How Does Shanghai Work as a City?

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Shanghai is a city that works relatively well in the sense that, you know, the Chinese at the local level understood market better than Mayor de Blasio. Many mayors in China told me I'm the CEO of this city. And they want to build a city of 5 million and would finance infrastructure out of the back of the envelope. Are you kidding? This is completely out of the question. How will the Shenzhen, China work as a city? And that's from basically nothing, right? Right.

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

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