The Function of a City

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In many American cities, almost every trip from going to work to getting a gallon of milk requires getting into a car. 85% of trips in the United States are taking in a car; that number is over 80% in Europe. Reed and Arya: How do you think about the function of a city and the design of it? And how does that function improved through changing the design?

What if we didn’t need cars? Janette Sadik-Khan, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, helped revolutionize some of New York’s most famous streets into navigable, car-free areas. She joins the show this week to paint a picture of cities that put people first. How has the purpose of the city changed over time? Is it really possible—and preferable—to remove cars from cities altogether? And what does the future of cities really look like? Janette also responds to speculation about the future of transportation via GPT-4’s stories of how people might traverse Istanbul and Vietnam decades from now. It turns out, we might need a lot less new technology than we think to create the people-first cities of the future.

Read the AI-generated stories for this episode here.

Read the transcript of this episode here.

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all of the episodes, visit www.possible.fm/podcast.

Topics:

4:15 - Hellos and intros

5:06 - How do we deal with city highways?

8:21 - When and how the city became all about the car

11:37 - What people-first cities look like

13:57 - GPT-4’s story about navigating Istanbul in the future

18:10 - What does the future of our cities look like?

20:40 - How COVID-19 transformed cities

23:51 - A change we can make today to improve cities

24:57 - Why are e-bikes so innovative?

29:59 - How we can make our polis more human

33:53 - Case study: New York City

37:43 - GPT-4’s story about an innovative new transportation system

42:28 - Rapidfire questions

46:00 - Debrief with Reid and Aria

Possible is a new podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with a visionary from a different field: climate science, media, criminal justice, and more. The conversation also features another kind of guest: GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest and most powerful language model to date. Each episode has a companion story, generated by GPT-4, which will serve as a jumping-off point for a hopeful, speculative discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network and hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Edie Allard and Sara Schleede. Jenny Kaplan is our Executive Producer and Editor. Special thanks to Kevin Sheekey, Seth Solomonow, Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, and Ben Relles.