 Okay. Thank you all for making it into the snow. And welcome to our third session on G-STEP's Lesson in Planning Series for those who are into my search. Today, we'll have a pleasure to listen to Alan Berthold, who is a senior reader scholar at the Brown Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Alan's operational work and research focus on the intersection of interaction between markets, regulations, and transfer infrastructure, taking the stage of structural development. His most recent field of assignment has been focused on urban transport, land development, and housing issues, and how they're implemented in the city of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Vietnam, Colombia, Mexico, and South Africa. From 1980 to 1990, he was the principal urban planner at the Royal Land, raised by his local and national government of urban development policy. Alan graduated as architect difficulty from the D-4 National School of Urban Planning and Marketing in 1970. The three of them were founded in 2018. Alan completed his book on urban planning and markets, published by the NINE-PFREDS, titled Order Without Design on Market Chief, which today is half a week long. So after the lecture, we'll open up for a question. And with this, please remain open as we go. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's always a big pleasure and an honour to be at the Columbia University. And I'm glad to see that the weather didn't diminish the attendance. So the goal of this talk is to talk about my new book, which came just two months ago. I will not go chapter by chapter. I just extracted some of the points, which are developed in the book. First, maybe I should give you my background as I'm an architect by training. Although at the time I studied architecture, it was not clear that there was a difference between urban planning and architecture. The idea was that the city was just a very large building, and which had to be designed by somebody with some genius, animated by genius. It was not because cities were made of people, cities were made of people. So I have evolved since that. I hope that you will also all evolve from the things you have learned at the University, and develop more way of seeing things. I worked in urban planning for several years, and after when I was 31, for the first time on the job, I met with an urban economist. I had never met an urban economist before. I was not completely sure what was the difference between economics and accounting, for instance. People would deal with money and cost. And it was a discovery, because when we compare nodes, we realize that the thing that I have observed, and I thought were either idiosyncratic or interesting things that regularities, suddenly I realized that there were a bunch of people, since about 100 years, I've studied those things, I've filled these and models. It was a bit, I would compare it, somebody would look at planets every night with a telescope, and suddenly fall on the work of Newton and the law of attraction and some gravitation. So for me it was really a discovery. Now it didn't mean that my skill as an urban planner were obsolete. It means that if I complimented this skill with a skill of economist, we would have a very good understanding of city work and how we can modify cities. So here in my book I make always a difference between developing models and understanding the mechanism of cities and compare that with what I call operational urban planning. That means every day you are in an office and you have pressure, somebody asks you, we need a new street or why should this be a street? Should we limit the height of building in this area and things like that? This is operational urban planning and most of the time those decisions are taken just, you know, using instinct. And I think that we should not use instinct, we shouldn't use knowledge. Now using knowledge can be completely wrong of course, but at least you have a reason for being wrong, which means that if things do not work the way you thought they were going to work, you can modify your judgment and probably do better than before. You know where? When you make a mistake, but this mistake is due only on instinct, there is no way to modify things after or to learn from your experience. So let us start now with this introduction. This is the illustration I have on the cover of my book. It's the distribution of population in Jakarta, Jabotabek, you know, the metropolitan area of Jakarta. And so the height here represents the density. So the volume of all this prism are in fact proportional to the population. So this gives you a view of all the population of Jakarta as being distributed on the built up area. This is, I use this in the cover of my book because it's exactly, it illustrates what I call the spontaneous order which arise in cities, which is in fact the sum of decision taken by individuals who decide to locate in the city. And if you make the sum of those decisions, those decisions, by the way, are not arbitrary. Each person or each business will decide to locate here and to consume very little land or a lot of land which is reflected in this graph here. They take this decision based on on something completely logical, at least for them part of you. So if you had all the logic, you end up with the structure of the city. Now, it's not quite so simple. Originally Jakarta, you know, the port is here, I didn't show that, that's a port with the seas on the north here. So the port is here, the city developed that way. And there was only one main road which were linking Jakarta to this little town at the time to a separate town called Bogor. And so the city has a tendency to develop linearly along this highway. Why? Because here are paddy fields and developing land in paddy fields is very expensive and difficult, you know, you have to build a lot of bridges, the canals, the foundation are expensive. So at a certain point the municipality was concerned that a linear city like that first created an enormous congestion on the main road, which by the way is after a road which goes to all the highlands of Java which are heavily populated like Bandung and Arie and all that. So they decided to build a tall highway east-west like that. And so you see here of course the market, this individual decision of people household and firm reacted to this new highway because suddenly the distance between here and here in terms of time becomes shorter than the very congested type of travel from here to here. So in a certain way I could stop my talk right now I will not. It's because I am talking. But because this is the essence of what I think about cities you have on one side a spontaneous order coming from the sum of decisions of household and firms who decide on much land to consume on the cross-space based on their own welfare to maximize their own welfare and then you have also so that's a grass-root thing and then you have a top-down decision on major infrastructure and this individual decision and the market will not provide this major infrastructure. So somebody has to take the decision to do it. What is important is to understand this complementarity. The problem with urban planner and the way I was taught about urban planning is that they think they can impose a shape on everybody and they think that anything which is spontaneous or in if you read many of the reports from my former employer, the World Bank you will see reports about it could be of the Asia, India or Colombia who say urbanization is haphazard who is out of control. I think this is completely wrong as a even if those cities might be a bit of a mess in terms of traffic or whatever it's just wrong nothing in a city is haphazard nothing is random it's always there is always a reason I could invoke Spinoza or Heger or that nothing which exists everything which exists is logical in a certain way so we have to have that urban planners have to be a little more modest and understand that their all is to support the sum of individual decision as best as they can they might be individual decision which are detrimental to the city for instance it could be that some area needs to be protected for some reason erosion or something like that then they should take the decision but it should always be informed by something quantitative and it cannot be just a city in the form of a castle a circle or a star is better than a city or so here this is really what is important this dialogue between the random not random the grass root movement coming from this spontaneous order emerging from markets and then what you can do so I like to quote three persons here Leonardo da Pisa his other name is Fibonacci the series of Fibonacci but also by the way introduced from India the zero and the numbers coming from India you imagine before Fibonacci if you were extracting grass root you would have to do it with Roman numbers you imagine how difficult it must have been so there is no knowledge without measurement I agree with many of the objectives of my fellow urban planners if they talk about livability or sustainability is if they don't measure it if you just say at the beginning of your chapter your report this is sustainable my concern is sustainability but there are no indicators to show what do you mean what is it really have you achieved it if this plan really is sustainable then how do you define it I think it's just like propaganda I mean it's a myth it's a dream there is no measure ever said there is no knowledge finally the last two Adam Ferguson the Scottish Enlightenment is I suppose he discovered really what is the execution the result of human action but not the execution of human design now I don't think he was when he wrote that he was talking about cities he was talking about more commercial order exchanges and commerce but I think it applies absolutely to cities and we have to bear in mind the same with IEC also order generated without design again this concept of a spontaneous order emerging which is created by human being it's not a natural order it's but there is no design somebody would design it in a certain way so that's really the essence of my book so design is top down market is grassroots now when I talk about market I have to make sure that we understand each other because sometimes markets is used ideologically markets are a mechanism it's like gravity it's always there even in a country which tried to eliminate market like the Soviet Union or China before and for you had black market without black market this country would have collapsed much before so market was not invented during the industrial revolution or was not invented besides you know market existed as soon as probably there were cities or even maybe before cities the first type of controls those are human mechanism human created mechanism markets it's not a religion it's not a God it's a mechanism like gravity so sometime you may not be happy you have to completely legitimate you have to explain why and you can take measure to contradict it but if you do not understand our market work you cannot modify the outcome of markets so again here when I talk about market I'm not saying it's your judgment to decide whether the outcome of the market is positive for human being, maximized welfare this is your judgment I make my own judgment on it but you could have a very different judgment on it this is completely acceptable but if you say I will ignore market it's a bit like somebody designing an airplane and telling you I don't take gravity into account in designing my airplane no chance of success this is my former boss for few months the Corbusier I didn't design that his idea was that the role of the planner architect by extension the planner is to impose a shape on things and that people will have to fit into this shape Corbusier had this idea that for some reason the streets were bad and that we have to invent a city without street now it's interesting because he was living in the 6th in Paris which is still one of the most pleasant places to walk around in terms of city there was a lot of cafe, restaurant art gallery but for some reason he thought that the French were spending too much time in cafe which he may have had a point there by my own experience but it is not the role of the planner or the architect to prevent people from going to cafe it is maybe the role of a moral leader, a guru it could be maybe a politician certainly not of an urban planner so here his idea was to design a city where everybody would be in a tower to work or live and then the tower in the park and so after you finish working you just jog you don't go to the cafe and then it resulted in this type of architecture now you see we will see now the difference between market and design as soon as you say design, I design something which is optimum for the people I want to serve but you have something uniform by definition because if you have invented a better way of living there is no reason to do it differently so you have this uniformity and this is a contrast this is Poudon Poudon is a financial center of Shanghai and this picture by the way was taken about six years ago so there are three more skyscrapers which are much taller than that so it's even more spectacular so here this is market in the sense that you see each building is different the first building which we built were relatively low this one because it was not certain that Poudon would be a success and the government you could develop Poudon only because infrastructure was built across the river here, the Wangpo you need to have bridges and tunnels without the bridge and tunnel there would be no Poudon so there would be no market the land if it's not accessible it's across the river the Wangpo is about half of the Hudson river it's pretty wide the land has no value so you see here again the interaction between market and infrastructure and design but after people realized that the government was serious about building the infrastructure and they could do it very fast suddenly of course the price went up and that explains the skyscraper you will not forget skyscraper or there it's not a decoration skyscraper or there because land is expensive a lot of people want to be in this area it is not just to make a landmark to build a skyscraper per square meter, per square foot the construction is much higher you have a lot of utilities which are expensive which are taking a lot of space to in a floor plan of a very tall building you will see the amount of floor space that the utilities are taking so it's expensive but it is worth doing only if there is a very high demand so you see this to me is exactly it's not design every individual building is design but the skyline shows the market it's not design and then you see the difference you see this enormous variety that market are creating because between the time where this building was built and this one the technology has changed too and that reflects the technology and this is what is interesting about cities that they reflect the technology evolve or the taste also of consumer evolve different building will reflect this imagine if Corbusier has been asked by the Chinese government 50 years before to design this you will have uniform tower covering the whole thing and they will be a bit like Brasilia they will probably declare them a patrimony of humanity and therefore will not be able to change anything so when I talk about spontaneous order created by market let us you know and I always say we have to be quantitative so I should prove my point that this spontaneous order is universal and I prove it by this graph here I have selected here I have a total of about 61 cities now that Marienius and I have measured exactly the same way you know measuring density you need to have the same methodology to do it if not you could end up with very different numbers and so we have measured densities exactly the same way and the way we measure density we start from the city we build rings and of one kilometer and we measure the built-up area within each ring and from the census data the population within each ring then we divide the population by the built-up area and that give us the density in one ring now we have here 12 cities what nothing to do with each other different continent a complete different history different income different climate different culture they have nothing to do with each other they have one thing in common all of them have densities which decrease from the center to the periphery so that those graph here are showing from 0 to 30 kilometers and the density are all measured the same way all these graphs are at the same scale so you see that Paris, Warsaw, Barcelona European cities have the gradients the way the density decrease follow what the model of economists have shown theoretically and confirm empirically it's a negatively exponential graph why that if you go to the literature you'll find some partner or explain exactly all those equations where derived but all these cities which have nothing to do with each other more or less follow we have here Beijing Jakarta and Bangkok in Asia Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York now Atlanta if you it looks quite flat if you blow it up the top density in Atlanta is of course a fraction of Paris or Beijing but you will find exactly a curve which is actually a bit like that so it follows exactly the same pattern and this pattern is derived from market that's the way the land market work that means people make a choice when they consume land if it is close to the center they decide your land is expensive because everybody wants to be close to the center and so they consume regular land and they make a trade-off when they are in the periphery they will have they will have commuting costs which are higher if you have an office building it will be more difficult if you are in the periphery to get workers than if you are in the center you have to consume some business too have to consume more land for instance if you are manufacturing your furniture certainly you will not select a place in Atlanta it will not make sense although you may have a lot of clients but to manufacture furniture you need space, you need land and it will be far for furniture if they reflect the capital cost of quality then they will be of course completely affordable now you may decide if you make furniture as your factory here so where land is not expensive however you may need a designer for your furniture and it's possible that then you will hire a designer in a firm right in the center so you see you can depending on what you do you adapt to this thing so all this to tell you again that this very different city different follow this this is again the spontaneous order of the market if you do not understand it if you think that this is an aberration that let's say the optimum density for Bangkok should be 200 people per hectare and the density should be like that and you design it to be like that because you think this this will avoid a swirl or something like that this is never going to happen it's never going to happen so you are losing your time if you design an infrastructure saying well all the infrastructure of Bangkok is going to ember so you are going to design an old infrastructure here to accommodate much more people than there is the meant for you are losing your time you are losing of course you are wasting so you have better understand that thing now those curve will change we start but again economists could tell you not exactly how they will change you know what they cannot tell you in 20 years whether the density here would be higher or lower but they can tell you if the price of transport change if the income change if technology change for transport for instance affecting again the transport time and cost the density will go higher or lower they can tell you in which direction it will go so that decrease the number of mistakes you can do because you will not now this is also a density curve it's from Brasilia and it goes to from 0 to 40 km on the ground and the density will go to 120 km now this contradicts completely what I have shown before well Brasilia was entirely designed there was no market the land was entirely to the government and the land was distributed by the government first to the top civil servants then the next tier of civil servants and then another tier of civil servants and then after all all the people who were for the city who would wash dishes who would cook for the civil servant or clean the offices well those have to thank for themselves they were not part of the design so they end up in the suburbs by pushing the poorest people by design by design the market would have never done that by design pushing them in the suburbs you end up with this reverse completely contradicting market fortunately not many planners or architects are asked to design cities like Brasilia they are very very few which have been done with this type of mistake I don't think any of you would have the occasion to make this type of mistake but it's just to show that indeed this gradient of density is created by market and if you design entirely that you may completely contradict this so cities are primarily a regular market this is very shocking to a lot of people like most of us I suppose in this room who like cities cities for us are much more than that you know cities where you meet new people you go to a concert you go to a theater you go to a cafe you go to a restaurant you jog in the park and yes all these things are possible in cities are what make the city attractive but they are built on the labor market if the labor market doesn't work then always this superstructure which is so attractive which is built on top of all these collapse we have the example of Detroit the tragic example of Detroit in the US Detroit was a very cultural city art museum in the world by the way it was well known also for creating new music all these things collapse completely when the labor market collapsed so the main job of the urban planner is first and foremost to make sure that's a labor market function as a city expand what is a labor market a labor market is not that everybody has a job and live close to its job and stay there all the time labor market as a word market it means that constantly if you are a worker you are looking at all the jobs which are available in the city and you are looking for a better job a better job maybe which pays better maybe which is closer to the place where you work but most importantly where you think you fit better either because it's more interesting or maybe because you have some skills that you have discovered after you left college and that are more fits to one type of job than another we are all very different and that's what the wealth of a city is all this difference put together which are in fact complementary but this talent can be used in the city only if yourself are moving and your employers also when they select people are trying to find exactly the right people who fit what we need and by the way within the firm employers know that they need very different types of people if somebody is keeping their book doing their accounting they don't want somebody who is too much of a relation from here but they want somebody who is very accurate very systematic who is always there on time on the other hand if they want to design something like furniture they may want a completely different personality somebody who may arrive late in the office sometime or leave late somebody who is very different so you see the labor market is that is this possibility of constantly changing work I'm not saying that you should change work all the time I'm just saying that as soon as you are dissatisfied with your job either because of the salary or because you find it boring the advantage of living in a city like New York or Paris or London or Chicago is that you can easily find something else which is better and by moving like that several times eventually you will end up with something that probably you enjoy more and everybody will be better off for it not only you but the entire society so here it's just to show that concentration of people by itself doesn't create a labor market this is an area of several square kilometers 55 square kilometers in the countryside near at least of Luoyang in China so it's countryside if you measure the density here in this rectangle you have a density of 26 people per hour which is about the density of Los Angeles and which is about stick time the density of Atlanta so at some time Los Angeles are obviously a labor market this is not a labor market so it has the same density as a labor market you can see these are villages they are linked by roads some larger than others but basically those villages are probably working in the field around that some of them here in the larger one probably repairing water pumps or tractors or similar that so they are some non-agricultural activities this is not a labor market in pre-reformed China and in the Soviet Union you had death cities with a lot of industrial workers but there often there was no labor market in the sense that people were given a job when they get out of either high school or university and usually they would stay in the same company not the same job for their life because there was no labor market advertising well we need somebody there and the salary was decided by the central government so you see a labor market is not having a job closely what example would be jails a lot of prisoners work in jail and so in a way it's an ideal situation they are very short commute usually they cannot be fired unless they do something very terrible and it's a very regular job it is not a labor market you cannot, you will not expect much innovation coming from the workers in the jail so this is not a labor market so that's very important some people think that labor market is in fact just being being employed and being close to your employment area this is not that at all so one of the consequence of my definition of labor market is the movement of people across a metropolitan area here I have what I call the classical monocentric model most cities go through this stage until the city reach maybe one million, one million and a half you have a high concentration of jobs in the center density is also higher in the center and then people go to their job either they live close to the center or from the periphery they go to the center so that's a monocentric model a number of cities follow this when they are relatively small follow this model then you have the dispersed model which represents practically the way trips are organized in Los Angeles or in Atlanta where people in fact seems to have a random movement or one movement from one part to another so here you see the difference between the two here you have dispersed origin but you have concentrated destination so that's allow you a certain type of transport which would be efficient and you have to end up also in very dense area where you are in the center so here transit is very efficient in a situation like that here on the country because everything is dispersed probably the car or at least smaller vehicle with four or five passengers will be the most efficient way of getting around because you have dispersed origin and dispersed destination and that this of course happened in cities which were developed actually where the car was affordable to a large number of people then the most common model is in fact this is what I call the composite model you had originally a city with a strong center like London or Manhattan Paris or Shanghai and then as the city expand you start having more and more trips which are from suburbs to suburbs you still have a large number of trips which are from suburbs to center but you have more and more trips which are from suburbs to suburbs and our observation in the last 20 years is that as city expand the number of jobs which are dispersed in suburbs is larger and larger even in New York metropolitan area so I'm counting here 20 million people and in Paris metropolitan area 12 million people 70% of the job of the trip commuting trips are from suburbs to suburbs you know we have always this idea that when we see Manhattan or the center of Paris or the center of London that this is really the destination of everybody it's the destination of all the tourists not necessarily all the workers who are providing the economy so this is the model which is the most common and then as the city expand in a way the dispersed model become more and more important in terms of percentage of trip this is this do not exist it exists only in the mind of urban planners but I show it here because I am often asked to review master plans and I found this model very often in the master plan basically the idea completely contradict the idea of a labor market they think that planners can be so skilled that they could match exactly housing and employment and therefore that will solve the major problem which exists in this model is that trips are becoming longer and longer and how do we manage those what's technology will allow those trips to be less than one hour so they say well if we could match exactly workers and jobs then everybody could bicycle to his work so a large metropolis will not be one large labor market it will be 10 or 15 smaller labor market and everybody will be very happy but that's a fairytale it doesn't exist in reality because you may don't get me wrong you may have cities which have a lot of little center like that some cities grow like that but you will never find this pattern of trips you see the people who are working here they have some coming from the other side and similar that so this do not exist and if you do a master plan which say this is the way it's going to work you are going again to waste completely you are not going to develop the type of transport system which will allow the labor market to work so you will have a fragmentation of the labor market now this exists in many cities for instance in a city like Mexico city which 22 million people the transport system is difficult because again you have this dispersion now more and more dispersion so the subway system which was when it was created extremely modern and efficient now it's serving only relatively small part of the population and most of the trips are in fact for collective taxi again because collective taxi are relatively good at serving dispersed origin, dispersed destination of trip so you see and then the result of that is that in fact Mexico city if you have 20 million people let's say that the labor the size of the labor is 10 million you have probably 3 labor market of 3 million and a half or something like that so if you could improve the transport system in Mexico city probably and again I rely on the work of economists there probably the GDP of Mexico will increase salary will increase also the salary of the people there for exactly the same job will increase finally talking about ships in China now we are moving to this model what the Chinese government called cluster cities now contrary to what people think in the west the Chinese government didn't decide when they let us do cluster cities they realize that although most of their cities were designed as monocentric we say ring road around them it emerged smaller towns smaller towns which developed industries which were complementary and then instead of having one large city with suburbs suddenly you had a lot of different centers will compete with each other but complement each other and when you know Tom Cook the head of Apple Tim Cook some what two months ago he was asked why they are not manufacturing Apple phone in the US and he said it is not anymore because Chinese workers are cheaper than American it's not very big factor it's not that much it's because in China we have supply chains which can allow the manufacturing and the changing of the manufacturing extremely fast and the supply chain this is the way it looks and again this came spontaneously the fact the Chinese government didn't say in this little town they would make switches and if they saw the time we are going to make streams and no it happens spontaneously they just they knew there was a demand for that entrepreneur were looking for land and they wanted to look for land in an area where land was not too expensive but still had relatively good access to their labor and things like that and they took a decision that's it so you see so this give us a completely different pattern this is the pure labor delta which by the way now I understand it's called the greater bay area but it's a little confusing for Americans they may think we are going to San Francisco San Francisco so here in red is what is built or was built in 2010 it's probably larger now we have here are 65 million people 65 million people you see the scale here is 200 km so this is the size of a country like the UK or France but I won't say as one city yet but very close to one city and now what is missing here you see the is a transport system which could completely integrate this market now from Hong Kong to Guangzhou you are now a rapid train you have to be careful in China because things change so fast that your data is always out but if I remember well you can go now in 40 minutes from Hong Kong to Guangzhou in a rapid train now that doesn't mean that you could commute anywhere from here in 14 minutes because you still need to get to the station and then when you arrive in Guangzhou you are still at the station you still need to get to your job but the Chinese now are completely aware that the challenge of an urban development like that is transport we know now will not allow this to be a reintegrated labour market Subway BRT are too slow Subway which stops every kilometer, kilometer and a half or two kilometer is too slow for a distance like that then when you arrive at the station you still need to go somewhere to your job so you have to have a system so that's McKinsey projection of automatic vehicle you know autonomous vehicle in China now I don't know how good is this projection sometimes McKinsey does a good job sometimes maybe not as good but this is still based on the research you see in 2040 they project that the majority of the vehicle and most of them will be of course in urban area will be will be autonomous vehicle for mobility service so they will not be private there will be a minority of one which are private which should be the equivalent of the driver and that means that they will use a fraction of the road space because if those shared vehicles have four or five passengers they provide door to door transportation practically and with a fraction of the road space that the normal car will use not only because you have more passenger vehicle but also being autonomous it can reduce the distance between vehicle which is the major impact so I cannot develop that too much now but just to say that in order for those city change they adapt also to new technology and we have to complicate the lines our either prejudices or tastes that we have for whatever the idea that somewhere the good guys and individual vehicles are the bad guys or even collective taxi most of my colleagues in transport think that collective taxi are the bad guys I think we have to revise this and not because we should shift to our tastes and look at numbers and we will find that really if we want to accommodate this this is the way now if the Chinese cities succeed in having integrated labour market of 60 million people the productivity and the creativity in those markets is going to be remarkable and it will be equivalent I think to relatively during the industrial revolution the productivity of the UK compared to the rest of the world because of the technology change so it's something we are better be aware of and when we are dealing with city non-Chinese cities some of us who work in non-Chinese cities I'm not saying that every city should become a cluster we should not but if there is an opportunity we should look again at the transport system even in the New York metropolitan area or the San Francisco Bay area there are certainly big improvements in transport so what is the role of the planner in all that for me the best planning was done in the 6th century and we have not much improved what is the job of the planner the job of the planner is to create a network of streets which will allow its labour market to function now the planner cannot exactly project how many workers will be there but the important thing is to put a boundary and say this is a street network largely in advance and this is a private land on the private land people can do whatever they want we don't care but anything which is public should be set in advance and that by the way allow the market to work if there is an uncertainty whether a piece of land in the suburb could be reserved for a park or a street but you don't know in advance the market so to separate that even if you are wrong in terms of streets you know the streets should have been a lot wider does matter compared to the advantage of having that another thing that was done in Miletus is that they also selected the area for the public space not only the street and if you were Greek they assigned the things which were very important to the theater the Greek always considered that the theater was an important form of the city thing you had the Agora where people were doing business by the way doing business and also the criminal they were all together because people had contracts there is sometimes disputes with contracts so that was a public space so it was reserved in advance for the public location and then here this was sports and the Palestine sport was supposed to be important so much as spectator sport but people would do sports so you see here this is the job of the urban planner reserve area which had to be protected which would be outside the market like shore you know the rivers for instance and then I have a network of streets so that the labor market can work as it is now unfortunately so that was not I quote Miletus because in a way my culture but say the same idea came in China much before that was Tang Dynasty by the way at a much larger scale you see this was the capital but if you compare it to Manhattan since the width of Manhattan would be about that here Manhattan would be a little longer the area is about the area of Manhattan but it would be longer so you see the blocks here were in fact they were inside blocks which are the smaller scale so here again this side day in the Tang Dynasty that people had to circulate from one part to another and move not at all the model that you saw before where you have a lot of little little cities put together twice this side day that you move around in the Tang Dynasty I would pass that this is so some people ask me but why can't cities be provided by markets after all it's you could conceive that you can conceive a watcher system for instance entirely designed by market it's conceivable because this is an example of a market provided street system this is a suburb of Cairo it's in an area that the government decided it should stay agricultural so on the planet it was green and then it was very close again they do not understand land prices so it's very close to the center of Cairo so people just and they you know bought from farmers not squatter and they develop streets so every developer you know put a street which give access to his or not but if you put all that together you don't have a transport system which allows people to move most of these streets are about 4 or 5 meters so that's the business right so you you do not it's fine to give access to a flat but not enough if you have thousands of them to move from one part of the city to another so again this ignore labor market to work one second function is decrease negative externality you don't want to to have a let's matter close to a school now frankly this could have happened during the industrial revolution in the time of Dickens maybe I don't see anything like that there are still some negative externality have been some activity noise or smells but these are relatively minor they should be controlled if we we go to pass that if we you know modern planning has gone completely astray by suddenly originally providing this right of way for street and suddenly trying to design what is happening in the private lot in much too much detail and so I think that I have to now pass my time so I will go to the the conclusion yeah urban planners at your all which is extremely important but they are not planning it they are mostly concentrating in trying to to piggyback as many revelation as possible on the individual lot if you look at you know when I wrote my book I tried you know one chapter I was talking about New York city zoning that I thought I knew well because many years ago I worked with city planning commission and then I tried to count how many zoning you know how many zoning area they are in type of zoning and after about a week I gave up because it could have taken me more than a month just to count how many zoning category they are because of overlayism and this is becoming now especially in New York you have a few lawyers who know exactly that and you cannot build anything unless you go to those lawyers I think this is completely wrong there are few cities from since Tokyo has a very simple zoning regulation you know there are six categories which you know can be so divided in some more but it's relatively easy to understand it can be disconcerting for us because you see things that you would not see in an American city which are close to each other but you don't see that next to a primary school what you see is an art gallery next to a restaurant next to a school next to a street floor building next to an individual building so I think that planners should concentrate on is to provide this network of transport and infrastructure because as a city developer you still need to provide drainage, storm drainage and water and sewer and of course social facilities concentrate on those aspects and do not try to completely design the city by the proxy of regulations so this is an example of this this is Washington Square here so this is Seoul here most of Seoul is still zone manufacturing now it is no manufacturing nobody could have a factory in Seoul on the biome so every time you want to build something there you have to ask for an exception they were artists they occupied loft which were abandoned factory so the city didn't want to it was kind of awkward to kick out artists in the center of Manhattan looks back on the city so they asked them to require a permit from the city this is still now to require a permit to require artists and then they would be given a certificate which says that they are assumed to be manufacturer for the zoning so they could continue living there so the city now the city which has 60,000 homeless people maintained a committee to review the portfolio of artists who asked for the permission to live here you see this is a complete dedication of what an urban planner should do so this is an extreme you would find a reference and by the way in my book I even gave a reference if you want to apply as an artist because it's still there you will see the portfolio you have to send it so this is the type of things you know the zoning every category is full of numbers nobody knows why this number is there this little number the EU factor here decide how many dwelling units are allowed in how many dwelling units are allowed in the lot indirectly because you have to divide the total number of floors of floors space multiply the lot area by the FAR and that's the EU factor so this is why recently there was an article well last year in New York Times showing all the building in Manhattan which would be illegal now because of those regulations 40% of the building in Manhattan could not be built now and you see those are not for instance some are too tall you'll be surprised that some many of them are on the east side some of them on the west west village for instance some are too big why what kind of number what kind of planners knows exactly what is the correct height of building here so you will not believe that some have too many apartments with the need for dwelling in New York these are the one in blue here are the building which have too many apartments and those here in Green have too many businesses so what planners on which information do they decide how many businesses should be in the village or in the east side or wherever these are the information which are there this is typically what the market does very well if you establish a business and it's fine if it's not a good place for business it will close don't worry about it so this is my my conclusion sorry I've been there a little longer than I saw but people will know me how used to it but it's important to understand what is the purpose and concentrate on those issues and maintaining this labour market developing indicators quantitative indicators to know for instance monitoring trick time commuting time do the commuting time decrease because you do something or does it increase affordability of course monitoring affordability monitoring land prices and rent and don't forget that the planners control the supply of land and housing through their regulation and through their infrastructure so if you have high housing prices planners should take a responsibility for it because they control transport and infrastructure they control the supply and they usually don't usually they say it's speculators it's gridding something like that this is not they are controlling the supply you have seen in the in the Manhattan plan that they consider that there are two already two many dwelling units in New York that means that if you demolish one of those building you have to build another building with less dwelling units in this area this is what it means so they have a responsibility they should take responsibility thank you planners who does the infrastructure the subways the subways yeah that's another aspect the subways it's an autonomous agency which is most controlled by the state and who does the zoning the zoning is not in the city but you said the planners who are these planners above all these people above all these agencies and who controls the amount of streets space that's the amount of street space I've been inside long ago so ok but the way users street space is more the way users let's say let's face it I blame planners of course planners are subject to politicians because they are higher at politicians so it's a proxy for the system democratic but I think that people are not knowledgeable enough when they vote to know exactly what is wrong so to get back to the senior what if you take away the sidewalk about 40% of the street space is occupied by park oh people choose cars we shouldn't get in the way of the market people like cars that's not market if they have a free parking space that's not market to me no no no you have to pay for if you occupy a 20 square meter of land because there are a lot of people in New York who do not have cars so they have some tax of their cars they don't have parking leaders yes they use the space while they park well is it a good way of no I don't think you want to say you said the plan was to be diminishing negative extremities and then you said but they shouldn't really regulate the buildings but the buildings need to be on the streets there's only 200 years we have the same amount of streets that hasn't changed and if you put more buildings up you make more demands on the infrastructure yes yes yes yes but they should have no said about getting those extra externalities they should why shouldn't they if you have a problem of affordability for me a problem of affordability is if you have a school teacher who has a job in the city and everybody agrees that the school teacher it's a completely normal job the school teacher cannot get to a mile or something yes the school teacher has to be or closely if the school teacher with a regular salary a completely normal job cannot afford housing you have to do something I agree so we want public housing no no no why public housing we want housing then let us decideーい public housing thank you if we had followed your arguments in the 19th century every city in Manhattan where the town has our income so you should have said you could have seen no you've get tenants too but I mean but they were no more then 5 stores Yeah, by the way, the Dense State Manhattan in 1910 was twice what it is now. That's correct. So that means that when you say, look, we cannot build more because it's a city. No, I agree with you. You've made a story about the planet. Yes, yes. Planet is not all the things you're saying about gradients. Yeah, yeah. I think that's what we do. We work with the market. So the issue becomes that when you take the New York City zoning, if you talk to the New York City Planning Department, they'll say, we promote what we call as a rights zone. Yes. And then what happens is you transfer development rights. So you think they provide too much? What? No, I don't. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't get a real question. What we now have is we have lawyers who just specialize in doing nothing but buying and selling air rights. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I completely agree with you. So I would rather have zoning. But you have zoning. But you have, I mean. No, I agree with you that in a way I use planners as a proxy for a much more complex system. But I could not every time say lawyers, lawyers, councilmen, mayors, people who finance lobbyists and so on. Yes, all these people. Because what we teach these students here is very much along the lines of how planners have to work with markets. But there's no easy answers. Look at the website of the Planning Department of New York. They say, and quote approximately, we have been using zoning. Now we go beyond externalities. We are using zoning to shape the city. To shape the city. This, I think, is wrong. It's worse. That's worse than we're saying. Because what happens in New York, under New York law, they define zoning as, in other words, if law is New York City, zoning consistent with a well-considered plan, they can change zoning on the New York law. And what New York City says, if we think about rezoning before we do it, we well consider it. So you're stuck. So I mean, it's worse than you think. Yeah, well, I think it's so bad that it's difficult to be worse. No, I think they have completely deviated from the whole. And I agree on your first question. Who decides on the proper use of street space? They decide. I know that politically, if they were saying from now on, we are going to charge for parking in all the streets of Manhattan, the mayor will not be elected. As there was a natural bunker, the head of the economy here, you know, the European Union, say, we know now in Europe what to do. We don't know to get elected when we do the right thing. That's that. I'm going to say it's impetuous. The street space problem is people have a fresh direct. They have Amazon. They have UPF. They have Uber. They have live. They have taxi fare. Then we want a bike lane. So the question is, how do we, and we only have the same amount of streets. Pricing. We put the buildings up high. Pricing, get back to market. Okay. So what about the people who came for it? So if you said, say, who has the most money, you can have the most access. No. Because you approve for transport to this money. But that's got to be priced, too, doesn't it? Yes. But yes. But that's, that's a, you know, if you price the street, you know, the use of the street, at least for vehicles, you know, I cannot say it in my book, I mean. But, you know, the problem with individual cars is that, you know, if I drive at 20 miles an hour, which is the speed limit on Fifth Avenue, I am using 80 square meter of the most expensive land in the world, one of the most expensive land in the world, for free. This cannot work. This cannot work. Now, do I have a bus line? Yes. But even the bus line, you have to manage it so that it's, it's used land very efficiently. And it's not that easy. It's not that easy. That's a little bit inefficient. And it's fair to ask all the people who want to use it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'll start. No, no, no. No, no, no. I like, I like to be able to. Any more questions? Yes. How do you revel back to the decisions on small private parts? Sorry. The decisions of people in the market on a small private parcel, we change in one year. Yes. The infrastructure required to respond to the, you know, all of those decisions added up might take ten or twenty years. Yeah. Let us face it. Yeah. The infrastructure is an interesting issue. Don't forget that at least in Manitou, the infrastructure of 80 years ago was sufficient for a public organization. So, by the way, infrastructure has to be maintained also. Right. So, but that's where corporate tax comes in. And that's why it comes. I think it's terrible to give a gift of corporate tax to an Amazon man. I went on Amazon rep. It's a wonderful idea to run an Amazon company in New York. But to attract them by giving away corporate tax is a terrible plan. You know, if it was by saying, well, whether it's a group of subways in order to attract them, I don't talk about that. But to give away corporate tax and you may have to build a gift, it will come out as a corporate tax holiday because they allow the first people to be commercial and access to corporate tax. So, to use corporate tax as a gift, because it's very tempting for a company to be commercial and access to corporate tax. So, I think it's a great idea to give away corporate tax to an Amazon company. So, it's a great idea to give away corporate tax to an Amazon company. You know, give away corporate tax. And the big office building and people not give away corporate tax because the developer thought it was good idea to do it. So, yes, infrastructure is not the initial. If you have a, you know, many city advance and which are based, you know, the actual corporate tax. That's why they are giving away corporate tax. And those bonds are not to finance. Landers, again, should be aware that some part of the infrastructure in New York or in the south solute, and should be renewed and unfortunately, you see that also in Washington for December, they have not been maintaining it well. And this is a terrible way to manage it. You have to maintain your assets. And that's why, you know, the resource for maintaining those assets. Imagine you have a condominium and the condominium association wants to have some kind of incentive. And they say, we will give away condo fees for the next 20 years. You know, the condo in 20 years will be already, you know, it will be ready to be demolished. And this is what the city is doing sometimes. So, I think those questions are raising a question of, you know, what is the proper democratic way of managing the city? And I have absolutely no idea about that. It's a political solution. It's a political solution, you know. Why, for instance, you know, one of the major problems we have here in New York is, of course, the fragmentation of responsibility in the state of New York. But also in New Jersey, in New Jersey it's a local municipality like Fort Lee, but also the state of New Jersey, the governor of New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island and the like. And that, this is, in fact, very, you know, we are creating there a, you know, we should have a city state which in the local community is the metropolitan area. But again, I'm not proposing that. It's not my job. I don't know anything about it. But, you know, again here, this is a big advantage of the Chinese cities, that the boundary of a theater has a solution that's clean and wide. And it's easier to enhance the environment. Now, in some cities, you know, for instance, Paris is also fragmented. You know, the new sort of Paris is only two minutes, but the cultivation, you know, the economy phase of Paris is quite medium. But because of centralization, the tradition in the future is sometimes. There is a technical body which supervises the transport in the area, which would be a bit equivalent of the New Jersey for the boat, you know, but which has a enormous prestige, which is, you know, run by engineers. And then they are able to overcome, let's say, the alertness and individual disability to have an advantage of your trade with other people. Sorry, it's no success, you know. Yes. So I think, Alain, thank you very much for your presentation. I have a question, but just before that, a comment. I mean, I think, I mean, I have to say that I, you know, when I first came across your work when you came to Tehran in the early 2000s, I mean, I have to say that for me, you cannot underestimate, I think the sort of the transformational paradigm that Alain is offering here, very different from how I was trained. And I think that, you know, it's the idea of regulation. And I think this understanding maybe earlier was that the idea of regulation is that you could have regulations which are either market enabling or market depressing. And you need both kinds. No, you need sometimes more. Well, the idea is, well, okay, I mean, I think the paradigm is that essentially the, okay, I'll tell you what was transformational for me is when I saw that chart, and I think it's hard to unoverestimate, which is on one or two of your book, I was astonished by that chart because I had been taught that neoplasmal economics essentially is not very relevant because it depends on a number of very, very unrealistic assumptions about perfect markets and so on and so forth. And here was empirical evidence showing that, in fact, the bit rent curves that we read actually work. That's the way cities actually function. Well, that's the population, thanks to you, Michelle. And that also has data on land and land price. What I'm trying to say is that it was transformational for me, this is the reason, is because what I thought was, what you taught was essentially a kind of theoretical exercise. It turns out actually to describe quite well empirically, many cities across the world. I thought you didn't take enough courses with me. Well, that may be true. The question I have, Alan, is that you've said about urban planning education. Yes. That it has suffered from mission creep. Yes, absolutely. And I wonder if you could expand a little bit what you mean by that. You talked about how you think urban planners have a basic task, which is separating private from public use and then making sure that land is preparing land for the market. Yes, right. For it to efficiently allocate uses. From what you understand about urban planning education, where do you see the mission creep then coming? Is it beyond regulations? I mean, there's a whole area of issues of social justice, gender issues and racial issues. Do you see that fitting in with urban planning education, or do you see that as a part of the mission creep and so forth? I said, you know, look, when you develop a city, when a mayor becomes mayor, he should put some priorities. A city has evolved in a certain way, and it's possible that the mayor say the first thing is environment. For instance, if you are some Chinese city, the mayor will say the first thing is environment. We have reached a point where another city, if you are in Detroit, you say the first thing is to restablish employment in the city. So you see that as soon as you have defined this objective, and you don't have one objective, you have two or three or four, then the planner should develop a certain thing which will achieve those objectives. Now, mission creep will be if, say, in Detroit, you say, well, the first thing is to restablish a labor market, and you say, well, why don't we zone all this area industrial, and then the industry will come. That will not do anything, you know? Because, again, my point is that even if you want to contract market, the outcome of market, you have to understand how market works, and you know that following a map do not attract industries. So you see that that's a way. So you have mission creep as soon as we piggyback a lot of things that people like in a certain way, you know? But I see that. Did I answer your question? Yes. Just one thing about environmental sustainability. You said it's not a primary concern of urban planning. No. It's a constraint on urban planning. It's a constraint. What do you mean by that? You know, if you think the main objective forces of transport is to reduce carbon emission, the objective of the constraint, then you should deplore that the Saudi are allowing women to drive because it was saving a lot of carbon. So you see, that's the difference between objective and constraint. Now, I agree that when you develop a transport system, the emission of GOG is very important, and so whatever transport system you do, you should try to decree them. But if the main objective is not mobility, the main objective is decreasing, then you end up with this plan where everybody bicycles to his work, you know? So there's another question that ladies asked. I have a question that you're not taking. Sorry? The decreasing population density part of the statement. Yes, yes. The trace of the question for me about the metrics that you're calling here. Yes. Because it seems to me, your point that those, that that sort of the confirmation that this new classical economic model of the city exists seems valid in a way that you've presented those specific charts, and you've laid out, very helpfully, it's really for us that those are based on measures of the population density that were consistent across all of the city based on this kind of concentric zone model that you're moving out in the city. I have a question about whether that is in fact an appropriate way to measure the change of population density over an area in all of those different contexts, given the history of the development of those specific cities, and so they need to do the precise methodology behind each of those metrics are themselves incredibly valuable in it and don't necessarily in my mind protect us against the kind of property end-up of non-metric-informed platforms that you were talking about at the beginning. So I'm wondering if you could just put that in. You know, I started measuring that not to confirm the theory, but just I was curious about it. What intrigued me very much, you know, in a way, if there were a case on the most centric model, you know, and suddenly you see in cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles, which are not in Los Angeles before, you know, the center of Los Angeles, if you consider the CBD, I think, and why did this apply to cities which completely contradict the model? Don't forget that you could decide that the city has no CBD, you know, the CBD of Los Angeles is so small for Atlanta is so interesting that you considered a city still has a shape and a shape as a centroid. So we place the CBD by the centroid and you found that in fact people by themselves and job, you know, at price, follow this curve. So in my book and book and in my thesis, why is it so high? We contradict the model, but the outcome is confirmed to the model, which is bizarre. So again, you know, I came to a balance on the side and I'm not trying to confirm something that I read. I'm observing something and then somebody tells me, you know, you observe that, but we've been working on it for 50 years and this is good to get. So again, I have no ideology. I'm completely... I don't know if you have an alternative way of measuring density, I mean you could measure density differently, but my guess is that you would find, you know, the way people... You assume that on the cover of my book, this is non-ideological. This is the way people locate themselves in the city. It's just densities, you know. So you have to explain more, you know, if you don't want to explain it, you have to take it into account. You may not want to explain it, but did I answer the question? So if you find an alternative, you know, I'm not theory. When I work in Russia or China, Russia, at some time before the reform or China before the reform, I have a completely open mind. You know, I realize forces that... You know, the subway in Moscow forces are of course fantastic, you know. So I have a problem with that. You know, I can change ideology from any day, you know, much faster ideology if I could see that something work. But when I see things that are not working, I, you know, I'm not looking. But I cannot forget, on the ideology, I understand that many people could disagree with me on the value of the outcome of some markets. By the way, some markets are distorted, we know they are distorted. If you work for a system of transport, you don't pay for all the markets in the name of the system. But if you want to collect it, you have to go to the distortion. You don't have to have an oxy for the distortion. You see, if not, you will not succeed. Forces say, if you are in a country where government expropriates farmers without paying the market price for land, it's just expropriated. This happened in many countries. The city probably will expand too much. So, you know, there's a point that it's not to put a wall around the city, it's that the city should not expand. The point that you see, we have to pay the market price, but the farmers should not be expropriated. You should pay for their land only when they are willing to sell it. That's the way I would like to play. But I agree that markets are distorted. But again, if you understand markets, you will deal with the distortion first. Yes? Sorry. So, I think the title itself, Studies Without Orders is... It's not Cities Without Orders. It's Order Without Design. And actually, the first memory of being urban platter students is actually we were given design of cities. This is how cities should like. Those are my first memories of being urban platter students. Given the idea of Order Without Design and how you explain in China and Jakarta, how and the notion of giving, as an urban platter, we have to design and set up such networks for a market to thrive. And what I observed in developing countries such as Jakarta where I live, it's so much depressing because the cities were designed like a hundred years ago and they designed the network not enough for the market to thrive. Therefore, urban planners and all the planning regulations is always one step behind the market. And so the urban planners, in my sense, the urban planners in Jakarta doesn't have enough political power as of the real estate developers who are much smarter and know how to make the urban planners make such regulations in order to serve for them. But how... What do you observe from your experience from the world that are working in Jakarta? Well, let's stick to Jakarta. Jakarta, when I started working in Jakarta, the CBD was just a little north south of the port, you know, and next to the monument, the whole hotel. That was the CBD at the time. No, no, no, no, no, no. And then you keep moving, you know, to the Golden Triangle, to a little north of it. And now there is a new CBD. If you look at it, you see that the latest big towers by development, very well stated, by policy developers are in fact centering the city toward the center of gravity of the population. That has not been done by planners. You know, the planners, let's say, agree all the way, as you say, under the pressure of the development, I suppose you mean that. It was not all negative. What is negative is that, of course, there was not enough investment in transport. There was also, on the part of planners, I remember the time where they were planners who were saying, well, just around... even within the municipality of Jakarta, in the Jakarta region, the density should not be more than 40 people per hour. Now, already, if you looked at the time at the price of land in this area, most of the people could not afford a 20 square meter plot at, you know, if, you know, which will ever... So, this density was completely unrealistic given the price of land and the income of the population. The planners, instead of realizing that and saying, yes, we are going to have much higher densities, you know, in the corridor between, say, VKC in Jakarta or Tangerang in Jakarta, if we need the higher... you know, we need to plan for higher densities, they assume that the density will be lower because, you know, they say, well, if we have a little density, we can use oxidation point, we don't need to develop a sewer system, on sewer and that was a mistake because, again, they didn't understand markets. So, you see, I'm not saying that they wish they should follow what the developers will represent also markets, they should anticipate, you know, if you put together the income of the population and the price of land that's the goodness. You know, that's the best they would expect. And... That's the way, rather than decide, you know, we are going to keep the density at 20 or 50 people per acre because we find it complicated. Did I answer your question? Yeah, it's always because it's convenient, not because it's... Really? Because it's likely to happen. Yeah, you see, the income of people and land prices and rents are something that are all the time, as a planner. The planner don't do it. They always think that they can allocate land just, you know, we are going to design a city for the poor and they design something and if you use the price of land and the rate of interest you know, in Jakarta also the planners used to say we will use a reasonable rate of interest. There is no such thing as a reasonable rate of interest. There is a rate of interest, period. You know, so when they say a reasonable rate of interest they mean it's tropical and affordable without the knowledge that development doesn't have. So you see, that's what I mean by planners have to understand markets. You know, both engineers and architects have a tendency so actually to not to take seriously the price of land and not to take interest like seriously. Because they are used to a town of cement, this is the price of a town of cement. This is serious stuff. This is the price of a town of steel and that's our commodity so we will convert to international COE or whatever. But rate of interest and land price are constantly varying from place to place with time so they think that this is arbitrary with somebody deciding the rate of the price of land and those are bad people who put high price of land. You know, it is true that sometimes the price of land is much higher than it should be but it's only because of constraints which are good. For instance again, getting back to Jakarta I don't know if the rebuilding permit is distributed is still the same but in the time I was working there the government will give a monopoly to developer for a large area where they could acquire land but they were not in competition with other developers. I don't think it's still like that. The government basically gives them very hurry of land and then for the development for the only 20 years they don't want. They didn't have to buy all of it but they had the monopoly on an area of say 1 developer on 5 or 6 dollars. And then they could pick up there because they were not in competition with other. So here you could say well, the price of land is too high because of this practice. And again, it's an understanding of not that if you give a monopoly to somebody you're pretty sure the price will be high. So you see, understanding of not that I know you to do something what I think is very social. But if you know it, if you just design that... It's a kind of curious how this will apply to Tokyo. Tokyo is a power line because it has a robust transportation system accessible to public and private because there's no such thing developed by private developers. The Japanese planner I think, if you think exactly they concentrated on the transport system on the main roads. They do not allow, by the way on all the parking in most of the streets is obsolete. So I asked the Japanese why it was so different from the zoning of other. And they told me that after the war the cities were completely destroyed. And so the planners tried to do a traditional plan to build a big foundation to build Tokyo in a very moderate way. And then they realized that because the cities were destroyed there were a lot of people who had nowhere to go. Business could not start again because you had this uncertainty of where to build it. So they decided that it was better to let the people build whatever they wanted. And that they concentrated only on the things which were important and pretty costful. So that's why we have this fantastic network which goes very far away actually of pretty costful. And they let within this it was not quite a great problem more than a kilometer or two kilometers where you have the subterranean road they say basically we don't give a damn what's happening here. We would just provide the and they provided the infrastructure so so in a way it was by accident you know I will compare that to the construction of Ziland where they had an escalator some about ten years ago and the planners they had say the escalator destroyed mostly the center of the project the planners say this is a fantastic opportunity let us build a model city a wonderful city where liveable but in a democratic country to do a wonderful city it takes a lot of time after five years they have not settled on the plan yet to many Europeans the city the city didn't stop business cannot stop even if the center of the city is destroyed no business have moved to the suburbs and by the time they had the plan which was ready the city was completely restructured in a different way and they were not taking the center which has lost its value because you cannot stop a city if it's few blocks yes but not an entire city center you block it and by the way in this city center they were still building which were intact but because they wanted to take the opportunity to have a a wonderful plan they cornered it up and they could not open their business there because there was this uncertainty the building would be demolished so you see this is an example of privatism being more useful than the perfect plan a city is not like a telephone or bridge or a clock it's not a manufactured product it is a living thing you cannot you cannot stop a city from living and it's evolved because the people are doing things you cannot prevent people from doing things saying wait here before I finish my plan you should stop living you cannot do that did I answer your question? I think also there is a tradition of having financial ownership of department stores building almost every customer department stores or integrating but that's by the way the way across the continent from building the US it was also a realistic operation