YouSaid · the spoken record

Alain Bertaud

lines on the record: 85
first: 2019-09-25
most recent: 2019-09-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“In financing the compound upgrading, which was basically slum, I mean, former villages, which had to be provided with infrastructure. And our theory in the bank was that you can do that only if you provide property rights to the people who are living there, whether they are squatters or not. You just give them, you survey their plot, you give them property rights. And we insisted with the government, the Indonesian government, that at the beginning we insisted that we will not provide infrastructure unless there was also a program to provide property rights. The Indonesian insisted that this will cost too much. We did a backup envelope thing and that it did cost too much to have a proper survey, especially there were lots which were extremely small. So we decided to go ahead.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that I don't make such a difference between the formal economy and the informal economy as most people do. My experience is that if you go in Islam, which is most planners were considered informal, you have a market which works exactly like other markets. You have also expropriation. registering property in itself will create a bureaucracy which will kill the again there are different ways of registering property for instance the way it was done in the Kampong in Indonesia where by the way another skeleton in my closet you know in Indonesia the World Bank particularly”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I could see my scooter bringing my scooter here folding it and putting it on my chair. I cannot put a segue under my chair. Segue is just too heavy.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deforestation in Haiti, that at the time of Duvalier, one of the main source of tax for the government was kerosene. So kerosene was for the relatively wealthy people the way of cooking. The poor people then, because the kerosene was so expensive, because of the high taxes, were cutting every tree, every bush, in order to just to cook. So, you know, this deforestation again was a man-made systematic political thing.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at the food, it's underrated. The culture is underrated. It's a wonderful culture. The creel culture is one of the creole language also is extremely rich. It has a lot of poetry. Of course, after the earthquake, it has never recovered, I think. And this is very sad. I don't know if it will ever recover. I don't know. It seems that the political system is unable to evolve. It's probably slightly better than what it was when I was in Port-au-Prince at the time of Baby Dock. But the city has deteriorated since that time and the combination of the earthquake, the deterioration also of environment due to overpopulation and deforestation.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I met Le Corbier at a conference, you know. And at the time he was at the top of his fame. And he started the conference by saying, people ask me all the time, what do you think? How do you feel being the most well-known architect in the world? He was not a very modest man. And he said, you know what it feels? It feels that my ass has been kicked all my life. That's the way he started this way. You know, he was a very bitter man in spite of his success and his. And I think that his bitterness is shown in his planning and some of his architecture.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a writer, he is underrated, as an architect, well, more or less, as an urban planner, of course, is grossly overrated.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have not seen the detailed numbers, but my gut feeling that it's overrated. Because I used to do a lot of skiing and I know how much a cable car can carry and it's not that much.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, when I was school children in Marseille, we were used to a city which has, you know, really there's only one big avenue, the rest are streets which were created locally. It's vernacular architecture. And in our geography book, we have this map of Manhattan. And our first reaction was the people in Manhattan must have a hard time finding their way because all the streets are exactly the same. And in Marseille, we oriented ourselves by the angle that the street made with another, somewhere very narrow, some very, very wide, well, not so wide, but somewhere curved, somewhere, you know. And that's the way we oriented ourselves. And we thought Manhattan must be a terrible place. We must be lost all the time.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a change in the pattern of cities. Paris is still dominant and growing. And look at Russia also, the only city which is really growing is Moscow. And I think it reflects a political system. And I think that planners trying to spread, let's say, cities without a change in the political system or even the culture. Maybe centralization is a culture. I mean, in the case of my country, France, I think centralization is a cultural aspect. It's not only political.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could say the same thing about France, by the way, Paris. You know, 12 million, the next city. Well, we're, from Marseille, we claim we are the next city 1 million. The people from Lyon claim it too. But the next city is about 1 million. So you go from 12 million to 1 million. I think you cannot change this. You cannot have a plan where say, oh, let us develop smaller cities. If you have this pattern, it's because you have a political system which gives such an advantage to the major city that this is where people want to go. And if you are in a secondary city, you are so much penalized that unless you change the system, the political system, you decentralize, for instance, French decentralization, which was done in the 70s, 80s, has not resulted”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Center. It is one of the worst records in the world in any measure you can have. But of course it's a world heritage city. For the 50 years anniversary of the city, I was invited by the committee celebrity and I told them but did you read what I wrote about what? And they say, yes, we want to have several points of view. So, you see, they are there tolerant.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The people went to Brasilia were not the same people went to Chenzhen. They were moved, I would say even manually military from Rio Janeiro. And yes, and the taxpayer of Brazil paid for Brazilia and Charlie. Nobody in his right mind will decide to live in Brasilia just by choice. It's one of the worst performing. It's not just my taste. It's the worst performing city. If you look at the number of deaths of pedestrian per 10,000 people, it has a world record. If you look at the segregation by income, the poor living at 30 kilometers of the city was not very good transport system and the rich living in Charlie in the city.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Casablanca. Because you know why? Because it's a city. I mean, you don't see the city very much in the movie, but you see people coming in. And, well, some want to get out too. But you see people coming in, and it's kind of a refuge, you know. So that's what I find interesting.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cities need good location. This is a debate I had with Paul Romer when he was interested in sharter cities and he had this idea that he could create 50 charter cities around the world. And my reaction, maybe I'm wrong, but my reaction is that they are not 50 very good location for cities around the world. There are not many. Maybe with Roden Belt, maybe the opening of Eastern Asia, you know, Central Asia, maybe the opening of the Ocean route on the northern following will create the potential for new cities. But cities like Singapore, Malacca, Mumbai,”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bold enough in a way or confident enough to say we don't need the big ice ball. We are confident in our own skill and we can make it. There are some books actually. There is a novel called Northern Girl, which is written by a Chinese who came from the Norse and Semi-skill or in skill and she tells the story of it's a novel, but I think it's very, you know, it explained exactly the point of view of migrants coming to a city raised in the context of China where you had this guarantee of a job, but you will stay all your life in the same job. And then people realize that if they were relying on their own energy, they could do better than that. So it's really the success of Chenzen is really the creation of a first labor market in China.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people think that Shenzhen was built the way Brasilia was built. The government decided, let us do this. No, Shen was a perimeter for the first time Deng Xiaoping say we are going to have a labor market. Within this perimeter, people are going to be able to change job. They are going to have salaries which is commensurate with their skills. And their employers will be able to increase their salary or decreasing or fire them depending on what they need. So what created the success of Chenzen was the first labor market in China. And that's why in Shenzhen you had people coming from all over China. That's why many people in Shenzhen are speaking Mandarin and not Cantonese because this has attracted a lot of people who refuse where”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was in Chen Zhang in 85 maybe and the city at the time it was basically not a fishing village but it was a small town it has altogether about 300,000 people and the mayor of Chenzhen show team of the World Bank was part of it a plan and they say we want to build a city of 5 million and would you finance infrastructure and I did a backup envelope calculation I said 300,000 to 5 million are you kidding you know try to do a city of a million and a half maybe two million will consider infrastructure this is completely out of the question so Chenzen is now 12 million people so that one skeleton in my closet but what people forget about Shenzhen”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where the air is pure, the garden are well maintained, and the schools are very good. So you see, you had a mayor here who understood really how to attract people and how to grow the city.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they were very, very interested in the way City developed. I remember in Sichuan, a city of about 600,000, they wanted to develop they had a high-tech industry. They were doing flat screen. They wanted to expand it. But to expand it, they needed top engineers to do their search. It was difficult to attract top engineers from Shanghai or the East Coast to go to Sichuan in a relatively small city because the mayor say the only way we can expand this is to have very good education and good environment. So we can, as a selling point, an engineer in Beijing or Shanghai or even Guangzhou will be probably interested to live with his family in an environment.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a city. As a city, I think it works relatively well in the sense that the Chinese even, well, I say up to four years ago when I still could get a visa to go to China. And up to four years ago, I think that the Chinese at the local level understood market better than Mayor de Blasio at all. It's a low bar. And, you know, why? Because they were interested in the GDP of the city. Now, it has also some drawback. Many mayors in China told me I'm the CEO of this city. And in a certain way, it created certainly also some problem with pollution, things like that.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have higher income people coming to the city. On the other hand, the city is blocking the development of new housing and controlling also the size of it, you know, privileging in effect larger houses and the demand. So when higher income people come in, yes, certainly it will raise the rent, but not because higher income people are greedy or whatever. It's because the city is blocking the supply at the same time. So you cannot have an increase in job and a freeze in housing at the same time. So the problem is not the people coming in. The problem is the city refusing to admit that they need to build more housing.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, normally, yes. But you see what happened with Amazon in New York not so long ago was an interesting. Now, I don't know if you should talk too much about that, but I think Amazon did a terrible approach to cities by having them bid for each other because I'm absolutely convinced being in urbanist myself that they knew exactly where they wanted to go in advance. So that was a little unfair. And there was a grassroots movement against high-income people coming to the city. I found that very disturbing because after all, high-income people create a lot of job for all sorts of income.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have seen China before the reform or Russia at the time in the early 90s, you need the initiative of a planner to say we are going to build something new here, they will have to compensate not the owner, but the user to move them somewhere else. So to the state, this is a net cash expenditure. To replace a low building by high building is a cash expenditure that the city has to pay and where in a market economy, of course, it is done automatically in a certain way the system is reversed. In a market economy, it's the planners who are slowing down the transformation, where in a socialist economy, the planners realize that it's not a very good use of land, but can Find the money to change the land use.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because according to Marx, land has no value, only labor has value. So if land has no value and you are in the center of the city where a lot of people like to live or work, but its land has no value, you are stuck with the existing building every time you want to move a building or renew it, you will have to have a planner decide it and it will be also a cash expenditure in a market city, it's a price of land which finance the development of new building. Automatically it is developers who realize that the land is expensive and therefore they can build more, who are asking the planners, please let us build an office building there or something. If you are in a socialist country,”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that that's one of the most terrible things, you know, the destruction of the transit system. The density in Manhattan and in New York are such that you can have mobility only if a relatively large number of people are using the transit. And some cities can work very well without transit, like Atlanta probably or Houston. But that's not the case in Manhattan. That will not be the case in Paris or London. So you have to maintain the transit system in the same way as you maintain the sewer system and the water system. I think that the destruction, you know, the lack of maintenance in the attention which has been given to the subway is equivalent of lead in the water in Flint or things like that.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then the people went in will have more say. If you keep it at the street level, I think the people who control it are the people who are living there and they are against everybody who wants to move in by definition.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aye, maybe I'm not optimistic. I think that Maybe in cities where you have the house itself What your neighbors are doing, you know, you say, well, I'm preserving the character of the neighborhood. Well, if the character of the neighborhood has to be preserved in Manhattan, you know, if it was preserved 50 or 100 years ago, there would be no Manhattan.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it has a future. Well, this is what this talk is all about, and you're talking general. I think people have to understand, to learn what is implied by freezing city the way they are. And cities are alive because they change constantly. As soon as you freeze city, and this is what NIMBI is all about, you're freezing cities, the city dies. Like a human being that you tied in a straitjacket.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that if you build much more and regulation allows to have a variety of buildings and building size, you could have a way where the poor outbid the rich by consuming less in a very desirable location. This is what you see sometime in Paris, by the way.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the streets, in the street. I think you have a more specialty restaurant in the streets, and in the avenue you have more people who just are transient, you know, pass by and are looking for faster food. I think so.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think densities have gone down in all those cities. I don't think in the case of Paris at least that it is depopulated. I think that you added gentrification of central Paris. So people were used to live in 10 square meters, 12 square meters. There are still some are living now, it's 120 square meters. So you have a loss of densities. It doesn't mean a loss of population in this sense. You know, New York, Manhattan density, which was two or three times higher than it is now, I don't think you can say that Manhattan is depopulated.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Around certain area, you can still buy foreigners, I think, can still buy properties in Zurich or in Geneva, but they are not allowed to compete with Swiss farmers in buying land. So I think I have no, let's say, I have not studied Airbnb as much, but I think it's a case where you have to look at it that way, that you have a competition here in cities are, tourism might be important and interesting, but it's not the essence of city. The cities are the people. If the people are gone from a city, it's not very interesting.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and this concerned me because normally I will say, well, so what? But in fact, it is not the case. I think that this is a case where we have to look at it a bit differently. It reminds me a bit what happened in Switzerland at a certain time where to own a piece of land in Switzerland was becoming valuable for a lot of people because it gave access, a refuge, let's say. And Swiss farmers who wanted to expand their field to have some more cow suddenly were competing with a Russian oligarch. And obviously this is not traditional economics. Although I will be rather laissez-faire, I think this is a case where indeed the Swiss government put a red line”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a difficult question Infrastructure is important, but infrastructure is there to serve people. And just look at people before you look at infrastructure. Infrastructure is there as a tool, not as a purpose in itself.”
2019-09-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source