About

On January 15th, 2018, Startup Cities hosted a discussion panel featuring Adam Hengels, founder of Market Urbanism, and Patrik Schumacher, Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects. Hosted by Peter Ryan, Founder of Startup Cities. This episode features the full audio recording of this event, plus Anarchitecture Podcast's pre-game and post-game discussion. Use hashtag #ana018 to reference this episode in a tweet, post, or comment View full show notes at http://anarchitecturepodcast.com/ana018. Intro Introduction to the event and participants We're the color commentary; Market Urbanism is the play-by-play A chance to connect with Market Urbanism, and reconnect with Patrik Schumacher Tim's impressions of the event Summary of topics covered Audio quality - remember that our policy is to blame the listener for any and all audio quality issues. You're just not listening hard enough. YouTube slideshow of notes summarizing the discussion: https://youtu.be/ujq1WGri4wA Startup Cities Event Audio Peter Ryan Mission of Startup Cities: Bring investors and entrepreneurs from startup community to urban planning, real estate development, and architecture communities Startup Cities sponsors 40% of buildings in Manhattan could not be built today with current zoning requirements Patrik Schumacher Biography Was a communist as a student Became more mainstream Re-radicalized in libertarian thought and Austrian economics after 2008 financial crisis Adam Hengels Studied Architecture in college, then switched to Structural Engineering Graduate school at MIT for real estate development, focusing on mega-projects Worked for a developer on large projects (Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, now Pacific Park) Long-standing interest in urbanism Saw what happened behind the scenes between government and developer (subsidies, eminent domain) Also saw negative impacts of NIMBY groups Adam Hengels Sprawl is not a free-market phenomenon, it is government-created Steven Smith and others started writing for Market Urbanism Market Urbanism is a movement Planning intelligentsia has started to come along. They admit that zoning is a problem. Next step is closing the gap between the intelligentsia and the mainstream Patrik Schumacher Left-liberal consensus runs deep among intelligentsia Peter Ryan Did you (Patrik) perceive these ideas before 2008? Patrik Schumacher Was exploring other ideas about societal organization Fordism - 20th century - Simpler industrial base and societal organization - more compatible with modernism Post-fordism - More complex economic and societal organization - more urban concentration Managed, state-run economy and development - a bad but viable idea in the 1950's, a suicidal idea today Peter Ryan Increased urbanism isn't a decision people are going to make, it is going to happen. What role does market urbanism play in this inevitable development? Adam Hengels The future is a world of agglomeration. People want to be around other people The great ideas of the future are going to happen in cities Patrik Schumacher Cities create the conditions under which productivity can soar and flourish People are willing to give up 80% of their salary to be in the city center and participate in the city network Living in the city is a socio-economic necessity, but urban life is also desirable The city is a prosperity engine Zoning and standards (i.e. housing) prevent people from making life choices. One-size fits all restrictions. These regulations prevent affordablility. Talking about this topic is viciously toxic Adam Hengels There are also environmental consequences of planning regulations. San Francisco is one of the most environmentally friendly places in the world to live. The more we prevent people from living in San Francisco, the worse for the environment. Peter Ryan How do planning regulations distort what the architect does? Patrik Schumacher Regulations stifle innovation and creativity for architects and developers Everything is predetermined Entrepreneurs compete only on the basis of negotiating with authorities, rent-seeking Basically there’s no market in real estate. That’s why it doesn’t function These (negotiations with authorities) are invitations for corruption  Adam Hengels Architects don't design buildings in NYC, zoning does. 90% of what you do is just compliance. "Planners" isn't the right word. They're not planning, they're reacting. Petty bureaucrats Patrik Schumacher Creativity comes through loopholes London developer building 500 bedrooms around one living room China - creative, counterintuitive developments The profession becomes boring and stifling Creativity has to start with entrepreneurial developers' creativity. Adam Hengels Developers have been trained to be compliance machines To be creative, find a loophole Adam Hengels Parafin - Artificial intelligence platform that uses generative design and parametric modeling to rapidly generate optimized buildings. Rather than wait weeks for architects to turn around a handful of options and then run cost analyses, Parafin generates millions of design options with cost analysis within minutes. Patrik Schumacher Research project to use parametric modeling to evaluate complex campuses Adam Hengels Computational analysis of development and design rather than relying on entrepreneurs' and architects' intuition Patrik Schumacher The city is the best place for discovering synergies We love that chaos, liveliness, diversity, mixity of uses The city is all about coming together, connecting up networking for synergetic activities Freedom of uses is necessary for cities to self-organize into complex, navigable places Architect gives shape and expression to this to allow people to find places and each other It shouldn't be a city sliced up into individual blocks and cells, it should be very open Inter-visibility and awareness. Multiple levels, dense, and organic Adam Hengels Cities as a rainforest – unplanned order and synergy Patrik Schumacher Bottom-up order Identity and coherence, navigable Garbage spill urbanization - cities all look the same Multi-species ecology generates character and order. Rule-based, not random Bottom-up forces need to be free to give shape to their environment Question from audience For a private, city-scale developer, it may be optimal for planning to take place. With no plan, cost of starting is much higher. How do you balance the costs and benefits of planning in private development? Patrik Schumacher London's great estates - large parcels of land were planned Planning as curation Curation needs to go by something It can be experimental and competitive at different scales Allow for something new to emerge - more anarchic and chaotic Adam Hengels Planning has to happen at some level Plan synergies of the private developer Need to have flexibility in the long run Need to recognize that cities are an emergent order Question from audience Should we get government out of the business of insuring risky lending? Should we restrict certain types of building, i.e. in watersheds?  Adam Hengels In 2008, big banks should have failed. In favor of not building in a watershed, but its a question of how you do it - with the heavy hand of government, or some other mechanism? Patrik Schumacher In a scenario where everything was privatized, owners of water resources would secure the benefits of long-term preservation and profitability of the resource. Self-regulation Individual land-owners could come together and organize Built environment is complex, lots of externalities. It's more politicized than some other industries (i.e. fashion). There are entrepreneurial and market solutions Question from audience What is the most difficult city you've ever worked in, and why? Adam Hengels Worked in NYC and Chicago, studied in Boston. Cambridge, MA may be more difficult than NYC. Chicago is a free market paradise compared to New York, but it's far from free in reality. Patrik Schumacher More dense, mature, and wealthy places are slower When you add a new piece to this context, you have to be sensitive This is made difficult by planning restrictions on improvisation A lot of value is destroyed by things not happening - projects rejected, postponed, or cancelled The land value that planning approval adds (to existing land values) has shot up in London from 50% of GDP to 200% of GDP Adam Hengels What's the longest time one of your projects has been tied up in approvals? Patrik Schumacher In Italy, the government changed ten times during the course of a project. What should have taken 3-4 years took 11 years. Question from audience California senator Scott Weiner introducing a bill (SB 827) to supersede local planning restrictions around transit. Resistance is from homeowners and incumbent developers. What is the market urbanism answer to removing power of homeowners rather than bureaucracy? Adam Hengels That bill (SB 827) looks awesome. If you're a certain radius from a transit station, the local governments cannot impose height restrictions below a certain amount, cannot impose density restrictions. Opening a good dialogue. Why are we preventing people from living in transit-served locations, because there are incumbent homeowners who don't like it? Question from audience What is the market urbanism answer to removing power of homeowners rather than bureaucracy? Patrik Schumacher  I don't think homeowners should necessarily have this power to prevent development in one area. There's no fast and ready formula that defines what is infringement on someone else's property. Preventing new building that doesn't affect someone else's property, just affects someone's feeling, is too much protectionism. In markets you don't prevent someone from opening a firm and competing with you. There needs to be a political debate about the kind of rules that should be acceptable. NIMBYism is the force behind the politics. That sense of entitlement needs to be broken. Political discourse shouldn't always lead to majority voting on everything.  YIMBY proposal in London to have people collectively agree to allow increased density on their streets. Question from audience Smart Cities - Are data-driven tools for cities dangerous munitions, or will they help planners do a better job? Adam Hengels There's a potential for both Empowered with better information, in theory they should make better decisions  But that information could be released to the public or open-source so everyone can make better decisions Patrik Schumacher It should empower private planners. It's not only an information problem, it's also an incentive problem. In political processes, the feedback is very coarse and crude - bundled into 4-year elections with everything else. Market urbanism gives voice and empowerment to everybody. Information is often lacking, governments often have counter-incentives for applying the information. Question from audience European cities appear as green, new urbanism paradises. Is "going green" another layer of regulation, or does it help to further the main goals of a city as the interaction between people? Patrik Schumacher One-size-fits-all rules of energy conservation make little sense Incentives to save energy should be in the market. Eliminate subsidies. I believe carbon trading is an interim measure. Improve walkability of cities. This kind of greening would be synergetic and congenial to a privatization effort. There could be some kind of collective action underlying this, but the political process is very slow (decades). Adam Hengels If government is going to talk about the environment, it should start by stopping doing the things that they're doing that are hurting the environment. Stop subsidizing the automobile Stop building all these damn highways Stop war Before you tell someone else what to do, you gotta have virtue yourself. Question from audience Hudson County NJ has half a million people. What prevents it from being the core of an independent city as opposed to a bedroom community that sends commuters to Manhattan? Adam Hengels It doesn't have the agglomeration that Manhattan does Zoning policies may prevent increased agglomeration Question from audience The title is "Startup Cities," which presupposes cities getting started. How many of you in the audience have actually attempted to start a city? Learn about what it takes to incorporate a city, it's not as hard as you think. If you were able to incorporate a city, you would be able to set up a planning and zoning board (not that you should!) But you could craft planning boards that could be more friendly to the ideas presented here. For a "city-preneur," what sorts of things should they be looking at when starting a city from scratch? Adam Hengels The first question is why. Why are you starting a city? How and why are people going to come together? I've become more humbled that we could or should be starting cities from scratch. Start small, with some economic reason. Patrik Schumacher In most of these private city projects, it's not only a new city, it's a new society. Its a libertarian project of a more free market driven society. Existing cities are politically captured. Since the whole world is so politically stifled, a private city could create incentives as a free economic zone to draw people. Would try to avoid zoning functions / uses. Allow speculation of uses. Could have a sounding board advising. Try out as much freedom as possible and do not be paranoid about freedom and what could come out of it. Peter Ryan The largest tax contributor in Florida, Disney World, was a startup city. Interesting to look into the dynamic of how they bought the land, worked with the state, and developed legal systems that were customised for themselves, zoning regulations, building codes, were tailor fit. While floating islands in the Pacific are a good bar to reach for, there are plenty of examples of private cities in the past that we can go back to. Adam Hengels Website: marketurbanism.com Twitter: @marketurbanism Facebook A new non-profit organization - The Center for Market Urbanism Nolan Gray is head of policy and research Events – Foundation for Economic Education FEEcon this summer in Atlanta. Patrik will keynote the Market Urbanism track. A collaborative book project summarizing the policies of Market Urbanism. Patrik Schumacher Giving a lecture tomorrow at the National Arts Club Talking about architecture and societal progress The built environment as ordered social processes The city as a text, a system of signification, etc. Website - www.patrikschumacher.com Facebook YouTube Talking about free market urbanism, also illustrating the history of urban development through various stages of socio-economic development Peter Ryan Startup Cities Website: startupcities.co Hashtag #startupcities Post-Game Discussion Joe's impressions of the event Seething envy Nothing ever happens in Australia The growing impact of Market Urbanism Parafin - AI powered development modeling Joe's household budget spreadsheet has become self-aware When is a computational approach best suited to the project? One-liners "They're not planning, they're reacting" "Gaming the planners" - a recipe for corruption It's not rule of law, it's rule of men Would NIMBYism be worse under private ownership of public space? Home Owner's Associations (HOA's) Density entices development of amenities and transit NIMBYism is a symptom of government-induced sprawl Increasing urbanism is an inevitable trend, not the result of a vote The inherent bias in favor of incumbent homeowners under democracy The opposite incentive could be the case under private cities Curation Allowing more organic entrepreneurial devlopment Pruning and weeding Curation by dispute resolution and pre-emptive public fora Scott Wiener's SB 827 Upzoning Beverly Hills The state government as a check on local government overreach - are anarchists ok with this? Startup Cities - Literally! Cities as an entrepreneurial venture Innovating cities Do cities need to be grown organically, or can they be created from scratch? Seasteading Liberland Economic freedom can provide the seed of a successful city - Hong Kong, Singapore Post-event activities and name-dropping Market Urbanism started as a blog, is becoming a movement Links/Resources YouTube slideshow of notes summarizing the discussion: https://youtu.be/ujq1WGri4wA Livestream Video of this event on Urbanist Startup Cities Peter Ryan's Startup Cities: Urbanization as Opportunity manifesto Market Urbanism Website/Blog Twitter: @marketurbanism Don't miss Market Urbanism at FEEcon 2018, featuring Adam, Patrik, and many other Market Urbanists! Adam Hengels Parafin Patrik Schumacher Anarchitecture Podcast's Patrik Schumacher Series patrikschumacher.com – Patrik’s publications, interviews, and lectures, including his two-volume book on architectural theory, “The Autopoiesis of Architecture” Zaha Hadid Architects California's SB 827 A cool Interactive Visualization of the Potential Effects of SB 827 Why SB 827 Failed Emily Hamilton on the inherent bias towards incumbent resident voters (on Market Urbanism, of course) Sandy Springs, GA - Outsourcing the city Seasteading Liberland - a Startup Country Sandy Ikeda: Is there a Libertarian Architecture? Nolan Gray bio Stephen Smith bio