clc lecture cities taking the lead

CLC LECTURE

Cities Taking the Lead 26 July 2017

Cities and their mayors are at the center of opportunities presented by a magnetic and innovative

economy, supported by investment in transportation and ecology, and committed to creating an

entrepreneurial workforce – all of which are essential to the success of cities, countries and cross-

boundary megaregions in the future.

Prof Taylor will discuss her work in Singapore as well as a case study of the Denver Union Station

Neighbourhood to illustrate how design vision and shared local leadership can assemble resources and

funding to undertake a transformative project for their city and region. Subsequently, Marilyn Taylor

and Michael Koh will lead a discussion about the increasing and enduring importance of cities in shaping

economic vitality and quality of life that can advance more inclusive and just societies.

Lecture Segment

Mr Michael Koh 00:00:17

Now a little bit about Marilyn. I have known her since the early 2000s

when I was at Mapletree [Holdings] and also at URA. She, to me, is a

hero or heroine, basically one of my heroines. She was the one who

opened our eyes up to large footprint buildings [and] the new

requirements at that point in time, whereby the whole world was

buzzing about trading floors being…catering for the financial industry.

00:00:47

And we in Singapore were not future-ready. So she, together with David

Childs, I think they really helped Singapore and Marina Bay to be future-

ready. Without their help, we would not have captured that that

moment in time when financial institutions were looking for locations,

and Singapore was in the end competitive, because of the plan that they

drew up for us and they advised us on.

Of course, we worked closely with them, we modified the plan but the

genesis of many of the ideas came from Marilyn. She is also a heroine

because during the time I was in Mapletree, we were affected by SARS

[Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome]. Singapore was affected by SARS

though some of you might not know it, and nobody wanted to come to

Singapore. I think the hotels were at zero occupancy. I think my boss,

my then boss who is also my current boss as well, Mr Khoo, he said,

“Come, you will probably enjoy the freshest air ever!” And here were

the two most senior partners of SOM and they said, “Alright, we will

come.” And they came! They braved that period of time in Singapore’s

history to come and advise us on the plan—that to me is totally heroic,

and at that point in time, it was 5% occupancy at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

So can you imagine that! So I really, really appreciate that.

In addition, she is also my heroine because she’s a champion for urban

mobility. She is a New Yorker through and through, I mean she lived

there much of her life, now she lives in Philadelphia. But she used to tell

me that she walked to work and it’s typical New Yorker style, she would

change into tennis shoes and walk from the station to work, and then of

course in the office put on her high heels. But nonetheless, do we do

that? You know, Marilyn Taylor, the Chairwoman of SOM walks to work

in tennis shoes. (Laughs). So, she’s such a champion of urban mobility.

Well, as a person, she is so bubbly, passionate, full of energy—she’s

really got a dare-to-do attitude, so it’s really an inspiration. She’s always

got such a positive outlook, and gung-ho and recently over the last few

days she got off the plane on Sunday and she said, “Well, I am not going

00:03:13

to sit still, I’m just going to do something.” and that’s after a long flight

from the US. And we kept her busy. We brought her to the nether

regions of Singapore, that’s at Tuas West. How many of you have been

to Tuas West? Not many right? Well, there you go, that’s another

achievement in Marilyn’s cap, another feather in her cap! So we brought

her there and she explored the area.

And then the next day she turned up at…well, she had dinner and it was

quite a late dinner. Next day, she turned up on Monday, gung-ho and

ready for work at 9 a.m. and we made her walk about 6,500 steps. I know

because I counted on my Fitbit. I was hoping we would make 20,000 but

we only achieved 6,500. But nonetheless, you see that’s the energetic

type of person, that gung-ho, just do it type of approach—and she does

it all with sensibility, with grace. And she is ever so nice, and that is what

I love about Marilyn, and I hope you will enjoy what she has to share

with us because she has so much to share. This is just creaming off, just

the tip of the iceberg, I wish you could just stay on and share more, but

we have limited time, so without much further ado, let me call upon

Professor Marilyn Taylor to deliver the CLC lecture. Thank you, Marilyn.

Prof Marilyn Jordan Taylor

00:04:33

So, on with the show. Yes, I’ve been very lucky to work in Singapore. At

the start, my first project here started in 1985 when we worked on the

first [Mass Rapid Transit] Red Line. We actually did the design and

worked together with the RSP [Raglan Squire and Partners] Architects

[Planners and Engineers], and very large engineering firms [in] building

and designing the segment of the line that started at Marina Bay—

although there was nothing there but landfill—and went to Tanah

Merah. And it was my first introduction to understanding how you, with

your short legacy and your extraordinary leadership, have the capability

to set aspirational goals and to bring designers forward who execute

this. I promise you, this is the only place in the world where I have done

clear platforms, clear-column platforms, no columns on the platforms at

all, granite finishes everywhere and the maintenance of the landscape

all around. I mean it is just symbolises [that] when something has to be

done, it gets done well.

00:05:29

We moved onto the airport, Terminal Three, I am very proud of having

an opportunity to work on the master plan for Marina Bay, moving on

to College [sic University] Town at the National University of Singapore;

and now being invited to think about the future of Marina Bay and the

future of the CBD [Central Business District] out at Jurong, where the

high-speed rail station will come. All of those are really rare

opportunities, and I think you too, all of you should feel privileged when

you have a chance to participate in those kinds of decisions.

Just for a moment to put this in context, I want to talk a little bit about

the changing world that we are all living in. Very short, I had planned to

and I will still do: I want to share on project with you, which is a

consummate example of a public-private partnership that worked

together for a long period of time to create a truly transformational

project. The governmental context is completely different than [sic

from] here, but the elements of the project and the accomplishments of

the project, I think are something that you will enjoy hearing about and,

I hope, learn.

And then I want to go back and talk about something that we have been

talking over the last three days of my fellowship which is, we all grew up

when the term CBD meant something. It was the Central Business

District. It was where you went to do your business, and yes, there was

shopping there. But essentially, especially in the latter half of the 20th

century, as residences spread and vacated the core of the city, it became

clear that there were places that hollowed out at five o’clock in the

afternoon, and didn’t provide the kind of all-day round-the-clock, at

least 18 hour, excitement and engagement that being a player in a global

economy demands.

So, it is interesting for me to look at the Denver Union Station project at

the beginning, and then to share with you some of the thinking that

we’ve been doing about the qualities that need to be brought into our

central innovation districts [and] our central mixed-use districts. We no

00:07:30

longer have that focus on one part of the way we live and work, but on

many more parts. So I hope that both of these will be helpful to you.

This last spring, I was privileged to bring a group of our students from

the University of Pennsylvania, who had been invited to come and work

with the URA and through the term, to take a look at the planning for

the changes at Jurong with the arrival of the high-speed rail station. And

of course, the goals are very high—to create a wonderful place to live

and work [in], that will attract an international population; but also be a

place of very much local to Singapore and expression of the values and

the creativity that exists here in this country.

And while we were here, Singapore’s committee on the Future Economy

released its report. And that was very important to us because I could

see for the first time that Singapore, which in my mind was always…had

played and is continuing to play such an incredible role internationally,

was becoming aware of the importance of the Southeast Asia as a

region, as a mega-region, and committing to the construction of a cross-

border project—the high-speed rail train between Kuala Lumpur and

Singapore.

As you all probably know, that’s the first little piece of a grand

connection which leads up through Bangkok, over into China, down to

Vietnam, back up again—and really becomes now, as we hear more

about it and as President Xi [Jinping] reveals his really grand plans, there

is a Belt-Road Initiative that is going to set up a whole new set of

economic relationships here in this region. And you all are well-placed

to capture it. And I am going to hesitate for a minute and see if I can

choose the words. I am personally regretful that we have a President

who isn’t stepping up to continue to play for the United States his full

role and the role that we have had for a long time, but I am here to

represent, as a party of one, the 600 corporations and 100 mayors who

have all said, “We are moving ahead with the Paris Accord [sic

Agreement], and we believe in exchange.” And I can only hold out for

00:09:47

00:11:52

you the fact that if we focus on mayors and cities, and the Americans

who do understand our roles and responsibilities and want to be a part

of interacting with you so that we all grow together, I hope I can help

you accomplish that.

But if we come back to the local for the moment, the work that our

students have been doing this spring has given me a chance to look at

Singapore in quite a different way. There is that whole 20% of Singapore

out to the west called the western region, which particularly has an

exciting new opportunity in that exciting new future with the arrival of

the high-speed train at Jurong. The station itself is like a pebble falling

into a pond. It will have a cascading effect that will extend across many

geographic scales, which in a way, we’ve tried to represent here.

Because the spot in the former golf course, will be the place that starts,

but it will spread through the Jurong Lake District. It can have a powerful

influence on the west region and all of Singapore, and indeed go on to

Southeast Asia in parallel with the ongoing globalisation efforts in which

you participate.

This means from an infrastructural point of view, thank you for calling

me a transportation planner-designer as well, because I have long been

fascinated by the role that transportation does play in bringing us

together and by the way it opens doors to opportunities. And so, we

begin to see that there is a very different map of Singapore emerging. It

is not just the downtown with a lot…with the hinterland on the rest of

the island, but about 20 years of planning and thinking about

decentralisation [and how it] is now generating an opportunity for two

major CBDs or mixed-use districts, so that high-speed rail supports the

port and the airport, and all of the clusters of knowledge, education and

resource [to] come together, creating new economic opportunities.

Case Study Sharing: Denver Union Station

I am going to shift now to the story I want to tell you, which is a project

that I worked on for about 15 years. The citizens of Denver worked on it

00:12:00

for at least three decades. I am…small interruption here just for a

moment, I want to say that I am so happy to see such a mixed age group

here today—and particularly for the younger ones of you, who are just

starting on your career and interning at CLC, or working in the agencies.

When I start to talk about this, this is 25 years of my life and it took so

long to do it, where you are, it seems like a long time. But what happens

is when you hunker down, get the right ambition, put together a vision

and are willing to stick with it, you will have the amazing reward of

seeing these things happen. So, when someone says, “Start this project

now. It may take a couple of decades,” say, “Great!” and go for it. Not

everything in this world, especially what we do, is about instant

gratification. And you and your ability to advise local leaders, city leaders

wherever you choose to practice, can, I assure you, make a huge

difference.

Denver Union Station case study. It is a story that begins with

transportation and a regional transport idea. The citizens of Denver

realised its federal government wasn’t coming up with money, and that

they would have to put together the resources to build a region-serving

transportation—to get people out of their cars to preserve the clean air,

and the access to high quality life in Denver. They realised their intention

of achieving an extraordinary station and a whole new district through

the following qualities and attributes. There was a combined mayor and

citizen will to do this project. It was a big vision which got knocked off

the track four or five times, and [sic but] someone was always there to

pick the railroad car up, put it back on the track and say, “Let’s continue

to go.”

It was intended and it became, by a very different route, a modest public

investment that became a catalyst for attracting considerable private

investment. It created a place where people want to live and work—no

longer the business district, Denver’s too, was quite dead at night —

because they wanted to work in a creative economy with more freedom,

more opportunity to invent, more opportunity to make. It brings out

something that we all have worked together hard over for the last

00:14:42

decade which is the importance of not just pride in square feet, but of

creating places that people can adapt to their own use; and using design

to bring people together to change the way places are used.

It requires thinking flexibly. I sometimes get frustrated in the United

States because in the time between when we put together a master plan

and get it approved, which frequently takes two, or three, or four years,

things have changed so much that the master plan is no longer relevant.

And I think all of us are working together, understanding that what we

need is a framework, a set of principles as guidelines. But really, [what

we need is] the clarity and the vision and the understanding of the

fundamental principles we are trying to accomplish, so that we can

modify those plans as we go and make them the success that they were

intended to be.

And finally, and this is pivotal to the engagement with the private sector:

we have to work together to allocate the financing responsibility

between public and private in a way that both sectors can participate

and can provide and receive the return—provide the resources and

receive the returns, the payback that makes it worth it. How many of

you have been to Denver? Please go. It’s a wonderful place. This is where

the prairie meets the Rocky Mountains. This is [a] slightly telephoto lens,

but not too much. Literally, the Rockies are there, Denver is called the

Mile-High City because it’s really quite a high elevation. But it had for

many decades, had been sort of a minor city in the west. It was a little

way off the transcontinental railroad. There was a spur that came down

to Denver. But Denver, as you will see in the story, has really begun to

identify itself in a very special and significant way.

In Denver, there are about 700,000 people living, and it’s in a region of

about 2.8 million—so that makes it kind of half of Singapore, but in this

very spectacular setting. There is a central city. This map shows the

mountains to the west and the city itself, and the area that we are going

to focus on is in the north-west part of the city, and it is an area of about

00:17:00

50 or 60 acres with a 21 acre station site in the centre of it, and that’s

the focus of this project.

Just a short time ago, that is two decades ago, this is what this area

looked like. It had finally become part of the trans-continental railroad

and there was a massive—in the middle of the city—a massive freight

yard complex, where it was a change point from goods coming in—coal,

lumber, the real stuff that is produced in the American West—came

here and sat and waited. Meanwhile, passenger rail had completely

deteriorated, the station was just a…only a very small part of it was used,

and it was a great vent in the urban fabric, a great hole.

The area immediately to the right, it’s called LoDo [Lower Downtown

Denver], the historic district. It’s Lower Denver. It was down in the flats

near the tracks and the floodplain. But over time, people had begun

buying warehouses and recapturing them, and there was a man by the

name of John Hickenlooper who got kind of tired of working in the

financial industry, and decided that he would buy a warehouse, open a

restaurant and create a brewery. He is one of the heroes of this story,

because this is a man who never intended to run for public office, who

when he realised a great opportunity for Denver was being missed, ran

for mayor, became the mayor, saw this project through implementation

as the mayor; ran for governor, became a governor, and when he had

the opportunity in 2008—when the financial crisis hit—to bail the

project out with a little bit of federal money, he was able to do that. So

the well-placed person who shares your vision, leading from a local point

of view, where you feel totally accountable to the people, and taking

that and rising to higher office, is something that I truly hope to see it

more of.

So this was the scheme to put roads through that would connect the

residential and small town centres to the west, with the main centre of

the city to the right. That half of the land, roughly, would be put into a

park called the Commons Park, [so] that all of the freight traffic coming

00:19:22

through here, the yard would be removed and the mainline would be

consolidated so that the train continues to come through—and by the

way, we are able to run commuter rail on it as well, so that all the

transportation pieces were put in place first, and then this came into

play.

So we had a park, we were able to designate a very significant area of

riverfront housing next to it. The old station with the red star was able

to become the centre of a transport district, and there were multiple

opportunities for development all around in the land that had now

become part of the regular part of the city. But it was a little more

complicated than that, because it was necessary to put in place the

public transportation, which generally except for buses, didn’t exist in

Denver in a way that tied the entire region together.

What do I mean by the region? The region of Denver is 23 separate

municipalities, [where] each one has its own mayor. They all shared the

vision of creating a rapid transit system, means a light rail, a series of

commuter rails, and you’ll see again, some buses that fill the gaps in

that, a connection to the airport, a connection to Amtrak’s continuing

service to the city, and also to the ski train which takes you by public

transportation out to the mountains to go skiing.

But here’s the difficult thing: there were 23 different, completely

separate municipalities. Each one of those had to independently vote in

favour of a half a percent sales tax [increase] in order to realise this

project. No federal monies were available. The first time they did it, it

failed in a few of the cities. Second time they did it, it won in almost all

of the cities. Third time they did it, every single mayor was able to deliver

through the story that was being told about becoming a much more

sustainable, viable and economic attractive reason. Everyone, everyone

came together. It was really unusual at that time.

00:21:39

Five years later, they had to renew it. Five years after that, they doubled

it to not just, what did I say it was, it was a half a percent on taxes that

was put toward financing this, it became a whole percent—and to this

day, they are continuing to renew their financial commitment. It is an

amazing thing in the United States for 23 communities to come

together.

But in addition, we needed to knit the downtown together. Union

Station which is now more or less at the top of this slide ties to the state

capital which is the diagonal piece. It is the city of Denver, and it is the

state capital of Colorado. But they existed as almost separate halves, so

we know we needed to have to tie it together with local transportation

that also made it work for people to move around the city without

getting into their cars.

So I’m going to move along quickly now and say, we did follow the

principle that what we needed to come up with was a strategic

development framework that could be flexible, rather than a detailed

master plan. And as we began doing this back around 2000, we realised

that there were some really powerful adjectives that we needed to

substitute for ones that typically pertained the master plans. We wanted

to be connected rather than thinking parcel by parcel. We wanted to

really take advantage of the citizens’ request that we shift to a transit-

oriented world and away from a car-oriented world. That meant things

were shared rather than individual, flexible rather than long-term, and

permanent and very much site-specific rather than copied.

And this is the plan that we came up with. So you see in the centre at

the very bottom of the slide, the historic building. The wings that had

been torn down were replaced [and] new buildings were added. And the

tracks outside, we created a great train room where people can wait for

their trains—Denver has sun 300 days a year and 14 different

developments parcels were created in the land that had…became part

of the station development area.

00:23:56

The station itself sits like this right at the end of a street, and so we

arranged for public circulation to flow in all around the station side and

continue up to the north-west, and go out to the light rail transit with

development on all of the sites around. So, this shows the track and

platform plan where the train to the plane, some take the train to

Boulder, Amtrak, all of the heavy rail comes in, and it occupies the train

shed.

Over on the left-hand side, you see the mall shuttle, which is a bus that

runs virtually continuously one after another—there is about one bus

per block and it connects the station and Lower Manhattan up to the

heights with the state capital. And in the upper left-hand side, there is

the consolidated mainline, which is where the light rail transit now runs

that is serving all the 23 communities.

Transportation can't be just process. It should also be, as a British

engineer friend of mine said, ennobling and exhilarating. We didn’t have

enough money to build a grand European train hall, but we did have

enough money to create a framework and a fabric structure that

protects both ends of the platform when you are out there waiting to

board your train; but at the same time it is open to the sky, so you can

enjoy every one of the three hundred days a year when Denver has

bright sunshine and feels like a wonderful place to be. This is the

experience standing on one of the bridges that flows through: you can

see, it is a very dynamic space. You walk straight to your train, very easy

on and off experience in a space that makes you feel good about being

there.

But that wasn't all we needed to do. We really needed to create in

orange, a public realm that everyone felt invited to use. And below it, to

create a bus station, so that the areas that weren’t served by the train

system could be served by buses. So, what you see here is the light rail

transit station. It is safe and friendly even at night. It accommodates

more than 110,000 people every single day. There is an easy transfer to

00:26:14

the mall shuttle that you see there in the foreground, and a really

accommodating and pleasant place to wait for the light rail transit as it

comes around and helps you greet the bus.

But that wasn’t all we had to do either, because we had to find a way to

integrate the buses. We didn’t want a large number of buses, we didn’t

want a bus concourse up in the public realm which was primarily

dedicated to pedestrians, so we created the kind of pavilion you see

here. And it takes you downstairs to brightly lit-with-skylights places,

where all buses that were coming into the region have a place to wait,

and also have a place to easily enter the city when their bus arrives. So

here are a couple of pictures of those: this runs underneath the street

that connects the station out to the light rail transit, and provides the

same quality of information and the same quality of service that are

afforded to rail passengers. Here are you see one end of it, there you

see the other end and of it. And this is the walking street that sits on top

of the bus terminal.

So altogether, those transportation investments were just under half a

billion dollars—[US]$488 million of public money was brought together

and already, at the time that the station opened, more…virtually every

site was under construction and we already had realised US$1 billion of

in-kind private investment—which has since then, doubled again. So it

is quite an extraordinary leveraging of public money to attract private

development.

Here you see the kind of master plan work we did. We did massing

studies [where] they were considered general envelopes, each site had

a specific image and plan associated with it, but we were free to let it

change; and in a moment, I am going to describe the organisational

structure. But from the very beginning, from the day we began the

masterplan for the station, the public agencies came together and

selected a master developer from the private sector to work in parallel

with them. It was…it had its rocky moments when markets changed,

00:28:33

when the private development wasn't able to proceed on exactly the

schedule that we had imagined, but the strong interrelationship

between the public sectors who would come together and the private

sector meant that they shared the vision of getting the project done,

and from beginning to end, we always found a way to overcome the

challenges.

This is a much more play-by-play listing, but we were able to attract not

only major corporate tenants, but [also] a lot of independent smaller

start-up firms [with] different forms of living—small apartments at

relatively high density, larger townhouses, all scattered around—

because we had the guidance of the master developer who didn’t do

every project himself but frequently brought in others to make it

happen.

So the station opened in 2014. As of 2015, this is what was underway on

the way to a total of at least four million square feet in the immediate

vicinity. And in those days, it was looking like this when you look down

from above. But what is really important is that this is how it looks: a

dead part of town is now a major attraction, 18 hours a day. There is

wonderful public space in front of the train station which serves both

the neighbourhood and the region. The train station itself has become a

boutique hotel developed by a local investor. That is her name on the

car, her name is Dana Crawford, [a] woman. And in fact, the old station

waiting room is the hotel lobby and within the station, where are you go

out to either side, there has been developed one of the great food,

eating and entertaining places along with some very small-scale retail.

And it’s one of those places that serves one function in the morning,

another at lunch, another when families get together on weekends—

and it goes into the evening when the younger people actually come in

and take it over as well.

00:30:36

Government Entities: Roles and Participation

So how does all this happen? How does government make this happen?

It is an elaborate structure. There were five different government

entities that needed to participate to make this project happen: the

Regional Transit District—the RTD, Colorado DOT [Department of

Transport], the [Denver] Regional Council of Government—which is

called Dr COG, the Centre City District and the Downtown Development

District, all came together. In the beginning, each of them sent their

representatives to the room and we had interminable meetings, and

they began to realise that they needed to coalesce into a single

organisation. So, they formed what is shown here as the Denver Union

Station Project Authority. And that hired, under a design¬–build

contract, a builder, an engineering firm, that delightful group down

there—Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. And I have to say and give her

credit, I insisted on bringing Hargreaves [Associates] landscape

architects. And so together, we found a way. And then there is a local

urban designer, who was an incredible eyes and ears on the streets for

us. This team was able, under a design–build contract arrangement, to

continue to provide the master planning services.

Parallel to it and selected and composed at the same time, was the

Denver Union Station Neighbourhood Development Company, and it

consisted of two different development firms—Continuum [Partners]

and East West Partners, both local and familiar with the region, who

came together and created the master development. They too had their

own architects, who oversaw the plan from their point of view,

defended what they needed in terms of the private sector and the

flexibility to make choices—while we, over here on the left-hand side of

the page, had the responsibility of making sure that the reasons for the

investment, and the quality of the investment was going to live up to the

expectation necessary to pay off the bonds, but more importantly to

meet the expectations that the people of Denver had for it. So the fact

00:32:39

that we…there may be two tones of blue, but we were sort of in one box

committed to work together to get it done.

I am not going to go into detail on this, but originally, we expected to do

the project entirely without public money, without federal money—and

raise money through the bonding capacity and through retail sales. But

it was 2007, in 2008 when we went into constr[uction]…got to the point

where we wanted to award the construction contracts, and it took

longer for the worldwide recession, depression to arrive here. But at the

moment, it was devastating in the United States. With the near fall of

the banks, the Lehman Brothers going under, other financial institutions

in the United States really struggling to hold the markets together, we

needed to find another way to work. And thank goodness, President

Obama passed the American Recovery Act.

John Hickenlooper, by now governor of the state of Colorado, said,

“Alright, you guys are a build–design, contract, you don't have your

documents ready to go, but if I give you 90 days while we raise this

money, can you get to the point where we can get a guaranteed

maximum price?” And again, that is the benefit of our all working

together, so we produced the document, got the guaranteed maximum

price and were actually able to attract approximately the US$187

million, and then able to fund the rest with the local bond funding.

It was tough putting it all together. This next slide describes the market

shift, how we came up with the loan structure for monies from the

federal government; and then the additional loan, all the loan

guarantees that had to be worked out, how the bonds would be repaid,

what the projected—you’ve seen this slide before—what the projected

development was going to be. Thank goodness it came more quickly and

just this last spring, these were the headlines in the Denver papers: “Tax

money beats projections by a lot.”

00:34:56

00:37:13

The monies actually came in so that the debt was able to be repaid

ahead of time, and the monies that had been saved were able to be

rolled over into the next transportation project. So, those of you who

are economists can explain that much better than I, but this is an

example of not only of the local capability to take on the responsibility

for funding, but also to realise that the initial project created funds that

could be re-used again in additional transportation projects.

So why did it work? They bought the land from the railroads. They, the

voters improved the tax and kept renewing it. The master developer

choice was key. The vision, because it was so carefully crafted with the

community, was able to survive changes through the long term. The

process was transparent and accountable, and the results spoke for

themselves: “Taxes paid ahead of time.” So that was great.

And to say this is just an example of the kind of things that happened—

wonderful public space, commitment to bikes, neighbourhood lived in

while it was being constructed and going well. What didn’t we do? That

short a time ago, we didn't allow for this. We didn't begin to realise that

automated vehicles, and in my case, shared vehicles more important

than whether they were driver or driverless, were not really on the

scene. Denver is just barely becoming a transit-oriented city and the

shift to the car is far from complete. But because in our master plan we

had made such a commitment to the public space and made it so

generous, we are absolutely confident that we will now go back in—and

this will be a great place to retrofit with those fleets of shared vehicles

that are going to free us from the obligation of owning a car, and move

us forward into the next world where we can live better together. So

that’s my Denver story. I hope you enjoyed it.

Changing Work Nature: Creative Economies & Co-Working Spaces

Moving quickly in these last moments, over the past few days we have

been talking a lot about, as I indicated earlier, about what’s a central

00:37:22

business district? What are these new high concentrations of workspace

become [sic becoming] and how do we make them more mixed-use?

And this comes exactly at the same time when, as you all know, the

nature of work is changing work radically.

Beginning a decade ago, cities around the world tried to move forward

in capturing the potential of the creative economy, and creating the kind

of co-working spaces that we now see in profusion—and we hope most

of them survive. There are a couple of quotes that I am going to share

from the work that the Brookings Institution did in their Metropolitan

Policy Office, because I think they both have a lot to say, both of these

quotes, about the way we need to work together to plan for more

flexible, more mixed-use and more exciting and dynamic central districts

in our cities.

The first, and this is Bruce Katz who headed that division for a long time,

and his partner Julie Wagner, with whom he worked to do this research.

So, “What’s an innovation district? Well, it is a geographical area where

institutions and companies come together and take advantage of being

physically compact, transit accessible and technically wired, in a mix of

uses.”

Even more important, I think perhaps, is this next quote which is, “In a

little more sophisticated way, locational preferences are changing and

what’s becoming important to people, workers and enterprises, as well

as financial entities, is that there is a very profound link between shaping

the economy, making places and supporting the social networking that

is essential to the exchange of ideas.” In Bruce and Julie's words, “These

institutions, firms and workers crave proximity. The open innovation

economy rewards collaboration, and is really changing in how buildings

and districts are designed. Most importantly, it is becoming more

diverse and better—more and better choices are essential. And it comes

down to things we have valued for a long time that are going to be used

00:39:36

in a different way: walkable neighbourhoods for housing, jobs and

amenities in a mix.”

So just a quick tour around the world. One of the cities that started this

long ago was Barcelona. They had a city architect, they had a city

scheme, they are one of the few cities to have success with the

Olympics. And they began moving east to take care of the everyday part

of the city, and created a very successful innovation district quite early

on.

San Diego did almost the same thing—move into an old warehouse

neighbourhood and use it as the enclosure for the start-ups who then

become the place for the economy to grow, and for start-up companies

to become much more specific.

Boston as a city, looked around at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of

Technology], and Tufts and Harvard and saw them reaping all the

benefits of patents in the innovation economy and said, “Wait a minute,

it’s not just you guys in the universities, we are going to do it ourselves

in our old port area, Fort Point Channel.”

Miami—[the] high-speed rail is coming to Miami, and they have planned

a very large high-density district. One of the interesting things is these

innovation districts started with the thought that it had to be cheap,

probably re-usable space primarily, and now we discover that even

tech[nology] companies can work in density in tall buildings, as long as

those buildings fit their needs in other respects.

My own city now, Philadelphia, has a wonderful collaborative process

going on between the universities and Comcast, our big cable company

that has become an entertainment company that is going to…that’s

become a control-your-life company—and they, together with all of us,

have made a major plan around the train station in Philadelphia where

Drexel [University], [University of] Penn[Sylvania], and the private sector

00:41:31

will be coming together, creating a very special kind of place for ongoing

research and partnerships with high-powered universities and the local

companies.

Sunnyside Yards in Queens, it’s a railyard. It’s like Denver but with a deck

over it, it can be another one of the locations for innovation. Also

existing areas, you have the very large industrial areas in some portions

and including in western Singapore, Chicago was taking a look at it’s

industrial quarter. In the foreground here is a place called Goose Island,

and they are saying, “We need to intersperse directly with industry, with

the industry that is safe, that’s safe to be a neighbour to, and introduce

housing both for workers but [sic and] for people who want to live here.

And this is the work of one of our faculty members showing what that

mixed-use area would potentially…that’s the existing condition, and this

what it would be like.

Best of all, and I highly recommend you go there, is Seattle. What’s

changed Seattle? Microsoft and Amazon are both located there.

Microsoft has chosen a suburban future: they have a big campus,

everybody drives. Amazon made a choice to move into an old industrial

area in Seattle called South Lake Union. It is not…it is a place with

amenity, it is right at the water—you can see Seattle’s iconic Space

Needle there, but they planned for it very carefully. They didn’t just let

it happen.

On the left-hand side, there is a plan that deals with where the retail is,

where the smaller scale infill projects can go, and really sets the stage

for the framework within which this would happen. On the right is even

more important. They knew that they needed to have a range of small-

scale and large-scale development sites. But even more what so part of

Seattle in being there is views to the mountains and the surroundings.

So the drawing on the right, probably too small for you to read,

nonetheless is a set of rules about setbacks. So that as buildings grow

taller, they have to set back and there is light and air coming in between.

00:43:44

So for the first 10 years or so, these are the kinds of buildings that came

there: warehouse-like, new office buildings that jumped the scale from

one and two storeys up to five and six storeys. It was so successful that

Amazon took four million square feet of space here. But they needed

more, so they moved forward with a plan to add this into South Lake

Union. The first building that you see, the one that has a kind of a

reddish-, orange-ish-gold is the first of three major high-rise buildings

that will constitute the Amazon headquarters. Amazon will have, in

South Lake Union, Seattle, 12 million square feet.

Think about it. It’s a huge transformation of a neighbourhood. And it will

be a place where not only they enjoy a very high quality of work life, but

it will be filled with the spaces in between: the little pathways, the alleys,

the lower buildings, the roof terraces, and their own very special…oops,

I went too fast there, but their own very special employee amenity—

which is a giant terrarium almost. It is all the ecology, all the flora and

fauna of the Pacific Northwest, and it is a place for Amazon workers to

go and relax—so far they are saying that they are not going to let the

public in, we will see what happens.

So in conclusion, we need more of you to become more like them. Think

of yourself as the person who can craft vision, create the collaborative

teams, bring in the private sector, adjust as you need to go, and make

sure that you are thinking about the things that we’ve always thought

about as designers—meaning the use of land, health and safety,

opportunity for private investment, but also supporting the notion that

it is going to change life for all of us, which is living in a collaborative

world where we each have a chance to continue to learn, to bring our

skills and to make our cities ever better for everyone. Thank you very

much for listening to me. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Panel and Q&A Segment


Right, thank you Marilyn. That was highly enjoyable and really, really

informative. I think I learnt a lot and already, I can think of the

application of your idea to some of the projects that we are working on

in our advisory work. Actually it’s…I hope that more of them will be like

you—with all that energy, enthusiasm, and you know, the gleeful

childlikeness when you explained that project, I think that’s so

wonderful.

First, I want to embark on some audience engagement. How many of

you would like to live close to work? Can you put up your hands, please?

Okay about 50%, I guess the rest of you would like to commute?

(Laughter in audience)

Prof Marilyn Jordan Taylor 00:47:01

On what kind of transportation?


Yes, but on what kind of transportation? And the second question is: how

long are you prepared to commute by MRT [Mass Rapid Transit] or by

bus? Let’s say, how many of you are prepared to commute more than

one and a half hours, both ways? I mean, additional, altogether. Can you

put up your hand please? One person would like to commute more than

one and a half hours. (Laughs)


The one who rides a bike.


But what about the rest the rest of you? You don’t want more than a

one and a half hour commute, yet you don’t want to live close to work?

Where do you want to live? (Laughter) Okay, so how many of you would

like to live close to food and beverage, gyms, coffee places and shops?

Can you put up your hands please. Okay this is slightly more—about

65%. I guess the rest of you like to live in isolation.

00:47:52

How many of you would like to start your own business? Put up your

hands, please. Very few of us, oh my gosh. And I think that’s scary! That’s

scary! Because a country like China is asking the millions or hundreds of

millions of young [people] to consider starting their own business. They

are creating neighbourhoods, innovation parks, innovation districts.

That’s the next generation—the creative economy, the thinking

economy. I tell my children, “I don't think you are ever going to get a

permanent job when you grow up. I think you are going to the

freelancers. I think you are going to just have to just change your

workplace a lot, unless you start your own business.” But yet, from what

I see in this room, very few of us are prepared to take that jump. So the

issue…


We’ll ask the question again in a few moments to see if you change your

mind.


So the issue here, and it is something that has become a mantra and

what I think the case studies that Marilyn has mentioned, and in many

other cities that we’ve seen in CLC—the issue of walkable

neighbourhoods, the issue of having the option of living where you work,

or making and creating and living altogether in one place, Innovating and

building communities of like-minded people, communities with a sense

of place and urban identity. So do we have that? Do we have that in

Singapore? Can I ask your opinion as well? Audience interaction. Do you

think we have that in Singapore? Put up your hands, anyone who says

yes. Two, three people say, “Yes, we have that.” Good, you are positive!

Looks like the rest are not so positive.


Actually, I did temporarily.


Really?


I have been staying at the Scarlet and I have a one-minute commute. It’s

so great!


So there you go, one minute commute. Actually it was two minutes last

night, but one minute this morning…


I got faster.


…she’s grown more energetic.

So I guess that’s the key issue at hand, Marilyn, and a lot of the photos

or the case studies I see that you’ve illustrated also say, show to me that

these new districts are actually very close to the city. They are not

outside the city. Yet in Singapore, we are planning innovation districts

outside the city, creative districts outside the city. So why is that so,

Marilyn? I think it is a difference in thinking and I guess is it because of

mayors wanting to increase the tax base or is it because of the lack of a

regional plan. Why is it that that reaction in the case studies that you have

shown, you have always brought these districts closer to the city, making

it walkable and re-enhancing and reinvigorating the downtown?


I think, at least from my understanding of this phenomenon, the first

impulse when these places of research were being created and needed

to go beyond the university to have additional space, was to say, “Let’s

go out into the country, let’s go out to Basking Ridge and Parsippany in

New Jersey, let’s go out to Montgomery County outside of Philadelphia,

and let’s build a splendid place where we can come to work, and work

uninterrupted all day long by any of those external influences that keep

us away from our task at hand for the day. And when the day is over

then we’ll drive home and come back.” Well, that didn’t work very well

because that meant that people were driving long distances, travelling

a lot—and more and more, they came to the self-realisation that they

were working in these research communities that really had no

relationship with the community beyond them.

So fast forward and what starts happening—and actually Bruce Katz and

Julie Wagner have a wonderful book called The Metropolitan Revolution

in which one of the most pivotal chapters, and this is written about 10

years ago now—was the emergence of the science park coming into the

city. Why? You want to see your friends. You don’t want to be isolated

00:52:10

only with the people you work with. You want to have a chance to

connect to others during the course of the day, and in the evening. You

might want to live without a car. Maybe you want to live in the city, and

why would reverse commute be the thing you want to do?

So [here’s] one case in point that I think might bring this home: one of

the suburban science parks had garnered leases from a number of the

major biomed[ical] companies. And those leases were all coming up for

rent, for renewal at about the same time just when Philadelphia was

taking its Navy Yard, which is at the south end of the city, and putting it

out on the market. And the HR [human resource] people in these

companies said to the CEOs [Chief Executive Officer], who were

probably pretty comfortable [and] ready to renew the lease out in these

suburban if not ex-urban park, “Maybe we should ask the employees

what would make them happy? Where would they like to be?” And

overwhelmingly, the majority of people said, “Oh, if we can be at the

Brooklyn Navy Yard,” which was the headquarters for the Urban

Outfitters…is the headquarters for Urban Outfitters, connected by

public transportation, a stone’s throw from the airport, only maybe 10

minutes from all the wonderful restaurants down in the south Philly.

And overwhelmingly, the indication was, “We want to be there.”

So the next question was, “Well, but if we are there, it is going to cost

more per square foot. So would you be happy to have fewer square feet

in which you, personally, are working? You are going to be in closer

proximity, not just when you are out and about in the city but in the

office! Would that be okay with you?” “Oh! Will that be okay with me?

I’d like it if I were working more closely.” So, what I am…the story I am

trying to tell here is, I think that one of the reasons that [sic why] we see

the reconnection back into the city for things that we thought would

benefit from splendid isolation, is that the people themselves who have

these jobs see themselves better situated, better resourced and better

able to do their work in less space, in an interactive place, where they

can reach out easily to collaborators and peers.


Well Marilyn, the counterpoint to that usually is, it’s all great to have

businesses moved back to the city—the science and the techies and the

geeks coming back and reinvigorating the economy. But I am being

chased out of the city, I can't afford to live there anymore. It’s the issue

of gentrification that Richard Florida has admitted to, because he was

one of those that [sic who] talked about the early rise of the creative

class in the city, but now he has admitted that the rise of the creative

class has created gentrification, people have moved out. It is well

documented in New York where Tribeca, the artists, the cultural people

are there and then you know, Robert De Niro comes in and the whole

neighbourhood goes up and then the artists have to move out and

around it, out of the city in the end. So how are cities tackling this issue

of gentrification and inclusivity?


We in New York, have a constant exchange with London because we are

very…same-sized cities and we have exactly the same problem. We

should be building about 60,000 units of new housing stock every single

year. And even as the market turns better and even as the acceptability

of high rents rises in New York City, we are still only building about

30,000 units a year, which means that the problem is getting worse.

However, we have a solution in the back pocket.

And so, I don't know how many of you are following this, but Google

which was very California-centric finally realised that they needed some

New York talent, and they began sending…they began organising not

their C-suite staff, but really their creative task forces to be located in

New York City and in Manhattan. And they made a choice to locate in

the lower west side, very close to the Hudson River. Why? It opened up

access to housing in New Jersey, which was accessible by ferry and by a

very special train service we have called the Path. And so, they took

advantage of creating in those places, a supply of housing.

On the other side of the river, we now have [an] expansion of middle-

income housing into many areas where people wouldn’t choose to live

before. And we are doing it precisely because of the cost reason: they

00:56:46

are living in old industrial lands, they are moving close to things that

have been considered more hazardous. They are doing it because, one,

the city is making a commitment to clean those up but also because

that’s where their friends are. And I do think that those of us who are

used to our more-bedrooms-than-we-have-children living are going to

be absolutely surprised and shocked at the housing stock that is

preferred as we move forward.

The rising generations are generations who want to work hard when

there is an assignment at hand, and who want to take it easier when that

pressure is off—who are probably going to cook much less at home.

They will be the people who use e-commerce to buy things that are

smaller, and probably discardable, and you know what? They might be

right. These may be better ways to live and it will be a way of at least re-

allocating the housing space we have for a more efficient use. While we

struggle wishing, in many ways, we were like Singapore, which we never

will be able to be in terms of providing housing essentially as a utility,

we have to struggle to get it on the market and it’s a big challenge.


But certainly there are solutions and the market has responded. I am

going to ask one last question of Marilyn and then I am going to open up

to the floor because I know that a lot of millennials…we should ask

millennial questions. Now you have always been helpful and

constructive in your comments for Singapore and we thank you for that

over the years. But let’s hypothetically say that you are the Chief Planner

of Singapore. What is…what are going to be your three key planning or

urban design issues that we should place a priority on? I know that’s a tall

order. Just your thoughts off the top of your head.


Well, I’ve had the pleasure of living through part of this transition

already, but I can't help but say it, that I think that when I first came, the

self-definition of Singapore as a beautiful garden island was something

that you looked at and didn’t really touch and didn’t really live in.

Indeed, it was the setting and it was splendid and it was beautiful—but

the thing we heard most often when we came is that, “It’s too hot and

that we can’t be out.” I think that you have made great strides and I

00:59:15

would urge you to privilege it even more: the continuous generation of

the public realm, the claiming of places to walk and bike and simply hang

out and not have to spend money to have leisure time, but rather just

to enjoy those spaces. Taking the bike paths and weaving them through,

following the canals wherever you have them—all of those seem to me

to be an indication that you all are really adaptable in ways that it is hard

for us when we first come, to understanding the times of the day and

the situations of the day, when it is fine to be outside and all of that is

contributing to a much more lively and healthy lifestyle, I think. And [that

is] something that really will continue to make Singapore an incredibly

attractive place for people to come and live, even if we don’t stay here

for a lifetime. It’s really a pleasure to be here. That the work that you

have done in shaping the public realm and the opening up of all the

public spaces, now around the museums, in the civic quarter, and the

extensions of the rivers going along with the cleaning up of the

Singapore River.

But I will unabashedly say, as a second thought, that because you are an

island, it has somehow surprised me how limited the contact is with the

water around. And as becomes cleaner and more viable—I know already

you are moving to take on the Kallang River, when we go west, there is

the Jurong River and the Pandan River and the whole western

catchment area—the work you have done can be replicated across the

island. So, building the public realm and encouraging interaction within

it and also taking advantage of being a place that lives with water, lives

with water constantly on the mind, and it can really frame the life even

more.

I think that the third thing that I would say, is in the efficiency of the

process to attract international financial firms to build more public

housing and even to encourage private housing, it is possible to see

places in Singapore where the mix of scale is being lost. As you know, it

is one of the things I worry about in Marina Bay. Every parcel seems to

be getting bigger and going to its maximum possibility, rather than

01:01:45

devising the means—as San Francisco is trying to do, as Seattle is trying

to do—where the small-scale is retained and intermixed. One of my

favourite pictures of Singapore is standing in the windows at URA [Urban

Redevelopment Authority], looking out over the roofs of Chinatown,

having a conversation with Wen Gin, Koh[-Lim] who did so much to

inculcate that idea that the history needed to be saved—but it is also

the small-scale and the mix of scales that makes this place so vibrant.

When you are walking around in the western part of the original CBD

area, there is a collision of scales and you see them all at same time. And

it is part of the vibrancy that the very small-scale is there at the same

time as the large-scale is. And I would urge you to make not dictated

forms, but strategies by which that mix of scale is always maintained. I

think it will give personality, specificity and identity.

And against such— can I have four?


Yeah, sure. That’s a bonus!


Whatever the new town centre around the high-speed rail station

becomes, it needs to find its own identity that doesn't try to replicate

that of the central business district right now—even as the central

business district in my opinion gets better, as the old and smaller office

buildings are translated into residential. And the same is true as Changi

becomes more of a centre, as the Paya Lebar Airport goes out of service

and becomes still another major community—not everything has to be

a housing estate or a dense office district. These things are better when

interwoven, and I think that you already have the examples where you

are beginning to do this, and you should do more of it.


Thank you, Marilyn for those words of wisdom. And I think now we

should ask the floor for some questions. Marilyn and I are of a certain

generation whereby we find using some apps difficult. You know, Uber

Eats, et cetera, Grab, Uber Taxi, et cetera. And somebody said to me

that these are actually assisted-living for the millennials, which I find

01:04:09

hilarious. But it is true! Think of [sic about] it, it’s assisting you guys, the

young people especially, in your living, in your lifestyle!


That's much better than what someone told me. Someone said to me

that Uber is just taxis for people with credit cards, and hopefully they

are much more than that.

Shaun 01:04:26

Hi, my name is Shaun [Koh] and I'm from Zeroth Labs, we are a small

international development consultancy. So, I actually have two

questions, you can pick the one that you find more interesting. The first

question is about the most famous pair of stairs in the world. You might

have heard of it, it is in Toronto. The city…there was a bunch of stairs.

There was a small hill leading down to a park, you’re familiar with it? But

just for the rest of us, it’s a small hill going down to a park. A guy asked

his city in Toronto to build a set of stairs because there were old people

that were stumbling down this park, so he was really worried about his

city. The city said that it would cost $160,000 to build like a set of stairs,

maybe like five metres tall, and he was like, “We can't do that!” So on

his own, he hired a homeless guy and in six weeks, he built a pair of stairs

for I think, it was $1000 or $600, and it made it into news because the

city found out, and they cordoned it off, and they said, “We've got to

tear this thing down.” So you know that story? And I was wondering, are

there’s any lessons there to be learnt for the people in this room? That’s

the first question.

The second question is about Singapore. So you’ve seen Singapore and

you have got a unique perspective as an outsider, who is also something

of an insider. Is there anything that has made Singapore so exceptional at

doing what it is doing historically, that is a potential weakness in the

changing context that we are in now?


So my similar story to the stair, I think illustrates a principle that you may

be getting at. And forgive me for taking kind of a slightly long way around

here. I think we all have spent the last couple of decades figuring out

better and better ways to engage citizens, individuals and pull them into

the decision-making process that [the] government makes. But I think

01:06:17

we are crossing a major threshold right now, which is not just to seek

the opinion and to adjust the plans that we are making accordingly, but

then to ask the next question, which is, “And how would you like to

participate in making that happen? What ideas do you have to bring?”

Two young men living on the west side of New York, looked out their

window and saw an old train line for which the city had granted—this is

in New York City—had granted a permit for demolition. And they said,

“This is too good to demolish. We need to keep it.” And so somewhere

in that process, I got the job of going to the railroads and discussing with

them how we could give them…find another way to compensate them

if they would just release their ownership of the railroads. There was a

whole lot of fun. But the fact is, an idea came from two young men who

engaged a bunch of people. They were fortunate enough to attract the

attention of Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg and a few other

people of that set who began to say, “Hey, we want to help make this

project happen!” So this extraordinary transformation of the west side

of New York started with an idea—yes, the city put in, all told, about

$160 million to brace the structure, take it down to replace it, put it back

together again so that the park could be constructed.

But when it was time for the for the next set of improvements, the group

of private investors said, “We’ve gained so much out of this, we are

going to contribute the next funds to do the next phase.” So I think that

it is important for government to look to the people around, not just to

say, “Is this okay?” or “Do you have a better idea?” but “How would you

like to engage with us to make these things happen?”

One of the things that we’ve learnt as we paid more attention to

extreme weather and storms and events that really challenge our

occupancies of certain kinds of spaces, is that the most resilient

communities are not the ones with the most financial resources, but the

ones who have the closest social networks and who could come

together and make things happen. And I think we make a mistake, those

01:08:46

of us who find ourselves in decision-making roles, when we don’t allow

an account for that enough.

Is there a characteristic of Singapore that may be compromising to

attaining the best? I think the thing that I have personally enjoyed and

personally admired most in conversations in Singapore—and I contrast

it for instance to Texas or Paris, where every citizen is very self-assured

that they are doing exactly the right thing, and probably most leaders

are too—you all benefit from a leadership. And it really is a set of

individuals, it’s not some obscure bureaucracy that engages in more

constructive self-criticism than any other set of public officials I have

ever seen. “How could we have done it better? What have we missed?

What haven't we done?”

And I think that this calls for a kind of a new contract between

community and government, for you to recognise that this self-criticality

does exist—and to a certain point, it’s really good. At the same time, as

we venture into new forms of place-making and living that the new

economy is going to be creating for us, as we all struggle to figure out

what jobs are we going to have when so many things will be taken care

of through the new inventions that we make, and we are constantly

doing that, we need to engage in a more trusting relationship. And I

don't mean, “Trust me, it’ll be fine.” That we together are going to do

experiments in which the public sector puts its money forward, the real

estate industry puts its money forward, but every bit as much, every one

of us, every one of us in this room is also an investor in the future. We

may be investing our idea, we may be investing sweat equity, we may

be investing our children's college funds in the hope that we are going

to get it back, and not lose it—I mean all of those, and we are every bit

an investor too. And so, we need to work together to be brave enough

to take on experiments, recognise that some of them may fail, but that

we will learn even from failures.

01:11:21

And more importantly, by doing pilots, by doing tests, by testing new

ideas, we’ll be able to adjust our expectations, make corrections and

move forward to find new, different and better ways of living and

working together. So I think that we need to share a commitment to the

same kind of experimentation that is going on in the creative economy

as we think about how we jointly create the places that we live and work

in together.


Well, certainly again, words of wisdom.


It’s called DIY—do it yourself.

John 01:11:55

Hello, I am John. Wonderful conversation! I wish to ask you a question

which hopefully you can give us some guides, or some wise words [on]

how to go about approaching two challenges we are facing in Singapore

at the moment—I mean there are many, but there are two that comes

to my interest. The first one, is the Smart Nation initiative.

The second one is quite diametrically opposed, which is how to go back

to the hundred-odd communities and make them more age-friendly.

More friendly to the senior citizens. The reason I say that is because at

the moment, we are still talking about walkability. But in the near future,

probably we’ll be speaking about personal mobility, because we have

already seen signs of that in our communities where there are people

moving around in their personal mobility devices. And the best example

I actually witnessed was actually in this small little community in

Cornwall called Mousehole. Well it is spelt “Mousehole” but it is

pronounced “Mozzle” by the Brits [British]. And this is where the…it is a

bit hilly, it is a seaside town [which is] always wet and windy, so the

senior people move around in their personal mobility devices which they

improvised by building a little sort of coverage around them. You know,

they zip at the side down when it’s not so windy or rainy, but when it is

windy or rainy, they zip it up. It’s a wonderful sight to see! I’ve never

seen it anywhere else in the world except in Mousehole.

01:13:37

So I want to see, from your perspective, as we go around these two things,

what are some of the things we need to bear in mind as we explore these

two challenges?


Wow, that is a really provocative question. Do you want to join me in

figuring how to go in this?


You start first.


I think the overarching thing I’m going to say and then maybe we can

get into the specifics a little bit more is, the corollary for “do it yourself”

also translates into how we get around, how we move, how we spend

our time. And I do think that the combinations of individual forms of

mobility along with the heavy channels of movement that we are used

to, give us really perfect answers. We are not, and sometimes I get very

frustrated because my friends come up to me and say, “All those big

railway projects that you have been working on all your life, guess we

don't really need those anymore because we are all going to have our

driverless car and we are going to be able to do whatever we want to do

while that’s going on.” And I’m going like, “No, no, you really aren’t

understanding.” We need those big corridors of mass movement more

than we ever did. And no matter how hard we try, we can’t each be in a

private vehicle and jam ourselves into the capacity that we have. But

what…and I never liked this term, but I think that shared vehicles give us

an opportunity to address it, which is the whole question of the last mile.

So I live in New York and Philadelphia. It’s easy for me, unless it is a

blizzard, I just walk the last mile. And so, it is not the big challenge for

me. But that is exactly where the places we have that are lower density,

that are more idiosyncratically organized, there is a new system that is

going to come into existence—and it is going to be that you get off your

commuter train, and you have [it] pre-arranged, maybe because you do

it every single day to meet three of your friends, and there is your car

and it takes you home. Or if you have [it] rearranged, you can get to go

somewhere else.

01:15:57

I think the combination of the part of our trip that we share—and we

know we are going to share with an incredible freedom of choice when

you get off that system and onto the other one—is going to persuade

people that understanding, specifically in the relatively dense cities we

live in, that all of it has to function as a system. And if I am going to make

a pitch right now, I think it is important for city planning leaders to

understand that these structures of shared vehicles are going to be

absolutely another system that needs to be thought of as utility and

available for everyone to use.

Mayor Bill Peduto of Pittsburgh is conducting in his city, a prototypical

test right now with Ford transportation. I think Google isn’t there, Uber

is there, and Zipcar is there, and he is running simultaneously with all of

them different test studies to figure out. But we will be giving up aspects

of our public realm for a system that is designed to make money, and

we need to be sure that it is working for us and that we have the means

of doing the deal that lets people use our public streets to extend this—

not just to those of us who have the credit cards or are young enough

to participate, but rather to everyone.

So I sort of took your question and I turned it around, but I think that

sometimes we forget that this is another system that is going to be

added, and it needs to be universally acceptable, or as Mayor Peduto of

Pittsburgh says, “If it’s not for all of us, it is not for us.” and I love that

statement—“If it’s not for all of us, it’s not for us.”


And I think that the great thing about the phone because I have some

relatives who are in their 80s, but due to the smartphone, they are able

to do that last mile connectivity because of Uber or Grab. So it’s a

changing world and I think you are right, we have to think about it, we

have to recognise that. Well, I think, and just to tie it back [sic to]

planning and what cities have achieved through leadership. I think we

know a lot about Chicago—Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Paris—Mayor Anne

Hidalgo, NYC [New York City]—Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg,

Philadelphia, you just mentioned. Now these are the rock stars of the

01:18:31

mayoral world. They are truly rock stars who have that vision and the

drive to implement, and they did it. Now how…of course you are a

mayor of the world as well, from all that you say. But how important is it

to have that leadership? What if a city does not have that leadership? Can

the people take over? Are there cities that have succeeded in the absence

of a strong mayor. Or does…it have to go hand-in-hand—strong

leadership, good urban planning, et cetera?


You know, I am trying to think of a place that doesn't have a mayor or

an equivalent. I do think that in places like India, where the person who

is called the mayor is really an appointee, in general is really an

appointee of federal government. I think the essential quality of being a

mayor, whether you are called the Chief Executive, whatever you are

called, this position of leadership where a constellation of people

around generally a single person are compelled not just to set the vision

but to do the really hard thing—which is to prioritise them as well, it’s

very difficult for a city to make progress without that collective. Can

other people replace it? (Pause). It’s really hard, isn’t it? There have

been points in time when corporations, manufacturing companies

created their own towns, and it didn’t really work because there wasn’t

freedom.

I think that…I guess that what I would like to see is more and more

people like John Hickenlooper, a businessman running a brewery,

deciding that he had the skill, the vision and the courage to take make

decisions for his city even though he wasn't an experienced politician.

Yes, you need a certain knowledge, but what cities need is that person

who is going to come, be a leader for a time, understand he is part of a

continuum. Once he leaves office, he probably won’t get…he or she

won’t get very much credit, but they will have fulfilled an absolutely

essential function. And I think that we need both to express our views

to government, but also to think from the point of view of what it is like

to hold that position. And if we do that, then can I ask the last question?

How many of you have it in your mind to consider running for mayor?

Think about it. (Murmurs by audience). What would make it appealing?

01:21:27

And then try to make that the way you relate to the people who have

that really incredible, terrible and wonderful responsibility, and who are

willing to be accountable and be acclaimed for their successes—and to

accept blame for what they haven’t done.


Well, certainly food for thought. Obviously, no hands out there.

(Laughs).


Thank you all.


But please put your hands together. I mean, we really had a good

session. Thank you so much, Marilyn.

[Transcript ends at 01:21:59]

LECTURE INFORMATION

TITLE

Cities Taking the Lead

SPEAKER

Prof Marilyn Jordan Taylor

Professor of Architecture and Urban Design (Current) Former Dean (2008-16), School of Design, University

of Pennsylvania

MODERATOR

Mr Michael Koh

Fellow, Centre for Liveable Cities

DATE

26 July 2017

LOCATION

MND Function Room

DURATION

1 Hour 22 Minutes 7 Seconds

Note:

Readers of this document should bear in mind that the transcript is a verbatim recording of the

spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that may be inherent in the process. The

Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the text nor the views

expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.

[ ] are used for insertions, after the interview. The information is not necessarily contained in the

original recording.

All rights in the recording and transcript, including the right to copy, publish, broadcast and perform,

are reserved to the CLC. Permission is required should you wish to use the transcript for any purpose.

clc lecture cities taking the lead

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