burns did about New York uh should that have been a longer story or a shorter story I don't know this story
which Sor there's a documentary but I haven't seen it either so I guess it should have been shorter uh but with that please all subscribe to the podcast series conversations with Tyler Alan thank you very much so much thanks for listening to
conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the [Music] show