What Will Urban Renewal Look Like?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

If I think about Ethiopia, it has more than 100 million people. Yet its second largest city is only about 400,000 people. You have some countries where the distribution of cities follows unusual patterns. Thailand has an income more or less the same as Mexico, but an urbanization rate close to that of Guatemala. Do you have a sense of what accounts for these cases? Politics. The political system which gives such an advantage to the major city. That this is where people want to go. And if you are in a secondary city, you are so much penalized and unless you change the political system, you decentralize.

Markets, Alain Bertaud likes to say, are like gravity: they exist everywhere. But while urban planners are quite good at taking gravity into account, they tend to ignore market forces entirely in their designs, resulting in city development that too often fails to address the needs of their residents.

Following the release of his recent book, Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities, Alain joined Tyler in New York City for a discussion of the politics affecting urban centers, his advice to Robert Moses, whether the YIMBY movement can win, why he loves messy cities, what he got wrong about Shenzhen, why the Moscow subway is so wonderful, whether cities can move, favorite movies about cities, the region of the world most likely to start a charter city, how to reform the World Bank, his top three NYC planning reforms, why Central Park is the perfect size, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded September 9th, 2019 Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.