Cities of Opportunity 2014 (2)

Contents

1. Highlights

2. Erik Brynjolfsson

3. Miguel Zugaza

4. Shanghai

5. Steven Koonin

6. Ulla Hamilton

Cities of Opportunity 6

Beijing Berlin Buenos Aires Chicago DubaiHong Kong

Istanbul JakartaJohannesburg Kuala Lumpur London Los Angeles

Madrid Mexico City Milan Moscow Mumbai Nairobi

New York Paris Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco São Paulo Seoul

Shanghai Singapore Stockholm Sydney Tokyo Toronto

6 | Cities of Opportunity 6 | PwC

Overview

Overview | 7

London

Cities of Opportunity 6 reflects the wide range of factors contributing to successful cities and resilient urban communities

This year, we’ve organized our 10 indicators into three families that reflect the fundamen-tals of a well-balanced city: forward-looking tools such as education and technology; quality of life making cities healthy, happy, and sustainable; and the ability to pay the bills for it all. However, reorganization does not cut down on the observations to be gleaned from the 59 overall data points on our 30 cities. Here are some of the most inter-esting findings from Cities of Opportunity 6.

London claims #1 by a clear margin, with New York and Singapore close behindAlthough London takes the top spot in our rankings for the first time, it was evident from our last report that it was coming up quickly on New York, finishing a hair’s breadth (less than a tenth of 1 percent) behind New York in our last edition in a virtual tie. This year, London clearly takes the lead and is also the only city to finish first in three indicators. New York, on the other hand, while missing out on the top rank in all indicators, shows continuing superior consistency across most of the indicator categories. The other strong contender is Singapore. It scores an unexpect-edly robust third place just behind New York (four spots ahead of its previous ranking) and finishes first in two indicators. Overall, nine cities in the top 10 in our last report remain in the top 10 in this one, albeit with some natural movement up or down.

Sydney surprises, but Stockholm remains a constant contenderThe only city that was not in the top 10 in our last report but climbs into that select group in this one is Sydney, which also ranks first in two indicators measuring quality of life, sustainability and the natural environment, as well as demographics and livability. Stockholm also finishes first in two

quality-of-life indicators (tying Sydney in one of them) and seventh overall, just behind Paris. Two other cities renowned for their exceptional quality of life, Toronto and San Francisco, rank fourth and fifth, respectively, confirming their reputation.

Nobody’s perfect…but the top cities are very good at a lot of thingsThe most consistent finding in our current report, echoing previous results, is what we called in Cities of Opportunity 5 “a virtuous circle of social and economic strengths.” When “great quality-of-life factors…are balanced with strong businesses and solid infrastructure,” the resulting formula—or, better yet, network of reinforcing advantages and assets—creates and sustains resilient cities with high standards of living.

Of the cities ranked in the top 10 overall this year, Sydney is the only one that doesn’t finish in the top 10 in at least half of our indicators (it makes the top 10 in four out of 10). Most cities score in the top 10 in the majority of indicators, which proves just how comprehen-sively they attend to most of the factors that enhance (or diminish) urban life and how they actively sweat the details on virtually every aspect of urban policy and organization.

It takes a city to make a citizen and vice versaOur other major finding is that it really doesn’t matter what size a city is as long as it’s a city. Every one of our indicators has both small and large cities in the top 10, usually in a good mix. Even our economic clout and city gateway indicators, which are intuitively associated with the larger (more “promi-nent”) cities, have several smaller cities in the top ranks. More to the point, all four quality-of-life indicators have a majority of smaller cities in the top 10.


How the cities rank

Intellectual capital and innovation

Technologyreadiness

Transportation andinfrastructure

200

186

148

190

195

204

192

158

181

174

162

182

172

161

121

98

75

117

96

117

106

94

72

73

68

61

55

35

30

30

98

107

91

73

96

75

105

100

71

86

74

93

84

107

60

57

62

58

44

40

52

28

33

44

28

23

19

35

32

14

112

95

139

118

89

114

111

99

80

91

107

74

104

115

112

105

103

91

90

94

101

98

43

115

70

87

83

87

79

31

City gateway

172

137

153

98

109

143

96

151

119

93

113

105

151

125

148

141

131

93

156

137

97

88

94

68

111

76

51

57

58

34

16

13

11

8

6

London

New York

Singapore

Toronto

San Francisco

Paris

Stockholm

Hong Kong

Sydney

Chicago

Berlin

Los Angeles

Tokyo

Seoul

Madrid

Dubai

Kuala Lumpur

Milan

Beijing

Shanghai

Moscow

Mexico City

Johannesburg

Buenos Aires

Istanbul

São Paulo

Rio de Janeiro

Mumbai

Jakarta

Nairobi

21

20

19

18

17

15

14

12

10

9

7

5

4

3

2

1

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

This last fact is critical because it also illus-trates the relationship between cities and their people. After a certain level of economic success, a city’s residents demand more from municipal administrations. In fact, economic success normally is seen as (and historically has been) the basis for those improvements in urban life that lead to a city’s infrastructural development, from schools, hospitals, and police to roads, buses, and metros to libraries, parks, and environmental sustainability. While it might be the simple demographic fact of population density and expansion that turns towns into cities, it is the self-consciousness of citizens—and their proud participation in the growth of their respective cities—that urges cities to improve the quality of life of the men and women who live in them.

Parlez-vous intellectual capital?What is perhaps most impressive about Paris’s #1 ranking in intellectual capital and inno-vation this year is not so much that it finishes first; after all, it only beats out London by just under 2 percent of the final top score. What is most striking is the group that Paris rises above. Look at the top 10 again: Seven of the cities are English-speaking, and an eighth, Stockholm, is a city in which English is almost a second language (and often a first one in various fields of technology). The only other city in which the natural language of intellec-tual investigation and research is not English is #10 Tokyo (see page 18).

This is a resonant achievement that plainly refutes the notion that non-English-speakers can’t compete, intellectually or techno-logically, within the context of today’s globalization of English. It also encourages cities such as Berlin and Seoul—which just fall out of the top 10—not to mention Shanghai and Beijing or São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Clearly, these results demon-strate the value of education and innovation in themselves—as opposed to the language in which they are conducted—precisely because, as this section says, they are the most important tools of a changing world.

Think locally, connect globally…Technology’s obvious capacity to level the playing field between developed and developing cities (as well as East and West) is confirmed by the technology readiness indicator, in which Seoul ties London for first place. Much more than in our previous

indicator, we see a geographical and cultural dispersion among the top 10 here that confirms technology’s innately disrup-tive ability to upend traditional patterns of economic sway and competitiveness.

…but connect, in any caseThe city gateway indicator exemplifies the truth that, year after year, the most successful cities are those tenacious, persistent ones

that persevere through good times and bad regardless of whatever is thrown at them economically, socially, politically, or environ-mentally. And a critical reason they survive so well is because they’ve always been open to the world. London, ranked first in this indicator, is, of course, an icon of global trade and commerce. But if we look at the other nine cities in the top 10, we immedi-ately notice that six are ports—and almost all of them famous ones (see page 30). One

Overview | 9

Demographicsand livability

141

119

133

123

136

128

126

133

142

119

135

98

96

67

101

108

80

91

70

85

77

63

79

65

59

59

65

25

35

64

Cost

76

93

69

105

102

59

73

78

81

117

95

120

84

83

103

94

64

40

53

57

67

108

61

75

51

58

42

75

79

66

Ease of doingbusiness

173

194

219

182

167

142

158

197

146

167

134

172

151

160

124

100

156

98

97

72

77

126

108

51

79

79

71

66

70

62

Economic clout

118

114

95

90

92

107

77

91

82

78

64

78

88

84

77

73

76

81

115

105

86

60

53

47

59

61

58

73

50

36

Sustainabilityand the naturalenvironment

79

89

71

106

112

116

121

63

121

96

116

96

69

61

91

37

55

84

63

46

96

71

57

82

61

64

70

57

42

74

Health, safety, and security

112

110

112

130

113

108

132

86

130

112

128

100

105

98

91

53

103

42

59

32

52

51

58

35

37

33

30

25

15

79

Score

1,290

1,235

1,230

1,215

1,211

1,196

1,191

1,156

1,153

1,133

1,128

1,118

1,086

1,043

1,015

913

885

880

813

808

781

747

698

664

645

598

547

523

496

439

High

Low

Medium

Highest rank in each indicatorEach city’s score (here 1,290 to 439) is the sum of its rankings across variables. The city order from 30 to 1 is based on these scores. See maps on pages 14–15 for an overall indicator comparison.


(Paris) is located on a celebrated commercial waterway, and only two, Beijing and Madrid, are inland, although both have rivers running through them (and, in Beijing’s case, several).

The city gateway indicator means a number of things, but, before and beyond every-thing else, it means exactly what it says: city gateway. For a city to be looked upon by the world as a model, a symbol, or even a haven, it has itself to be continually looking to the world and to be open to it for that fundamental exchange of ideas, people, and commerce that, in the past as well as in the future, has always defined a transnational city.

Singapore moves people—and houses them as wellSingapore dominates among the cities of opportunity in transportation and infra-structure. It ranked first by a small margin in our previous report; it ranks first by a much larger margin in this one. Moreover, the difference in score between Singapore and #2 Toronto is great (even more than that between the Canadian city and #15 Mexico City). Singapore clearly understands the fundamental role of infrastructure in a city’s development and in its contribution to the well-being of its citizens. It is particularly telling that Singapore ranks first in the critical variable that measures the availability, cost, and quality of housing (which shows a strong, positive correlation with the overall social and economic health of a city).

The other noteworthy result in this indicator is the exceptionally wide range of cities that make up the top 10. Buenos Aires and Seoul tie for third place, followed by Paris, London, and Madrid (tied, again, for sixth place), Stockholm, Berlin, and Dubai. This is, to say the least, an unusual mix of cities, which illustrates that good infrastructure is not necessarily a product just of economic clout or global prominence (as measured by our city gateway indicator).

Whether or not small is beautiful, it’s decidedly healthy and safeAlthough we changed the variables slightly in this edition, the results in health, safety, and security have hardly changed from our last report. Stockholm finishes first, with a marginal difference, as it did previously. Sydney and Toronto tie for second, currently with a tiny difference between them, while

they finished #2 (Toronto) and #3 (Sydney) in our previous report. In the end, nine of the cities in the top 10 in the last report remain in the top 10 in this one.

What is perhaps more interesting than the actual ranking of the cities is their size. The top five cities in this indicator have an average population of just under 2.5 million. And even if we add the populations of the top 10—which includes London, Singapore, and New York—we’re still left with an average just about 1.4 million larger. The result is no less compelling for being so obvious: Larger cities, with larger populations, must strive harder, and expend more resources, to secure the health and safety of their residents.

Where health and safety lead, sustainability followsSeven of the cities in the top 10 in the previous indicator are also the first seven cities in the top 10 in sustainability and the natural environment. And, again, if we average out the populations of these 10 cities, it comes to roughly 3.61 million people—and that’s only because of one city, Moscow, whose population is almost 12 million. If we delete Moscow from the average of the other nine cities, the figure drops almost by a million to 2.69 million. Clearly, urban sustainability means just that: sustainable urban magnitudes.

Sydney finishes first in livability, but London beckons to would-be expatsDemographics and livability rounds out the quality-of-life section of our study. It is also the indicator that benefits from PwC’s global staff survey of 15,000 professionals that supplements this year’s Cities of Opportunity. Two variables are based on survey results, one of which measures responses to the question, “Of the cities in Cities of Opportunity (other than your own), which are the top three in which you’d most like to work?” London places first in that answer. But Sydney finishes a whisker ahead of London in the overall demographics and livability ranking and places third as most desired city for relocation.

As for the other most desired cities for reloca-tion, New York comes in a close second to London (41 percent to 47 percent, respec-tively)—showing professionals are powerfully attracted to the energy and opportunity of the world’s most competitive cities. Sydney,

however, comes in third most desirable at just under 28 percent with San Francisco following close behind at 26 percent—suggesting that good quality of life has a powerful pull, perhaps made even more seductive by beautiful beaches and sophisti-cated culture.

When it comes to economic success, be strong but also be competitiveThe final section of our report includes its three economic indicators. Together, they point to the synergies needed if economic growth is to lead to permanent economic strength. It’s not surprising that the top five cities in our first indicator, economic clout, are London, Beijing, New York, Paris, and Shanghai. They are all legendary cities that mirror the economic history of the urban world during the last couple of hundred years.

Not one city in the top five in our second indicator, cost, is in the top five in economic clout, however. But the three cities in the top 10 in cost and economic clout are also in the top 10 in our third indicator, ease of doing business. In addition to their success in all three indicators, these three mature cities—New York, San Francisco, and Toronto—also rebut the notion that developed cities can’t compete on costs. Finally, given that six of the cities in the top 10 in economic clout are also in the top 10 in ease of doing business, our findings validate the obvious expectation that a city in which it is easy to do business will actually do so successfully.

The texture of city life emerges beyond the numbersWhile quantitative results tell one sort of story, the human experience of leaders and thinkers at any moment in time adds a different layer of insight. This year, those we spoke with mention technology often but quickly bridge to innovation, creativity, and the need to be one with the spirit of a great city. It seems, to borrow from Dylan Thomas, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” drives our urban age.

Roll over Leif Eriksson and tell Valhalla the news!Accompanied to New York by a horde of Nordic software developers, if not blood-thirsty Vikings, Stockholm’s vice mayor

Overview | 11

for entrepreneurism, Ulla Hamilton, told us her small, sustainable city with a powerful broadband network has been “lucky in the area [of entrepreneurism] for several reasons. We have a very interesting mix of life science companies, information and commu-nications technology companies, clean tech companies, and the entertainment indus-tries.…That creates an innovative climate. Also, Swedes are very interested in solving problems, and it has become fashionable to start your own company.” One of Stockholm’s most successful startups, DICE, even brought us Battlefield 1, 2, 3, and 4. It seems the old Viking spirit is not dimmed by a pair of jeans or a business suit.

Change those bad behaviors or else!At New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), the hope of urban informatics is being explored every-where from traffic to health and safety and energy management. But according to CUSP’s director Steven Koonin, big data isn’t so much a driving force to manage cities but a tool to help people see and improve urban patterns. Koonin explains “science with a social dimension” holds the promise of urban informatics to make city life better, but it’s less a technological “fix” than a way to understand our own collective behavior and, with the help of behavioral economics, build better, more logical approaches to city dynamics.

In other words, individually, it may be hard to start healthy eating looking straight at a bowl of vanilla ice cream, but we may be able to push collective behaviors in the right direction guided by the power of information and the need to serve the common good in massive, densely populated cities where we all share in success.

Shanghai surprise: A huge city manages breathtaking growth with an eye on its heritage“A city is a place for people to live, so you need to adapt and make use of heritage,” explains Wang Lin, director of historic conservation in Shanghai. Her city’s explo-sion to 14.3 million permanent residents (nearly 24 million if migrants are included) may not have begun with as big an eye on Shanghai’s history, but, today, Lin says “the first important thing is we need to be sustain-able. We need to pay more attention to the quality of the city. We need to keep a balance between the environment and the economy. And equality is very important.” Careful management of the great city’s past—its 12 historic conservation areas—weaves right into the fabric of Shanghai’s future. Lin’s focus on Shanghai is complemented by Ron van Oers of the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for Asia and the Pacific and previously UNESCO’s World Heritage Cities Programme, who offers a global perspective.

The Prado unveils an Enlightenment approach to crisis managementDespite 60 percent government funding cuts to Madrid’s splendid museum, Prado director Miguel Zugaza tells us “our reaction was to actually invigorate our activities, do more that would appeal to more visitors.” And his approach is working. Extended hours and notable shows are attracting more visi-tors from the city, the nation and the world. In fact, Zugaza says “one of the ways we will exit the crisis in our country will come from the cultural sector. Spain has a very important asset in its cultural heritage.…It generates excellent employment. It generates appealing activities for tourists. It enriches the economic fabric around us. And it’s important that poli-ticians and society know this....Every 1,000 visitors who come to the Prado generate one job in Madrid.”

A writer embraces the “messy heteroge-neity” that defines a great citySuketu Mehta is author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, a forthcoming book on New York, as well as many articles on the favelas of Brazil. Here he pauses amid travels and teaching to explain the lure of urban life from many angles. “A young person in an Indian village moves to Bombay not just to make more money but because the city signifies freedom. It’s also a place where your caste doesn’t matter as much.” As for rich cities like London, he warns “it doesn’t matter how welcoming the city is if you can’t find an apartment there for a reasonable price, because you won’t be part of the city at all. That’s dangerous to the city’s well-being. You need the great middle class—good people who will keep faith in the city during a downturn.”

Yikes! Robots advance…Are we inno-vating ourselves out of a day job?Erik Brynjolfsson, director of MIT’s Center for Digital Business and author of The Second Machine Age, keeps his finger on the pulse of economic and technological change. Nowhere is “creative destruction” more potentially dramatic than the rise of smart machines and their ability to do our jobs. How do cities and their citizens avoid future unemployment and potential social unrest? Brynjolfsson says a number of jobs will be even more in demand: “One is creative work. The second is interpersonal interac-tions. And those are areas where cities can excel. They can stoke creativity by bringing people together…They’re attracted partly by the culture, partly by proximity to other creative people. These people will be even more in demand in the next 10 years, and the successful cities will be the ones that cultivate and attract them.”

From Stockholm to Shanghai, Madrid and to the streets of New York, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower” appears to drive our creative, urban age.

Robots are coming to a city near you and they want your job!… Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT explains how to stay a step ahead of technological unemployment

Erik Brynjolfsson is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business. In 2003, Business Week declared: “If e-business had an oracle, Erik Brynjolfsson would be the anointed.” Since then, he has sealed his reputation as one of the world’s leading experts on the economic effects of technological innovation. He is the co-author with Andrew McAfee of a new book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. Here, he shares his vision of the future and discusses how cities can ride this wave of technological change.

As the technological revolution continues, how do you see it affecting the economy and employment, both for better and worse?

When I look at the economic statistics, I see that there’s a great paradox right now. On one hand, we have record wealth. In fact, it was just reported that the United States hit a new record for net wealth: over $77 trillion. There are more millionaires and more billionaires than ever before. Productivity is at an all-time high. GDP is at an all-time high. That’s all good news. But, at the same time, the reality is that the median income is lower now than it was in 1997; the portion of the population that’s working is falling; jobs are disappearing. So, on the one hand, the economy is working very well in terms of making

the pie bigger. But, on the other hand, a lot of people are not sharing in that. And the reality is that there’s no economic law that says everyone has to benefit from technological progress and gains in productivity. It’s quite possible that some people will be made better off and others will be made worse off. When the automobile was introduced, people who made buggy whips and horseshoes lost their jobs. With every technology, some people are made worse off. Historically, that’s been a relatively small section of the population. But recently it’s gotten to be a bigger and bigger section of the population. That reflects the fact that the new technologies are so much more powerful and are affecting so many more tasks than earlier generations of technologies.

Erik Brynjolfsson at MIT.

2 | Cities of Opportunity | PwC

We’re really at a fundamental inflection point right now: you’re seeing cars that can drive themselves; you can talk to your machines, your phone, and have it understand your natural speech and carry out your instructions—not perfectly, but pretty well. There are problem-solving machines now that can make medical diagnoses or that can sift through legal documents better than lawyers can to find the most relevant information. Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, won the game show Jeopardy, which involves a very compli-cated set of tasks. In each case, technology is pushing back the frontiers of things that, previ-ously, only humans could do. As a result, we’ve seen what my co-author Andrew McAfee and I call the great decoupling of productivity from median income and employment. Historically, those trends rose together: as the country became more advanced and more tech-nologically productive, median income and employment also went up. But, starting in the late ‘90s, they became decoupled. That’s a real change. So, both the theory and the data suggest that we are in a different era now.

This digital transformation is occurring at a time when we’re also seeing a trend of massive urbanization. Is that a coincidence?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence. One of the main things that digital technologies are doing is dramatically lowering search costs and transaction costs. It makes it easier for people to find each other and share ideas. For instance, with Google’s search engine, it’s remarkable how easily you can locate a particular document or piece of informa-tion; and social networks do the same thing for people. Mostly, this is a good thing: people can connect with each other in ways they couldn’t before. But it also has some interesting effects in terms of the way that people group together. I’ve written about what we call “cyber Balkanization” or what some people call the “filter bubble.” The idea is that you can use technology to filter in the things you’re interested in—but, when you’re doing that, you’re also filtering out other things. We only have a finite number of hours in a day and a finite amount of attention, so we can’t

be friends with seven billion people on the planet. We choose who to be friends with. And we can’t pay attention to all the information that’s being gener-ated. We choose what to focus on. If people focus on particular narrow interests and associate with people who are like them-selves, then they’re not getting as much diversity of opinion; there isn’t the same kind of mix we saw when people just randomly bumped into each other without having as much control over that. And this can have some negative effects in terms of our social institutions, the variety of ideas that are generated, and political polarization. We need to think more about this—about how to manage the effect technology is having on the way people interact and the way ideas mix.

Technology is causing dramatic economic dislocation and creative destruction, yet you still describe yourself as a digital optimist. Why?

Technology is having an enor-mous effect on our ability to produce wealth, but it’s also a substitute for lots of different kinds of labor. That’s part of

the concern—that people won’t have jobs going forward, if machines can do those jobs more cheaply and efficiently. But, in the long run, I’m optimistic because I think there’s no inevitability to any particular technology trajectory. I don’t think we should try to slow down technology. However, I do think we should speed up the rate of re-skilling people and improving the way they work with machines, as opposed to competing against them. That way, we can create not just a bigger pie, which is almost inevitable with the improve-ments in technology, but also shared prosperity, with more people participating in it. The key, though, is that it’s not going to happen automatically. It’s going to happen only if we make conscious efforts to guide our society in those directions. We need to make choices that can improve those outcomes.

Such as?

We can do a much better job with education. Digitization has affected almost every industry, including media, manufacturing, transportation, retailing and finance. But it has not affected

We’re at a fundamental inflection point right now: you’re seeing cars that can drive themselves; you can talk to your phone and have it carry out your instructions. There are problem-solving machines now that can make medical diagnoses. In each case, technology is pushing back the frontiers of things that, previously, only humans could do.

PwC | Cities of Opportunity | 3

education to nearly the same extent. We’re just at the cusp of using digital technologies like massive, online open course-ware. Those technologies and many others can allow us to bring the very best educational methods and the best teachers to a much broader set of people, raising the level of learning in a lot of key areas. More important, perhaps, these digital technolo-gies will allow us to measure and understand what’s working much better than before. Digital processes are inherently more measurable. That’s why many of my students go into online advertising, where you can see who clicks and who doesn’t. You can take that same big-data approach and apply it not just to advertising or manufacturing or finance, but to education. That means we would get not just a higher level of teaching but also, a higher improvement rate, as we understand which practices are working and which aren’t. So, education is certainly one category where we can improve. There are also other areas like boosting entrepreneurship and finding better ways of matching people to jobs. If we work on those areas, we’ll be able to get more people working than would otherwise happen.

Do you see similar trends of tech-nological change and disruption outside the US?

Yes. This is a global phenom enon. With globalization—which, of course, is partly driven by technology—many segmented markets are now becoming one global market. Therefore, the same forces we see affecting America also apply in China, India, Europe, Latin America. In fact, I’d say that workers in low-wage countries are even more in the bull’s-eye of automation than those in America. If you take a look at manufacturing, for instance,

much of the routine work has left the United States for lower-wage locations. But looking to the future, that’s exactly the kind of work that robots can do best. So, if countries like China or Vietnam are relying mainly on low wages to protect themselves from automation, that’s going to be a losing battle. In fact, what we’ll see is robots taking more and more of those simple routine tasks away from humans in every country.

How important is immigration as a means of driving innovation and creativity?

The data I’ve seen suggests that a disproportionate share of the startups in Silicon Valley were founded by people born outside the US—as I was, for that matter. One of the country’s great strengths is the ability to attract creative people from all over the world to help not just with startups but with scientific breakthroughs and contributions to the arts and other fields. It’s been wonderful for the United States to bring these people together. You can make a case that it’s also good for the world because many of those people are more productive in this milieu where they’re near each other. Urban environments tend to facilitate that because creative workers can be close to other creative workers, and the speed of idea transmission is just much greater that way. Wonderful as email and other digital technolo-gies are for sharing ideas, there are still a lot of things that can really be done much better face-to-face. So, by bringing people together from all over the world who have ideas in particular areas, you can speed up idea creation; then, ultimately, those new products and scientific breakthroughs are available to all of humanity, not just to the local city or region where they were developed. I’d like to see us

do even more to increase the free flow of people and ideas across boundaries. Ideas are inside of people’s heads, and it’s often better to give people a chance to work side by side in urban envi-ronments than for them to have to communicate digitally.

So the density of cities really fuels innovation?

Absolutely. The reason I love being at MIT is because of all the amazing people I bump into here —not just at the MIT Sloan School but the Media Lab, the computer science and A.I. lab, and also the students. It’s a wonderful experience, and there’s so much serendipity that you can’t plan. If you had to schedule a meeting with somebody, it wouldn’t be nearly as likely that you’d come up with these unexpected insights as when you just run into people in the elevator or at lunch, or else-where. I have to admit that I made a big mistake ten years ago when I was on the MIT Parking Committee. As a good economist, I was looking at the fact that there’s a lot of free parking at MIT, and I thought, “Well, we should charge people the marginal cost of that parking,” which is quite expen-sive here in Cambridge, because then they’d make a rational decision about whether to come in and clutter up the parking lots or work at home. So, we raised the cost of parking. But it was one of the worst mistakes I’ve made because a lot of people now work at home. They save the cost of parking and trans-portation, but we all lose when they aren’t here as part of the milieu. When I work at home, I can be very efficient in tackling certain kinds of tasks, but I lose that unexpected benefit of bumping into other people. If I were asked to be back on that Parking Committee, I would undo that and provide subsidies


that would encourage people to be more physically close to each other. Just as at MIT, the same thing is true for cities: by getting people to be near each other, you get what economists call “externalities” from these idea-sharing events. That’s one of the great virtues of a university and of a city. Unfortunately, it’s not something that technology can easily replace—at least, not in our generation.

What happens if cities stick with their old ways, hoping that these technological and economic changes will pass, instead of adapting to this new era?

There are certainly some tempo-rary phenomena going on right now—like the Great Recession and the business cycle. But the roots of this disruption we’re seeing in the labor markets and

elsewhere are much deeper, and they have to do with some fundamental technology changes that are only going to accelerate. Those technological improvements—whether it’s self-driving cars or being able to speak to our machines—are just the tip of an even bigger tidal wave of changes that we’ll see in the next ten years. Technological change is not going to slow down; nor should we want it to slow down. It’s going to accel-erate. But what’s happening is that our organizations and institutions aren’t keeping up. And if they don’t keep up, more people will be out of work, more people will fall into poverty, and we’re going to have even more social and economic disruption. So, ignoring those technology changes is not an option. The best option we have is to try to speed up our adaptation to the

technology and to get ahead of it, and that’s going to require much more effort in thinking about urban planning, organi-zational studies and economics, both at the national and indi-vidual levels. All of those things are going to require much more attention than we’ve given them so far.

In The Second Machine Age, you argue that everyone from lawyers to truck drivers will be upended by technological change. What should individuals—and cities—do to prosper in this new environment?

What we’re seeing is that a lot of routine information-processing work is being automated, and this is increasingly happening with routine physical work as well. But a number of areas will

be in more demand. One of them is creative work, inventive work. The second is interpersonal interactions and relationships. And those are areas where cities can excel. In particular, they can stoke creativity by bringing people together. As Richard Florida [an urban studies theo-rist at the University of Toronto] and others have described, you need to attract a creative class of professionals who work together. They’re attracted in part by the culture, in part by proximity to other creative people. Those kinds of skills and those kinds of people will be even more in demand in the next ten years than they were in the past, and the successful cities will be the ones that cultivate and attract them.

But a lot of people are not that well-equipped for this brave new world of creativity.

Right. I think we’re entering a world in which more and more people—but not everyone— are going to be part of this creative class. Some of their creations will be incredibly valuable and will help billions of people; others won’t be so valuable. You go to YouTube and you see a whole panoply of people doing creative things. And that’s great. The crowd sourcing of ideas and creativity is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t mean that every single one is going to be a blockbuster or even interesting. But some of those apps and videos and other types of creative contributions will catch on. It’s very hard to predict in advance that this person or this idea is the one that’s destined for big success. Really, the best way is to let a thousand flowers—or a billion flowers—bloom. Try lots of different ideas and see which ones end up being successful. To be frank, if someone had come to me with the idea of Wikipedia ten or 15 years ago, I would

We should speed up the rate of re-skilling people and improving the way they work with machines, as opposed to competing against them. The key, though, is that it’s not going to happen automatically. It’s going to happen only if we make conscious efforts to guide our society in those directions.


definitely have said: “Don’t even bother. There’s no way that could work. There’s no economic model.” But, of course, it’s been enormously successful. Luckily for the world, MIT professors or presidents or Congress are not the ones that decide which ideas are tried and which aren’t. Instead, we have an increas-ingly open innovation system. And, as the routine work gets automated, there’s going to be more opportunity for people to contribute that kind of creativity.

John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that, around now, humans would solve the economic problem of subsistence and move on to the greater chal-lenge of living a more fulfilling life. With the coming of the second machine age, are there signs of that shift?

I think so. But Keynes was accurate in some predic-tions and off on others. He wrote a great article called Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. Interestingly, he was almost spot on in terms of what GDP per person would

be. He extrapolated the expo-nential trend, and we’re actually a little bit richer even than he predicted. He was terribly wrong in terms of how many hours he thought people would work. He assumed that when people were, by his standards, so wealthy— as we are compared to people in 1930—we would not want to work more than 10 to 15 hours a week, that we’d go fox hunting or whatever wealthy people did back then. But the reality is that many of us continue to work quite a large number of hours. There are lots of new things we can buy that the lords and ladies of the 1930s couldn’t buy. But also, we’ve had a bifurcation where there are many people looking for work today who can’t find work. Many of their skills simply aren’t in demand the way that they would’ve been 20 or 30 years ago. And that’s the big challenge we need to face now: although we’re creating a lot of wealth, we don’t have an economic system that leads to shared prosperity to the extent that most of us would like to see.

Has the world ever had a system like that?

Yes. There used to be more economic mobility in the United States. But it’s gotten harder for people who are, say, born into the bottom quintile to rise up to being middle class or above that, as they could before. Some of the things we can do about this include better education and more entrepreneurship—not because everyone is going to become an entrepreneur but because entrepreneurs are the ones that create jobs. We need to create new industries, new products, new services, just as Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did. This happened when people on farms saw their jobs disappear in earlier eras of automation. We can speed up the creation of new industries and jobs. Sadly, it’s happening more slowly now than it used to happen, and that’s a challenge for us as a society and for us as individuals. This is something the government can do more to foster.

If countries like China or Vietnam are relying mainly on low wages to protect themselves from automation, that’s going to be a losing battle. In fact, what we’ll see is robots taking more and more of those simple routine tasks away from humans in every country.


Do we need to readjust our atti-tude to fundamental questions like how much time we should spend working and how many consumer goods we should buy?

Different people will have different ways of answering these questions about values. But I think we could realistically set the goal of essentially eliminating severe poverty in the next 20 years. Jeffrey Sachs [a Columbia University professor and author of The End of Poverty] makes a very convincing case. It’s an achievable goal. It’s what Keynes described in Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. As the wealth of the globe continues to increase, the share of people in crushing poverty has been dropping quite rapidly. And if you extend and extrapolate that, you can get it down pretty close to zero in terms of the number of people who are actually, literally, starving. That would be a huge achievement for humanity, for the first time ever to elimi-nate starvation and crushing

poverty. But it’s not just about crushing poverty: it’s also about the opportunity for people to contribute more broadly. These are the challenges that we’ll need to face going forward.

It seems like we have the riches and the knowledge to achieve that, but do we have the incentives?

That’s a great point. I do think we have the wealth and the technology to achieve that. One interesting feature of a capitalist system, for all its wonders, is that it gives everybody a vote based on how much income they have. If somebody has zero income, then an entrepreneur has essentially zero incentive to provide any goods and services or to develop new inventions that are useful to that person because they can’t pay anything. Some might say that this is a bug in the capitalist system. So, if we want to put a positive weight on those people who are very poor, we have to do that through other mechanisms; we

can’t just expect a free market system to automatically take care of it. One of the reasons Bill Gates devotes so much philanthropy to things like mosquito nets is he recognizes that this is a gap in the way the current free enterprise system works. But we can work toward solving this better through philanthropy and government action. And I guess the first step is recognizing that this is something that won’t automatically fix itself.

Boston, which is just across the river from you at MIT, is a rich and developed city. But is there anything about it that you’d want to improve?

It’s great that Boston has a vibrant cultural and academic community. It’s one of our real competitive advantages, and we need to work hard to preserve and boost that further, and also to encourage more entrepreneurship. The physical infrastructure could also use a lot of improving. In part, it’s a matter of making investments in

Technological change is not going to slow down; nor should we want it to slow down. But our organizations and institutions aren’t keeping up. And if they don’t keep up, more people will be out of work, more people will fall into poverty, and we’re going to have even more social and economic disruption.

transportation. In part, it’s that we also now have the technology to make the traffic flow much more smoothly. A few weeks ago, I had a meeting in down-town Boston and it took me 30 minutes to go two miles to get there. Oddly, the other person thought we were meeting at MIT, so then it took me another 30 minutes to come back. It would have been much quicker if it hadn’t been for that traffic congestion. Having congestion pricing could do a lot to help the traffic flow more smoothly. Of course, new technologies could help with that as well. So, I think there are things we can do on the infrastructure side—and also on the education side— that would continue to make Boston a magnet for creative and intellectual leaders.

What would you do in terms of education?

We’ve been very successful with universities like MIT and Harvard, and that’s something we obviously need to try to preserve and extend. But for a lot of the rest of the population —the people who aren’t going to the elite schools—education hasn’t been as robust. The data I’ve seen suggests that, if we invested more in education at the K-12 level, that would have huge payoffs. Eric Hanushek [an economist at Stanford University] has found that taking a schoolteacher from the bottom of the distribution even just up to the middle —perhaps by firing that person or perhaps by retraining them—can add $300,000 to $400,000 of lifetime

value for each class they teach. That’s a huge return on invest-ment. Also, right now, many of our best and brightest are going into investment banking or law and elsewhere. I think it would be a wise societal choice to boost the pay of teachers so we start attracting more of the best and brightest into that area, and also to put the time and effort into improving educational methods. When we underinvest in educa-tion, both in terms of technology and in terms of direct resources, we are shortchanging our future.

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A number of areas will be in more demand. One of them is creative work, inventive work. The second is interpersonal interactions and relationships. And those are areas where cities can excel. In particular, they can stoke creativity by bringing people together.


The Prado’s relationship with Madrid … blends a full palette of artistic, cultural and economic benefits, according to Miguel Zugaza

Since 2002, Prado director Miguel Zugaza has overseen the rein-vigoration of one of the world’s greatest museums with collections spanning Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Bosch, Bruegel and Dürer. Attendance has risen by a million annually during Zugaza’s tenure—despite the economic crisis— including many more visitors from the Madrid area. Here, Zugaza discusses a museum’s responsibility to the public and its multi-faceted contribution to the city. He also tells how, in the face of drastic funding cutbacks, the Prado is continuing research and conservation and still expanding services and public access.

You have said that the Prado has grown without forgetting its reason for being. What would you define as the Prado’s reason for being?

Museums came about toward the end of the 18th century with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Museums were invented at that particular moment, and haven’t changed that much up until our days. What has changed is society and the way society uses museums. I think it’s important that museums adapt to the needs that society makes of them, but without changing their original mission. However, some museums fall into the tempta-tion of following the demands of society and become something they’re not.

Fortunately, the Prado, which is a relatively small museum in comparison with the Louvre, the Metropolitan or the Hermitage, has been able to build an expansion that lets it have a better relationship with the public and that allows it to better develop its research, conserva-tion, and restoration needs. But we do this not by going against the first basic mission of the museum. I’m going to give you an example. I’m not against new technologies, but I resist having new technologies come into that first relationship of the visitor in the museum.

A lot of advisors propose that we offer our visitors a tablet to walk through the museum and compare images with the

Miguel Zugaza in front of Goya’s The Pottery Vendor at the Portraits of Spain exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery, Australia.

Photo: Lyndon Mechielsen/newspix


painting they have in front of them. I resist that. We believe that it’s an unnecessary competi-tion. In a way, museums are a natural reserve of humanity. We have to temper the experience even if it’s understood as almost an antiquated ideal. But, it’s a unique experience with art.

What is it about Spain’s history that most inspires you when you come to work in the morning at the Prado?

The process of moderniza-tion in Spain that began at the end of the 18th century with the reign of Charles III was completely shut off by the War of Independence at the beginning of the 19th century. Instead of helping society progress toward modernity, as it did in the United States and in France, in Spain the war slowed it down. What remained in some institutions, one of which was the Prado, was the memory, the idea of the Enlightenment or the search for modernization. As a matter of fact, the Enlightenment was the historical reference point behind the Spanish transition toward democracy at the end of the 70’s, beginning of the 80’s.

Jonathan Brown, the professor at NYU, recently said, “I can’t think of any other major museum that has reinvented itself the way that Prado has.” What have you done?

Jonathan Brown, the great Hispanist that he is, has lived since the 80’s the very difficult progress toward moderniza-tion of this museum. He has witnessed the past 15 years with great enthusiasm. For the first time ever, the Prado had the full support of the Spanish administration and had a plan to expand. There was also the desire to professionalize the museum, moving it away from political maneuvering and bringing in teams of profes-sionals. I think that’s what Jonathan refers to.

What are your goals for the people who come here?

First and foremost a museum’s major mission is to take care of its collection. What the visitor ultimately looks for is the authenticity of the collection as it is presented; works of art that are unique. That is the first responsibility. Furthermore, we

have to put this collection at the disposal of a very heterogeneous public. We have to think of a public that perhaps is highly educated and specialized, and present the works in a way that appeals to them, in the same way that we have to think about the visitor who has much less information, is much less versed in the collection whether he or she comes from a small village close to Madrid or Seoul. I think that’s what we have to do.

How is Madrid different or distinguished from other cities? And, what is the relationship of the Prado with Madrid?

Madrid is, first of all, an interior city neither close to the ocean or a large river. Its identity comes from the fact that it is a capital city chosen by Phillip II to be the center of a huge empire. But one of the problems that we detected early on was that the Prado had largely ignored the city. It was a museum for the tourists. And what we worked on diligently from the beginning was to actu-ally nourish a relationship with the visitor who is closest to us, from Madrid itself.

One of the great recent successes is precisely the addition of almost a million new visitors annually from our own commu-nity. We have structured our program of exhibitions as a key to that relationship with visitors in close proximity, at the same time as we pursue research.

Do you think that the political changes in Spain in the past 30 years have helped the Prado to become more vibrant and popular?

There are two moments that are very important in the transition for the Prado and Spanish culture. And they both have to do with the relationship between Madrid and New York. The first was the arrival of the Guernica, because when it first arrived from the Museum of Modern Art it came to the Prado. And then, the second was an exhibition of Velázquez that the Prado organized in collaboration with the Metropolitan in ’89 and ’90. It was a big success in New York, but here, it almost brought traffic disorders because of the amount of success. It was a social gesture of great relevance. It was Spanish society acknowl-edging, recognizing the Prado for the first time.

Two moments that are important in the transition for the Prado have to do with Madrid and New York. First was the arrival of the Guernica from the Museum of Modern Art. Second was an exhibition of Velázquez that the Prado organized with the Metropolitan. It was society acknowledging the Prado for the first time.


The Third of May 1808 by Francisco de Goya commemorates Madrid’s resistance to Napolean’s army. “Understanding of [Spain’s] history, not just the history of its art, but also its history in full context” is among the Prado’s many rewards, explains Miguel Zugaza. Courtesy of Museo Nacional del Prado.

Because of Velázquez, because of the Prado, because of the moment in time?

It’s a mixture of the three elements. A lot of people at the time of Spanish society thought of the Prado as a museum of the Franco era. The Velázquez exhibition gave society a recognition that changed the relationship with the Prado. That’s the moment when Spain began to discuss the need for the Prado to expand because of the relationship to the needs of this new society.

What contribution does a great museum like the Prado make to a city?

No doubt the Prado has a very important cultural impact in Madrid, but also a socioeco-nomic one. Every 1,000 visitors that come to the Prado generate one job in Madrid, symbolizing the economic fabric that surrounds the Prado. There’s also an element of pride in the city of Madrid toward the Prado. It’s almost a patriotic

feeling the city of Madrid and the country itself have toward the Prado because we’ve been able to maintain the collection of the Spanish monarchy with full integrity.

Yes, yes.

President Manuel Azaña, who was President of the Republic in the 30’s, said that the Prado was more important than the Republic and the Monarchy together.

I felt that pride when I was handed an interview with you in La Razón at the hotel.

When the Spanish transition to democracy was initiated, only the Prado existed. Shortly there-after, the Guernica arrives in this building close to us. Then there was a planned decision to enrich the Prado with a series of institu-tions around it: the Reina Sofia, and the Thyssen Museum.

Are you happy with the Guernica at the Reina Sofia or should it hang in the Prado?

My personal opinion is that it was Picasso’s wish that it be at the Prado. But right now it’s invigorating a very good collec-tion of contemporary art at the Reina Sofia.

You have said we must encourage the public to have a conscientious, more mature relationship with the museum. Describe that relationship and how you accomplish it?

I’m always impressed that any person who appears at the door of the Prado, right before coming into the museum, has taken a very important, a very relevant decision—which is to come into a museum and have a personal experience with works of art.

Many years ago when we began here, people used to criticize the groups that came from the far corners of the world and the way they experience museums. But I reminded them that these


tourists had taken a flight thou-sands of kilometers, taken a part of the little vacation they have every year to come to the Prado, to come and see these works, and that we should acknowledge and recognize that.

I remember telling people of Madrid and Spaniards in general, “You criticize these tourists, but you have the museum right next to you across the street. You understand its prestige as an institution, but you don’t come in to see what’s inside. You’re not valuing it in the same way.” And the museum can offer many things: under-standing of your country’s history, not just the history of its art, but also its history in its full context. It’s a cosmo-politan museum also. That is, the culture is actually European rather than purely Spanish.

And that’s why I think we should attempt to bring the Prado to the public, at different levels. There’s one limitation that I think the Prado has, and Madrid museums have with respect to, for example, British museums. And it’s the payment of the entry ticket. I think it’s a bit cynical on our part that we want to open the Prado to everyone, but then, the visitor has to pay for a ticket to enter. If it is a public museum and we would like to invigorate that relationship with the public, one shouldn’t have to pay to come in. That’s why we looked for a mixed format so a lot of groups can actually enter free. This includes young people up until the age of 25, people who are above 60, and also every day the two last hours are free.

the Spanish administration by our own means—by having a stronger relationship with society, and asking the visitor to pay a slightly greater share. We’re a very simple enterprise.

At a time of economic difficulty, what do you say to the public sector, to private philanthropists to convince them the Prado is a priority?

I actually think that one of the ways we will exit the crisis in our country will come from the cultural sector, in the manage-ment of our patrimony. Spain has a very important asset in its cultural heritage. And we know how to manage this Spanish heritage very well. It gener-ates excellent employment. It generates appealing activities

the four percent it does now. That should be the objective.

If you knew in 2004 or ’05 the economic crisis was coming, would you have said to architect Rafael Moneo, “No, let’s not build the new wing?”

No, I wouldn’t. The Prado needed this extension to better present its collections for the needs of visitors. As a matter of fact, the Prado’s extension has not been capricious in any way. It was very much needed. What we could have done, had we known, is perhaps stop building unneces-sary projects such as airports in Spain that have no airplanes or museums that have been built in a very artificial manner and that have no contents.

A few years ago, the MoMA presented a project regarding development of buildings for the great talents of architecture in Spain—spectacles of buildings that were to be built throughout Spain. But it was almost like a sickness, a feverish moment. Like the Spanish Flu that scared everybody.

Like the “Bilbao effect,” every city building a museum to put itself on the map?

Bilbao is actually the only exception.

Because it was the first one?

It was the first one, but it was also an example of a project well done, very well done, that cannot be duplicated anywhere else.

Right.

Bilbao symbolizes the success and the failure of the globalization of museums. As a matter of fact, the Guggenheim itself has tried to replicate this idea in other places in the world, and it hasn’t been able to. … But I’m from Bilbao, I don’t know if you know.

Museums are a natural reserve of humanity. We have to temper the experience even if it’s understood as almost an antiquated ideal. It’s a unique experience with art.

How have you adapted to the economic crisis?

In the past three years, the Prado has lost 60 percent of the funds that were allocated from the administration. At this point, what the Spanish administration gives to the Prado allows us to pay half of the staff’s salaries. But our reaction was to actually invigorate our activities, do more that would appeal to more visi-tors, and in that way, generate greater revenues. We’ve readjusted the program of the museum with the idea of being fully able to work within the $42 million year-round budget by 2016. By that I mean we will generate what we have lost from

for tourists who can enjoy it. It enriches the economic fabric around us. And it’s important that politicians and society know this, and value it as well.

The crisis undresses a country. The crisis leaves you naked. When you take away all the accessories, all the jewels, what it will leave Spain with is the nucleus for the future, the strength of what it has. And no doubt, one of the great things this country has is its cultural heritage. I think that once we come out of this crisis, that every-thing that has to do with culture in Spain could generate almost six percent of GDP rather than


You said in La Razón, “A muse-um’s profitability is not measured by the number of visitors.” How should one measure a museum’s true profitability?

I’m not sure what to measure. I think there are certain indicators that are important to understand the reality of an institution. And one of these is the number of visitors. Within the number of visitors one can also see different elements. For example, maybe one year there are less visitors coming into the museum, but there’s a higher number of visi-tors that were gained from the community close to you, and that’s a success. And an impor-tant indicator of the benefits of your museum is the number of works that have been restored that year, and the publications that are edited or published by the professionals, the curators in the museum. Indeed, I don’t think you can measure the benefits or the success of a museum by its visitors.

The media likes that indicator. But it shouldn’t upset us. Nobody dares do this with a hospital. Nobody talks about, “Oh, the

Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid has had 100,000 more visitors, more sick people than a year ago.”

You said despite the budget cuts, the last thing to suffer as long as you are director of the Prado will be research and conservation. Why is that?

The first responsibility the museum has is to preserve in the best conditions possible a collection for the future. And the museum has to continue the research on its collection at all times. A museum can then literally just open its doors to allow people to come and see its collection. The Prado has been doing that since it was opened for the first time in 1819, but apart from that, what you can do is showcase the collection, and preserve the intellectual and material wellbeing of that collection by enriching it the best way possible.

And we’ve actually looked with great interest at the [Philippe de] Montebello years at, at the Metropolitan [Museum of Art in New York]. In his very long

tenure [1977-2008] as director of the Metropolitan, everything was negotiable except relinquishing intellectual academic excellence vis-à-vis the collection. And that’s where we can’t fail.

We’re living in a funny time. You can go into certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York or Berlin, and it seems 90 percent of the people will tell you they’re artists. Do you think painting and drawing and sculpture will die away as new forms of expression take over geared to the mass experience?

Thinking about the develop-ment of art in the 20th century and simplifying it greatly, there are two artists who had really shaken the foundations and turned it around. The first is Marcel Duchamp, who said that anything could be art starting with this installation that you have placed between us here.*

And then, the German artist, [Joseph] Beuys, who said not only that everything is art, but within us, everyone is an artist and has a soul to create art. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, a bad

The Prado had largely ignored the city. It was a museum for the tourists. And what we worked on diligently from the beginning was to actually nourish a relationship with the visitor that is closest to us, from Madrid itself.

* Mr. Zugaza refers to a microphone placed in a glass to record the conversation.


notion to think that we can all as individuals think of ourselves passing through life, our exis-tence, in a way that could be creative in itself. Not only to look at beauty and to amass beauty if one has a means to do so, but also to acknowledge our own existence as creators.

But I think of Albrecht Dürer sitting there for thousands of hours, or Henri Cartier-Bresson pre-visualizing a photograph and patiently waiting for the decisive moment. The idea of investing time and labor to perfect craft into art seems not modern.

That’s almost like an occasional defect of the way artists are trained nowadays. Baudelaire used to say of Manet, that he was a genius amongst the decrepi-tude of painting. He spoke of Manet as if saying he was the last one. And the craftsmanship of painting and drawing is dying. It’s dying every day as we speak. And it’s interesting that at the same time that we’re seeing the death of this craftsmanship, it’s when society is demonstrating its greatest need to see great art.

What does quality of life mean to you in a city?

For me, quality of life has a lot to do with efficient, good manage-ment of the public services, where you have good alterna-tives for education, for health, good opportunities to relate with art and culture, within a secure environment. And if, on top of that, it’s an ideal city if you have a good climate, and the society is fun and not lazy, and people want to reinvent themselves and be dynamic. Small Spanish cities have actually developed rather well, this idea of quality of life.

The AVE [high-speed train] is here also. You can go anywhere easily and pleasantly.

Yes. The communications, connecting with the world. And another factor that’s important is that it’s economically viable as a citizen to live in that city. And I don’t know if Madrid, in that sense, is competitive enough. I think it’s a rather expensive city.

It’s cheap compared to New York, but it’s probably expensive compared to Berlin.

Yes, Berlin is very cheap.

Looking back 20 or 30 years from now, what would you want to have accomplished at the Prado?

I think any director will tell you that one of the things that gives great pride in what he or she did during their tenure is the acquisitions that were made; the value you’ve added to the collection. I see myself with my grandchildren some day walking through the Prado and looking at Pieter Bruegel’s “The Feast of St. Martin,” or different works that have been acquired in the past few years, and looking at them with certain pride. Interestingly enough, when Philippe de Montebello left as director of the Metropolitan, an exhibition was set up by all his curators of the acquisitions that had been made during his tenure.

In the past three years, the Prado has lost 60 percent of the funds that were allocated from the administration. But we will generate what we have lost by our own means—by having a stronger relationship with society.


One more question that comes from one of your former curators, who said, “Miguel is like a great orchestra director. He knows how to talk to everyone, the poli-ticians, the administrators, the curators, the educators. Miguel Zugaza gets the best out of all of them, and he gets what he wants, too.” What is the secret?

I have the difficulty of not being able to speak in several languages. But I am given the credit for being able to speak to different people. I think a director has to be a good connector. He connects a good sponsor with a good project that a curator is developing, for example; or the museum itself with different sensibilities, for instance, amongst politicians. I feel comfortable doing this. But then somebody once told me having the product I have makes it all that much easier.

If you were not at the Prado, is there another museum that would be a challenge to you?

After the Prado for somebody who works in art, there really isn’t anything else. You have to think about doing something completely different.

It’s a beautiful museum. It’s very intimate compared to the museums in New York.

There is this human scale to it, yes. That’s one of the most flat-tering comments we’ve had.

Museums in New York have gotten very crowded and often very consumerist. Perhaps the Brooklyn Museum retains the most human scale.

I love this museum. It’s wonderful.

It is one of the best to me. But others require almost a fistfight to get near the art.

The Metropolitan, once you leave aside the Egyptian Galleries and the Impressionists, there are certain spaces within the Metropolitan that are almost always empty.

Yes, and pleasant.

The Met is actually one of the museums that gives me the greatest pleasure to walk through. It embodies this idea of a museum that is interested in absolutely everything that has to do with human creativity. You actually are very lucky to live in a city that has the Metropolitan.

www.pwc.com/cities

www.pwc.com


Every 1,000 visitors that come to the Prado generate one job in Madrid. There’s also pride in the city toward the Prado. It’s almost a patriotic feeling.

Urban conservation takes hold as skyscrapers rise across a powerful, new Shanghai

… Wang Lin and Ron van Oers explain a young city’s coming of age as they take afternoon tea on the historic Bund

Wang Lin, director of the historic conservation department in Shanghai’s Planning and Land Resources Administration Bureau and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard, has been one of the driving forces in the city’s master planning and redevelopment for 15 years. Ron van Oers served for 10 years coordinating UNESCO’s World Heritage Cities Programme in Paris before assuming his current role as vice director of the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for Asia and the Pacific based in Shanghai. Together, they combine insight into Shanghai’s evolution with a wide perspective on the world’s great cities.

To set the context, how would you define urban preservation? Shanghai is an amazing city, amazing in energy and in history. But its growth seems to defy the notion of keeping anything as it was.

RvO: Preservation is a word typically used by Americans, but conservation in this regard is a better one. Conservation is actually more a collective of processes to retain and reveal cultural significance. Urban preservation, from my point of view, is a contradiction in terms because the urban condition by definition is changing all the time—it’s dynamic, it’s in flux—and preservation is strictly keeping something as it is. Urban conservation would be more the process of trying to retain cultural significance, which doesn’t mean that you have to

freeze things. You can reveal cultural significance while you are actually adapting to the current context. I think that is what we are experiencing in Shanghai.

WL: I agree. When I got my doctorate degree in preserva-tion of Chinese historic cities, we talked about the difference between preservation and conservation. Conservation includes preservation, but is more than that. It means we can reuse a building or improve it, add new life or new facilities. Yes, and revitalize it. That’s more than preservation, especially when you use the word with urban because a city is a place for people to live.

Urban conservation is not to put a building into a museum, or put a city or streets or

Ron van Oers and Wang Lin sit across from the sprawling Pudong district and atop Three on Bund, the city’s first steel-frame structure, built in 1916.


neighborhoods into a museum just to show the original. Maybe one or two buildings or one or two streets can remind people of the cultural tradition. But the most important thing is culture. Culture means you’re not only engaging to remember it, but you need to make use of it, to create a new history of the future. That’s very important, especially in the city.

Why should a city that’s growing as fast as Shanghai say conservation is a priority? What are the benefits?

RvO: For big cities, and certainly if you’re a really big city like Shanghai with 23 million people, I think a keyword is diversity— diversity of work places, resi-dential areas, choices where you can spend your money. And Shanghai is the top city in China where the best salaries are meted out. So, how are you going then to pump that money back into the local economy?

One of the problems Hong Kong is experiencing is that people are making a lot of money but there is very little oppor-tunity for the people there to spend it. So Hong Kong is investing heavily in trying to get big cultural institutions and museums into the city, because people in their leisure time have very few options to spend that money, aside from shopping.

It is partly for tourism purposes, but partly also for the people that are living and working in the city so they can actually have a pleasant time out of office. I think conservation is part of offering diverse choices in work, leisure and where you want to live. For me, as a foreigner who came to Shanghai a year and a half ago, I have a multitude of different neighborhoods where I can choose the type of living that would most engage me. I don’t necessarily have to go into a resi-dential tower, although Shanghai

is full of residential towers. I can actually, if I want to, live in a mansion-style apartment from the nineteenth century.

Shanghai practically has got the whole range of residential styles on offer and that makes Shanghai stand out against many other cities, like Hong Kong or Shenzhen. They just have residential towers, there is actually no choice. That is the way that you live and that is the way you earn your money, and you go over the border, to Macao or to another place, to spend and to see something different.

People living and working in Pudong, they just take the ferry ride to Puxi, and I think for them it is wonderful to be working there in one of the top offices and earning a big salary and a five-minute ride later they’re in a totally different neighborhood where it’s almost like being in a different country.

Of course, coming from Europe, it’s so normal to spend one or two hours traveling to be in completely different surroundings and a different environment, whether it’s language, culture, or cuisine. I think Shanghai to a certain extent is emulating that. Within a large urban area of 23 million people, you can actually travel around and have different experiences within a day. And the practice of urban conserva-tion contributes to that diversity of experiences.

WL: I totally agree with Ron that diversity is one of the very big issues for a Green City. Three aspects I would say will be very important for a Green City. For instance, first I think culture. Culture will be very important, because when you respect culture you will retain the character of your city— especially when we talk about historic preservation, because buildings are very important, or the streets are also important, like name cards that show the history of the city.

Tea and conversation.


Yes, I feel that.

WL: The third aspect is that Shanghai is a city that’s open-minded, with open-minded people. The Shanghainese are very curious. And they respect other people’s business. They will talk, discuss, but they would not quickly condemn—because Shanghai is not a traditional city. They’re open, not closed.

That’s what makes this city so diverse compared with other cities, because, for example, in the central part of Shanghai we have defined 12 historic conservation areas. Each area has its own character. When you go inside Hengshan-Fuxing Historic Area, it’s a different character than when you go into the Bund Historic Area and its waterfront, for instance. So I think it’s culture—linked to the quality of life and the openness of the people.

Shanghai reminds me of New York and Paris—great cities that are parts of their nation but just as much open cities that are parts of the world.

WL: Yes. I think Shanghai is that kind of city.

Who are the various stakeholders you consider in terms of conservation and how do you balance interests among govern-ment planners, developers and communities?

WL: That’s a big question. I should say that generally speaking, maybe 20 years ago, not so many people paid much attention to historic preservation in Shanghai. I think it’s almost the same in the US.

Very much—certainly in New York. San Francisco was paying attention to preservation decades ago. New York only recently.

WL: Actually we have destroyed some very good buildings during the past phase of rapid develop-ment of Shanghai. We have to say that. But very fortunately we

have some experts, professors and historians and also the right persons who work for the city including some directors in the Urban Planning Department and mayors of Shanghai. Now, more and more people have begun to pay attention to historic preservation.

Compared with most Chinese cities Shanghai is a very young city. Because when we talk about historic cities, there are some more than 3,000 years old. But Shanghai is just 170 years old, when it was declared a city. Even so, Shanghai was among the first cities in China where the city government began to pay attention to historic preservation. In 1986 we applied for inclusion in the list of National Historic Cities of China. We were the first modern city to be included as a historic preservation city. We have the first legally listed preser-vation buildings, especially those of the Bund and several other buildings. [The Bund is a river-side area of Shanghai popular with residents and tourists for its architectural mix.] I think we had more than 61 buildings listed to be preserved at that time.

So, I should say that culture is a very important issue for people and that you can see the differ-ence—the way people walk, the way people think, and the way people live. So, that’s the sense of place offered by the city.

That’s the reason why you will like Shanghai immediately—it’s a special city combining West and East together very well. It has its own history, our history. It’s a city that has its beginnings from the time of the concessions, from the British Concession and French Concession, then public concession, and this is combined with western and eastern people living here. It’s a commercial city with a culture that totally mixes West and East. Its culture is very important to Shanghai.

The second aspect I think is quality. Shanghainese have a deep desire for the delicate quality of life, and quality of life does not only mean money. It’s more than that—much more. So, that’s another character of Shanghai.

The first important thing is we need to be sustainable, not just having the most rapid speed of construction. We need to pay more attention to the quality of the city. We need to keep a balance between the environment and the economy. Also equality is very important. We will pay more attention to low-income persons.Wang Lin


So the city of Shanghai itself said this is valuable to us?

WL: Yes. The city government, the Urban Planning Authority, we work together with profes-sors and some experts on what and how to list, and then we show this to the public and then just send it to the national government and get it approved.

At the very beginning, because not so many people paid atten-tion to historic preservation, we just listed it and got it approved by the government. At the time this was not so complicated. But now we have more than 3,000 buildings as listed heritage buildings. This year we have begun to collect even more historic building to be listed. So, now we have a very serious process, because the stake-holders, the government, the owners, or any people who live in the city can give their opinion about it if they do or don’t want to preserve. But, of course, the Historic Conservation Committee makes the final decision. Consultation is part of the legal process now.

But generally speaking, in China we do not need to get permission from the owner, so if we think this building or this district is valuable from the general point of view, we have a process that we can just define and list it as

a historic building or historic district. That’s the privilege of the government.

Do you involve the people in the community in what’s going to happen?

WL: Certainly. We will show people before we define it and collect their opinion or ideas. It’s a legal process, we need to do that now and we will put it on the website or put it in the paper and collect opinions of the people. It’s a process we need to do now.

RvO: What I find fascinating in this story is, like you said Lin, Shanghai is relatively a very young city, I mean, barely 200 years old as a city. But it is really at the forefront of conservation thinking, urban conservation thinking. So that is of course a very fascinating duality— a young city, but very advanced in its urban conservation thinking, whereas other cities that have a legacy of 2,000 years have not been able to articulate as well as Shanghai does the importance of urban conserva-tion for the further development of the city. And one may be inclined to think that that is prob-ably because of an early, much open influence, when the city was open to many outside ideas and influences.

The fact that the government can actually list buildings and neighborhoods without the consent of owners is a very European thing. In France and in Holland it’s the same—owners are not asked, just informed. However, the government is obliged once they list buildings to provide some sort of incentive for the owner to maintain and conserve the building.

In my mind this advanced thinking in urban conservation is very likely coming from an intense exchange with European partners on this subject, and the French are very active in Shanghai. Tongji University has a longstanding working rela-tionship with some of the finest conservation institutes in Paris and in France. So I think that much of the thinking of how to deal with urban conserva-tion in the city has probably been exchanged and discussed with European partners. That is bringing another fascinating aspect to the table, which I think counts for the whole of China, because that is how the national leadership looks towards the development of China. China has made a great effort in studying many different systems and many different contexts and situ-ations in order to see what is the most useful to adapt and further develop in the context of China’s history and culture.

I read somewhere that the postal services are taken from the Dutch model because the Chinese had studied various postal services around the world and considered that the Dutch was the most efficient. Similarly, for railroads and other types of services, as well as the various aspects of managing societies and managing the city. China is adopting very much the American model in that a city must not be impeded too much to stymie growth. That is a typical American idea, but they’ve taken urban conserva-tion models and approaches from Europe, not from America. To me that’s the fascinating thing of China—they combine things to create a whole new context. So it’s not that every-thing is American, or everything is European, or everything is Asian. Only some things remain distinctly Asian.

What I feel is that, for instance, relating to your question about who is involved in urban conservation, the West is always talking about stakeholder participation and participatory planning. If I’m going abroad and I’m telling what type of work I’m involved in, in Shanghai and in China, there is a huge skepti-cism about public participation. In the West there is an almost universal belief that public


because they think it is another political slogan. But with the growing middle class, can you expect anything else? People have become far more vocal about what they want.

WL: I would like to give an example about what you said. Actually, lilong is a very typical Shanghai-style residential building . There are a lot of lilong in very bad conditions. In lilong each unit was origi-nally designed for one family, but when you go inside a gate, actually at least four to five, sometimes seven families, live in one unit. So, the living standard there is very low. Because of the history of China, people do not own them. The government owns the house, they just lease it to the family for very, very low prices—almost nothing. But if you want to upgrade all these buildings, it’s very difficult finan-cially, so the people are writing letters each year to the govern-ment, because there’s no facility, there’s no toilet in their own building, they only have a public toilet in the whole neighbor-hood. So, it’s a bad situation for the 21st century. People who live there want to move out.

Actually, when they really move out, they will be given at least two to three times the amount of space of their current living area. This means their living situation will be much better, but some-times there’s a big argument prior to that. When the govern-ment really tries to move them, some of them said no, sometimes to extract more compensation money, sometimes to settle old disputes and sometimes they did not want to move from the central part of the city. So now we have a democratic process that means we will ask people to vote if they really want to move out or not. The process will be going in two stages. First, there is a general stage to inquire if they want to move out. If more than 90 percent of the families agree to move out and rede-velop, then, they will go into the second stage. They will be given very detailed information—where they will be moved and what the conditions will be like, the amount of space of the new neighborhood, or the compensa-tion money they will be paid if they move out. All the detailed information will be shown to the neighbors and to the public. And the people will vote again. This time, if more than 85 percent of the families agree,

the government will redevelop the area. If less than 85 percent agree, the area will not be rede-veloped. If not, the government will stop it. It’s a real process in which people decide for them-selves if they want to move out or not. It’s really progressing.

RvO: And if you allow me, I would like to add to this very significant fact that to me as a technician, I’m not an adminis-trator in terms of government function, but as a technician thinking about these issues and visiting the old city and the old town, the parts that still exist here in Shanghai, I’m being confronted with a key question that is so difficult to solve, which is what Lin is explaining. If you go to these old neighborhoods my thinking and my training is let’s try to renovate and reha-bilitate these areas, because these are wonderful areas. I mean, very typical of an Asian context in terms of organization, very densely packed and rich in social fabric. However, each unit, which should house one family, has seven families, so how are you going to deal with the renovation of an area where six-sevenths of the population cannot be brought back? And how do you pay for such an intervention?

Shanghai is probably the most advanced of any city in China in asking local people their opinion and trying to find solutions that are the optimum for many stakeholders, meaning some neighborhoods can stay, but some have to go.Ron van Oers

participation doesn’t exist in China—everything is a top down approach, and a heavy-handed top down approach. That’s why it is so important to talk to Lin and to other colleagues. Public participation has a different form than in the West, but it is of course there. Chinese people are very vocal and they are very much aware of their rights, and they express that at various occasions and in various ways.

But of course China is still very much under development, so the sophistication of how these processes actually work out in the field needs a little bit more time, a little bit more matu-rity, but it is certainly there. And I think the more you go to the south in China the more expressed it is. There is a real dividing line going from north to south. Guangdong province and Guangzhou city are very much expressing their own opinions and the newspapers there are the most progressive in the country.

WL: Generally speaking, we are going to democracy. We are making progress.

RvO: The people in the West will not easily accept and believe that


Of course, there are also regular capitalist forces at work in the city. At the moment that a neigh-borhood is slated for renovation, there are obviously some people who say, “listen, we can also make some money out of this if we completely redevelop it.” So there is a type of building which makes money for developers, which solves the problem for the city government to upgrade the local standard of living, and they can also bring back the same amount of people, or even more, because the city has to accommodate an increasing number of people coming in from the countryside.

Those are the forces that we should be looking at when we are talking about urban conser-vation, in trying to understand the type of transformations that we are witnessing in the city of Shanghai. There are many forces at work and obviously an optimum needs to be found between upgrading of neighbor-hoods, providing everybody with a decent standard of living, and

accommodating an ever growing number of people who move into the city.

This is how we have to under-stand the transformations that we see going on. And still I think that Shanghai is probably the most advanced of any city in China in dealing with these matters, in asking local people their opinion and trying to find solutions that are somehow the optimum for many stakeholders, meaning some neighborhoods can stay, but some have to go. But it’s not easy.

I was thinking that conservation might be easier in a developed city with more money and less growth. But you seem to be saying it’s a priority here also.

WL: I should not say it’s easy because historic preservation always means money. It means that you need to have a lot of money because you need to make this building more useful for modern life, for today’s life. So you need money to reno-vate the historic building, to

revitalize it. From our point of view the Europeans and the Americans have already done a lot of good things and they have set a really good example in historic preservation. What we do is try and learn from them.

But listed buildings create a burden. How can we really preserve them? We cannot just move surplus people out, or make these buildings into museums. But even if a museum, you would still need money to maintain it. So that’s a reason to opt for redevelopment, they want to just destroy the building and make a high-rise building. It’s much easier and you spend less money if you destroy it and build a new one. It’s cheaper than when you renovate or revitalize an old building. But that creates a lot of conflicts between the experts, the govern-ment and the developers. I think for Shanghai city we need to get more policy for historic preservation. We need to provide financial incentives for historic preservation—gener-ally speaking, we do not have

that. Maybe we can just embed that into a policy regulation. For example, now we begin to try to explore the incentive of TDR.

RvO: That is Transfer of Development Rights. So, if you have a one-story historic building where the owner actu-ally would like to demolish it to build a tower, then he can be compensated for the fact that he cannot develop this particular lot with the historic building on it, but through another lot he owns somewhere else, where he can develop more floors. It’s called Transfer of Development Rights, or TDR.

WL: Exactly. We try to figure out a special policy for historic pres-ervation to encourage people, not only from the cultural perspective but also from the economic perspective.

I think most important is that the government itself cannot have all the burden. This kind of thing is to be done by collaboration among all the stakeholders—like owners, developers, and NGOs and organizations like that. We try to encourage that.

And you’re working with colleagues from around the world.

WL: Yes. We work together with Tongji University here in Shanghai, and we also work together with some experts from Paris and the School of Architecture of Paris. We work together. When I was in charge of the detailed planning of the inner city area, we tried to learn a lot of things from other cities how to control development. We defined regulations for each building block in the historic area, so when people renovate

Because urban life keeps changing, we not only control the historic buildings, we also control what happens in the area. You need to retain the traditional fabric, the scale and the street pattern. So, it’s very important to control new construction.Wang Lin


they know how they should preserve, and which buildings could be demolished. That’s very important for the historic areas.

Also, we make regulations that control the scale of the building and the fabric of the street in each area. We not only control the historic buildings, but also the new construction: it means new construction will meet the fabric, meet the sense of place of the surrounding area.

In other words, aesthetically and practically the new buildings will—

RvO: Fit into the historic context.

WL: Yes. My department is called the Historic Conservation Department. Actually we also control new construction.

Why and how does that work?

WL: That’s what we talked about earlier, urban conservation is not preservation per se. Because urban life keeps changing, we not only control the historic buildings, we also control what happens in the area. Some build-ings are historical, which you can preserve, but some buildings you need to destroy because they

need to be renovated and they are of no historical or cultural value. But you need to retain the traditional fabric, the scale and the street pattern. So, it’s very important to control new construction. Although the area keeps changing, it still feels that you are in a historic area.

It seems like you’re thinking 40 or 50 years out in the future.

WL: We learn from the West.

RvO: But I think that there is an important addition to that, which is that the political system there favors long-term thinking. Our political system doesn’t favor long-term thinking.

WL: Really?

RvO: With elections going on every four years the effectiveness of a person is reduced, whether it’s the president of the United States or a mayor is elected for four years, because the first year you need to adapt to being in office. Then, the second and the third year you can probably be effective in whatever you decide to do. And the fourth year you need to focus on your re-election. So, effectively people can only do two years of real, meaningful work in terms of

setting up policies and influencing certain trends, whereas China’s president can reasonably assume that he has 10 years to effectively do something.

WL: Actually I should say that it’s very fortunate for Shanghai that we have very good mayors. They have paid a lot of attention to historic conservation. For the whole of Shanghai the adminis-trative boundaries combine a total of 44 districts. Each district has its own character and planning.

But our department that belongs to the city government oversees all planning. And especially, we control all the building activity in these historic districts—not only their historic preservation, but also the new construction in all these areas. So we are much more powerful, a right that the mayor has issued to us. So that’s the reason that all these areas have been very well preserved, generally speaking.

RvO: So, you’re controlling the 44 districts?

WL: Yes.

RvO: The important point that we have to take into account is

the current process of further decentralization. What I’m saying is that with decentraliza-tion the cities are changing very rapidly, because many of the city government officials engage actively in the city development process. These people are in their seat usually for four years only and then they get promoted to another place and this promo-tion often happens based on how much development has been brought to the area that they were responsible for. That is one of the critical things that I run into regarding the imple-mentation of the Historic Urban Landscape approach in China. Instead of slowing down, the pace of development is going too fast, with the decentralized system favoring promotion based on how much change has been brought about. This is auto-matically in conflict with urban conservation. How can we create the conditions by which govern-ment officials in power will take local culture and heritage into account when making deci-sions about development, while avoiding being penalized when promotions are meted out? That is the critical issue that we are facing here in China.

What’s fascinating is that Shanghai is a relatively young city, barely 200 years old, but it is really at the forefront of conservation thinking. That is a fascinating duality: young city, but very advanced in urban conservation practice.Ron van Oers


WL: I think centralization is very good for urban conservation. It’s benefiting from it. I totally agree with that.

As a planner and conservationist, do you think about building Shanghai’s “soft power” including heritage and cultural richness to attract and keep the people who will build the city’s future?

WL: In 1999 I got my PhD and went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Administration Bureau, which is called the Planning Authority. There I participated in the development of the Master Plan of Shanghai for the next 20 years, meaning from 1999 to 2020. We set a goal for the city for the next 20 years, which included the function of the city, the layout of the city and the transportation, the infrastruc-ture and also including historic preservation and residential and industrial development.

So, we had a blueprint for the city, which we presented to the public. Then according to the Master Plan we developed detailed plans. That’s the tradi-tion for any Chinese city—they need to have a Master Plan and then work through it. In 2005, when I was the director of the Master Plan Department, our Planning Authority began to review what we had already done according to the approved Master Plan.

It’s a sort of a review, mid-term review.

WL: Indeed. But actually we have reached most of the goals set for 20 years already. We have done more than that. So we began to prepare for the new Master Plan for Shanghai, to see what is most important for the next 20 or 30 years. We have to do a lot regarding the physical construction for the city to meet the needs of urbanization of the country.

People come here?

WL: Yes, they come here. I think the city sometimes is not ready. We cannot catch up with the speed of the immigration. Each year we have 500,000 to 600,000 more people added to the city

RvO: So, six million over the last 10 years?

WL: Yes. How can you build for that?

Where are they coming from? From China?

WL: All over China most of them, but also some foreigners.

RvO: But foreigners are a minor trickle in the six million. Just to clarify, Lin, am I correct in understanding that what was planned for 20 years was actu-ally achieved in 10 years?

WL: Yes, generally speaking.

RvO: Shanghai development is going so fast: it went twice as fast as planned! All the benchmarks were already met, you say?

WL: Well, we already met most. We have to revise the Master Plan, which means that over 60 percent of the set targets have been reached, some overreached. Two-thirds of the aims for 2020 we have reached already. We aimed to reduce the population in the inner city of Shanghai, but we failed. We failed.

Looking forward what are the challenges you still want to address?

WL: That’s exactly a question that we posed—what we need to do for the next 20 years. I think the first important thing is we need to be sustainable, not just having the most rapid speed of construction, because we do not pay much attention to the quality of the construction. We need to pay more attention to

Looking down from Three on Bund at waterfront redevelopment planned by Wang Lin and others. An underground highway allows Shanghainese to cross the road and stroll along the bustling Huang Pu River.


are lots of things going on that should give the city an eco label, but beyond just having more technicalities related to “green.”

Of course, Singapore has also been quite significant in terms of how it actually pushes forward particular policies, as they would like to attract highly-skilled, highly-trained labor, so they are investing heavily in science parks, biotechnology. But those types of high-tech, highly-skilled workers that they would like to draw into the city would like to have also a high culture environment.

So, Singapore is moving into the next phase and providing this super green environment, which I hope goes beyond just a brand and a label. What I’m reading is that they are really trying to push urban farming to a limit where most Singaporeans can eat organic food that is grown in the city itself. That is of course at the core of sustainability.

You read about urban farming a lot now. Is there a possibility that it really could be scalable for the size of modern cities?

RvO: What I hope and what I think is happening in Singapore is that all the policies are being aligned to achieve this goal, and I think that is the impor-tant lesson from Lin. Historic preservation, or urban conser-vation, needs to be integrated

into the planning of the city, meaning that various policies—how you deal with housing, how you provide for a working environment, you know, your labor policy—all those poli-cies need to be linked to this goal of historic preservation. Historic preservation is not so big in Singapore, but I think that making the city more sustainable means realigning all the policies, including everything you do in terms of business, and how you invest your money in the city.

Singapore is a new city. There wasn’t much of a city 50 years ago?

RvO: It is also a very young city, of course, and in many aspects one can only admire what’s been built up over there. It’s one of the safest, one of the cleanest, one of the most prosperous cities in Asia. In the Asian context Singapore has always been an outstanding example. However, one small thing needs to be said. Singapore doesn’t have to deal with 23 million people.

From Shenzhen to Dubai, many cities today are entirely new. How does conservation apply to them?

RvO: I would reframe that question. We need to integrate contemporary culture in the city because we need to create the heritage of the future, although I

think that would be going beyond the real meaning of what heritage should be all about. It’s all about meaning and once something has meaning and significance and value you start to care for it. You should not be starting creating buildings that should be heri-tage. I mean, you should create something that has meaning. And is there something that is meaningful in terms of the devel-opment of Shenzhen, or Dubai, that is worthy of preservation? I think that is a good question.

Also in the city of Shanghai development is a priority, but the shift is going towards, recognizing what has meaning and what has value and to give that a strong voice in decision making in how the city should go forward. That to me is critical for any city anywhere in the world because of the global competi-tion. So cities should be looking towards a very smart strategy and that includes sustainability, which has four components, not only the environmental, the economic and the social, but also the cultural. The cultural compo-nent has to do with meaning and value and traditions. Tradition is very powerful for inspiration.

Shanghai is capable of deriving some inspiration for its future from the historic neighborhoods that it still has, in search of a better quality of life. Shenzhen is

Shanghainese have a deep desire for a precious quality of life. And quality of life does not only mean money. It’s more than that—much more. Wang Lin

the quality of the city. We need to keep a balance between the environment, ecology and the economy. It’s important. Also equality is very important. We will pay more attention to low income persons. So we began to look at quality, equality, ecology and environment—we pay more attention to that now.

Looking at the cities we cover beyond Shanghai, are there any projects you view as real successes or models for other cities?

RvO: I’ve been looking recently into a series of cities because of the program that I’m trying to implement in China, that is, UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape approach. For example, Singapore is rein-venting itself now as not only a green city, but as a city in a park. You know, not with parks in the city, but the city in a green ecological area.

So, there is an enormous amount of investment going on in terms of creating green roofs, creating extra parks, but also linking all the undeveloped areas surrounding Singapore and to draw them into the city and to undertake urban farming, for instance, a key project in the city. Singaporeans should buy Singapore-grown food, which should be organic. So there


not able to draw inspiration from that because it doesn’t have any historic neighborhoods, so the inspiration comes from Dubai. But Dubai is a totally different city with a totally different context, where the longevity of its quality of life still needs to be proven. So you’re importing something that you may only hope will take root, whereas Shanghai can draw inspira-tion from its past that you can actually touch. I think that is an important element that is fortunately being valued much more now in the development of the city.

WL: I would like to focus on your question about other cities and what we could learn. I would like to give you some examples. Like Boston. Boston has a major project—the Big Dig. The purpose of the Big Dig is to put transport circulation underground and to create more public space above ground. We really learned from it.

If you walk along the Bund, you can see that people can now just walk through the streets and go

to the Bund, to the waterfront. But four to five years ago, people could not go. They needed to go underground from the terminal and walk and then up again, because there were 10 lanes of traffic on the Bund. What we did is that we put six lanes under-ground and left four lanes above the ground, and we created a 100 meters wide space for the public. Actually I was involved in and in charge of one part of this project in 2007. We had an urban design for the landscape of the Bund, but that created big arguments with different departments.

But it was 2007, only three years before the Shanghai Expo, so if we did not make a decision then, the construction would be impossible to achieve in time for the Expo. So I explained to the mayor that we had three reasons to do this renovation project of the Bund. First, we could give more than 100 meters of public space to the people. People could walk across the street and then go to the Bund and they could see the historic areas and the waterfront.

Second, we could do more for historic preservation for the Bund, because the Bund is the image of Shanghai. You could have more space for people to walk along the Bund very close for the historic buildings and they could have a good look at the historic buildings. So that was the second reason. The third was that we all know that there were some of the facilities underground for more than 100 years, so it was a very tough work to renovate this area. So the Shanghai Expo was a key point, a unique point for deci-sion making, because we needed to get support from the people as we had to stop the traffic for more than half a year.

To do the excavation?

WL: Yes. We showed this renovation plan to the public and asked the people if they agreed or not: 99 percent of the people agreed with the plan, so the mayor made the final decision: let’s do it!

RvO: It’s a big success.

We’ve learned historic preservation from New York, such as the very popular High Line … on how to make new public space and to make urban redevelopment happen around it. We also learned from SoHo in New York, because when we renovated the waterfront at Suzhou Creek, where we have lots of abandoned warehouses and factories, we looked at how these projects were done in New York.Wang Lin

WL: We just used three years to finish our Big Dig. I think that’s a great success. What we’ve tried to learn from New York is historic preservation, for example, the very popular High Line of New York.

I think that’s not only historic preservation in itself, but also it’s how to make such a kind of public space—to be useful and to make urban redevelopment happen around it. I think that’s the interesting thing—so that’s what we need to do. That means that Shanghai needs to pay more attention to its public space. It means more space not only for traffic but for people to walk down the street and to enjoy the urban life and the space around them.

RvO: It’s actually taken from a Parisian example, Promenade plantée. It was a high-elevated rail line that they converted into a public space, into an elevated garden. I’m convinced that the


Conservation is part of offering a diversity of choices in work, leisure and living. Shanghai practically has got the whole range of residential styles on offer, and that makes Shanghai stand out against many other cities.Ron van Oers

people from the High Line looked at the Parisian example and said, hey, this is what we want.

WL: We also learned from SoHo in New York, because when we renovated the waterfront at Suzhou Creek where we have lots of warehouses, abandoned warehouses and factories, they said you can learn from New York. We did preserve a lot of warehouses and factories, which were renovated and used for creative industries. We also learned from London about the creative industry.

If you could come back in 50 years, how would you like to see Shanghai looking?

RvO: What I would like to see very much is that Shanghai somehow has managed to retain this diversity that it has right now. I’m living in Xuhui District and I had an interesting

discussion with Lin about it, because what she was explaining earlier in retaining a certain urban fabric, it’s actually happening in that part of the former French Concession where I live. You see a lot of conver-sions going on, and it doesn’t mean that all the buildings are being preserved—but the character is being preserved. That is something that many people don’t asso-ciate with the dynamic image of Shanghai. But it is of course an integral part of it. Then we have the Bund. Then we have other historic areas as well.

WL: Exactly.

RvO: I hope that the sheer diversity in different historic neighborhoods with their different characters has been retained and that a lot more neighborhoods have been added to this careful planning—let’s not necessarily call it preserva-tion, but careful planning and

retaining character and signifi-cance. I also hope that some areas that have grown under sheer pressure, in the second half of the ‘90s and the early part of the 21st century, like Pudong, have been improved, because I think in terms of public space, for instance, Pudong is a poor area. If you walk over Century Avenue and you keep walking you’re suddenly in an American city really. Nowhere are any coffee shops or bars, or anything like that to be seen. You need to have a car, because otherwise you walk among these rows and rows and rows of high rises.

Thus, what is so characteristic of Xuhui, the small, human scale, has actually been lost in the rapid development of Pudong and I’m very pleased to hear that Lin is working towards a requalifica-tion of that area and to see how more urban life can be brought into Pudong. I hope that in 50 years time the city’s diversity will have been maintained and even increased, and that the rapidly developed areas will have gained more urban quality.

Lin, in 50 years, what would you be most proud of? What would you want to see?

WL: It’s my point of view that Shanghai does not need much more new construction. We cannot stop that, but we do not need much more. I think when I come back in 50 years, it’s important that the Bund will still be the Bund, that it will have kept it’s original image. Maybe we will have less traffic than today. I would like to see more quality. The level of economic growth may be lower—we should lower the speed of development—but we will have much more leisure time in the city. Yes, I hope gener-ally speaking that the overall speed of life in Shanghai will be lower than before.

That’s a great challenge.

WL: Yes, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s a good thing. To be a little bit lower, but have more quality of life, which means more sustainability. The weather I think should be 90 percent blue skies.


When you look at the future, would manufacturing still be part of your vision for Shanghai, or would you only see finance, engineering, accounting and other services?

WL: We need manufacturing, but it’s the same thing—it means that we need to change the quality. We can have a different kind of manufacturing, but it is a very important part of Shanghai. We could change its style and add more value to it. And we should have more good quality public space, and more museums, more theater, more culture and art—more cultural and life satisfaction in the city.

In the 50 years do you think Shanghai will be the commercial and cultural center of Asia?

RvO: I’m pretty confident in saying yes.

WL: That’s our ambition. We set a goal to be like that. I think in 50 years we will be.

RvO: And very important in that strategy is to make the Chinese renminbi fully convert-ible on the capital markets and that is a stepped process that the Chinese leadership is doing very cautiously and in a very controlled fashion. But you can imagine in 10 years’ time when the Chinese renminbi is fully convertible, Shanghai will rival New York in terms of sheer output of financial services, because much of the trading, the direct bilateral trading between China and its partners, is already being agreed upon that it should be directly in RMB, instead of dollars.

WL: I think we will be going forward to democracy, but the style of the democracy will be different, because the culture is different. That’s the point. We cannot do exactly what the foreign democracies do. It’s different because of the culture.

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Community heritage lives in Fuxing and many other parks throughout the city where Shanghainese gather daily for ballroom dancing, t’ai chi in the morning, mah-jongg and chitchat all day long.

Photo: Qilai Shen/The New York Times/Redux


As cities hone in on the promise of big data …they’re often lost in the sauce of big government, explains Steven Koonin

Steven Koonin, founding director of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), served as under secretary for science at the US Department of Energy from May 2009 through November 2011, over-seeing technical activities across the department’s science, energy, and security activities. Before joining the government, Koonin spent five years as chief scientist for BP p.l.c. and was professor of theoret-ical physics at California Institute of Technology from 1975–2006. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the JASON advisory group.

Let’s talk about privacy and secu-rity of data. What is it that people tend to misunderstand the most about what research facilities are trying to do with big data?

First, privacy and security have emerged as a key research topic for CUSP, because it’s so essen-tial in letting us do the urban research that we want to do. And that’s central: CUSP is a research institution. We’re not a company, although we work closely with companies. We’re not part of the government. Second, as a research institution, we are subject to independent oversight by NYU’s institutional review board under the federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects.

Third, we are, of course, not interested in individuals. We’re interested in aggregate behavior. And we’ve got a set of policies that make that very explicit. Finally, we’re beginning a larger dialogue about privacy and security in a broader academic context, sponsoring a conference in June [2014] and publishing, Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement, this coming June [2014].


If, as your taxi study shows, urban informatics can make plain certain inefficiencies of human behavior, then changing those behaviors would seem to require a revolution in regulation, compliance, and enforcement. Are we moving into an era of greater regulation of individual behaviors?

I would say it’s a greater awareness of individual behaviors. It doesn’t have to happen through regulation. There’s a whole discussion of nudges or, to use a fancier term, “choice architectures,” that can influence human behavior but are not actually regulation. We see choice architecture at work with organ donorship and

driver’s licenses, for example. If you ask people if they want to be an organ donor, perhaps 20 percent choose to do so when they sign up for their license. But when you make your targeted behavior the default option—and oblige people to opt out of the donor program, then donorship increases. It’s a simple, non-regulatory mechanism that targets optimal behavior.

If everyone will soon be living in cities, won’t federal or national governments have an increasing interest in helping to provide solutions that will help cities run better—financing and/or incentivizing big data or urban informatics solutions,

for instance, or subsidizing the retrofits of infrastructure and traffic management systems or electric grid support and water systems that will become the “smart city” of the future?

Cities qua cities don’t have great visibility in the [US] federal government. Yes, there’s Housing and Urban Development, but it is concerned with one small slice of cities. There is certainly Health and Human Services, concerned with the public health aspects of cities and medical care. And then you’ve got transportation, and so on, but there is no place in the federal government that thinks about cities as systems of systems—no federal entity that funds, regulates, and encourages cities as systems of systems.


And do you see this changing?

I would like it to change. I and others have been talking in Washington to see if we can get city-focused initiatives cross-cut across the various agencies. Not to look with envy, but the Department of Agriculture, for example, is very much concerned with rural affairs, as one might well imagine, but there is nothing comparable in an integrated way for the interests of cities. Again, not to complain but just to state a fact—cities are legal entities of state governments, so this is a result of how the Constitution apportions power to the states.

As you’ve said elsewhere, the shape of the future is urban-ized, but the current paradigm, in which the federal govern-ment has long had an interest in encouraging economic growth, is, in fact, based on an agrarian world.

Absolutely. And I’m no expert on politics or political theory, but one can imagine that the idea of changing this paradigm would cause a lot of—let me just say—discussion, in Washington.

Can you speak to the question of how the smart city solutions that you’re creating at CUSP will be deployed in developing cities? What solutions seem to be the most likely candidates for developing cities?

One of the advantages of the developing countries is that the infrastructure is largely yet to be built. So you could try to build some of this in from the begin-ning. And synoptic observation techniques that we’re developing for cities, where you can watch the broad swath of a city from an urban vantage point, may have some real advantages in the developing world, because you can cover large areas without having to put in a sensor infrastructure.

There’s a whole discussion of nudges, or, to use a fancier term, “choice architectures,” that can influence human behavior but are not actually regulation.

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What advantages will New Yorkers gain from CUSP in 10 to 20 years?

First, one goal for CUSP is to just make the city more efficient. New York City has already made the enforcement of illegal building conversions five times more efficient. Second, by putting data about the city in people’s hands, you can improve the quality of life. Noise levels are something that we’re quite interested in. If people understand, in a more detailed and quantitative way, the noisier parts of the city, you can modulate your living and travel. Real estate prices will no doubt change as a result of what the noise scores look like.

Innovation, entrepreneurism and sustainability spur Stockholm … according to deputy mayor Ulla Hamilton

Deputy mayor for entrepreneurism, labor and traffic and previously the environment, Ulla Hamilton has played a leading role in some of the city’s greatest successes, including development of Stockholm’s broadband network, auto congestion pricing plan and sustainable housing. Here she discusses those and other efforts to keep the city growing and healthy.

Stockholm is admired around the world for style, sustain-ability, and openness. What are Stockholm’s greatest achievements?

It’s a fantastic time because Stockholm is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. On population, it is bigger than ever and growing. New businesses

game companies like DICE and Spotify. It’s a fiber network open to whoever needs to rent capacity.

How did Stockholm put in the information and communica-tions spine without it costing Stockholmers anything?

I was vice chairman of the company when we discussed how to develop the business idea. It was part of an existing network, a cable network that was developed into a fiber network. We thought that it was important that small companies that couldn’t afford to develop a system on their own could hire the capacity they needed to develop their business ideas.

So in the late 1990’s Stockholm was very enthusiastic about IT development. And because

are springing up and it’s a very creative city. It’s a big change from 10 or 15 years ago.

Is that growth because Stockholmers are having more children or because more people are moving in?

Both. More people are coming, and Stockholmers with children used to move away, but now are

staying. People are coming from other parts of Sweden, and other countries.

What is Stockholm doing right to attract and keep people?

We have a lot of interesting companies and interesting jobs. Combine that with the city overall—we have good restaurants with great chefs, entertainment, closeness to nature, both in terms of greenery and water. It is a combination of things.

What government programs make Stockholm so attractive?

It’s very important to develop the city in a sustainable way. Also, we developed a broadband network in the mid 1990s, and that has led to a booming ICT industry, the development of

New York’s bike sharing program wins a Nordic nod of approval.


of that, we attracted a lot of companies, both from Sweden and from other countries. Now the network covers more than 90 percent of all real estate in the Stockholm area. All the schools are connected and most of the businesses as well. And the capacity is high—1,000 megabit per second.

So this is a case where public investment in infrastructure drove the health of the economy?

Yes. And we didn’t use any taxpayers’ money because we kept it affordable. We let compa-nies rent the capacity, and we didn’t develop the system until we had customers.

It also became a revenue engine for the city?

Yes.

Do you think investment in infrastructure generally drives growth, or does growth occur and then you invest in infrastructure?

I think that investment in infra-structure is very important in order to get growth.

What would you do to improve Stockholm further?

We should use the tools that we have today to better develop education. We have the game industry. You can use, for example, Battlefield or Minecraft, as a tool to push innovation in education. Young people are used to having smart phones and ICT all around them. You have to have something in education that connects to that, and that might be one way of attracting more people to learn mathematics or physics and so on.

Stockholm has done well in Cities of Opportunity for the past three years in areas like sustainability, health and safety, intellectual capital and innova-tion. What explains Stockholm’s excellent standing?

On sustainability that goes way back. Stockholm was named the first European green capital in 2010. And that was because we’ve been dealing with sustainability for a long time. In the 1920’s, people began to be interested in how to create green areas in a growing city.

That interest has continued, and the city has been developed in a green way.

The city has been so depen-dent on clean water, and Lake Mälaren, which surrounds Stockholm, is our drinking water reservoir. So it has always been very important to take care of the environment in Stockholm, and in order to do that, you have to have smart engineering solutions.

Beginning in the 1940’s we built a very big water treatment plant, so the water infrastruc-ture is very well developed. We started early to develop the subway, and a big percentage of people use public transport. We developed the district heating system in the early 1950’s. These are engineering solutions., but also environmentally friendly solutions. For example a district heating system based on renew-able fuels means you have low CO2 emissions. And if many people use public transport, running on renewable fuels, that also lowers CO2 emissions.

You mentioned earlier Fortum Heat, the large biomass facility to turn garbage into energy. How does it work? How do you get Stockholmers to sort their garbage?

The system to burn waste and produce electricity and district heating is connected to 80 percent of all the houses and apartment buildings in Stockholm. And in order to do that in an environmentally friendly way so you have clean waste to burn, you have to sort the household waste, and that’s done by families.

The incineration is environ-mentally friendly with tough environmental rules. It’s a very smart way of taking care of the waste. We also have tough legislation regarding plastic packaging. We just recently decided upon a new biogas strategy, where we are collecting food waste to produce biogas. The biogas is used by many buses and taxis. We decided to collect 50 percent of household food waste to produce fuel, and the program will grow over time.

Stockholm is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. New businesses are springing up and it’s a very creative city. It’s a big change from 10 or 15 years ago.


Stockholm entrepreneurs from Spotify to Mutewatch, Vamos, Mozoomi and more join Ulla Hamilton on a trip to Manhattan.

You were saying that by making Stockholm environmentally friendly, you attract younger, more environmentally conscious people.

We know that people are more and more concerned about environmental issues. We notice since Stockholm was named the European green capital in 2010, people like to boast that they live in a very environmentally friendly city. It is important to tell people what we are doing to be more sustainable in the future. We inaugurated plans for new districts with high environ-mental goals, and people are proud to be part of a city that’s working in a sustainable way.

In Sweden, what is the balance of power between the city and regional and national governments?

There is always a conflict between the city and the national government, and that goes for every country. But it’s important that we as a growing city, thanks to the tax structure, keep much of our tax money. It’s a good situation.

How will you continue to spur innovation and entrepreneurism in the future?

We are lucky in this area, and it’s because of several reasons. We have a very interesting mixture of life science companies, ICT companies, clean tech compa-nies, and the entertainment industries. And Stockholm is a fairly small city, so it’s easy for executives and innovators to meet one another. And that creates a creative, innovative climate. Also Swedes are very interested in solving problems, and it has become fashionable to start their own companies.

In the past five or six years, universities and high schools have become interested in helping students begin their own companies. Before that the universities were more focused on producing academics. Now we have very close cooperation among businesses, the universities, and the city. The atmosphere is totally different today.

Considering not just Stockholm, but Malmö, Uppsala,Gothenberg and other cities, what does government do to foster innovation?

A politician should try to find arenas where people can meet to exchange ideas. But a politician must know when not to interfere and disturb development. It’s very important to understand the government’s role.

In other words, stand back a little, allow more room to innovate?

Yes. Also in Stockholm we have open data resources so companies—and Stockholmers as well—can develop websites, or apps, or other business ideas.

Small businesses created 800,000 jobs in Sweden from 1990 to 2012, over twice what Sweden had in 1990. What explains that and what part is government playing?

There has been a big change in Sweden since the present government took over in 2006.


The past decade, a voucher system was created for elderly care, healthcare, schools and so on. That led more people to consider starting their own companies rather than just being employees. So it was a combina-tion of things.

It’s been a tremendous change in the atmosphere and attitudes in Sweden and Stockholm since the 1970’s, where we had a big state, and the attitude was the welfare state should take care of you. Today’s voucher system has provided the opportunity for big and small companies to provide services, rather than the govern-ment doing so. The competition in the service area brings devel-opment and productivity.

Rather than building a cradle-to-grave government structure, you’re letting people play a greater role in it?

Yes, and the voucher system is still financed by taxpayers, but it’s using the taxpayer’s money in a more efficient way.

Speaking of public-private partnerships, do you think injecting the profit motive into things like building a hospital is a good thing?

The county council in Stockholm is right now building a new hospital. And it’s a public-private partnership with the construc-tion company Skanska. That’s one example where the public sector and the private sector can work together to find smart, cost-effective solutions.

quite a lot of different services that we can’t even imagine today. Just look at the growth of the smart phone, for example.

You mentioned that Stockholm has 201 different nationalities living there.

That’s a very big challenge. Historically, it has taken a long time for immigrants to Sweden to be part of the workforce. But we are trying hard to see that immigrants can start working as soon as possible. We have programs where people with academic qualifications can learn Swedish and work at the same time. We also have programs where, for example, engineering companies connect with trained engineers who recently moved to Stockholm.

people as possible leaving their cars at home when they go to work. To do that, you have to give more space for buses, for example, and give more space for bicycles and pedestrians. And that’s what we’re working with right now. You have to take away some parking spots for cars. And, hopefully, more people will choose the public transport systems, and also ride bicycles more.

Their own bicycles as in Amsterdam or rental bicycles?

Both. It’s very popular, and the number of people using the bicycle has at least doubled during the last 10 years.

Can bike lanes and rental bikes work in an aggressive, non-bike environment like New York?

It can work, but it has to be made quite clear for car drivers and buses that bicycles are a part of the infrastructure. It’s very important that different travelers accept each other, or there will be a lot of conflict. This is hard and it will take time. Different travelers have to behave in a polite way. Eighty-five percent of Stockholmers live close to where they work, so it’s easier to use bicycles.

A few years ago I was told Hammarby Sjöstad and the Royal Seaport were models of sustainable housing that were exportable beyond Stockholm. How are those projects going?

The Royal Seaport area is developing quite well and the area is one of 18 programs in the Clinton Climate Initiative. We have very good cooperation between business and the city to fulfill the tough environmental goals. The retrofitting program for the city-owned apartment buildings is also going quite well, and the energy use in apart-ments has been halved. That’s a very interesting program

Sustainable development is very important in Stockholm’s attractiveness. We also developed a broadband network in the mid-1990s, and that has led to a booming ICT industry.

That makes it easier for immigrants to become part of Swedish society, but it is still a big challenge.

What is Stockholm doing to ease traffic congestion?

The challenge is that the city is built on islands. Whether your city is big or small, there are ways to make traffic easier, but you have to regulate to avoid chaos. In Stockholm, we are promoting bicycling and walking as the best ways to move around the city, and having as many

Stockholm is growing. Immigrants are coming and Swedes are doing their duty making more Swedes. Is there a threat of unemployment as technology makes many jobs obsolete?

No. Technical development also leads to development of services. So I don’t see that as a threat. Actually the risk is that the city doesn’t grow. In a growing city you will always have devel-opment of new businesses. I’m absolutely sure of that. Five years from now we will have


because most of the buildings involved are older, and the energy use is high.

Three quarters of all the apart-ment buildings built in Europe after the Second World War are similar to the buildings that we’ve been retrofitting in Stockholm. So we learn from the experience.

Is the retrofitting paying for itself in terms of energy and other savings?

Yes, during some years. But from the city point of view this is an investment in the future

What is your thinking on the future of Stockholm in terms of growth? Is it good? Is it bad? And, what would you like to see happening?

It’s good because the alternative is very bad. To be competitive, to be creative and innovative, it’s crucial that the city grow. But we have to grow in a sustainable

way. We have to have green areas, and people like the closeness to nature. This helps to attract people to Stockholm. It’s a tough challenge for the city and the larger Stockholm area, because we will have constructed 140,000 apartments by 2030. But the alternative to growth is much worse.

It seems that there are more leading women in business and government in Scandinavia than in other places.

It has to be so and it has to come in other countries, too. In an open society, in a transparent world, women should be part of leading positions as well.

If you were to leave Stockholm, among the 30 cities next year in Cities of Opportunity, where would you go, and why?

There are a lot of nice cities, so it’s a tough choice. Buenos Aires has a lot of challenges, but the climate is nice and they

have a lot of opportunities. San Francisco is also a very nice city. I would pick Buenos Aires. It’s a city with a lot of potential. But the traffic situation is quite interesting, and they also have quite a lot to do to develop a waste management system. Overall, the, environmental issues are very important, but there are great opportunities to develop the city by learning from Stockholm.

We have a very interesting mixture of life science companies, ICT companies, clean tech, and entertainment companies. And Stockholm is a fairly small city, so it’s easy for executives and innovators to meet one another.

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