WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.339 I want to start with a specific feeling. You 00:00:02.339 --> 00:00:03.660 know that feeling when you're walking through 00:00:03.660 --> 00:00:07.059 a city like say London or maybe parts of downtown 00:00:07.059 --> 00:00:10.519 Boston. Oh yeah. It's a mess. The streets turn 00:00:10.519 --> 00:00:14.939 at like a 45 degree angle for no reason. You 00:00:14.939 --> 00:00:16.559 hit a dead end that looks like it hasn't been 00:00:16.559 --> 00:00:19.519 touched since the 1700s and everything is just. 00:00:20.220 --> 00:00:22.739 Exactly. It's like a geological formation of 00:00:22.739 --> 00:00:25.719 history, mistakes and compromises. Yes. It's 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:28.679 the organic evolution. Yeah. It's chaotic. It's 00:00:28.679 --> 00:00:31.600 inefficient. And frankly, it's how most of human 00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:33.859 history has actually lived. Right. It's the result 00:00:33.859 --> 00:00:36.780 of. thousands of individual decisions made over 00:00:36.780 --> 00:00:39.780 centuries, none of which were coordinating with 00:00:39.780 --> 00:00:42.140 each other. Exactly. And there is a romance to 00:00:42.140 --> 00:00:44.439 that chaos. Yeah. But then you have the total 00:00:44.439 --> 00:00:46.399 opposite experience. You drive into a place, 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:48.380 maybe it's a suburb, maybe it's a corporate campus 00:00:48.380 --> 00:00:51.039 or a brand new city district, and the feeling 00:00:51.039 --> 00:00:54.359 changes instantly. The roads are wide. The curves 00:00:54.359 --> 00:00:57.799 are mathematically perfect. Every tree is equidistant 00:00:57.799 --> 00:01:00.820 from the next tree. The architecture isn't arguing. 00:01:00.939 --> 00:01:03.820 It's all agreeing. It's almost. Uncanny. Uncanny. 00:01:03.820 --> 00:01:05.700 That's the word. You're describing the planned 00:01:05.700 --> 00:01:08.280 community. It's that feeling of entering a space 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:11.900 where absolutely nothing is accidental. And for 00:01:11.900 --> 00:01:16.579 urban planners, architects, and frankly, a lot 00:01:16.579 --> 00:01:18.819 of dictators throughout history, that lack of 00:01:18.819 --> 00:01:21.400 accidents. is the ultimate dream the ultimate 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:23.620 dream it's the blank slate the idea that if we 00:01:23.620 --> 00:01:26.200 just burn the draft and start over we can engineer 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:28.879 utopia and that is the tension we are unpacking 00:01:28.879 --> 00:01:31.060 today we're doing a deep dive into the planned 00:01:31.060 --> 00:01:34.280 community yeah we've got a massive stack of sources 00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:37.280 here everything from archaeological reports on 00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:40.180 the indus valley to i mean financial autopsies 00:01:40.180 --> 00:01:43.099 of uk new towns and architectural critiques of 00:01:43.099 --> 00:01:46.019 modern smart cities it's a huge topic It is. 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:48.239 And we're going to figure out why humans are 00:01:48.239 --> 00:01:50.260 so obsessed with building the perfect city from 00:01:50.260 --> 00:01:53.760 scratch. Is it efficiency? Is it ego? Or is it 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:56.120 just a desperate attempt to control the messiness 00:01:56.120 --> 00:01:58.659 of human nature? I think you'll find it's usually 00:01:58.659 --> 00:02:00.980 a mix of all three. And what's really crucial 00:02:00.980 --> 00:02:03.519 to understand is that the plan city isn't just 00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:05.719 about placing buildings. It's about more than 00:02:05.719 --> 00:02:07.560 that. It's about social engineering. I mean, 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:09.580 when you decide where the roads go, you decide 00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:11.939 how people meet. When you decide where the houses 00:02:11.939 --> 00:02:15.150 face, you decide what privacy means. It's high 00:02:15.150 --> 00:02:17.990 stakes stuff. Incredibly high stakes. Okay, before 00:02:17.990 --> 00:02:20.509 we get into the 5 ,000 year history, which by 00:02:20.509 --> 00:02:22.530 the way, totally blew my mind because I always 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:24.849 thought this was like a 1950s thing. Right, a 00:02:24.849 --> 00:02:27.509 post -war phenomenon. Exactly. But let's set 00:02:27.509 --> 00:02:30.949 the terms first. We see planned community, new 00:02:30.949 --> 00:02:34.729 town, model city. Are these all synonymous or 00:02:34.729 --> 00:02:37.550 are we dealing with, you know, distinct taxonomies 00:02:37.550 --> 00:02:39.409 here? They're distinct, but they definitely sit 00:02:39.409 --> 00:02:41.610 under the same umbrella. A planned community 00:02:41.610 --> 00:02:45.289 or planned city? is the broad term it's for any 00:02:45.289 --> 00:02:47.629 settlement designed from inception usually on 00:02:47.629 --> 00:02:50.210 undeveloped land a green field site so it didn't 00:02:50.210 --> 00:02:52.849 grow from a little hamlet no it was born as a 00:02:52.849 --> 00:02:56.069 city a new town on the other hand is very specific 00:02:56.069 --> 00:02:58.990 to a legislative movement in the uk after world 00:02:58.990 --> 00:03:03.129 war ii and a model city usually implies a prototype 00:03:03.129 --> 00:03:05.849 an idealistic project meant to be copied somewhere 00:03:05.849 --> 00:03:09.539 else got it And just to be super clear, because 00:03:09.539 --> 00:03:12.180 I know we have listeners who are into the commune 00:03:12.180 --> 00:03:14.020 lifestyle, we aren't talking about intentional 00:03:14.020 --> 00:03:16.599 communities today, right? No, that's a good distinction. 00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:18.960 We're not talking about six families buying a 00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:21.780 farm and sharing a kitchen. No. While the social 00:03:21.780 --> 00:03:24.699 impulse is definitely similar, intentional communities 00:03:24.699 --> 00:03:28.180 are defined by their social contract. Today, 00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:31.080 we're looking at the infrastructure, the urban 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:35.219 planning, and the macro scale. So sewers, grids, 00:03:35.219 --> 00:03:38.240 power structures. Thousands or even millions 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:40.379 of people. It's a whole different ballgame. Okay, 00:03:40.419 --> 00:03:43.120 so let's go back, way back. Because as I said, 00:03:43.159 --> 00:03:46.560 I assumed the grid was a modern invention. Maybe 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:49.449 Roman at the earliest or American? A very common 00:03:49.449 --> 00:03:51.629 assumption. But the sources point to the Indus 00:03:51.629 --> 00:03:54.050 Valley civilization, specifically the mature 00:03:54.050 --> 00:03:57.909 phase around 3300 B .C. That is shockingly old 00:03:57.909 --> 00:04:00.330 for this level of organization. It is. I mean, 00:04:00.330 --> 00:04:02.330 we're talking about Harappa and Mohenjo -Daro 00:04:02.330 --> 00:04:05.050 in present day Pakistan and India. And if you 00:04:05.050 --> 00:04:06.930 look at the archaeological maps, you don't see 00:04:06.930 --> 00:04:10.270 the winding organic paths of a tribal village. 00:04:10.449 --> 00:04:13.650 Not at all. You see a rigorous north -south, 00:04:13.650 --> 00:04:16.370 east -west grid. It's comparable to Manhattan. 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:20.439 In 3300 BC. That's just wild. But it's not just 00:04:20.439 --> 00:04:22.160 that the streets are straight. It's what was 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:24.019 under the streets that really surprised me. The 00:04:24.019 --> 00:04:26.439 sanitation systems. This is the real technical 00:04:26.439 --> 00:04:29.959 marvel. The sources detail gravity -fed wastewater 00:04:29.959 --> 00:04:32.779 systems. Gravity -fed. We're talking about covered 00:04:32.779 --> 00:04:36.240 drains lining the major streets. Now think about 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:39.220 the implication of a covered drain. Right. In 00:04:39.220 --> 00:04:41.819 medieval Europe... Thousands of years later, 00:04:41.939 --> 00:04:44.600 you had open sewers running down the middle of 00:04:44.600 --> 00:04:46.920 the street. It's a disgusting trench. Exactly. 00:04:47.160 --> 00:04:51.620 And in 3300 BC, the Indus Valley engineers had 00:04:51.620 --> 00:04:54.339 the foresight, and just as importantly, the municipal 00:04:54.339 --> 00:04:57.550 authority. to build covered infrastructure. That's 00:04:57.550 --> 00:04:59.790 the key part for me, the authority. You can't 00:04:59.790 --> 00:05:03.110 build a citywide gravity drainage system if everyone 00:05:03.110 --> 00:05:05.170 is just doing their own thing. You can't. You 00:05:05.170 --> 00:05:07.209 need a central power saying, this is the grade, 00:05:07.370 --> 00:05:08.829 this is the material, and it's going through 00:05:08.829 --> 00:05:11.170 your backyard whether you like it or not. Precisely. 00:05:11.389 --> 00:05:14.290 It implies a very strong, centralized municipal 00:05:14.290 --> 00:05:17.250 government, even though we haven't found grand 00:05:17.250 --> 00:05:20.819 palaces that suggest a single monarch. The whole 00:05:20.819 --> 00:05:23.939 layout prioritizes the collective hygiene over 00:05:23.939 --> 00:05:26.740 individual whims. Wow. And the houses opened 00:05:26.740 --> 00:05:29.360 into inner courtyards, turning their backs to 00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:31.839 the street noise. It was designed for order and 00:05:31.839 --> 00:05:34.420 privacy from the very beginning. So it wasn't 00:05:34.420 --> 00:05:36.279 just let's build a shelter. It was a sophisticated 00:05:36.279 --> 00:05:38.699 machine for living. A machine for living. That's 00:05:38.699 --> 00:05:40.920 a great way to put it. And then naturally, we 00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.540 have to talk about Egypt. We always talk about 00:05:43.540 --> 00:05:46.639 the pyramids, but we rarely ask, where did the 00:05:46.639 --> 00:05:49.519 guys who hold the stones sleep? They didn't commute 00:05:49.519 --> 00:05:51.579 from Cairo, that's for sure. They lived in purpose 00:05:51.579 --> 00:05:54.629 -built worker towns like Cajun. But the real 00:05:54.629 --> 00:05:57.750 behemoth mentioned in the text is Pyramids. Pyramids. 00:05:57.750 --> 00:06:00.269 This was built by Ramses II in the 13th century 00:06:00.269 --> 00:06:03.029 BC. And the scale here is staggering for the 00:06:03.029 --> 00:06:04.970 ancient world. The sources say it was the first 00:06:04.970 --> 00:06:07.910 city to exceed 100 ,000 people. Some estimates 00:06:07.910 --> 00:06:10.529 go up to 300 ,000. Yeah, you have to think about 00:06:10.529 --> 00:06:13.370 the logistics of that. 100 ,000 people in a pre 00:06:13.370 --> 00:06:15.910 -industrial desert environment. The mind boggles. 00:06:16.029 --> 00:06:18.970 You need a constant planned supply chain for 00:06:18.970 --> 00:06:23.129 grain, water, and waste removal. If the system 00:06:23.129 --> 00:06:26.189 fails for three days, the city collapses. So 00:06:26.189 --> 00:06:29.170 this wasn't organic growth at all. Not a chance. 00:06:29.230 --> 00:06:32.750 This was a massive state -run logistical operation. 00:06:33.129 --> 00:06:35.370 It sounds like a military operation, actually, 00:06:35.389 --> 00:06:37.629 which transitions us perfectly to the Romans. 00:06:37.850 --> 00:06:40.069 Because if anyone loved a standard operating 00:06:40.069 --> 00:06:42.569 procedure, it was the Roman legions. The Romans 00:06:42.569 --> 00:06:45.569 were the franchise kings of urbanization. They 00:06:45.569 --> 00:06:48.129 had a template called the castrum. The castrum. 00:06:48.290 --> 00:06:51.120 It was originally a military camp layout. Square 00:06:51.120 --> 00:06:55.160 walls, a grid of streets, a central forum. And 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:57.339 whenever they conquered a new territory, whether 00:06:57.339 --> 00:06:59.680 it was for veterans or active duty, they just 00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:02.019 stamped this grid onto the landscape. It makes 00:07:02.019 --> 00:07:03.560 sense from a command and control perspective. 00:07:03.639 --> 00:07:06.100 If I'm a centurion transferred from Pompeii to, 00:07:06.180 --> 00:07:08.480 say, Tungeren in Belgium, I don't want to get 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:10.399 lost. No, you want to know the layout. I know 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:12.120 exactly where the commander is. I know where 00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:14.660 the granary is. It's identical. It's the McDonald's 00:07:14.660 --> 00:07:19.040 model of city building. I like that. Predictability 00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:21.319 creates efficiency. Yeah. And you can still see 00:07:21.319 --> 00:07:24.560 this grid at the core of dozens of European cities 00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:27.759 today. It persists. OK, so let's skip forward 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:29.600 a bit because the motivation starts to shift. 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:31.920 In the Renaissance, you get these ideal cities 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:35.079 like Palma Nova in Italy or Zamość in Poland. 00:07:35.279 --> 00:07:37.420 Right. This wasn't about housing troops anymore. 00:07:37.519 --> 00:07:40.220 This felt more like vanity. It was intellectual 00:07:40.220 --> 00:07:45.220 vanity and it was also about power. Jan Zamoyski, 00:07:45.319 --> 00:07:48.079 who founded Zamoysk, was a Polish nobleman who 00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:50.480 wanted to bypass royal tariffs. So he just made 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:52.980 his own city? He built his own trade hub. But 00:07:52.980 --> 00:07:55.360 he didn't just build a market. He hired an Italian 00:07:55.360 --> 00:07:58.279 architect to build a perfect Renaissance city 00:07:58.279 --> 00:08:00.939 based on the concept of the ideal human body 00:08:00.939 --> 00:08:04.139 and geometric harmony. That is the ultimate rich 00:08:04.139 --> 00:08:06.480 guy move. I don't like the king's taxes, so I'm 00:08:06.480 --> 00:08:08.399 going to build a geometrically perfect city in 00:08:08.399 --> 00:08:10.879 the middle of nowhere. Pretty much. But this 00:08:10.879 --> 00:08:12.699 brings us to the biggest shift in the history 00:08:12.699 --> 00:08:14.740 of planned communities. The Industrial Revolution. 00:08:15.139 --> 00:08:17.699 Exactly. We go from military and royal reasons 00:08:17.699 --> 00:08:20.279 to economic reasons. This is the birth of the 00:08:20.279 --> 00:08:23.000 company town. Right. And the dynamic changes 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:25.339 completely here. It's no longer about defense. 00:08:25.639 --> 00:08:28.079 It's about production efficiency. You build a 00:08:28.079 --> 00:08:31.040 factory in a rural area to access resources, 00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:34.039 water, power, coal, whatever, and you need workers. 00:08:34.279 --> 00:08:35.980 So you build the housing. You build the housing. 00:08:36.059 --> 00:08:38.000 But it's never just housing, is it? It's control. 00:08:38.460 --> 00:08:40.039 Let's talk about Pullman just outside Chicago. 00:08:40.399 --> 00:08:43.240 George Pullman, the sleeping car magnate. Ah, 00:08:43.340 --> 00:08:45.740 Pullman. He didn't just build a town. He built 00:08:45.740 --> 00:08:48.440 a mechanism to control his workforce's morality. 00:08:48.980 --> 00:08:51.679 Absolutely. Pullman, built in the 1880s, was 00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:53.799 beautiful on the surface parks, lovely brick 00:08:53.799 --> 00:08:56.639 homes, indoor plumbing. Sounds great. But the 00:08:56.639 --> 00:08:59.440 social contract was stifling. Alcohol was banned. 00:08:59.679 --> 00:09:02.679 Public gatherings were monitored. Pullman's inspectors 00:09:02.679 --> 00:09:05.299 could enter your home at any time to check for 00:09:05.299 --> 00:09:07.830 cleanliness. There's a detail. In the notes that 00:09:07.830 --> 00:09:11.629 I found wild. The church in Pullman stood empty 00:09:11.629 --> 00:09:14.269 for years because no denomination could afford 00:09:14.269 --> 00:09:16.549 the rent Pullman was charging. He tried to turn 00:09:16.549 --> 00:09:20.029 a profit on God. He did. And that, really, it 00:09:20.029 --> 00:09:22.909 sums up the flaw of the company town. It treats 00:09:22.909 --> 00:09:25.490 civic life as a line item on a balance sheet. 00:09:25.629 --> 00:09:28.929 And it all came to a head. It did. When the Panic 00:09:28.929 --> 00:09:32.870 of 1893 hit, Pullman cut wages but refused to 00:09:32.870 --> 00:09:35.769 lower rents. That led to the famous Pullman Strike, 00:09:35.929 --> 00:09:38.789 which crippled the nation's railways. It proved 00:09:38.789 --> 00:09:40.929 that you can plan the streets, but if you squeeze 00:09:40.929 --> 00:09:44.009 the people too hard, the plan explodes. Speaking 00:09:44.009 --> 00:09:46.710 of plans exploding, we have to talk about Fordlandia. 00:09:46.730 --> 00:09:48.870 This is my favorite disaster in the whole stack 00:09:48.870 --> 00:09:51.610 of sources. Oh, Fordlandia is a classic. Henry 00:09:51.610 --> 00:09:53.970 Ford, the man who perfected the assembly line, 00:09:54.149 --> 00:09:56.190 decides he doesn't want to pay the British for 00:09:56.190 --> 00:09:58.789 rubber. A reasonable business decision on the 00:09:58.789 --> 00:10:01.789 surface. So he goes to the Brazilian Amazon to 00:10:01.789 --> 00:10:04.769 build his own rubber plantation in town. And 00:10:04.769 --> 00:10:07.309 he brings the Dearborn, Michigan mindset to the 00:10:07.309 --> 00:10:10.500 rainforest. It's a case study in ignoring local 00:10:10.500 --> 00:10:13.399 context. Completely. He built American -style 00:10:13.399 --> 00:10:16.039 clapboard houses with asbestos roofs, which in 00:10:16.039 --> 00:10:18.620 the jungle heat turned into ovens. Unbearable. 00:10:18.740 --> 00:10:21.200 And the diet. Yeah. He tried to force the Brazilian 00:10:21.200 --> 00:10:23.419 workers to eat oatmeal and whole wheat bread 00:10:23.419 --> 00:10:26.980 and banned alcohol. He was trying to export 1920s 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:29.639 American Puritanism to the Amazon. And he mandated 00:10:29.639 --> 00:10:31.960 square dancing. He mandated square dancing. Are 00:10:31.960 --> 00:10:34.820 you serious? He believed it was a wholesome moral 00:10:34.820 --> 00:10:39.129 activity. Oh, my God. Imagine the scene. Sweltering 00:10:39.129 --> 00:10:42.649 heat, exhausted workers, and Henry Ford's managers 00:10:42.649 --> 00:10:45.590 demanding they do -si -do. It had to end badly. 00:10:45.789 --> 00:10:48.649 It led to a revolt. The workers literally chased 00:10:48.649 --> 00:10:52.169 the managers into the jungle. Wow. But the failure 00:10:52.169 --> 00:10:54.250 wasn't just cultural, right? There was a massive 00:10:54.250 --> 00:10:56.649 agricultural failure, too, because Ford didn't 00:10:56.649 --> 00:10:59.429 listen to the botanists. Correct. In the wild, 00:10:59.590 --> 00:11:01.889 rubber trees are spaced out to prevent the spread 00:11:01.889 --> 00:11:04.889 of leaf blight. Makes sense. Ford planted them 00:11:04.889 --> 00:11:07.539 in tight rows like corn in Iowa. for efficiency. 00:11:07.860 --> 00:11:10.519 The blight jumped from tree to tree and destroyed 00:11:10.519 --> 00:11:13.139 the entire crop. It's a perfect metaphor. It 00:11:13.139 --> 00:11:16.440 is. He tried to impose an industrial grid on 00:11:16.440 --> 00:11:19.899 a biological system and nature pushed back hard. 00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:23.120 So company towns are all about control. But as 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:25.120 the industrial cities like London and Manchester 00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:28.100 became choked with smog, a new movement emerged. 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:30.879 The Garden City. Right. This wasn't about control. 00:11:31.019 --> 00:11:33.299 This was about escape. This is Ebenezer Howard. 00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:36.200 He publishes tomorrow. A peaceful path to real 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:39.350 reform. In 1898, he has this famous diagram called 00:11:39.350 --> 00:11:42.129 the three magnets. A three magnet. One magnet 00:11:42.129 --> 00:11:46.110 is the town. It has jobs, but it's dirty. One 00:11:46.110 --> 00:11:50.210 is country. It has clean air, but no jobs. The 00:11:50.210 --> 00:11:52.629 third is town country, the garden city. It sounds 00:11:52.629 --> 00:11:55.029 lovely. Town country. The theory was to capture 00:11:55.029 --> 00:11:58.090 the best of both. Moderate density, surrounded 00:11:58.090 --> 00:12:00.690 by a green belt of agriculture, all connected 00:12:00.690 --> 00:12:03.730 by rail. Letchworth and Welland Garden City in 00:12:03.730 --> 00:12:06.070 the UK were the prototypes. And they were radical 00:12:06.070 --> 00:12:08.750 at the time. Totally radical. Zoning that separated 00:12:08.750 --> 00:12:11.610 industry from homes, plenty of public green space. 00:12:11.929 --> 00:12:14.330 It was a huge step forward. And this idea eventually 00:12:14.330 --> 00:12:16.649 crosses the Atlantic and it mutates into something 00:12:16.649 --> 00:12:19.710 massive, the American suburb. Yes. But the motivation 00:12:19.710 --> 00:12:21.830 shifts again. It's not just high -minded reform. 00:12:22.029 --> 00:12:25.509 It's mass production. Enter Levittown. Levittown 00:12:25.509 --> 00:12:28.370 is to housing what Ford was to cars. William 00:12:28.370 --> 00:12:30.450 Levitt applied the assembly line to construction. 00:12:30.889 --> 00:12:33.190 How did that even work? They broke the building 00:12:33.190 --> 00:12:36.889 process down into 26 steps. One crew poured concrete, 00:12:37.110 --> 00:12:39.990 the next framed, the next roofed. They could 00:12:39.990 --> 00:12:42.570 finish 30 houses a day. 30 houses a day. That 00:12:42.570 --> 00:12:46.529 is insane speed. But there's a darker side to 00:12:46.529 --> 00:12:48.509 this efficiency that we need to unpack. Yeah, 00:12:48.529 --> 00:12:51.110 we do. The sources are very clear that these 00:12:51.110 --> 00:12:53.389 planned communities were not for everyone. They 00:12:53.389 --> 00:12:56.929 were explicitly exclusionary. The Federal Housing 00:12:56.929 --> 00:13:00.429 Administration. the FHA, often required restrictive 00:13:00.429 --> 00:13:03.830 covenants to insure the loans. And a restrictive 00:13:03.830 --> 00:13:06.389 covenant means? It meant that in many of these 00:13:06.389 --> 00:13:09.210 new perfect suburbs, like the Greenville communities 00:13:09.210 --> 00:13:12.190 or even Levittown itself, African -Americans 00:13:12.190 --> 00:13:14.950 were barred from buying homes. So it was baked 00:13:14.950 --> 00:13:17.330 into the financial system. Baked right in. There's 00:13:17.330 --> 00:13:19.470 a note here about Concord Park in Pennsylvania. 00:13:19.889 --> 00:13:22.509 It was built by a progressive developer, Morris 00:13:22.509 --> 00:13:25.549 Milgram, who wanted to integrate. Right. He tried. 00:13:25.950 --> 00:13:29.269 But even he had to capitulate to the financiers. 00:13:29.289 --> 00:13:32.350 He had to set a quota. He capped African -American 00:13:32.350 --> 00:13:35.750 residency at 45 percent because the banks believed 00:13:35.750 --> 00:13:38.590 that if it went over 50 percent, white flight 00:13:38.590 --> 00:13:40.950 would occur and property values would crash. 00:13:41.250 --> 00:13:43.970 So even in a progressive planned community. The 00:13:43.970 --> 00:13:46.889 financial models enforced segregation. And then 00:13:46.889 --> 00:13:48.929 you have places like Ronert Park in California, 00:13:49.149 --> 00:13:51.750 which marketed itself as a country club for the 00:13:51.750 --> 00:13:54.149 middle class. Laughs. That slogan says it all. 00:13:54.559 --> 00:13:57.059 It's selling exclusivity. You're buying into 00:13:57.059 --> 00:13:59.019 a club where you know exactly who your neighbors 00:13:59.019 --> 00:14:01.820 are and who they aren't. Exactly. And that evolution 00:14:01.820 --> 00:14:05.840 continues. In the 60s, you get Reston, Virginia, 00:14:06.039 --> 00:14:08.679 and Columbia, Maryland, which tried to be more 00:14:08.679 --> 00:14:11.500 inclusive and mixed use. The noble effort. But 00:14:11.500 --> 00:14:15.059 then, enter Disney. Celebration, Florida. I've 00:14:15.059 --> 00:14:16.840 been to Celebration. It feels like you're walking 00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:19.399 around inside a movie. That's the whole point. 00:14:19.620 --> 00:14:23.139 It's new urbanism wrapped in nostalgia. And now 00:14:23.139 --> 00:14:26.200 Disney is launching story living. Entire residential 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:29.740 communities in places like Rancho Mirage. Story 00:14:29.740 --> 00:14:32.039 living. Yep. It shifts the value proposition 00:14:32.039 --> 00:14:36.539 from efficiency or nature to narrative. You are 00:14:36.539 --> 00:14:38.860 paying to live inside a curated story where the 00:14:38.860 --> 00:14:40.879 sidewalks are always clean and the background 00:14:40.879 --> 00:14:43.120 music is always pleasant. It's the Truman Show 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:45.620 as a business model. Pretty much. But while America 00:14:45.620 --> 00:14:47.700 was building these suburbs, the U .K. was doing 00:14:47.700 --> 00:14:50.059 something completely different. The New Towns 00:14:50.059 --> 00:14:52.139 Experiment. This wasn't private developers. This 00:14:52.139 --> 00:14:54.659 was the state. Yeah, and the context here is 00:14:54.659 --> 00:14:57.799 key. Post -World War II, Britain is battered. 00:14:57.820 --> 00:15:01.200 The Luftwaffe destroyed millions of homes. You 00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:03.480 have this terrible overcrowding in Victorian 00:15:03.480 --> 00:15:06.590 slums. So they had to do something drastic. They 00:15:06.590 --> 00:15:08.870 did. The government passes the New Towns Act 00:15:08.870 --> 00:15:12.009 of 1946. They didn't just want to build houses. 00:15:12.250 --> 00:15:14.970 They wanted to physically move populations out 00:15:14.970 --> 00:15:17.710 of London into self -contained towns. And the 00:15:17.710 --> 00:15:20.669 big daddy of them all is Milton Keynes. The third 00:15:20.669 --> 00:15:22.970 generation, yep. Milton Keynes is fascinating 00:15:22.970 --> 00:15:26.110 because it was designed for the car, but differently 00:15:26.110 --> 00:15:29.029 than L .A. How so? It has a grid of distributor 00:15:29.029 --> 00:15:31.990 roads designed to keep through traffic out of 00:15:31.990 --> 00:15:34.210 neighborhoods. You can drive across a city at 00:15:34.210 --> 00:15:36.649 60 mile for all, but your house is on a quiet 00:15:36.649 --> 00:15:39.009 cul -de -sac. A city for the car, but not through 00:15:39.009 --> 00:15:41.350 the homes. Exactly. And we have to mention the 00:15:41.350 --> 00:15:45.610 concrete cows. Yes, the famous public art. It 00:15:45.610 --> 00:15:47.690 became a punchline for the artificiality of the 00:15:47.690 --> 00:15:50.370 place. Look, even the nature is fake. But the 00:15:50.370 --> 00:15:52.669 real issue with the Newtowns wasn't the cows. 00:15:52.850 --> 00:15:56.230 It was the money. The sources mentioned the financial 00:15:56.230 --> 00:15:58.730 model was tricky. What does that mean? It was 00:15:58.730 --> 00:16:01.629 a huge gamble. The development corporations borrowed 00:16:01.629 --> 00:16:04.269 money from the Treasury to buy the land and build 00:16:04.269 --> 00:16:07.049 the infrastructure. The plan was that as the 00:16:07.049 --> 00:16:10.350 town grew, land values would rise and they would 00:16:10.350 --> 00:16:12.769 pay back the loan with interest. Sounds plausible. 00:16:13.090 --> 00:16:16.730 But in the 1970s and 80s, inflation skyrocketed. 00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:19.559 The interest payments ballooned, but the land 00:16:19.559 --> 00:16:22.019 values didn't catch up fast enough. Oh, no, no. 00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:24.240 It became a massive debt trap for the government. 00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:26.840 And socially, it wasn't a paradise either. They 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:30.320 coined a term for it, Newtown Blues. This is 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:32.679 a crucial psychological phenomenon. They took 00:16:32.679 --> 00:16:35.240 families from the slums of East London. Now, 00:16:35.279 --> 00:16:37.720 those slums were poor, but they were tight -knit. 00:16:37.879 --> 00:16:39.620 Right, you had community. You knew your neighbor, 00:16:39.700 --> 00:16:41.840 your mom lived down the street. They moved them 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:44.889 to a pristine new house in Stevenager. Milton 00:16:44.889 --> 00:16:48.750 Keynes. Yeah. And suddenly, silence. Isolation. 00:16:48.789 --> 00:16:51.549 No grandma down the street, no pub on the corner. 00:16:51.690 --> 00:16:55.049 Right. Just miles of identical housing. It created 00:16:55.049 --> 00:16:57.990 profound social isolation and depression. It 00:16:57.990 --> 00:17:00.029 proves that community is harder to build than 00:17:00.029 --> 00:17:02.210 infrastructure. So much harder. You can pour 00:17:02.210 --> 00:17:04.789 concrete, but you can't moor friendship. Precisely. 00:17:04.789 --> 00:17:07.170 Okay, let's stale up. We've talked about towns. 00:17:07.369 --> 00:17:10.730 Now let's talk about power. Capital cities. Because 00:17:10.730 --> 00:17:13.829 sometimes a country decides the old capital is 00:17:13.829 --> 00:17:16.789 too messy or too dangerous or just too old politics 00:17:16.789 --> 00:17:19.829 and they build a new one. This is nation building 00:17:19.829 --> 00:17:22.529 through architecture. And usually the motivation 00:17:22.529 --> 00:17:24.990 falls into one of three buckets. Neutrality, 00:17:25.170 --> 00:17:27.730 development, or defense. Okay, let's hit neutrality 00:17:27.730 --> 00:17:31.170 first. Canberra, Australia. Classic sibling rivalry. 00:17:31.509 --> 00:17:34.250 Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be the capital. 00:17:34.470 --> 00:17:36.890 I can see that. Neither would agree to the other. 00:17:37.480 --> 00:17:40.440 So in 1908, they compromised. We'll build a new 00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:43.019 city in the middle. They held an international 00:17:43.019 --> 00:17:46.059 design contest, and an American couple, Walter 00:17:46.059 --> 00:17:48.400 Burley Griffin and Marion Monty Griffin, won. 00:17:48.700 --> 00:17:50.599 And the design is very geometric, right? Not 00:17:50.599 --> 00:17:53.180 organic at all. It's beautiful on paper. It centers 00:17:53.180 --> 00:17:56.180 on a massive man -made lake. lake burley griffin 00:17:56.180 --> 00:17:59.200 with radiating axes aligned with topographic 00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:01.859 landmarks so it's the opposite of sydney sprawl 00:18:01.859 --> 00:18:04.440 the total opposite it's a city designed for bureaucrats 00:18:04.440 --> 00:18:06.480 to work in peace okay then you have the development 00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:09.859 play this is brasilia ah the ultimate modernist 00:18:09.859 --> 00:18:12.740 statement President Juscelino Kubitschek in the 00:18:12.740 --> 00:18:16.500 1950s promised 50 years of prosperity in five. 00:18:16.900 --> 00:18:19.079 Ambitious. And Brazil's population was clinging 00:18:19.079 --> 00:18:21.539 to the coast. He wanted to force the country 00:18:21.539 --> 00:18:24.000 to look inward, to the Amazon, to the resources. 00:18:24.259 --> 00:18:26.880 So he moved the capital to the geographic center. 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:29.720 And the design. It looks like an airplane. Yeah, 00:18:29.740 --> 00:18:32.019 that's the common description. Lucio Costa's 00:18:32.019 --> 00:18:34.440 plan is shaped like a bird or a plane. And Oscar 00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:36.900 Niemeyer's architecture is iconic. Those white 00:18:36.900 --> 00:18:40.799 swooping curves. But the planning. This is where 00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:43.039 it gets controversial. It's based on super blocks. 00:18:43.319 --> 00:18:46.339 It is. Unpack the super block for us. Why does 00:18:46.339 --> 00:18:48.400 that matter to the average person living there? 00:18:48.640 --> 00:18:51.259 Well, a traditional city has streets and corners. 00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:53.279 Corners are where you bump into people, where 00:18:53.279 --> 00:18:55.380 you start a protest, where you open a bodega. 00:18:55.400 --> 00:18:58.660 The messy human parts. Exactly. Brasilia has 00:18:58.660 --> 00:19:01.960 sectors. There's a hotel sector, a banking sector. 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:04.500 The residential zones are these massive super 00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:06.940 blocks with no streets in the traditional sense, 00:19:07.059 --> 00:19:09.440 just access roads. So it kills the street life. 00:19:09.799 --> 00:19:12.119 It kills the serendipity. It was designed for 00:19:12.119 --> 00:19:14.480 the automobile age. You don't walk in Brasilia. 00:19:14.839 --> 00:19:17.619 And sociologically, some critics argue this was 00:19:17.619 --> 00:19:20.579 intentional. Intentional how? It's very hard 00:19:20.579 --> 00:19:23.220 to organize a revolution in a city with no public 00:19:23.220 --> 00:19:25.440 squares and vast distances between everything. 00:19:25.579 --> 00:19:27.839 Which leads us to the third motivation. Defense. 00:19:28.039 --> 00:19:30.779 Or paranoia, depending on how you look at it. 00:19:30.880 --> 00:19:34.259 Naipia da Manmar. Right. In 2005, the military 00:19:34.259 --> 00:19:38.259 junta moved the capital from Yangon to a greenfield 00:19:38.259 --> 00:19:40.839 site in the middle of the jungle. Just packed 00:19:40.839 --> 00:19:43.259 up and left. And it is massive. We're talking 00:19:43.259 --> 00:19:45.720 20 -lane highways that are completely empty. 00:19:46.059 --> 00:19:48.200 It moves the government away from the coast, 00:19:48.380 --> 00:19:51.299 protecting against amphibious invasion, and it 00:19:51.299 --> 00:19:53.579 isolates the leadership from the general population. 00:19:53.900 --> 00:19:56.279 It's a fortress disguised as a city. That's a 00:19:56.279 --> 00:19:58.220 perfect description. And this trend isn't dying. 00:19:58.500 --> 00:20:00.700 I mean, Indonesia is building New Santara because 00:20:00.700 --> 00:20:03.480 Jakarta is sinking. Egypt is building a new capital 00:20:03.480 --> 00:20:05.599 because Cairo is bursting. It's happening all 00:20:05.599 --> 00:20:07.559 over. It seems like the capital city business 00:20:07.559 --> 00:20:10.299 is booming. It is, but the center of gravity 00:20:10.299 --> 00:20:13.039 has shifted. In the 20th century, the West was 00:20:13.039 --> 00:20:16.299 building new towns. In the 21st century, the 00:20:16.299 --> 00:20:18.960 megaprojects are almost exclusively in Asia and 00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:20.660 the Middle East. Okay, let's dive into that. 00:20:20.759 --> 00:20:24.220 Section six, the modern megaprojects. Because 00:20:24.220 --> 00:20:26.900 the scale here makes Levittown look like a Lego 00:20:26.900 --> 00:20:29.980 set. It really does. Let's look at China. China 00:20:29.980 --> 00:20:32.740 has a deep tradition of planned cities. Ancient 00:20:32.740 --> 00:20:35.500 capitals like Chongyan were strict grids based 00:20:35.500 --> 00:20:38.319 on feng shui and imperial power. A long history 00:20:38.319 --> 00:20:40.779 of this. A very long history. But today they're 00:20:40.779 --> 00:20:44.059 building special economic zones. Kudong in Shanghai 00:20:44.059 --> 00:20:47.400 was farmland in 1990. Now it has a skyline that 00:20:47.400 --> 00:20:49.690 rivals Manhattan. And now they have Xiangyan. 00:20:49.869 --> 00:20:53.009 Xiangyan is President Xi's legacy city. It's 00:20:53.009 --> 00:20:54.910 being built about 100 kilometers from Beijing. 00:20:55.170 --> 00:20:57.369 It's intended to be a showcase of ecological 00:20:57.369 --> 00:21:00.369 civilization. So a green city. Automated traffic, 00:21:00.529 --> 00:21:03.430 massive green spaces, limiting population density. 00:21:03.630 --> 00:21:05.769 It's the state trying to prove it can solve the 00:21:05.769 --> 00:21:07.589 big city disease of pollution and congestion. 00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:09.759 Then you go to the Middle East and you see these 00:21:09.759 --> 00:21:11.640 two different visions of the future. You have 00:21:11.640 --> 00:21:14.859 Jubail in Saudi Arabia and Mazdar in the UAE. 00:21:14.980 --> 00:21:17.859 Very different visions. Jubail is the industrial 00:21:17.859 --> 00:21:20.960 titan. It was built in the 70s and 80s, essentially, 00:21:21.059 --> 00:21:24.480 to process oil and petrochemicals. It's the largest 00:21:24.480 --> 00:21:26.559 civil engineering project in the world. Wow. 00:21:26.819 --> 00:21:30.359 And get this, it creates 50 % of Saudi Arabia's 00:21:30.359 --> 00:21:33.180 drinking water through massive desalination plants. 00:21:33.420 --> 00:21:36.369 It's a city of brute force engineering. And Mazdar, 00:21:36.470 --> 00:21:39.450 what's its story? Mazdar is the eco -utopia. 00:21:39.690 --> 00:21:42.049 Designed by Norman Foster's firm, it was meant 00:21:42.049 --> 00:21:45.250 to be zero -carbon, zero -waste, car -free. It 00:21:45.250 --> 00:21:47.670 uses ancient Arabic design principles, narrow 00:21:47.670 --> 00:21:50.430 streets to create shade, wind towers to catch 00:21:50.430 --> 00:21:53.049 breezes. Total tech. Combined with high -tech 00:21:53.049 --> 00:21:55.890 solar. But the sources suggest Masdar hasn't 00:21:55.890 --> 00:21:58.230 quite hit its targets. It's a bit of a ghost 00:21:58.230 --> 00:22:00.470 town. It's struggled to attract tenants. It's 00:22:00.470 --> 00:22:02.890 very expensive. And it highlights the risk of 00:22:02.890 --> 00:22:05.230 these smart cities. You can build the most sustainable 00:22:05.230 --> 00:22:06.930 building in the world, but if people don't want 00:22:06.930 --> 00:22:09.130 to move their business there, it's just a museum 00:22:09.130 --> 00:22:11.710 of good intentions. And there's a darker undertone 00:22:11.710 --> 00:22:13.930 to the smart city concept, too, isn't there? 00:22:14.089 --> 00:22:16.150 In places like China or the new developments 00:22:16.150 --> 00:22:19.029 in the Middle East, smart means sensors. It means 00:22:19.029 --> 00:22:22.279 cameras. It means data. Absolutely. A smart city 00:22:22.279 --> 00:22:25.160 is a surveillance city. If the garbage can tells 00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:27.200 the central server when it's full, that's great 00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:29.700 efficiency. Sure. But if the streetlight tracks 00:22:29.700 --> 00:22:32.420 your gate and facial recognition logs your entry 00:22:32.420 --> 00:22:34.819 into a building, you have created a panopticon. 00:22:35.359 --> 00:22:38.339 The planned community becomes the monitored community. 00:22:38.819 --> 00:22:41.579 That's a chilling thought. Okay, let's take a 00:22:41.579 --> 00:22:46.220 detour into the weird stuff. Section 7. Curiosities. 00:22:47.019 --> 00:22:49.480 Because sometimes you don't build a city for 00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:51.740 a nation. You build it for a specific type of 00:22:51.740 --> 00:22:55.119 person. Right. Scientists? The Soviet Union loved 00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:59.180 this. Akadem Gordak. Academic Town in Siberia. 00:22:59.220 --> 00:23:01.160 Academic Town. They took the best physicists, 00:23:01.460 --> 00:23:04.279 mathematicians, and biologists, gave them better 00:23:04.279 --> 00:23:06.059 apartments and better food than the rest of the 00:23:06.059 --> 00:23:08.480 USSR, and put them in the middle of a forest. 00:23:08.660 --> 00:23:10.940 It sounds like a golden cage. It was. It allowed 00:23:10.940 --> 00:23:12.960 for a degree of intellectual freedom that didn't 00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:15.279 exist in Moscow, but it was also a way to contain 00:23:15.279 --> 00:23:17.759 them. And Japan did something similar. With Tsukuba 00:23:17.759 --> 00:23:20.480 Science City, they consolidated dozens of research 00:23:20.480 --> 00:23:23.099 institutes. But again, the Newtown Blues hit. 00:23:23.470 --> 00:23:25.450 There were high rates of suicide and depression 00:23:25.450 --> 00:23:28.130 in Sukuba in the early years because it was sterile. 00:23:28.190 --> 00:23:31.269 Just labs and no life. No nightlife, just labs. 00:23:31.470 --> 00:23:33.950 Then you have resource towns. Kiruna in Sweden 00:23:33.950 --> 00:23:36.990 is the wildest story here. Kiruna is incredible. 00:23:37.289 --> 00:23:39.849 It exists for the iron mine. But the mine has 00:23:39.849 --> 00:23:42.769 dug so deep that the ground is destabilizing. 00:23:42.950 --> 00:23:45.609 The town is literally sinking into the earth. 00:23:45.769 --> 00:23:48.410 So they have to abandon it. No. Instead of closing 00:23:48.410 --> 00:23:51.269 the mine. They are moving the town. Moving it, 00:23:51.349 --> 00:23:53.890 like packing boxes? No, moving buildings. They 00:23:53.890 --> 00:23:56.630 are putting historic buildings on massive flatbed 00:23:56.630 --> 00:23:59.869 trucks and driving them three kilometers east. 00:24:00.109 --> 00:24:02.329 You're kidding me. It's an incredible feat of 00:24:02.329 --> 00:24:04.809 engineering, but it shows the precarity of a 00:24:04.809 --> 00:24:06.809 single -purpose town. And the ultimate tragedy 00:24:06.809 --> 00:24:08.930 of the single -purpose town has to be Pripyat. 00:24:09.130 --> 00:24:11.529 Pripyat was the atomic city. It was considered 00:24:11.529 --> 00:24:14.890 a plum assignment in the USSR. Modern, young, 00:24:15.089 --> 00:24:17.670 full of roses, built for the workers of the Chernobyl 00:24:17.670 --> 00:24:22.009 plant. And in 1986, it was evacuated in 36 hours. 00:24:22.690 --> 00:24:26.329 It's the ultimate ghost city. Now, a time capsule 00:24:26.329 --> 00:24:28.730 of failed planning and failed technology. There's 00:24:28.730 --> 00:24:30.549 one more I have to ask about because it sounds 00:24:30.549 --> 00:24:33.750 fake. The marble city. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. 00:24:33.829 --> 00:24:36.130 What's the deal there? The former president had 00:24:36.130 --> 00:24:39.130 an obsession with white marble. The city holds 00:24:39.130 --> 00:24:41.509 the Guinness World Record for the highest density 00:24:41.509 --> 00:24:44.170 of white marble -clad buildings. Wow. It looks 00:24:44.170 --> 00:24:46.779 blindingly bright in the sun. Wide boulevards, 00:24:46.779 --> 00:24:49.440 gold statues of the leader, and almost no people 00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:52.500 on the streets. It is a monument to one man's 00:24:52.500 --> 00:24:55.640 ego, solidified in stone. So we've toured the 00:24:55.640 --> 00:24:57.859 world. We've seen the grids, the sectors, the 00:24:57.859 --> 00:25:00.119 marble, and the swamps. The big question is, 00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:02.920 does it work? Session eight, success and failure. 00:25:03.099 --> 00:25:04.960 It's a spectrum. It's not a simple yes or no. 00:25:05.160 --> 00:25:06.640 Okay, so let's start with the failure. On the 00:25:06.640 --> 00:25:08.519 failure side, we have Fortlandia, obviously, 00:25:08.700 --> 00:25:10.960 or a place like Craigavon in Northern Ireland. 00:25:11.299 --> 00:25:13.460 Craigavon. It failed because it tried to be a 00:25:13.460 --> 00:25:17.000 linear city strung out along a highway. But humans 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:19.720 don't live linearly. We live radially. We want 00:25:19.720 --> 00:25:22.059 a center. When you strip the center, you kill 00:25:22.059 --> 00:25:24.460 the heart. And on the success side, what's the 00:25:24.460 --> 00:25:27.549 gold standard? Singapore. It is the gold standard. 00:25:27.589 --> 00:25:29.490 It's a city -state that is entirely planned. 00:25:30.029 --> 00:25:33.069 The Housing Development Board, the HDB, builds 00:25:33.069 --> 00:25:35.990 these massive high -rise estates where 80 % of 00:25:35.990 --> 00:25:38.710 the population lives. 80%. And they are integrated 00:25:38.710 --> 00:25:41.390 with transit, food courts called hawker centers, 00:25:41.589 --> 00:25:44.809 and parks. So why does Singapore work when the 00:25:44.809 --> 00:25:47.470 projects in the U .S. or U .K. failed so badly? 00:25:47.930 --> 00:25:49.950 Constant maintenance and adaptation. They don't 00:25:49.950 --> 00:25:51.769 just build it and leave. They renovate, they 00:25:51.769 --> 00:25:54.349 upgrade, and crucially, they use ethnic quotas 00:25:54.349 --> 00:25:56.349 in the housing blocks to enforce integration, 00:25:56.789 --> 00:25:59.349 preventing ghettos from forming. So it's social 00:25:59.349 --> 00:26:01.630 engineering. It is social engineering, yes, but 00:26:01.630 --> 00:26:03.430 it created stability. But there's a lingering 00:26:03.430 --> 00:26:05.849 criticism in all the sources, the soul problem. 00:26:05.950 --> 00:26:07.930 It's sort of Jane Jacobs versus Robert Moses, 00:26:08.049 --> 00:26:10.730 right? This is the eternal debate. Jane Jacobs 00:26:10.730 --> 00:26:14.029 argued that a city needs friction. It needs old 00:26:14.029 --> 00:26:16.630 buildings next to new ones. It needs narrow streets 00:26:16.630 --> 00:26:18.809 where people bump into each other. It needs the 00:26:18.809 --> 00:26:21.289 accident. It needs the accident. Planned cities, 00:26:21.430 --> 00:26:24.470 by their very definition, remove the accident. 00:26:24.910 --> 00:26:27.630 They are efficient, but they often feel sterile. 00:26:27.809 --> 00:26:29.930 It's like the difference between a forest and 00:26:29.930 --> 00:26:32.150 a tree plantation. Oh, that's a perfect analogy. 00:26:32.549 --> 00:26:35.690 A tree plantation has more timber, but a forest 00:26:35.690 --> 00:26:38.650 has an ecosystem. That is a perfect way to put 00:26:38.650 --> 00:26:41.759 it. And that brings us to the present. We are 00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:45.720 in a boom of planned cities, smart cities, eco 00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:48.440 -cities. So are we just repeating the mistakes 00:26:48.440 --> 00:26:51.359 of the past with better Wi -Fi? That is the big 00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:55.000 risk. We are solving for efficiency and data, 00:26:55.180 --> 00:26:58.240 just like Pullman solved for hygiene and Ford 00:26:58.240 --> 00:27:01.299 solved for production. But are we solving for 00:27:01.299 --> 00:27:04.130 happiness? That's the question. A smart city 00:27:04.130 --> 00:27:06.069 that knows your heart rate but doesn't give you 00:27:06.069 --> 00:27:08.150 a place to hang out with your friends is just 00:27:08.150 --> 00:27:10.670 a high -tech prison. It seems like the lesson 00:27:10.670 --> 00:27:12.690 is you can plan the hardware, but you have to 00:27:12.690 --> 00:27:14.869 let the software, the people, be a little bit 00:27:14.869 --> 00:27:17.210 messy. You have to leave room for the unplanned. 00:27:17.589 --> 00:27:19.829 That's where the life happens. Okay, I want to 00:27:19.829 --> 00:27:21.150 leave the listener with a thought experiment. 00:27:22.009 --> 00:27:23.890 We've been critiquing emperors and billionaires 00:27:23.890 --> 00:27:26.450 for an hour. Now it's your turn. If you were 00:27:26.450 --> 00:27:29.190 given a blank map and infinite money to design 00:27:29.190 --> 00:27:32.109 a city from scratch, your utopia, what is the 00:27:32.109 --> 00:27:34.750 first thing you would build? Not the sewer, not 00:27:34.750 --> 00:27:37.089 the power plant. A first feature that defines 00:27:37.089 --> 00:27:40.210 the place. And what is the one thing you would 00:27:40.210 --> 00:27:43.190 absolutely ban? That is a dangerous amount of 00:27:43.190 --> 00:27:46.289 power, I think. I would start with a central 00:27:46.289 --> 00:27:50.630 piazza, a big open square. A place with no commercial 00:27:50.630 --> 00:27:54.329 purpose, just sitting. Benches, fountains. I 00:27:54.329 --> 00:27:57.670 like that. And the ban. And I would ban billboards. 00:27:57.930 --> 00:28:00.769 No ads. No ads. Let the architecture speak for 00:28:00.769 --> 00:28:03.589 itself. Let the trees speak. I like it. A quiet, 00:28:03.690 --> 00:28:06.450 ad -free piazza. I'd probably ban cars and build 00:28:06.450 --> 00:28:08.970 a giant slide, but that's why you're the expert. 00:28:09.190 --> 00:28:11.170 We can workshop it. I'm open to the slide idea. 00:28:11.630 --> 00:28:13.589 Thanks for diving deep with us today. This was 00:28:13.589 --> 00:28:16.269 a massive topic. My pleasure. It was great. And 00:28:16.269 --> 00:28:18.269 to our listener, whether you're in a grid, a 00:28:18.269 --> 00:28:20.529 cul -de -sac, or a chaotic medieval alleyway, 00:28:20.609 --> 00:28:23.450 look around. Someone planned that. Or maybe they 00:28:23.450 --> 00:28:24.589 didn't. See you next time.