 Okay, well, I just want to start with the obvious issue of this year, of the last year, about the death of cities has been much exaggerated, and that you feel, as I do, that cities not only are going to bounce back, but are bouncing back. And say more about that. Yeah, I think there's no doubt. I mean, you know, it's interesting. Having been an urbanist for 40 years. I never once considered the role of pandemics or infectious disease in the form and function of cities. So that's kind of telling me something you know it and I studied urbanism as an undergraduate in planning as a minor at Rutgers took a PhD in city planning in Columbia. I did all this research and you know I read things like, well, after bouts with tuberculosis or cholera New York created new building regulations for light chefs, but that was it. And then once this pandemic struck you know I had the opportunity to actually go back and try to do research and read a lot of the histories of cities and pandemics and you know what I could tell is that, over the long course of the pandemic, pandemics have not made much of a dent in the arc of urbanization. You know talking to our friend Ed Glazer, Ed said you have to go back to like thousands of years before Christ to find one instance of a city becoming derailed by infectious disease you know in the in the plagues in Europe, 30 or 40 or 50% of the population of Italian cities was annihilated yet those cities rebounded. Think about London your own London it's it's resilience in the wake of fires. Well think about London in the wake of bombings nevermind pestilence think about here's another one Berlin you know resiliency. So I think that you know this has been overdrawn heat of the moment I think both in both of our countries to be honest, there is a long tradition of anti urbanism and anti city feeling particularly against New York and London. I don't know I have no doubt that cities will bounce back. You know that I have no doubt that they'll bounce back. I think the other thing you've been identifying for a number of years is certain trends which are happening at the macro level and the micro level and I'm, you know it's for someone who I've worked probably more in terms with big cities, big, big cities from the moon buys to to Mexico City whatever you're identifying trends both across cities and from one city to another and within cities, which I find interesting and that picks up also a sort of middle sized scale. I'm more of an expert in cities in the advanced world and particularly in the United States so I come with my own bias. But it's pretty clear to me that what this pandemic is doing is not disrupting urbanization it's it is really accelerating as you said trends already underway. I think that that big cities like London and New York super cities will do just fine. I do think they may get younger. You know I think that people our age and people with families may decide particularly in the United States where educational options and urban areas are not as good to leave cities for suburbs or for second cities but that's something that's been in the United States for 50 years, far less the case in Toronto where I'm a professor, because urban schools are much better. I think that certain second cities, you know, the way I kind of say when they talk about the so called rise of the rest here there's a fellow named Steve case he founded a high tech company named AOL. He talks about the rise of the rest he's very passionate. It's not the rise of everywhere else I think there's probably a dozen cities. Phil Pittsburgh Denver, Austin. And now you know I spent part of the winter in Miami this has been very interesting to watch. Miami has been undergoing something of a moment. And you think about it Miami and Austin are the two that you see a lot of press on in the United States well. Austin has been a tech hub, since I started as a professor 40 years ago 40 years ago, Austin's business leadership and civic leadership was pilgrimaging to Silicon Valley to recruit talent and technology and when I wrote rise of the creative class Rick. In the late 1990s, Austin was the number one preferred destination of Carnegie Mellon top engineers electrical engineers and computer engineers. Miami of course is different people confuse it as a tech hub but many people have long called Miami the sixth borough of New York, because of the snowbird phenomenon but it's not just that finance people in real estate people in New York have long had a position in Miami along with Miami being the banking center for Latin America. I don't think it makes, it's not a great change to see you know hedge fund types investment bank type real estate types in the United States saying one it's warm and it's nice and I have access to a beach but to because of our peculiar state local tax structure. Right which says that you can pay a different state local tax and since Florida has none very wealthy people are taking advantage of it but I don't think we're going to see a massive change in geography. There will be shifts and a handful or two of new places may rise, but they're not going to displace New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco they'll just be a new group of second cities. The point you've been making that there are push and pull factors and technology of course today. Because of the pandemic and because of the remote working focus you know which is pretty impressive the way that's happened but you've been noting that there's been a trend that way and can you describe the push and pull dimension. Yeah, I think I think is we know, you know folks who work in our field there are two sets of forces that work on urban areas. There are push forces which push people towards urban centers and towards the downtown corner or pull factors which pull them away. And I think both are at work, you know what we've seen in the press is that a big emphasis on the pull factors. You know the people being pulled out of London or New York tend to be older tend to be more affluent tend to have families and perhaps they want to yard. And the one one way I've tried to say this is it is accelerated family formation moves people who were likely to leave London in New York, as they had more kids and their families got bigger and they wanted more space. Moves that would have taken place over a year or two years three years five years got compressed into three months. And there's also push factors and those push factors have been going on for the past decade, particularly young and ambitious people back to cities. But that's not just over the past decade if you look at the wake of any previous pandemic, going back to the plagues in Europe the cholera epidemics of Spanish food. They've always been followed by a massive movement of young people into cities because cities have opportunity to pay higher wages, but they're also great places to kind of make a life. And so that's what I tend to see is going to happen. I actually think this may sound crazy. That that the pandemic may make London and New York and San Francisco better you know you were very kind of host the book event for me on my book The New Urban Crisis at the LSE. And I was talking about the housing affordability and hyper gentrification and aristocratization and you know we could go on and on oligarchification inequality. So now there's an opportunity for London and New York and San Francisco to have their housing prices reset. Maybe as many of these oligarchs don't want to come or the super affluent decide they want an estate somewhere in the country, Monica, whatever they want to go. And younger people and more creative people artists and musicians can come back to city so I'm actually hopeful. Instead of the end of cities that will see kind of a renaissance of a creative, if I will may poking fun at myself a creep more creative more artistic city. I'm not saying it has to go that way but there's an opportunity for I love the phrase you use the you know that the cities in the end have thick labor and mating markets. And I think that's the I think in this case it's probably going to be the mating markets. I, you had mentioned remote work I think remote work is a big deal. And, you know, if we look at the benchmarks about 5% of people in advanced countries work remotely before the pandemic the argument is, it'll settle out about 20% of workforce. Well, you know, that's going to put it that's going to change cities and I think most people who read the press are focused on where we live the geography of where we live. I actually think it's the geography of work that will change more. And I do think the central business districts of big cities are going to be have a big challenge the analog I would use for this is the industrialization. Now I don't think this is going to be as big as the industrialization but it's an analog that when when the factories began to move out of London, and New York and the Soho or Tribeca or Chelsea whatever neighborhoods we pick. And they began to be remade into then artists complexes and then high tech office complexes and shopping areas and something like that's going to happen and I think it's not that the central business district is going to disappear. I think there's just going to be somewhat less demand for office space so then we I think we could, and you're an architect right you actually work on the design of cities. I think the real challenge is how do we make those better neighborhoods I think we can make them more live work neighborhoods or the phrase urbanist like to use 15 minute neighborhoods. How do we add working and living together in those communities and that could be for the better. Yeah I was going to add that I think apart from the, the resilience of the city itself as a mechanism as a social economic mechanism, the built form itself plays a role in that In other words, if you have big fat buildings designed only for banking halls Allah 80s right, you're sort of how you had it you can't you can't turn it into a funky studio space for young couples to live in so this, the actual building size and this is where climate change interestingly, or the attention to climate change is going in the right way it's a win win situation, basically thinner buildings, opening windows, not depending on air conditioning or that that means that you know what was going to be a lawyer's office in the CBD of London or canary war for whatever can easily become a place so I think that is an important part. The buildings will have to come down. I mean, I mean the same thing happened with old factory building some of them were reused magnificently in other words were were white elephants but but yeah the space will be valuable. Because you know that's what's so interesting about the history of cities, the space remains valuable but the use of that space changes over time. And once again it'll change. And for me the great model then we'll move on is the Georgian House right and London the white terrorist stuck out house which is the cheapest building in the world because it's it's all brick. And you just put some nice looking stuff at the front right, and all across London they you know they were built for the emerging middle classes of the 1830s. And I find a lot of them turned into multi level flats, occupied by students or whatever, you know, down and out, and now exactly those same houses have been bought up by the oligarchs, you know so the society's way but the building forms remain. I think London, despite all the troubles with Brexit in the United States and New York all the troubles with Trump, London in New York are going to remain the two most important cities in the world for the rest of my life. What's interesting to me is the city people don't talk about as much Hong Kong, I think Hong Kong is the one that's in deep trouble, you know, given all the political troubles with China but it's not going to be. I don't see any city maybe I'm crazy. I don't see this placing New York or London as as as dominant super cities for the world in the course of my life maybe in my children's life, but that's another story. So on on the, let's call it vibrancy and ability to respond on a track of these big cities. I live in, in North London. So near this massive new development called King's Cross which you probably have visited when you were here last we didn't go together. And the biggest single building as part of this actually old refurbished neighborhood which is very funky is the new Google headquarters, so it couldn't be more central. And the reason it moved there is mainly because it's next to two railway stations and a funky art university. Now I've observed in New York in fact I was involved in advising the big developers there as it happened a few years ago. And I think that's the tornado the pen Plaza development that if I'm right there's, there's, there's Apple, there's Google, and I think Facebook are also moving into the city into and occupying large amounts of office space there. Did you expect that. I did. You know I wrote about this in rise of the creative class and was roundly criticized and use the example of then Amazon, colonizing the city of Seattle obviously they took it way too far. But when I wrote about it people said I was crazy to anticipate it not that it would become gentrification it was just the obvious that it couldn't scale. I actually think that London in New York are going to change at the margin. So I want to make that clear that what is going to leave London in New York or real estate and financial operations. And they're not, they're still going to be among if not the largest real estate and financial centers in the world, but some of them will leave. What's coming to London in New York is high technology the Googles the Amazons the Facebooks and, and also startups in this space in the reason is because that young high technology talent really wants to be in big cities not all of it some of that talent likes to be in Austin or San Francisco but a considerable mass of it and you know my dad. You know I talk a lot about my dad with the seventh grade education working in a factory. And my dad always said if you want to get engineers to work in the factory, you have to hire the new ones. I thought that what do you mean by they said well engineering skills decline very quickly. So if you don't hire a new engineer, the old engineers goes out of style really fast rich. That number I forget if it was five or 10 years. So these companies need young engineers, right they need young computer scientists young AI people. Those people are the people who are attracted to London in Europe and other cities in New York in the United States so I actually think the city the big cities becomes at the margin more tech, less finance and less real estate now, it'll still probably more finance than tech, but I think the balance is going to shift. One of the arguments behind what you're describing is that location matters. You know, to for let's call it a factory or anyway a 21st century version of a factory, which uses based on knowledge work and technology. I mean, in the past would have been very, very dependent on locating themselves next to the ideal workforce work pool, right. So I think this is very interesting because I think all of this is partially correct and none of it is completely correct so people tend to think concentration versus distribution. The world is flat or the world is spiky in the reality is it's all of those things and more. It's a work for young talent, engineering talent technical talent ambitious talent. That talent because of what you said before a thick labor market and a thickly mating market will locate around the world in big cities that it will that those folks will just be more attracted to big cities than ever before. And so, even as the world becomes flatter or more spread out that talent those talent pools will be more concentrated now, you may be able to tap into that pulling London in New York and Singapore and their equivalents, but it's not going to spread out evenly. I think remote work enables older people who have families who want more space to say look use my dad as an example again who worked in a factory. My parents and a wife and my mom and my brother and me, and they needed more space they were running out of space in their apartment in Newark. So they bought a single family home in a nearby suburb of Newark called North Arlington, where we were raised. Well now a young family can say, I don't have to go to a nearby suburb of London and commute to the factory I can use them just like we're talking now. I can go and I know the United States better than I know England but but you I could say, well I could go to Nashville I could go to Pittsburgh, I could go to Miami I could go to Indianapolis I could go to the Hudson River Valley. I have more choices than the suburbs so I think what's what's actually happening is that the people who prefer cities will stay in cities. But instead of the people who prefer not city going to the adjacent suburb, they can spread out more. They have a bigger portfolio of choices than just the local suburb and I think the beneficiary areas of that will be rural places that are wonderful and I bet this is going on outside of London. I don't know what it but wonderful rural places outside of New York and San Francisco in London, where you can live in a spectacular state at a fraction of the cost and then the other thing would be second cities, which have sufficient amenity. But a big cost differential with London in New York where where if you leave those cities and go to that second city. For a fraction of the cost you can have a wonderful life and I think what's also happened. The amenity differential that we would have seen 20 years ago in London or New York or San Francisco or Paris, where you stuff you could get there you couldn't get anywhere else. It's now available in second cities now you know there are great cafes there are great restaurants you can shop, you can shop online, you know you don't have to go to the boutique down the road. So I think the amenity differential between big cities and smaller places has become equalized so for those older people with families who want more space, they can get it and doesn't have to be in the nearby suburb. That would be a sad thing for two people with Italian connections. In my case 50% in your case 100% right. To think that the process you're describing could end up with cities without families and young children, and I think that's that's that's a potential danger. I think that's the United States case. I think that's less the case in Canada or Europe and I think I always want to qualify this the difference in the United States is that urban schools are terrible. And, and there is, it's better than it was but there's a degree of violence that there just isn't in Toronto, I mean, in Toronto, they might steal your car, or they might, you know somebody might break into your window and take your money clip. But you're never in fear for your life. I think in the United States with with the proliferation of firearms. That's part of it but I also think the schools I you know, almost everyone I talked to who who's raising kids in the United States says, you know the urban schools are the public schools are not great. They're better but they're not great. And then if they want to choose a private school they're driving anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour each way. That's the case in the United Kingdom or Canada in in our street in Toronto in our neighborhood in Toronto they're probably five or six schools within walking distance you know several public schools a Catholic school private schools and people mix and match according to the needs. That's the difference in the I think the United States does become. It's always been less families but I think right now we're looking at the United States where the cities clear even more than that's a clear which is right. The issue of Canada kids walk to school in a way that just doesn't happen so I think the States is they talk about American exceptionalism I think this is a real area of American exceptionalism is that you know the cities are very hard for families to make a go and I think the United States is that exception and it's kind of that's kind of sad. Actually you know I haven't talked a lot about the role of governance I mean obviously the more I spend time with the work at LSE cities and looking at different systems of governance. There is no doubt that having someone in charge of an area where people tend to live tend to work and pay taxes is a pretty good model right and I mean you've made your point about the 1% moving to across state boundaries and because the taxation system is different. And I have become quite positive in the view that you can change things I mean in my city exactly 20 years ago well now 20 and one month we didn't have anyone in charge and we invented a new system. And whatever we think of the three individuals who've been mayors having a mayor has been positive and a mayor responsible for the transit authority a mayor responsible for economic development. Emergency services sadly not the schools interestingly that's still run by federal government. What's your feeling the more I mean because in the States it's very checkered isn't it the even the power of the mayor is very different. So this I think is the biggest challenge of the 21st century bar none. The industrial revolution gave us centralized power structures and I cut my teeth studying factories not studying city so you saw this in factories, and then the people who ran Japanese factories when they developed this competitive advantage that that's just stupid. We are going to decentralize decision making authority down to the worker on the factory floor. I've done that in governance of advanced industrial or advanced knowledge based nations. Look at our own country look at the United States if there's ever been a signal example of, if you ask me the biggest problem in the United States. It's the imperial presidency, and the over concentration of power and the executive branch and Donald Trump exemplifies that because he's just incompetent and dysfunctional. I would much rather have a robust and resilient system that's decentralized where there's multiple power centers at the state or provincial level and then, you know, subsidiarity you want to bring power down to the place closest to where that decisions make a difference. Look, I'm amazed that that conversation is so difficult to have. At least you have a conversation around city governance and Metro mayors and that's that conversation has not been on the table maybe under Biden it will be in the United States but that's I think the biggest issue facing the advanced world is the over concentration of power at the executive branch. That means devolution and the empowerment of the local what I do think the United States does well. And I'm going to give the United States one prop here is the public private partnership. You know, this is something that the US is ingenious at that I've not seen in Canada, you don't see as much in the UK and Europe. This mixing of philanthropic assets and private sector assets and civic ambition with local governance. Now it's not. We have to work to make that better. But it's remarkable and every city does it different you know if you go from New York to San Francisco to Indianapolis to Milwaukee, every partnership is different but they all seem to work me a couple of concrete examples. Well look at Pittsburgh you know a city I lived in for 20 years a city that was down on its knees. And it wasn't local government that took built that back or federal government it was the Heinz Foundation and the Mellon Foundation and other foundations, coming together with the universities coming together with the business community and saying look we have to break our city back and government doesn't have money. So we're going to develop all of these hybrid institutions you can't even figure out the names of them public private partnerships, and we're just going to make a go of it you know we're going to fix our city and make it better and the university is going to do its part in the private sector is going to do its part. It's such a flexible and amorphous thing it's hard to put names on it. Every, every place you go in the United States this has happened in some way shape or form. What one thing we call them are now anchor institutions, like a Carnegie Mellon or University of Pittsburgh is an anchor institution. But I think putting real structure on that governance, local governance around public private partnership. That's the big challenge and I don't see enough work. I don't see enough thinking and work and action around that but I think that's really the challenge. And by the way, where do we see an example of that working the damn vaccine. Sorry, government has failed on so many things but when you got the university working in AstraZeneca and Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson and Moderna with this weird combination of philanthropy and state and local action. You know, it's kind of magnificent. And so I think there's something in a new less structured form of governance which is more local and more a mixture of private public and philanthropic that's our future. So if one were to look forward, and you know you're you're you've been very good at also helping a non specialist audience understand the complexities of cities, right, how they how they work. And, you know, I think I know because you've already mentioned there are some winners and some losers ahead, right. I think you've described the next years are going to be bumpy, they're going to be bumpy for everyone but they're going to be bumpy for cities. So who are going to be the winners and who are going to be the losers. Well, you know what keeps me up at night is the fact that the Spanish flu in the in the late teens of the last century was followed by the roaring 20s. The 20s were an era of great partying, some cultural significance some cultural movement in arts and music, but also tremendous the gilded age tremendous inequality the great Gadsby. You know I think we're really looking at the roaring 2020s that's what I think we're looking at. And we're looking at a time where people are going to merge from this and say it was terrible. We want to forget it that they call the Spanish through the forgotten pandemic it wasn't talked about. I think people are going to want to forget it, and I'm worried that we're going to go into this rebound, if you will, and we're going to forget that there are losers as well as winners we're going to celebrate the winners and that we're going to see more economic inequality more spatial inequality, unless we galvanize ourselves to saying look out of this we want more inclusive and resilient cities that's our job to make that case but my my hunch is, we're going to look. I think if we have this conversation a year from now we're going to be in a totally different space and cities are going to be roaring back things are going to be kicking back into gear people are going to be in a celebratory mode. Trump's going to be way gone. Sorry. You know it's going to be a different world out there. And I just hope that we stay galvanized about dealing of these problems and then equity of racial and economic injustice of inclusivity and then one you said resiliency, not not all of those inequities which are social and cultural and racial, but also that the issues of resiliency and climate change and all the other issues that are affecting our cities I hope we stay focused on but I'm worried we're going to lose that focus. Well, I love the idea that we're ending this conversation in a positive note with the idea of the roaring 2020 so fantastic concept that we this sort of a positivism on your party so in fact everyone who's listening which it, it, it, no, no, no doubt. I think I mean I want to be really clear on this for folks listening in. This was a horror. This is a horrible pandemic. I mean this is terrifyingly horrible and and 400,000 Americans nearly have died. But if you look at how fast we invented a vaccine and how fast we're rolling out of vaccine. It's the scientific advance and innovation component I'm not trying to be polyanna is pretty amazing and I think an amazing step forward. I think we're going to remember that a lot that this was the era in which we began to not conquer viruses but learn how to cope. We pulled off something as dysfunctional as our governments were and as dysfunctional as Trump things didn't have to be that way. We still pulled off something pretty amazing. I think even some of the research you published in the last months, you know, do does confirm that actually the dense the nasty big density city has actually been part of the solution and not just a big part. And that was colleagues at LSE to some of your colleagues as well doing some of that incredible work that showed that that it was the connective if you think about it it was the global connectivity of London and New York, that and and the ski slope areas of the Alps and the Rockies that expose them. And then it propagated through those communities but if you look at how that virus, you know, look for spaces to invade it very quickly moved to smaller cities and in the United States devastated because the United States was very ineffective at mitigating the virus. So it moved into the Dakotas and rural areas which had much higher incidence of cases and deaths per capita. So yeah and the big cities have been much better at mitigation this is what surprises me. That in fact in the United States which I know the best. We have seen a migration at least a supposed migration the state aren't all in but from New York and San Francisco. The places that have both most effectively mitigated the virus. Okay, the places that have taken a disaster situation and mitigated at the best to the places that have done the worst Florida and Texas. That just astounds me. And I know why people are saying well I want warmth, I want outside, I'm scared of inside. But it's very interesting that the migration in many ways has gone exactly the opposite of how you might have predicted it's gone from safe, safer, increasingly safe to increasingly less safe places. So that also tells me is that the virus is not the main motivator of the migration or other things at work. And I think it just has a concluding reflection going back to the beginning the fact that cities, you know, your point that you don't really think of cities that have died as a result of illness or, or died for stop I mean cities tend to tend to last even longer than national states, very often, right. They certainly do this notion of, you know, the resilience word is used too much and it means every means doesn't mean very much anymore. But there is something there that I think you just put an end note on this, you know, if I turn on my TV, you know, I don't go out I'm very safe. I haven't been into a store since March, having wasn't allowed in my office still not allowed because we'd locked down in Toronto. But if I put on a show and it's showing London, or New York, like, or Paris, I'm like dying to get back there. And I'm not the only one so I think what's happening now is people are scared. They can't go out. They want to be outside. But as soon as things get safer, you know, I can't keep them down on the farm right I mean it's a great old expression but there's something in the appeal and energy of cities to human beings. That's not going to go away and people might think you know you've heard this all the time with your friends who have retired. You know, I moved to this wonderful part of a warm community, and I started golfing and playing tennis and that was great for six months. And then I was bored out of my freaking mind. I think the same things going to happen. You know people are going to go. There's a reason London in New York and Paris are great cities. And it's not because they have great golf courses and tennis courts and great weather. It's because they have great people and smart people in great places to interact and I think it might take a while it may not be a year it might take two or three years, but we're going to see a powerful recoil towards towards real cities like we always have. I think the notion that the city sort of generates randomness is of course part of its attraction so maybe that's what we're thinking forward that the you know that the bumpy riders always going to be there. But the sort of the direction of travel is pretty clear and could be quite positive. You know and I've enjoyed the sabbatical and I've enjoyed the downtime as much as I've been scared so, but I think a lot of us. Not many of us are going to want to stay in our remote or cubicles forever I, and there's a reason, great cities are great cities and they're hard to replicate you know it's it's really hard to replicate what happens in London or Paris and you are her Tokyo. Yeah, and you know someone. There's a there's a person a writer in New York City called Jeremiah Moss it's a it's a pseudonym. And this writer writes about the old declining New York and great stuff very critical very left brilliant brilliant stuff. And they interviewed Jeremiah Moss and Jeremiah said, The only thing about this pandemic is that the people who never belonged in cities will get the hell out. Now, now I don't have the nerve to put it that way but his point was what you saw in a lot of immigrants to London and New York and I were people who didn't want they wanted to be out of the city. We can exempt company example but they literally were building these hermetically sold buildings and hermetically sold neighborhoods that were not urban, they were not what New York and his point was those people didn't belong in the city anyway so if they leave, we're just left with the city people. And I think that's another point that's well worth taking that cities went off in a direction that they were becoming very suburban very affluent very aristocratic, almost Neil feudal right to Joel Cotkins phrase Neil feudalism. You know maybe this is a reset in that we go back to people who like artists and creatives and young people and people who love cities for what they are for their funky interactive dense texture and I was always a remarkable comment he made. And a smart one probably the follow on from that is that the most exciting thing is not to know who the next group of people were going to mix with. Yes, I think that's right and I think the other thing that will happen post pandemic is one of the other reasons cities have died a little, a little bit less so in the United Kingdom and in the United States was Trump restricting immigration. So one of the things that has been fuel to the greatness of cities is this incredible global immigration. I think that will bounce back across the world that will see this this new round of immigration as people say we want opportunity to so. Yeah, you know cities, hopefully cities become better cities. Well, we look forward Richard to the roaring 2020s and cities so thank you for that.