WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.800 Okay, I want to try something a little different 00:00:01.800 --> 00:00:03.339 to kick things off. I want you to close your 00:00:03.339 --> 00:00:05.620 eyes. Yeah. No, seriously, humor me for a second. 00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:08.560 Picture a prairie. A prairie. All right, I'm 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:10.660 with you. What do you see in your mind's eye? 00:00:10.980 --> 00:00:13.400 Well, the classic image, right? You see, um... 00:00:13.789 --> 00:00:17.289 Tall grass, it's swaying in the wind, big wide 00:00:17.289 --> 00:00:21.250 open skies, maybe a bison if we're feeling particularly 00:00:21.250 --> 00:00:24.410 romantic about it. But it's peaceful. Exactly. 00:00:24.809 --> 00:00:27.469 It's peaceful. It's nature. It's wild. Now hold 00:00:27.469 --> 00:00:30.350 that image, the grass, that sort of untamed feeling, 00:00:30.469 --> 00:00:32.710 and I want you to mentally just drop it right 00:00:32.710 --> 00:00:35.649 on top of the grid of a major city. Okay. And 00:00:35.649 --> 00:00:37.250 I don't mean a park. This isn't Central Park. 00:00:37.310 --> 00:00:40.270 I'm talking about city blocks. Pavement, sidewalks, 00:00:40.289 --> 00:00:44.219 fire hydrants. But the buildings? They're just 00:00:44.219 --> 00:00:47.079 gone, erased. All the noise, the traffic, the 00:00:47.079 --> 00:00:49.560 people, it's all gone. And all that's left is 00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:52.060 just silence and weeds coming up through the 00:00:52.060 --> 00:00:53.700 cracks in the concrete. Right. So you're not 00:00:53.700 --> 00:00:55.219 actually talking about nature. You're talking 00:00:55.219 --> 00:00:59.880 about the aftermath of something. I am. I saw 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:01.840 this term in the source material, urban prairie. 00:01:02.299 --> 00:01:05.739 And it just stopped me cold. It sounds so poetic. 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:08.079 But when you actually see pictures of it, like 00:01:08.079 --> 00:01:11.819 in parts of Detroit or St. Louis, it's... It's 00:01:11.819 --> 00:01:14.359 haunting. It is a haunting term. It looks like 00:01:14.359 --> 00:01:16.739 the world ended, but only on that one block. 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:19.319 Well, and it's technically accurate. I mean, 00:01:19.340 --> 00:01:22.640 when the population density of a city drops so 00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:24.900 low that the land literally reverts to green 00:01:24.900 --> 00:01:27.219 space, not because we planned a beautiful park, 00:01:27.299 --> 00:01:30.000 but because there's no one left to live in the 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.239 house or mow the lawn that is the urban prairie. 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:34.180 And that's exactly what we're digging into today. 00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:35.840 We're not just looking at abandoned buildings. 00:01:35.900 --> 00:01:39.340 This is more like a forensic investigation into 00:01:39.340 --> 00:01:42.650 the life and, well, the death of cities because 00:01:42.650 --> 00:01:43.950 that's what we're talking about isn't it it's 00:01:43.950 --> 00:01:46.189 a kind of death it is but i'd argue it's not 00:01:46.189 --> 00:01:48.689 a natural one it's not a city dying of old age 00:01:48.689 --> 00:01:51.989 when a bustling thriving metropolis becomes a 00:01:51.989 --> 00:01:55.049 ghost town or a neighborhood becomes what planners 00:01:55.049 --> 00:01:58.750 call grayfield land that isn't some random accident 00:01:58.750 --> 00:02:01.349 it's not bad luck it's a process it's a sociological 00:02:01.349 --> 00:02:04.250 process it's a series of decisions often made 00:02:04.250 --> 00:02:07.329 decades apart that all lead to this one outcome 00:02:07.790 --> 00:02:09.590 That's the core tension I really want to pull 00:02:09.590 --> 00:02:12.729 apart today. Because, you know, you grow up thinking 00:02:12.729 --> 00:02:15.289 cities are these permanent monolithic things. 00:02:15.569 --> 00:02:18.310 Rome is the eternal city, right? New York is 00:02:18.310 --> 00:02:21.030 the city that never sleeps. But the material 00:02:21.030 --> 00:02:23.750 we've got today, it shows that cities can absolutely 00:02:23.750 --> 00:02:26.259 fall asleep. They can go into a coma. Yeah. Or 00:02:26.259 --> 00:02:29.419 they can even die. Exactly. And our whole mission 00:02:29.419 --> 00:02:31.460 for this deep dive is to really understand the 00:02:31.460 --> 00:02:34.099 mechanics of that. We call it urban decay or 00:02:34.099 --> 00:02:37.539 urban rot or blight. But those are just labels. 00:02:37.719 --> 00:02:40.439 We need to look under the hood at the gears that 00:02:40.439 --> 00:02:43.099 actually turn to crush a city. And we're talking 00:02:43.099 --> 00:02:46.280 about what? Economic gears? Political? All of 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:48.840 the above. Economic, political and social gears 00:02:48.840 --> 00:02:51.159 all grinding together. And it's never just one 00:02:51.159 --> 00:02:53.879 thing, is it? It's never as simple as, oh, the 00:02:53.879 --> 00:02:55.960 big factory closed down so everybody packed up 00:02:55.960 --> 00:02:58.810 and left. No, never. That's probably the biggest 00:02:58.810 --> 00:03:01.449 misconception out there. It's never a single 00:03:01.449 --> 00:03:05.509 gunshot. It's always a convergence. It's deindustrialization 00:03:05.509 --> 00:03:08.849 colliding with a massive population shift, which 00:03:08.849 --> 00:03:10.930 then collides with a policy decision that was 00:03:10.930 --> 00:03:13.590 made 30 or 40 years earlier. It's a perfect storm. 00:03:13.729 --> 00:03:16.069 It's a perfect storm, exactly. So we have a huge 00:03:16.069 --> 00:03:18.590 map to cover today. Yeah. We start by looking 00:03:18.590 --> 00:03:20.430 at the anatomy of blight. You know, what does 00:03:20.430 --> 00:03:22.129 it actually look and feel like on the ground? 00:03:22.530 --> 00:03:24.689 Then we're going to get into the American model, 00:03:24.830 --> 00:03:27.900 which creates... It's this very specific kind 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:31.699 of weird donut shape of decay in the U .S. And 00:03:31.699 --> 00:03:33.379 then we're going to flip that script completely. 00:03:33.639 --> 00:03:36.039 Because if you think urban decay looks the same 00:03:36.039 --> 00:03:38.300 everywhere, you are mistaken. We're going to 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:40.699 Europe. We'll look at France and the U .K., where 00:03:40.699 --> 00:03:43.180 that whole map is basically inverted. And the 00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:44.860 case studies. I mean, some of these are just, 00:03:44.900 --> 00:03:47.300 they're mind -blowing. There's a story out of 00:03:47.300 --> 00:03:50.240 South Africa in the notes that... Well, let's 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:52.180 just say I had to read it three times to believe 00:03:52.180 --> 00:03:55.199 it was real. It completely redefines the word 00:03:55.199 --> 00:03:57.819 stealing. Oh, the Johannesburg example is terrifying. 00:03:58.139 --> 00:04:01.699 It's what happens when the rule of law just evaporates. 00:04:01.780 --> 00:04:03.780 I cannot wait to get to that. But first things 00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:07.879 first, section one, the anatomy of blight. When 00:04:07.879 --> 00:04:10.340 I say urban decay, I think we all have a sort 00:04:10.340 --> 00:04:12.939 of movie clip that plays in our head. You know, 00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:15.960 broken windows, graffiti, trash playing down 00:04:15.960 --> 00:04:18.259 the street. We do. But let's zoom in on that 00:04:18.259 --> 00:04:20.920 image. The research mentions a really specific 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:24.019 aesthetic. It talks about modern ruins. You mentioned 00:04:24.019 --> 00:04:26.060 the broken windows, but think about the texture 00:04:26.060 --> 00:04:28.259 of it all. There's a reference to a building 00:04:28.259 --> 00:04:32.060 in Poznań, Poland, and it describes these tiles 00:04:32.060 --> 00:04:34.720 that are cracked and just covered in layers of 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:37.000 graffiti. It's not just empty. It's scarred. 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.560 It's scarred. It's the visual language of neglect. 00:04:39.860 --> 00:04:41.879 It's like the building itself is screaming, nobody 00:04:41.879 --> 00:04:44.220 cares about me anymore. And that's the critical 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:46.600 link, right? The material points out that blight 00:04:46.600 --> 00:04:50.279 isn't just a physical thing. It is. I mean, just 00:04:50.279 --> 00:04:52.199 imagine for a second you live next door to one 00:04:52.199 --> 00:04:54.220 of these condemned houses. I've seen this. I've 00:04:54.220 --> 00:04:57.000 literally seen it. You have one house with a 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.899 perfectly manicured lawn, and the house right 00:04:59.899 --> 00:05:02.779 next to it has a blue tarp on the roof, and the 00:05:02.779 --> 00:05:05.199 windows are boarded up. Right. So what does that 00:05:05.199 --> 00:05:08.199 do to you day in and day out? It has a visual 00:05:08.199 --> 00:05:11.060 effect, sure, but the source says it has a physical 00:05:11.060 --> 00:05:14.259 and psychological effect. It creates this pervasive 00:05:14.259 --> 00:05:17.259 sense of abandonment. If your environment is 00:05:17.259 --> 00:05:20.379 literally degrading around you, you start to 00:05:20.379 --> 00:05:22.699 feel like maybe you are, too. It's a signal. 00:05:22.860 --> 00:05:25.300 It's a signal that the social contract is broken. 00:05:25.399 --> 00:05:27.560 It feels like being the last guest at a party 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:29.720 that ended three hours ago. Like you missed the 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:31.300 memo and you're not supposed to be there anymore. 00:05:31.420 --> 00:05:34.029 That's a great way to put it. If we look at the 00:05:34.029 --> 00:05:36.889 causes, and believe me, it is a laundry list, 00:05:37.110 --> 00:05:39.149 we kind of have to group them to make any sense 00:05:39.149 --> 00:05:41.629 of it. The first big bucket is, of course, economic. 00:05:42.350 --> 00:05:44.709 This is the bedrock of it all. This is the no 00:05:44.709 --> 00:05:46.889 jobs part of the story. It's even deeper than 00:05:46.889 --> 00:05:50.069 just no jobs. It's deindustrialization. So think 00:05:50.069 --> 00:05:52.449 about a town that was built entirely around a 00:05:52.449 --> 00:05:55.990 steel mill or a car factory. The mill closes. 00:05:56.209 --> 00:05:58.370 It's not just the steel workers who are out of 00:05:58.370 --> 00:06:00.610 a job. No, it's the whole ecosystem. The whole 00:06:00.610 --> 00:06:03.459 ecosystem. The diner across the street loses 00:06:03.459 --> 00:06:06.579 all its customers. The truck drivers who hauled 00:06:06.579 --> 00:06:09.120 the steel lose their contracts. The local government 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:11.899 loses its biggest taxpayer. So they can't afford 00:06:11.899 --> 00:06:13.519 to fix the potholes or keep the streetlights 00:06:13.519 --> 00:06:16.680 on. Exactly. Then private divestment kicks in. 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:19.240 The banks see the writing on the wall and they 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:21.939 just stop lending money in that area. It becomes 00:06:21.939 --> 00:06:25.189 a death spiral. High local unemployment isn't 00:06:25.189 --> 00:06:27.569 just a statistic. It's the trigger for absolutely 00:06:27.569 --> 00:06:30.009 everything else that follows. OK, so the money 00:06:30.009 --> 00:06:32.829 leaves first. Then do the people follow the money? 00:06:32.949 --> 00:06:36.480 That's the second bucket. And this is fascinating 00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:38.620 because it can actually go two different ways. 00:06:38.939 --> 00:06:41.300 On the one hand, you can have population decline 00:06:41.300 --> 00:06:43.939 depopulation. That leaves you with a city that 00:06:43.939 --> 00:06:46.180 was built for, say, a million people, but now 00:06:46.180 --> 00:06:48.500 only 500 ,000 live there. So you've got all these 00:06:48.500 --> 00:06:51.360 schools and fire stations and bus lines. Right. 00:06:51.399 --> 00:06:53.579 But you don't have enough taxpayers to keep the 00:06:53.579 --> 00:06:55.819 lights on in any of them. Correct. It becomes 00:06:55.819 --> 00:06:58.339 incredibly inefficient to even run the city. 00:06:59.579 --> 00:07:02.379 But paradoxically, you can also have overpopulation 00:07:02.379 --> 00:07:05.620 in certain pockets. If everyone who's left crowds 00:07:05.620 --> 00:07:08.180 into the few remaining affordable areas, you 00:07:08.180 --> 00:07:10.240 screen the infrastructure there until it snaps. 00:07:10.300 --> 00:07:12.620 So the sewers back up, the power grid fails. 00:07:13.079 --> 00:07:15.160 Precisely. You get a situation where it's a ghost 00:07:15.160 --> 00:07:17.139 town and a pressure cooker at the same time. 00:07:17.259 --> 00:07:20.060 Wow. So it's either empty or it's breaking. And 00:07:20.060 --> 00:07:21.980 that leads directly into the third layer, which 00:07:21.980 --> 00:07:25.379 is social. You see family fragmentation. You 00:07:25.379 --> 00:07:28.399 see the brain drain. I mean, anyone with a college 00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:30.459 degree or transferable skills, they're the first 00:07:30.459 --> 00:07:33.139 ones to leave. Of course. You lose what sociologists 00:07:33.139 --> 00:07:35.800 call social capital. Those are the networks of 00:07:35.800 --> 00:07:37.560 trust, the neighborhood watch, the people who 00:07:37.560 --> 00:07:39.339 know each other and keep the community functioning 00:07:39.339 --> 00:07:42.639 and safe. And into that vacuum. Crime rushes 00:07:42.639 --> 00:07:45.939 in. Yeah. Gangs, drugs. That's the classic pattern. 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:48.800 There was one detail in this list of causes that 00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:50.420 I actually, I circled it in my notes because 00:07:50.420 --> 00:07:52.600 it genuinely freaked me out a little. It wasn't 00:07:52.600 --> 00:07:56.879 about economics or crime. It was about urban 00:07:56.879 --> 00:08:00.420 wildlife. Yes. This is a very specific indicator 00:08:00.420 --> 00:08:02.920 of advanced decay. And we're not talking about 00:08:02.920 --> 00:08:05.800 like a cute raccoon tipping over a garbage can, 00:08:05.879 --> 00:08:08.459 are we? No, no, not at all. The notes specify 00:08:08.459 --> 00:08:12.199 large, unregulated populations of animals. Think 00:08:12.199 --> 00:08:15.139 abandoned pets. Feral dogs. Feral dogs forming 00:08:15.139 --> 00:08:17.899 packs. Now stop and think about what that signals. 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:20.980 We spend thousands of years as a species building 00:08:20.980 --> 00:08:24.120 cities specifically to insulate ourselves from 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:27.040 the wild. We build walls. We have animal control. 00:08:27.139 --> 00:08:30.339 We have streetlights. When you have packs of 00:08:30.339 --> 00:08:33.919 feral dogs roaming the streets of a major industrialized 00:08:33.919 --> 00:08:36.779 city. The city has failed at its most basic function. 00:08:36.909 --> 00:08:39.370 It has completely failed. It's not just sad or 00:08:39.370 --> 00:08:41.490 neglected at that point. It's genuinely hostile. 00:08:41.730 --> 00:08:43.690 You could be walking to the bus stop and have 00:08:43.690 --> 00:08:45.649 to worry about a pack of dogs. It's like something 00:08:45.649 --> 00:08:48.490 out of a post -apocalyptic movie. But it's real 00:08:48.490 --> 00:08:51.029 life in some of these blighted zones. It just 00:08:51.029 --> 00:08:52.830 signals that all the structures of civilization, 00:08:53.230 --> 00:08:55.870 you know, safety, sanitation, our basic dominance 00:08:55.870 --> 00:08:58.570 over the immediate environment, have just dissolved. 00:08:58.870 --> 00:09:00.710 Okay, before we move on to the history of how 00:09:00.710 --> 00:09:02.789 this happens, I need you to explain one thing 00:09:02.789 --> 00:09:05.889 to me. The notes bring up this counterpoint from 00:09:05.889 --> 00:09:08.250 some libertarian economists, guys like Milton 00:09:08.250 --> 00:09:11.710 Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. And they blame 00:09:11.710 --> 00:09:14.309 something that I think most people assume is 00:09:14.309 --> 00:09:17.070 a good thing. They blame rent control. This is 00:09:17.070 --> 00:09:20.210 a really important and very controversial piece 00:09:20.210 --> 00:09:23.169 of the puzzle. The logic for rent control seems 00:09:23.169 --> 00:09:25.450 straightforward, right? Housing is expensive. 00:09:25.809 --> 00:09:28.769 People are poor. So let's put a legal cap on 00:09:28.769 --> 00:09:31.110 the rent. It sounds compassionate. Yeah, of course. 00:09:31.549 --> 00:09:33.110 Keep it affordable so people don't get pushed 00:09:33.110 --> 00:09:35.690 out. But Friedman and Hayek would ask you to 00:09:35.690 --> 00:09:37.149 look at it from the landlord's point of view. 00:09:37.909 --> 00:09:39.889 Let's say you own an apartment building. The 00:09:39.889 --> 00:09:42.309 roof is old. It needs to be completely replaced. 00:09:42.610 --> 00:09:46.210 The estimate is $50 ,000. Okay. But the government 00:09:46.210 --> 00:09:49.149 has a law that says you can only charge, say, 00:09:49.350 --> 00:09:51.889 $500 a month for each apartment because of rent 00:09:51.889 --> 00:09:54.490 control. Right. You do the math. You will never, 00:09:54.509 --> 00:09:57.289 ever make that $50 ,000 back. It's just not possible. 00:09:57.570 --> 00:10:00.909 So the question is, do you fix the roof? I mean, 00:10:01.029 --> 00:10:04.730 no, I guess not. I'd go bankrupt if I did. Exactly. 00:10:04.789 --> 00:10:07.690 You don't fix the roof. Then the boiler breaks. 00:10:07.909 --> 00:10:10.830 You patch it, but you don't replace it. The plumbing 00:10:10.830 --> 00:10:13.669 starts to leak. The building just deteriorates. 00:10:14.009 --> 00:10:16.870 Eventually, it becomes unlivable. And the tenants 00:10:16.870 --> 00:10:19.169 leave. The tenants leave or they stop paying 00:10:19.169 --> 00:10:22.049 rent and become squatters. You, the owner, just 00:10:22.049 --> 00:10:24.129 abandon the property because now it's a financial 00:10:24.129 --> 00:10:27.549 liability, not an asset. So their argument is 00:10:27.549 --> 00:10:29.649 that by trying to keep the price artificially 00:10:29.649 --> 00:10:32.690 low, you actually end up destroying the supply 00:10:32.690 --> 00:10:35.570 of housing itself. Yes. They argue that it completely 00:10:35.570 --> 00:10:38.169 freezes the market. New developers won't build 00:10:38.169 --> 00:10:39.970 there either because why would you? There's no 00:10:39.970 --> 00:10:42.970 profit to be made. So the existing housing stock 00:10:42.970 --> 00:10:45.570 rots from the inside out and no new housing gets 00:10:45.570 --> 00:10:48.389 built to replace it. So a well -intentioned policy 00:10:48.389 --> 00:10:51.330 can basically become a machine for creating blight. 00:10:51.570 --> 00:10:53.889 That's the argument. And it highlights how complex 00:10:53.889 --> 00:10:56.600 these forces really are. That is. Yeah, that's 00:10:56.600 --> 00:10:58.799 some depressing math. But it makes a certain 00:10:58.799 --> 00:11:01.879 kind of cold, hard sense. Okay, let's pivot. 00:11:01.940 --> 00:11:03.519 We've got the ingredients of decay laid out. 00:11:03.559 --> 00:11:06.039 Now let's look at the recipe. And it seems there's 00:11:06.039 --> 00:11:08.720 no chef quite like the United States of America 00:11:08.720 --> 00:11:11.100 when it comes to this. The American model, as 00:11:11.100 --> 00:11:13.299 it's known. We call it the donut effect. Right. 00:11:13.419 --> 00:11:16.759 And you should picture a literal donut. The doughy, 00:11:16.759 --> 00:11:19.620 tasty part is on the outside. That's the wealthy, 00:11:19.759 --> 00:11:22.639 growing suburbs. The hole is in the middle. That's 00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:25.840 the empty, decayed city center. But it wasn't 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:28.580 always that way. That's what's so strange. No, 00:11:28.620 --> 00:11:31.389 absolutely not. Before World War II, the city 00:11:31.389 --> 00:11:33.509 was the place to be. I mean, the whole Industrial 00:11:33.509 --> 00:11:35.929 Revolution was about packing people in. You wanted 00:11:35.929 --> 00:11:38.149 to live close to the factory, close to the trolley 00:11:38.149 --> 00:11:40.409 line, close to the action. So what happened? 00:11:40.470 --> 00:11:42.490 Did we all just collectively decide we liked 00:11:42.490 --> 00:11:45.549 having lawns and barbecue grills better? It wasn't 00:11:45.549 --> 00:11:48.909 just a preference. It was engineered. After 1945, 00:11:49.269 --> 00:11:52.750 two absolutely massive things happened. The first, 00:11:52.830 --> 00:11:56.019 and maybe the most obvious, was the car. The 00:11:56.019 --> 00:11:58.399 private automobile. We shifted from a society 00:11:58.399 --> 00:12:00.980 built on public transportation, walking, trams, 00:12:00.980 --> 00:12:04.000 subways, to a society built around the private 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.440 car. And the car just obliterates the traditional 00:12:06.440 --> 00:12:08.639 geometry of a city. Suddenly, you didn't need 00:12:08.639 --> 00:12:10.919 to be close to anything anymore. You could live 00:12:10.919 --> 00:12:13.600 10, 20 miles out, have a big yard, a two -car 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:16.279 garage, and just drive into the city for work. 00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:19.340 But wait, cars are expensive. New houses in the 00:12:19.340 --> 00:12:21.440 suburbs are expensive. How did everyone afford 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:24.580 this all at once? And that is the second crucial 00:12:24.580 --> 00:12:27.700 factor, the government. We have this myth of 00:12:27.700 --> 00:12:31.740 the suburbs as... this this natural expression 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:34.879 of the american dream right rugged individualism 00:12:34.879 --> 00:12:37.320 yeah i pulled myself up by my bootstraps and 00:12:37.320 --> 00:12:39.379 bought my house with my own hard -earned money 00:12:39.379 --> 00:12:41.500 but the reality is that the federal government 00:12:41.500 --> 00:12:45.340 heavily heavily subsidized that dream the fha 00:12:45.340 --> 00:12:47.639 the federal housing administration and the va 00:12:47.639 --> 00:12:51.639 mortgage aid for veterans they completely revolutionized 00:12:51.639 --> 00:12:53.980 home lending before this you might have had to 00:12:53.980 --> 00:12:57.120 put 50 down to buy a house 50 who has that kind 00:12:57.120 --> 00:13:00.129 of money almost nobody But the FHA came in and 00:13:00.129 --> 00:13:02.490 introduced the low down payment, 30 year fixed 00:13:02.490 --> 00:13:04.769 rate mortgage. All of a sudden it became cheaper 00:13:04.769 --> 00:13:07.190 to buy a brand new house in a suburb like Levde 00:13:07.190 --> 00:13:09.429 town than it was to rent a cranked apartment 00:13:09.429 --> 00:13:11.490 in the city. So the government basically built 00:13:11.490 --> 00:13:14.190 a giant slide leading out of the city. Yes. And 00:13:14.190 --> 00:13:16.370 then greased it with cheap money. For some people. 00:13:16.830 --> 00:13:18.669 And that's a key point we'll get to in a minute. 00:13:18.870 --> 00:13:21.909 But yes, they pulled the white middle class out 00:13:21.909 --> 00:13:24.649 of the city like a giant vacuum cleaner. And 00:13:24.649 --> 00:13:26.669 to make sure they could get to and from their 00:13:26.669 --> 00:13:28.809 new suburban homes, they built the interstate 00:13:28.809 --> 00:13:31.409 highway system. Infrastructure. Infrastructure 00:13:31.409 --> 00:13:34.389 as a weapon. This is so important. We think of 00:13:34.389 --> 00:13:36.850 highways as things that connect us. But in the 00:13:36.850 --> 00:13:39.950 context of urban decay, they were escape routes. 00:13:40.590 --> 00:13:42.750 And more than that, they were often built by 00:13:42.750 --> 00:13:45.649 literally demolishing the city neighborhoods 00:13:45.649 --> 00:13:48.529 they passed through. There's that specific brutal 00:13:48.529 --> 00:13:51.049 example in the notes about the Gowanus Parkway 00:13:51.049 --> 00:13:53.429 in New York. Oh, it's a tragic story. And Robert 00:13:53.429 --> 00:13:56.070 Caro documents it beautifully in The Power Broker. 00:13:56.610 --> 00:14:00.009 You had the street, 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. It 00:14:00.009 --> 00:14:02.669 was a bustling, working -class market street. 00:14:02.750 --> 00:14:06.610 It was vibrant, noisy, full of shops and people. 00:14:06.769 --> 00:14:10.679 Full of life. And then... Then Robert Moses, 00:14:10.899 --> 00:14:13.460 the so -called master builder of New York, decided 00:14:13.460 --> 00:14:15.759 he needed an expressway to get people from the 00:14:15.759 --> 00:14:18.120 suburbs into Manhattan. And he didn't build it 00:14:18.120 --> 00:14:19.679 around the neighborhood. He didn't tunnel under 00:14:19.679 --> 00:14:21.399 it. He built it directly on top of it. He put 00:14:21.399 --> 00:14:24.659 a roof over a living street. A massive six -lane 00:14:24.659 --> 00:14:27.730 concrete slab. The source material describes 00:14:27.730 --> 00:14:30.769 it so vividly. It says he cast the avenue forever 00:14:30.769 --> 00:14:34.009 into darkness and gloom. Wow. The noise from 00:14:34.009 --> 00:14:36.789 the traffic above was deafening. The sun was 00:14:36.789 --> 00:14:39.370 completely blocked out. The businesses on the 00:14:39.370 --> 00:14:42.070 street below just withered and died. The street 00:14:42.070 --> 00:14:44.970 life vanished. He literally shadowed a neighborhood 00:14:44.970 --> 00:14:47.370 to death just so that suburbanites could drive 00:14:47.370 --> 00:14:49.809 over it more quickly. That is such a powerful 00:14:49.809 --> 00:14:52.870 image. You're actively killing the city to serve 00:14:52.870 --> 00:14:55.779 the people who have just Abandon the city. It's 00:14:55.779 --> 00:14:58.299 the perfect metaphor for the whole process. But 00:14:58.299 --> 00:15:00.320 now we have to talk about the people who couldn't 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:02.500 leave because this wasn't just about cars and 00:15:02.500 --> 00:15:04.820 highways. It was about race. We have to talk 00:15:04.820 --> 00:15:06.620 about the great migration. This is the massive 00:15:06.620 --> 00:15:08.720 internal migration of African -Americans we're 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:11.259 talking about, right? Yes. From the rural south 00:15:11.259 --> 00:15:13.940 to the industrial cities of the north. It happened 00:15:13.940 --> 00:15:16.980 in two major waves. The first was early from 00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:20.450 about 1910 to 1930. But it was the second great 00:15:20.450 --> 00:15:24.330 migration from 1940 to 1970 that was truly seismic. 00:15:24.389 --> 00:15:27.049 Five million people. Five million people on the 00:15:27.049 --> 00:15:29.450 move. They were moving for factory jobs. They 00:15:29.450 --> 00:15:32.129 were fleeing the oppression of Jim Crow. They 00:15:32.129 --> 00:15:34.509 were looking for a better life. By the end of 00:15:34.509 --> 00:15:36.409 this period, something like 80 percent of black 00:15:36.409 --> 00:15:39.370 Americans lived in cities. But when they arrived 00:15:39.370 --> 00:15:42.889 in Detroit or Chicago or Cleveland, they ran 00:15:42.889 --> 00:15:45.250 straight into a wall. Institutional discrimination. 00:15:45.470 --> 00:15:49.000 Remember those FHA loans we talked about? The 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.360 ones that made the suburbs possible? Yeah, the 00:15:51.360 --> 00:15:53.639 cheap mortgages. Well, they weren't for everyone. 00:15:53.740 --> 00:15:57.000 The FHA had an explicit policy called redlining. 00:15:57.120 --> 00:15:59.840 And this is absolutely essential to understanding 00:15:59.840 --> 00:16:01.919 the American city. This wasn't just a couple 00:16:01.919 --> 00:16:04.419 of racist bankers. This was official federal 00:16:04.419 --> 00:16:08.000 policy written down in government manuals. Can 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:10.240 you explain exactly how it worked? The government, 00:16:10.259 --> 00:16:13.100 through an agency, literally drew maps of every 00:16:13.100 --> 00:16:15.740 major city. They color coded the neighborhoods 00:16:15.740 --> 00:16:18.179 based on perceived risk for mortgage lending. 00:16:18.620 --> 00:16:21.340 Green was good. These were new white affluent 00:16:21.340 --> 00:16:25.059 areas. And red was bad. Hazardous. And what made 00:16:25.059 --> 00:16:27.120 a neighborhood hazardous? I have the quote right 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:30.860 here from the 1938 FHA underwriting manual. It's 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:33.360 shocking to read out loud. It says they need 00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:36.759 to protect against the infiltration of inharmonious 00:16:36.759 --> 00:16:39.440 racial groups. Inharmonious racial groups. That's 00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:40.860 the federal government of the United States. 00:16:40.980 --> 00:16:43.600 That's their language. If a single black family 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:46.500 moved into a white neighborhood, the FHA could 00:16:46.500 --> 00:16:49.200 declare that entire neighborhood red and refuse 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:52.259 to insure any mortgages there. Banks followed 00:16:52.259 --> 00:16:55.039 their lead. No loans. So let's just play this 00:16:55.039 --> 00:16:58.820 out. I am a white WWII veteran. I get a cheap 00:16:58.820 --> 00:17:01.279 government -backed loan and I move to a new house 00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:04.039 in the suburbs. I buy it for, I don't know, $5 00:17:04.039 --> 00:17:07.180 ,000. Over the next 40 years, that house's value 00:17:07.180 --> 00:17:09.880 explodes. I build equity. I can borrow against 00:17:09.880 --> 00:17:12.240 it to send my kids to college or I leave it to 00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:14.519 them as an inheritance. Correct. That is the 00:17:14.519 --> 00:17:17.099 primary engine of white middle -class wealth 00:17:17.099 --> 00:17:20.220 creation in the entire 20th century. Okay. Now, 00:17:20.279 --> 00:17:23.500 I'm a black WWII veteran. I fought in the same 00:17:23.500 --> 00:17:26.829 war. But... I can't get that loan. I'm forced 00:17:26.829 --> 00:17:28.970 to stay in the city. I probably have to rent. 00:17:29.490 --> 00:17:31.849 Or maybe I managed to buy a house in one of those 00:17:31.849 --> 00:17:34.690 redlined areas. But because no banks will lend 00:17:34.690 --> 00:17:37.309 there, the property value never goes up. In fact, 00:17:37.309 --> 00:17:39.410 it probably goes down. That's right. You gain 00:17:39.410 --> 00:17:42.289 zero equity. You might even lose money. You can't 00:17:42.289 --> 00:17:44.430 get a loan to fix the roof when it starts leaking 00:17:44.430 --> 00:17:46.589 because the bank looks at the map and says, sorry, 00:17:46.690 --> 00:17:49.410 you're in a red zone. So the house decays. So 00:17:49.410 --> 00:17:52.410 you fast forward to today. The White family has 00:17:52.410 --> 00:17:56.089 inherited a $500 ,000 asset. The black family 00:17:56.089 --> 00:17:58.549 has inherited nothing or maybe even a liability. 00:17:58.849 --> 00:18:01.769 That is the brutal, simple math of structural 00:18:01.769 --> 00:18:04.369 inequality. It's the power of compound interest, 00:18:04.529 --> 00:18:07.289 but for discrimination. Redlining didn't just 00:18:07.289 --> 00:18:09.750 segregate where people lived. It segregated their 00:18:09.750 --> 00:18:12.430 financial futures for generations. It systematically 00:18:12.430 --> 00:18:14.950 stripped the inner city of all its capital. And 00:18:14.950 --> 00:18:16.730 when you strip the capital and the industrial 00:18:16.730 --> 00:18:19.529 jobs leave and the white population flees to 00:18:19.529 --> 00:18:21.829 their subsidized homes. You get the American 00:18:21.829 --> 00:18:24.690 model. Poor, decaying, predominantly minority 00:18:24.690 --> 00:18:28.109 inner cities surrounded by rings of wealthy, 00:18:28.250 --> 00:18:31.009 predominantly white suburbs. It was a machine 00:18:31.009 --> 00:18:34.650 designed, intentionally or not, to create slums. 00:18:34.849 --> 00:18:38.630 Wow. OK, so that is the donut. Yeah. And it feels 00:18:38.630 --> 00:18:43.289 so ingrained, so permanent, like that's just 00:18:43.289 --> 00:18:45.869 how American cities are supposed to look. But 00:18:45.869 --> 00:18:49.069 the research says no. Not at all. Look at Europe. 00:18:49.230 --> 00:18:51.390 This is where it gets really, really interesting. 00:18:51.650 --> 00:18:54.089 We call it the European inversion. The inversion. 00:18:54.230 --> 00:18:57.450 If you go to Paris or Vienna or Rome or many 00:18:57.450 --> 00:19:00.650 of the great European capitals, the map is completely 00:19:00.650 --> 00:19:02.690 flipped on its head. So where do the rich people 00:19:02.690 --> 00:19:05.109 live there? They live right in the center. Historic 00:19:05.109 --> 00:19:07.509 core, the first surrounding small of Paris, right 00:19:07.509 --> 00:19:09.150 by the Louvre. That's where the money is. That's 00:19:09.150 --> 00:19:10.950 where the power is. The apartments there are 00:19:10.950 --> 00:19:14.269 astronomically expensive. Where is the decay? 00:19:14.509 --> 00:19:16.829 Where is the blight? It's on the edge. It's in 00:19:16.829 --> 00:19:18.849 the suburbs. In France, they call them the banlieues. 00:19:19.210 --> 00:19:21.150 I always thought banlieue was just the French 00:19:21.150 --> 00:19:23.849 word for suburb. Linguistically, yes, it is. 00:19:24.130 --> 00:19:26.670 But culturally, it carries an incredibly heavy 00:19:26.670 --> 00:19:29.089 weight. It's become synonymous with poverty, 00:19:29.250 --> 00:19:32.509 with immigrants, with crime, and with social 00:19:32.509 --> 00:19:35.130 exclusion. How did that happen? Why didn't they 00:19:35.130 --> 00:19:38.069 get the nice, leafy, single -family home suburbs 00:19:38.069 --> 00:19:40.190 that we got? It's just a completely different 00:19:40.190 --> 00:19:43.950 history. In the post -war era, the 50s and 60s, 00:19:43.950 --> 00:19:46.210 France had a massive housing crisis. They needed 00:19:46.210 --> 00:19:47.950 to build housing and they needed to do it fast. 00:19:48.130 --> 00:19:49.829 So they built these enormous projects called 00:19:49.829 --> 00:19:53.789 Grand Ensembles. What were they? Huge, modernist, 00:19:53.829 --> 00:19:56.990 concrete, high -rise towers. And they built them 00:19:56.990 --> 00:19:59.369 way out on the periphery of the cities where 00:19:59.369 --> 00:20:02.109 the land was cheap. And at first... People liked 00:20:02.109 --> 00:20:03.789 them. Oh, yeah. At first, they were seen as a 00:20:03.789 --> 00:20:06.069 huge step up. They had indoor plumbing, heating, 00:20:06.289 --> 00:20:08.589 electricity. It was much better than the shanty 00:20:08.589 --> 00:20:10.750 towns and slums many people were living in before. 00:20:10.950 --> 00:20:14.130 But there's always a but. But by the 1980s, the 00:20:14.130 --> 00:20:16.289 industrial jobs in those areas started to dry 00:20:16.289 --> 00:20:19.470 up. The white -collar, middle -class French stayed 00:20:19.470 --> 00:20:22.210 in the beautiful city centers. And these high 00:20:22.210 --> 00:20:24.789 -rises became essentially warehouses for the 00:20:24.789 --> 00:20:27.410 unemployed and increasingly for immigrants from 00:20:27.410 --> 00:20:30.230 France's former colonies in North Africa, Algeria, 00:20:30.230 --> 00:20:32.950 Morocco, Tunisia. So instead of a white picket 00:20:32.950 --> 00:20:35.329 fence in a backyard, the suburb in the French 00:20:35.329 --> 00:20:38.789 imagination means a giant concrete tower block 00:20:38.789 --> 00:20:42.390 and a sense of isolation. Yes, exactly. And the 00:20:42.390 --> 00:20:44.910 notes talk about a deep, profound social stigma 00:20:44.910 --> 00:20:46.930 attached to these places. There's this feeling 00:20:46.930 --> 00:20:49.690 that these areas are outside the law or even, 00:20:49.730 --> 00:20:52.509 quote, outside the republic. That phrase gives 00:20:52.509 --> 00:20:54.690 me chills. Outside the republic. It's like saying 00:20:54.690 --> 00:20:56.690 you're not really French if you live here. That 00:20:56.690 --> 00:20:59.269 is precisely the feeling it conveys. And it creates 00:20:59.269 --> 00:21:01.940 a pressure cooker. The notes, of course, mention 00:21:01.940 --> 00:21:04.500 the 2005 riots that spread across France. I remember 00:21:04.500 --> 00:21:06.380 seeing that on the news. All the cars on fire. 00:21:06.440 --> 00:21:08.680 It was shocking. And it started when two teenagers 00:21:08.680 --> 00:21:11.720 who were running from the police hid in an electrical 00:21:11.720 --> 00:21:14.279 substation and were accidentally electrocuted. 00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:18.099 They died. And that tragedy was the spark. But 00:21:18.099 --> 00:21:21.339 the fuel was decades of frustration, unemployment, 00:21:21.579 --> 00:21:23.920 and feeling trapped in these concrete islands 00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:26.490 on the far edge of the city. So the U .S. burns 00:21:26.490 --> 00:21:28.890 from the center out. France burns from the edges 00:21:28.890 --> 00:21:31.789 in. It's the perfect inversion. Now let's hop 00:21:31.789 --> 00:21:34.029 across the English Channel to the U .K. Is it 00:21:34.029 --> 00:21:36.309 the same story there? Well, London feels a lot 00:21:36.309 --> 00:21:38.789 like the Paris model. Super, super expensive 00:21:38.789 --> 00:21:41.130 center and the poverty is pushed further out. 00:21:41.250 --> 00:21:43.950 London is its own unique beast. But for the U 00:21:43.950 --> 00:21:45.970 .K. as a whole, there's a different kind of divide. 00:21:46.150 --> 00:21:48.329 It's not just center versus suburb. It's north 00:21:48.329 --> 00:21:50.730 versus south. The regional divide. The urban 00:21:50.730 --> 00:21:53.049 decay in the United Kingdom is heavily concentrated 00:21:53.049 --> 00:21:55.390 in the old industrial heartland. of the north, 00:21:55.609 --> 00:21:58.789 cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle. 00:21:58.910 --> 00:22:00.930 These were the engines of the British Empire. 00:22:01.349 --> 00:22:04.930 Coal, shipbuilding, textiles. And I'm guessing 00:22:04.930 --> 00:22:07.170 when the empire stopped needing as many ships 00:22:07.170 --> 00:22:09.430 and as much coal. The economic floor just fell 00:22:09.430 --> 00:22:12.130 out from under those cities. The notes mentioned 00:22:12.130 --> 00:22:15.130 the big slum clearances of the post -war era. 00:22:15.250 --> 00:22:17.809 They tore down a lot of the old Victorian terraced 00:22:17.809 --> 00:22:20.009 housing and built high rises, a bit like the 00:22:20.009 --> 00:22:22.529 French model, but the economic collapse was just 00:22:22.529 --> 00:22:25.160 too severe. There's a pop culture connection 00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:27.579 here in the notes that I absolutely love. The 00:22:27.579 --> 00:22:30.980 idea of a soundtrack to this decay. You really 00:22:30.980 --> 00:22:33.539 can't understand British urban decay in that 00:22:33.539 --> 00:22:37.000 era without listening to a band like The Specials. 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:39.400 Their song Ghost Town. Oh, it's the ultimate 00:22:39.400 --> 00:22:43.579 anthem for this. This town is coming like a ghost 00:22:43.579 --> 00:22:46.359 town. It's so bleak. It is. It's haunting. Or 00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:49.299 The Jam with a song like Down in the Tube Station 00:22:49.299 --> 00:22:52.279 at Midnight. These songs from the late 70s and 00:22:52.279 --> 00:22:54.400 early 80s, they perfectly captured that mood. 00:22:54.599 --> 00:22:57.259 Gray concrete, the constant threat of violence, 00:22:57.440 --> 00:23:00.160 mass unemployment. It was a very specific flavor 00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:02.480 of despair. There's a really interesting data 00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:04.440 point here in the material comparing Manchester 00:23:04.440 --> 00:23:07.559 and Newcastle. Yes, this is crucial because it 00:23:07.559 --> 00:23:10.160 helps us check our assumptions. In the U .S., 00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:12.599 we talk so much about race and redlining and 00:23:12.599 --> 00:23:15.019 for very good reason. But look at the U .K. during 00:23:15.019 --> 00:23:18.279 this period. Manchester had a growing non -white 00:23:18.279 --> 00:23:21.099 immigrant population. Newcastle, on the other 00:23:21.099 --> 00:23:23.880 hand, was overwhelmingly white. And yet. And 00:23:23.880 --> 00:23:26.859 yet both cities suffered catastrophic urban decay. 00:23:27.099 --> 00:23:29.440 So it proves that while racism can absolutely 00:23:29.440 --> 00:23:32.539 pour gasoline on the fire, the root cause, the 00:23:32.539 --> 00:23:35.259 fundamental economic collapse, is colorblind. 00:23:35.539 --> 00:23:38.440 Exactly. When the factory closes its gates for 00:23:38.440 --> 00:23:40.880 the last time, the city dies. It doesn't matter 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:42.579 what the people who live there look like. The 00:23:42.579 --> 00:23:44.779 economics of it are just brutal and universal. 00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:48.180 Speaking of brutal, I think it's time we get 00:23:48.180 --> 00:23:51.859 into the case studies. Section four, failed utopias. 00:23:52.059 --> 00:23:54.039 These are the stories that show how weird and 00:23:54.039 --> 00:23:56.259 extreme this whole process can get. Which one 00:23:56.259 --> 00:23:57.900 do you want to start with? Let's start in Italy, 00:23:58.039 --> 00:24:01.380 in Naples. The Ville di Scampia. The Sails of 00:24:01.380 --> 00:24:03.420 Scampia. Sounds so beautiful, doesn't it? The 00:24:03.420 --> 00:24:07.160 Sails. And it was meant to be beautiful. This 00:24:07.160 --> 00:24:09.480 is a classic tragedy of modernist architecture. 00:24:09.819 --> 00:24:12.480 It was built in the 60s and 70s. The architect, 00:24:12.759 --> 00:24:16.079 a guy named Franz de Salvo, had this grand utopian 00:24:16.079 --> 00:24:18.960 vision. He wanted to create a self -sufficient 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:21.720 small city right there in Naples. Can you describe 00:24:21.720 --> 00:24:24.680 what it looks like? Imagine these huge triangular 00:24:24.680 --> 00:24:28.400 slab buildings. They genuinely look like giant 00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:30.799 concrete sails billowing in the wind. They were 00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:32.720 supposed to have these shared walkways connecting 00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:35.740 them, parks, their own train station. The whole 00:24:35.740 --> 00:24:38.559 idea was to use architecture to force community 00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:40.660 interaction. We will build a perfect community 00:24:40.660 --> 00:24:43.559 with concrete, a classic modernist dream. The 00:24:43.559 --> 00:24:47.059 ultimate dream. Yeah. But then reality crushed 00:24:47.059 --> 00:24:49.759 the party. First, in 1980, there was a massive 00:24:49.759 --> 00:24:52.539 earthquake. The Urpinia earthquake. It left thousands 00:24:52.539 --> 00:24:54.579 and thousands of people homeless. So desperate 00:24:54.579 --> 00:24:56.480 families just started moving into the Vala. They 00:24:56.480 --> 00:24:58.900 became squatters. The perfectly planned community 00:24:58.900 --> 00:25:01.259 became a massive refugee camp almost overnight. 00:25:01.480 --> 00:25:03.519 And what did the government do? The police? The 00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:05.359 government largely abandoned it. It was too big 00:25:05.359 --> 00:25:08.200 of a problem. And in Naples, when the state retreats, 00:25:08.200 --> 00:25:12.000 who fills the vacuum? The Camorra. The local 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:15.420 mafia. The Camorra took over the entire complex. 00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:19.359 And ironically, that utopian community architecture, 00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:22.900 the complex maze like passageways, the lack of 00:25:22.900 --> 00:25:25.799 clear roads. It made the buildings the perfect 00:25:25.799 --> 00:25:28.279 fortress for the drug trade. So police couldn't 00:25:28.279 --> 00:25:30.279 get their cars. Exactly. Police couldn't get 00:25:30.279 --> 00:25:32.740 in. Lookouts could be posted everywhere. The 00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:34.720 architect designed a walkway for neighbors to 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:37.460 stop and chat. And the mafia used it as the perfect 00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:40.079 spot to sell heroin and watch for cops. That 00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:42.329 is the ultimate failure of what they call. architectural 00:25:42.329 --> 00:25:44.789 determinism. Yeah. You can't design your way 00:25:44.789 --> 00:25:47.430 out of a social collapse. Not a chance. OK, from 00:25:47.430 --> 00:25:49.190 the heat and chaos of Naples, let's go to the 00:25:49.190 --> 00:25:52.349 cold, quiet emptiness of eastern Germany, the 00:25:52.349 --> 00:25:54.910 shrinking east. This is a completely different 00:25:54.910 --> 00:25:57.309 kind of decay. This isn't about crime and overcrowding. 00:25:57.369 --> 00:25:59.609 It's about silence and absence. The case study 00:25:59.609 --> 00:26:01.910 here is a town called Heuerswerda. Heuerswerda. 00:26:02.009 --> 00:26:04.869 Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, its 00:26:04.869 --> 00:26:07.049 population has dropped by 40 percent. Nearly 00:26:07.049 --> 00:26:09.789 half the town is just gone. And specifically, 00:26:09.869 --> 00:26:12.579 it's the young people. Especially the young women. 00:26:12.759 --> 00:26:14.960 They left for jobs and opportunities in the West. 00:26:15.180 --> 00:26:17.900 The birth rate just collapsed. It's a textbook 00:26:17.900 --> 00:26:20.700 case of what demographers call urban shrinkage. 00:26:20.960 --> 00:26:23.079 And what's left behind? What does it look like? 00:26:23.400 --> 00:26:25.759 Well, you have the Plattenbau. These are those 00:26:25.759 --> 00:26:28.859 prefab concrete slab apartment blocks that the 00:26:28.859 --> 00:26:31.140 East German socialist government loved to build. 00:26:31.220 --> 00:26:33.880 They were fast. They were cheap. But the notes 00:26:33.880 --> 00:26:35.819 mention something really eerie about the East 00:26:35.819 --> 00:26:37.740 German approach to history and architecture. 00:26:38.460 --> 00:26:40.960 Yeah, this part was strange. It says that in 00:26:40.960 --> 00:26:43.839 some places they just left the rubble from World 00:26:43.839 --> 00:26:46.299 War II where it fell. It's bizarre, isn't it? 00:26:46.299 --> 00:26:48.319 In West Germany, they were obsessed with rebuilding 00:26:48.319 --> 00:26:51.400 everything, the economic miracle. In the East, 00:26:51.460 --> 00:26:53.859 if a building was bombed out in 1945, sometimes 00:26:53.859 --> 00:26:56.920 they just left it. Or they cleared the lot and 00:26:56.920 --> 00:26:59.460 just left it empty for 50 years. If a building 00:26:59.460 --> 00:27:02.119 didn't fit the new socialist ideal, they just 00:27:02.119 --> 00:27:04.690 let it rot. So you could be walking through this 00:27:04.690 --> 00:27:07.650 town today and see a mix of ugly concrete blocks 00:27:07.650 --> 00:27:10.930 from the 70s, empty lots, and a pile of bricks 00:27:10.930 --> 00:27:12.769 that's been there since the war ended. It's a 00:27:12.769 --> 00:27:15.890 landscape of overlapping traumas, and now it's 00:27:15.890 --> 00:27:18.130 emptying out completely. It's a ghost town happening 00:27:18.130 --> 00:27:20.890 in slow motion. Okay, those are both incredibly 00:27:20.890 --> 00:27:24.690 heavy. But the South Africa story, Hillbrow. 00:27:24.940 --> 00:27:27.019 in johannesburg this is the one that felt like 00:27:27.019 --> 00:27:28.839 it was ripped from the script of an action movie 00:27:28.839 --> 00:27:31.599 hillbrow is something else entirely to understand 00:27:31.599 --> 00:27:33.920 it you have to understand the transition out 00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:37.720 of apartheid under apartheid hillbrow was a whites 00:27:37.720 --> 00:27:40.859 -only high -rise very affluent neighborhood it 00:27:40.859 --> 00:27:42.859 was kind of the manhattan of johannesburg so 00:27:42.859 --> 00:27:45.700 cool cafes bookshops beautiful high -rise apartments 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:51.559 exactly then 1994. Apartheid falls. A Democratic 00:27:51.559 --> 00:27:53.700 government is elected. And naturally, people 00:27:53.700 --> 00:27:55.960 start to move. The white residents flee to the 00:27:55.960 --> 00:27:58.480 suburbs. It's a classic white flight story like 00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:00.940 we saw in the U .S., but on hyperspeed. They 00:28:00.940 --> 00:28:03.119 are replaced by low -income black workers and 00:28:03.119 --> 00:28:05.700 a huge influx of immigrants from all over Africa, 00:28:05.779 --> 00:28:08.019 all looking for a foothold in the new South Africa. 00:28:08.259 --> 00:28:10.700 So far, that sounds like a fairly standard, if 00:28:10.700 --> 00:28:13.680 rapid, urban transition. It is. But then comes 00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:16.319 the phenomenon of hijacking. You have to explain 00:28:16.319 --> 00:28:19.079 this term. How on earth do you hijack a 30 -story 00:28:19.079 --> 00:28:21.480 skyscraper? This isn't like hijacking a car. 00:28:21.779 --> 00:28:23.839 This is organized crime syndicates targeting 00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:26.440 a specific apartment block. Imagine you're a 00:28:26.440 --> 00:28:28.480 legal resident there. You come home from work 00:28:28.480 --> 00:28:30.799 one day. The locks on the front door are changed. 00:28:31.099 --> 00:28:34.259 And there are men with AK -47s standing in the 00:28:34.259 --> 00:28:36.119 lobby. And they just say, this is our building 00:28:36.119 --> 00:28:38.819 now. Basically, they drive out the official property 00:28:38.819 --> 00:28:41.519 management company. They intimidate the legal 00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:43.880 registered owners of the building until they're 00:28:43.880 --> 00:28:47.160 too scared to ever come hear it again. Then the 00:28:47.160 --> 00:28:50.180 gang becomes the de facto landlord. They go door 00:28:50.180 --> 00:28:53.200 to door with guns and collect the rent from everyone. 00:28:53.319 --> 00:28:55.319 But I'm guessing they don't use that. rent money 00:28:55.319 --> 00:28:57.599 to pay the bills. Of course not. They pocket 00:28:57.599 --> 00:28:59.579 all the cash. They don't pay the municipality 00:28:59.579 --> 00:29:02.720 for water. They don't pay for electricity. So 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:04.940 after a few months, what does the city do? They 00:29:04.940 --> 00:29:06.759 have to cut the power in the water. Right. So 00:29:06.759 --> 00:29:09.460 now you have a 30 -story glass and concrete tower. 00:29:09.640 --> 00:29:11.700 There are no elevators. There are no lights in 00:29:11.700 --> 00:29:13.440 the hallways. There is no running water. Oh, 00:29:13.480 --> 00:29:17.039 my God. The sanitation, the smell. People are 00:29:17.039 --> 00:29:19.559 literally throwing their trash and human waste 00:29:19.559 --> 00:29:22.319 out of the windows. It creates what's known as 00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:25.680 a vertical slum. And it's terrifying because 00:29:25.680 --> 00:29:28.240 it shows just how fraggle the whole system is. 00:29:28.380 --> 00:29:30.839 We assume if we have a deed to a building, we 00:29:30.839 --> 00:29:33.160 own it. But if the police won't come and the 00:29:33.160 --> 00:29:35.519 courts are paralyzed, that piece of paper means 00:29:35.519 --> 00:29:38.380 absolutely nothing. It's pure anarchy. It's the 00:29:38.380 --> 00:29:40.880 total collapse of the rule of law, but contained 00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:43.319 within the four walls of a single building. Precisely 00:29:43.319 --> 00:29:46.039 that. Okay. We've seen the donut. We've seen 00:29:46.039 --> 00:29:47.960 the banlieue. We've seen the hijacked tower. 00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:50.680 I feel like I need a shower and a stiff drink. 00:29:50.920 --> 00:29:53.779 Uh -huh. But we have to ask the big question 00:29:53.779 --> 00:29:57.019 at the end of all this. Can we fix it? That is 00:29:57.019 --> 00:29:59.440 the multi -trillion dollar question. Yeah. And 00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:02.539 the history of fixing urban decay is, in some 00:30:02.539 --> 00:30:05.559 ways, almost as tragic as the decay itself. Let's 00:30:05.559 --> 00:30:07.900 talk about the big American solution, urban renewal, 00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:10.819 with a capital U and a capital R. In the mid 00:30:10.819 --> 00:30:13.099 -20th century, the U .S. strategy was brutally 00:30:13.099 --> 00:30:15.339 simple. The neighborhood is the problem. The 00:30:15.339 --> 00:30:17.460 old buildings are the problem. So knock them 00:30:17.460 --> 00:30:19.809 all down. Slum clearance. Get the bulldozers. 00:30:19.970 --> 00:30:23.529 They leveled entire neighborhoods, displacing 00:30:23.529 --> 00:30:25.490 thousands of people, and they replaced them with 00:30:25.490 --> 00:30:27.589 massive projects, the most infamous of which 00:30:27.589 --> 00:30:30.609 is Pruitt Ego in St. Louis. Pruitt Ego is the 00:30:30.609 --> 00:30:33.490 poster child for failure. It is the... absolute 00:30:33.490 --> 00:30:36.130 Titanic of public housing. It was built in the 00:30:36.130 --> 00:30:39.670 1950s. It was huge. It was modern. It won architectural 00:30:39.670 --> 00:30:42.910 awards, but they didn't provide any funding for 00:30:42.910 --> 00:30:45.630 maintenance. They packed it with the city's poorest 00:30:45.630 --> 00:30:49.029 residents and completely isolated them. It became 00:30:49.029 --> 00:30:52.109 a zone of intense crime and poverty almost from 00:30:52.109 --> 00:30:54.250 the day it opened. And how did that story end? 00:30:54.410 --> 00:30:57.250 It ended with dynamite. By the 1970s, the government 00:30:57.250 --> 00:31:00.089 admitted total defeat and just imploded the buildings. 00:31:00.230 --> 00:31:02.049 You've probably seen the footage. It's this iconic. 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:05.380 slow motion demolition that came to symbolize 00:31:05.380 --> 00:31:07.740 the death of that whole utopian idea of public 00:31:07.740 --> 00:31:10.079 housing. So the expert consensus now is that 00:31:10.079 --> 00:31:12.140 urban renewal, that whole bulldozing strategy, 00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:15.839 was a complete failure. Largely, yes. The source 00:31:15.839 --> 00:31:18.670 material calls it misguided. Because when you 00:31:18.670 --> 00:31:21.809 bulldoze a slum, you aren't just destroying rotting 00:31:21.809 --> 00:31:24.710 buildings. You are destroying a community. It 00:31:24.710 --> 00:31:26.630 might be a poor community, but it's a community 00:31:26.630 --> 00:31:29.609 with social networks. You scatter those people 00:31:29.609 --> 00:31:31.430 to the winds. You don't solve the problem of 00:31:31.430 --> 00:31:33.990 poverty. You just move it somewhere else. So 00:31:33.990 --> 00:31:35.950 if the government can't fix it with bulldozers, 00:31:36.089 --> 00:31:38.710 what about the free market? What about gentrification? 00:31:39.210 --> 00:31:41.690 Ah, gentrification, the word that everyone loves 00:31:41.690 --> 00:31:44.230 to fight about online. A source calls it a double 00:31:44.230 --> 00:31:46.589 -edged sword. And it absolutely is. On the one 00:31:46.589 --> 00:31:49.430 hand, it is the primary means of a natural remedy. 00:31:49.750 --> 00:31:52.210 Capital flows back into a neighborhood. Buildings 00:31:52.210 --> 00:31:54.950 get fixed. The roof that was leaking for 20 years 00:31:54.950 --> 00:31:57.710 finally gets repaired. The tax base recovers. 00:31:57.930 --> 00:32:01.190 The city financially stops dying. But the other 00:32:01.190 --> 00:32:03.339 edge of the sword. The people who live there, 00:32:03.440 --> 00:32:05.720 through all the hard times they get priced out, 00:32:05.779 --> 00:32:08.400 their rents skyrocket. The corner store that's 00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:10.619 been there forever gets replaced by a boutique 00:32:10.619 --> 00:32:13.900 coffee shop selling $12 lattes. And this leads 00:32:13.900 --> 00:32:16.400 to this fascinating new phenomenon that's mentioned 00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:19.160 in the notes. The decay of the inner suburb. 00:32:19.279 --> 00:32:22.009 Yes. This is so important for understanding where 00:32:22.009 --> 00:32:24.690 we're heading now. As the city centers get wealthy 00:32:24.690 --> 00:32:27.369 and gentrified again, think about Brooklyn, think 00:32:27.369 --> 00:32:30.009 about downtown L .A., the poor are pushed out. 00:32:30.130 --> 00:32:32.329 But where do they go? They go to those first 00:32:32.329 --> 00:32:35.089 ring inner suburbs, the ones that were built 00:32:35.089 --> 00:32:38.470 in the 1950s. Exactly. The Levittowns of the 00:32:38.470 --> 00:32:40.410 world, the places that are now 70 years old. 00:32:40.569 --> 00:32:43.650 The infrastructure is aging. The shopping malls 00:32:43.650 --> 00:32:46.809 are dying. Poverty is migrating from the urban 00:32:46.809 --> 00:32:50.059 core to that first suburban ring. So the donut 00:32:50.059 --> 00:32:52.240 is slipping again. The hole is turning into the 00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:54.359 donut. The hole is filling up with gold and the 00:32:54.359 --> 00:32:57.359 dough is starting to go moldy. It's this constantly 00:32:57.359 --> 00:33:00.769 shifting geography of poverty. Are there any 00:33:00.769 --> 00:33:02.930 success stories? Is anyone actually doing this 00:33:02.930 --> 00:33:05.230 right? Well, Europe offers a slightly different 00:33:05.230 --> 00:33:08.490 model, which is often called new urbanism. What's 00:33:08.490 --> 00:33:11.029 that? Europe has a built -in advantage. Their 00:33:11.029 --> 00:33:13.450 cities have good bones. They're older. They have 00:33:13.450 --> 00:33:16.089 those dense, walkable, historic quarters. Right. 00:33:16.150 --> 00:33:19.009 It's a lot easier to fix up a charming 19th century 00:33:19.009 --> 00:33:21.869 brick row house than it is to fix up a decaying 00:33:21.869 --> 00:33:24.680 1970s strip mall. That's it exactly. People want 00:33:24.680 --> 00:33:27.119 to live in the row house. So in a place like 00:33:27.119 --> 00:33:29.039 home in Manchester, they've gone through this 00:33:29.039 --> 00:33:31.799 incredible three stage cycle. Walk us through 00:33:31.799 --> 00:33:36.259 the home timeline. Stage one, 19th century working 00:33:36.259 --> 00:33:38.980 class housing, kind of slums, but a traditional 00:33:38.980 --> 00:33:43.619 street grid. Stage two, the 1950s and 60s. They 00:33:43.619 --> 00:33:46.859 bulldozed it all and built those awful concrete 00:33:46.859 --> 00:33:50.019 high rise towers. Total disaster. And stage three. 00:33:50.460 --> 00:33:53.059 The 1990s, they finally admitted the towers were 00:33:53.059 --> 00:33:55.420 a catastrophic mistake, so they bulldozed the 00:33:55.420 --> 00:33:57.500 bulldozed neighborhood again. And what did they 00:33:57.500 --> 00:33:59.500 build in its place? Let me guess. Did they basically 00:33:59.500 --> 00:34:01.940 go back to stage one? Pretty much. They built 00:34:01.940 --> 00:34:04.500 what are called new urbanist developments, traditional 00:34:04.500 --> 00:34:07.299 style houses, mixed -use buildings with shops 00:34:07.299 --> 00:34:09.239 on the ground floor. They put the street grid 00:34:09.239 --> 00:34:12.309 back. low rise human scale building. So we spent 00:34:12.309 --> 00:34:15.030 50 years and billions of pounds just to realize 00:34:15.030 --> 00:34:16.650 that the Victorians kind of had it right in the 00:34:16.650 --> 00:34:18.630 first place. In terms of urban geometry. Yeah. 00:34:18.670 --> 00:34:21.750 It turns out humans like human scale places. 00:34:21.789 --> 00:34:23.929 We like streets. We like corner stores. We do 00:34:23.929 --> 00:34:26.969 not like vast windswept concrete plazas between 00:34:26.969 --> 00:34:29.409 identical towers. So let's try to wrap this all 00:34:29.409 --> 00:34:31.630 up. We've been all over the world. We've looked 00:34:31.630 --> 00:34:34.570 at the ruins. What is the big overarching takeaway 00:34:34.570 --> 00:34:37.570 from all this? I think the biggest takeaway is 00:34:37.570 --> 00:34:41.400 that. A city is not a statue. It's not a fixed 00:34:41.400 --> 00:34:44.280 thing carved out of stone. It's a flow. It's 00:34:44.280 --> 00:34:47.000 a living, breathing organism. It metabolizes. 00:34:47.219 --> 00:34:49.920 It metabolizes, exactly. Money flows in, money 00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:52.940 flows out. People move in, people move out. Policies 00:34:52.940 --> 00:34:55.079 shift the currents. It's this constant cycle. 00:34:55.599 --> 00:34:58.679 Construction, flight, decay, and then, if you're 00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:01.360 lucky, rebirth. But we have to remember the human 00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:04.400 cost of that cycle. Always. When a city sheds 00:35:04.400 --> 00:35:07.360 its skin like that, real people get hurt. Generations 00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:09.920 of family wealth are wiped out. Communities... 00:35:09.929 --> 00:35:11.909 that took a century to build are scattered in 00:35:11.909 --> 00:35:14.610 a decade. There's one last concept in the notes 00:35:14.610 --> 00:35:16.349 that I just want to leave everyone with. It's 00:35:16.349 --> 00:35:20.269 the idea of ruined porn. Ah, yes. The Instagram 00:35:20.269 --> 00:35:22.929 aesthetic. Right. People who travel to Detroit 00:35:22.929 --> 00:35:24.989 or the abandoned resorts in the Catskills just 00:35:24.989 --> 00:35:27.570 to take these beautiful artistic photos of the 00:35:27.570 --> 00:35:29.849 decay. It's clear we have a deep fascination 00:35:29.849 --> 00:35:33.469 with it. We do. We find a strange beauty in the 00:35:33.469 --> 00:35:36.389 failure. It's romantic in a way. But I would 00:35:36.389 --> 00:35:38.449 challenge everyone listening. Don't just look 00:35:38.449 --> 00:35:40.469 at the photos online. Look at your own city. 00:35:40.710 --> 00:35:42.769 Yeah. Next time you're driving home from work, 00:35:42.849 --> 00:35:44.889 actually look out the window. And ask yourself, 00:35:45.110 --> 00:35:47.730 what stage of the cycle am I seeing right now? 00:35:48.510 --> 00:35:51.769 Am I in the American donut? Am I seeing the French 00:35:51.769 --> 00:35:55.010 Banlieue model? And look really closely at those 00:35:55.010 --> 00:35:57.909 suburbs. The strip malls with half the storefronts 00:35:57.909 --> 00:36:01.269 empty. the aging apartment complexes? Are we 00:36:01.269 --> 00:36:04.489 witnessing the quiet birth of the suburban prairie? 00:36:04.570 --> 00:36:07.289 That is the question for the next 30 years. On 00:36:07.289 --> 00:36:09.530 that cheery note, this has been The Deep Dive. 00:36:09.730 --> 00:36:11.929 Thanks for exploring the ruins with us. Keep 00:36:11.929 --> 00:36:13.550 looking closer. We'll see you next time.