craziness manufacturing of the war. it drove him to become what i call a maniac. >> to watch the rest of this program, visit booktv.org and search for the title of the book. the man who hated women using the search box at the top of the page. ... pandemic on cities . >> good afternoon from west,, good afternoon to the east coast . my name is alicia jean baptiste and i'm president and ceo spur. we had an urban planning organization with offices in san francisco, oakland and san jose this is the first time i've moderated the commonwealth club program and i could not be more excited to be participating in today's program and still aligned with the work that we here in my organization do and a special welcome to all commonwealth club members. so we're here today to

discuss the new book survival of the city, "survival of the city: living and thriving in an age of isolation" with us is author, economist edward glaeser and david cutler read edward's specialty is urban policy, david focuses on healthcare which is a perfect match for today's world and the book comes at a critical time for urban america and citiesacross the country . after 18 months of the pandemic many are wondering about the future of cities especially san francisco where todaypt our offices remain largy empty downtown, somewhat deserted. many issues existed before the pandemic. the development, health and segregation i think we continue to grapple with. showing many of these urgent issues. their approach and take people together across certain sectors of this very important book.

if you have a question put it in the chat. questions that are close to their will be forwarded to the program. we are going to jump in. it is so great to be with you today. >> thank you so much for having us on. >> it's a pleasure to be with you today. thank you. >> this is an incredibly timely book. really thinking about the future of cities post pandemic. before we start to talk about the future, i was doing a little bit of a setback, we do talk about the fact that while covid-19, pandemics or something that you have experienced in the past and continue to grapple with in the past. i would love to talk a little bit about what we can learn

about that history. >> pandemics are and old demon. the global lattice of trade and travel. entry for goods and ideas. it has been ever so by the plaque of athens. spreading like wildfire. what may have been the most glorious moment in terms of collaborative creativity and the classical world. the play that came 1000 years later. an attempt to re- bring roman peace to the mediterranean world knocking them into a darker time. over the last 150 years, proven far more robust. a humanan catastrophe. the amount of land per capita

was up. the renaissance of the 15th century, in the 19th century, cities survive the flags because they made investments. some sort of a pandemic group there. david has written some work that has been done on that investment >> what are the things that really stirred the city to allow it to be great. the ability to cure pandemic disease. fever and other waterborne diseases. you know, jon snow in london. if you look, roughly, a century ago, things that government spent money on was urban project.

water, sewer and sanitation and all oft that. that investment paid off multiple folds. when plummeting death rates and plummeting so much so the l spanish flu, a super big outbreak. there was really a century where we can dwell. a couple of things. world travel got so fast that diseases enslaved from wuhan china to new york in a matter of minutes. also the things that we needed to prevent within the city. doing what we needed to do to prevent the spread of covid across the world or any of the other potential pandemics. if we want to have our cities be

healthy and sustainable for us, we will need to address these just as we had to address the earlier issues that plagued cities until very recent times. >> in the 19th century, we really argued that it is the hinge of history where government stopped being agents of death which is pretty much all they did prior to 1800 is kill people. fundamentally about cities and aqueducts. that was really the moment in which governments turned into benevolent agents. >> i was just thinking about infrastructure and the fact of prior pandemics, the positive response has been the introduction of infrastructure that actually held those pandemics at bay and increased

health and safety. one of the things that you speak to in this book is how the atorientation of a public health infrastructure today actually set us up to be more vulnerable to this pandemic. i am wondering if you could expand on that. the ways in which we were prepared in the ways in which we are not prepared. >> the u.s. and the world had some institutions directed at this. seen as being more involved for how to run a public health agency. it is really the only game in town. if something goes bad, for example, their first test was off. they getso a lot of false positives. you just doo not do your testing rightju away. if something happens, getting in or out of the city. that is kind of a lousy way to run a city.

that is kind of how we had it. we had an organization that was sort of charged with the health of the world that really sort of blows with the wind where the money is. china was supplying part of the who budget. when government says to it is okay, everything is okay. when there is an outbreak in west africa, for fear of west africa, they do not do find that. that is not a very good thing. if you are charged with doing something technical, we have to do that one thing. something to contrast that with his nato. one mission to prevent arrest. it did not do things for

thpolitical that were not y appropriate, technically. what we say is part of what we will need is to take these real scientificic questions, how do u prevent world pandemic? and really turn them into true scientific questions and say we will develop what we need to. somewhere else in the back office, dealing with all the politics of how you deal with these upset countries. but those two cannot be together because it just does not work well. >> one of the other things that i saw in your writing was a reflection on our healthcare system in this country being set up as a disease of the individual rather than being

sent up with preventive care or community health at large. can you talk a bit more about that? >> what we have set up in the u.s. is an extremely costly private healthcare system. when you get sick, it helps to pay the bills. it does that very well. it is roughly 50% more than your typicalca country. that is very different from a healthcare systemm that is set p to ensure the public's health. focused on the private health of individuals. dithe private payment of medical bills. that is going to be a couple of different dimensions to that. one is investing into public health much more.

we squeezed out the private healthcare component. every dollar that we spend. the other thing is even outside of that situation, we always knew that healthcare did not work quite. having difficulty accessing it. the system was too difficult to use and so on. that is still true, even in a pandemic. a trillion dollars does not buy you a smooth functioning healthcare system. even now it is not quite as easy as you i want. having to address the private

side of it, to. how do we make sure that people get access to their nonpandemic healthcare needs. even during the pandemic, we cannot do it any better. >> thank you. >> one of the stories that we tell in the books, we try to explain why we have a healthcare system not a public health care system. why we have a system that does so poorly controlling the amount of money that is spent. we really trace this to the history

virtually empty still. eighteen months into this pandemic. the malfunction of the system that you have been describing. why it was important. securing for the future of humanity that was so important to each of you. >> i believe very strongly that the cities have been the homes. the most important collaborations. the partnership for 24 years

ago, the creativity that gave us the italian renaissance. entryways for poor people to find opportunity. places where the young can learn and see their wages grow. humanity's greatest invention. destroying opportunities for billionse of people on the planet. the shutdown that happened in march 2020. the rapid fire the organization of our world. thef absence of physical space between people. the shock felt so terrible for.y the zoom change which made it feel like we would maybe never go back. even moree importantly, cities felt vulnerable pre-covid. when the terrorists hit the twin

towers, there was a remarkable consensus about what pragmatic government was supposed to look like in cities of new york and chicago and los angeles. that consensus has just disappeared. in part because they seem to be accruing. not to everyone, but it seems to be remarkably restricted view. this is partly about housing affordability crisis, low levels of operability in cities and it is partially about a police force which seems to treat men with disrespect in many places. we really think that fixing the cities means addressing those root problems. not just fighting for better health. >> i think that that is totally right. something that is ingrained in that is a huge disparity in

health, even in parts of the city. it is on the opposite. weay can go 12 minutes by subway and lose 12 years by life expectancy. just to give you a sense of whae care expectancy. going from a place where everyone smokes to a place where everybody smokes. it is just this huge disparity. using the analogy of the an escalator. in one part of the city you have people who are rich and wonderful and fulfilled lives.

others struggling to live as long as well middle income countries around the world. that is just not working for everybody. people will get really frustrated. that is not a recipe for things going well. >> i think many people have talked about the dynamic. a zip code where you can tell where they are writing expectancy will be. i have this about your book. holding your concept of insiders versus outsiders. the idea that we organize ourselves and control resources at the expense of outsiders. i would love to talk a little bit more, just elaborate on that

dynamic. when you start to consider what they hold. >> this idea is associated with the rise from 1983. i read this book probably dated 22 in the late 1980s and 1990s. and did not feel to me like it was describing america. insiders grab all the power and there iss no room for new leentrepreneurship. the age of reagan. all of these insiders. i think that olson was completely wiped. i first started working 20 years ago. i thought of that as a relatively isolated example. well organize clips of inside

figuring out how to use the rules of regulation to stop any new construction. preserving their views, their property values. make sure that their commutes are shorter. by raising the gate against any outsider,, coming into, you kno, yourur area. just doing this on steroids. making sure that the insiders pay different property taxes. you know, you see this in other areas as well. we see this in terms of our public schooling system. you think about one set of insiders to create a good system for your kids. including inner-city schools that don't get advantages. a teachers union. they have a legal right not to just go into class and face the

disease. that is understandable. the stance that they taught last summer. that is a very hard one to see how that is not hurting outsiders. occupational licensing making it difficult for people to change. barriers on entrepreneurship, one particular outrageous regulating the poor so much more than it does the rich. if you want to start your internet phenomenon, you can have 1 billion users. if you want to have a grocery store half a mile away, this does nothing. this has led to a society ins which mobility is went down. the most constructive parts in america. we have persistent pockets of joblessness that stayed that way for 30 or 40 years because

change is so difficult. asking why people feel capitalism. the only capitalism that does not workk for them. protecting older people that own homes. >> for the past century, the way that people got ahead was to move to urban areas. typically what would happen is people would move to the richese areas. so we saw people moving to the bay area and new york and so on. the past few decades it has gotten so outrageously expensive seeing people moving there. not to the central areas, they are moving to the outlying

areas. extremely long commutes. these interactions that we are talking about. people are moving to other cities which are great for them. moving to houston and las vegas and other places where building is much cheaper. that is good. there is nothing wrong with that. crying out for workers in many t ways. that is true in so many of our biggest cities. people would like to be there. we have structured it so they just cannot afford to be there. >> describing our day to day reality. we are consistently locked into battles of housing developments. at the same time, constantly

about the population, over 35,000re people literally unable to afford to live under the roof in the bay area. we have under built housing in last 20 years. and then we wonder why people cannot afford to be here. it is not a dynamic that is changed in any meaningful way. the last number of years. i am curious, you talk in your book about the importance of providing more opportunity to build dense environments. how do we actually move that kind of a concept forward. "the insider" control. what is the pathway for an artist struggling with this dynamic right now? >> let me just give it a 20 year perspective on this problem.

yes, it is true. like what is going on in sacramento right now. we have not done cracked the local housing. even if we do have fast tracks. local communities figuring out how to got that. but, with that being said, when i first received, there is nobody that thought this was a reasonable issue. i do not think that it was anything. in terms of groups that thought that this was a problem worth fighting over. i think, you know, i see lots of progress. we need more housing. the issue is not some sort of elite. you want to help the developers. it is just incredibly healthy for the region and it is good

for the environment. there is no greener place then in the san francisco bay area. so, i just look at the fight is long, the fight is hard, the fight is slow. peopleib that are engaged in making the flight feels incrediblyat hopeful. this has to happen in the state legislature. that is ultimately wheree the power comes from. i tried to argue that infrastructure aid. buto two areas that permit more building. fundamentally, local control is controlled by the state legislature. small localities never have a huge interest. they are controlled by those that do not want that. ultimately in the state house where there is a fair and more

open california or massachusetts will be made. >> there is no reason why we should pick on you. people who want to live in the area that live in a dynamic environment. they cannot afford to live in the environment. the similar story to that, well, the businesses that cannot get this space. havingt an idea for some new te of business. maybe it works, maybe it does not work. you cannot do it unless you are absolutely certain that it will succeed andnd so on. it really has a very big impact on people and businesses. >> i'm interested in how you perceive the dynamic of remote

work affecting some of that underlyingth pattern. being reminded. secondly, one of the other reflections i was considering is , even with the concept of adding capacity to cities, what we have seen in the city developing in all kinds of different ways, the areas that are more restricted and very much open for business. regardless there was a study published recently at cal berkeley which found that over thees past 30 years in the largt metro in the united states, racial residential segregation has increased in 80% of cases. i am wondering if you thought about interventions that are

required,wi oh, by the way, they are very much also tracked against racial residentialno segregation. something necessary in addition moto allowing from our opportunity, allowing for more density to grapple with outer that dynamic. >> we started our work together on racial segregation 25 years ago. on the downside of racial segregation for african-american , relatively young african-americans in the u.s. the impacts are terrible. one of the things that is particularly difficult is the segregation of kids. much worse than the segregation as experienced day today. it shows us that when adults get

up and go to work, they, you know, they live in a integrated office. inin a sense, for that child, ty are experiencing a world that is like an isolated village. all of the integration that can come from city life, that really is gone. that, i think, is a big reason why the city seems to be so bad about mobility with children. experiencing significant strains over adults living in different areas. creating cities of opportunity for poor kids, fighting against that. fighting against segregation again segregation is incredibly hard. certainly when i think of a move to life by zoom or even worse,

these a are all things where oh, let's just retreat into our enclave. let's just separate from each other. why it is so important that we make our public spaces safe. make our public transportation safe. we also have meaningful ways ofe improving the experience to less advantaged americans. >> one of the things that came up very clearly was that the cities where segregation was the highest, they were not adding a lot of people. they were not adding a lot of houses so everything was fixed. it was just the way that it was. youie are building new houses on much of the city so everyone can move in there.

that frees up houses. particularly if you have an open minded population, i will not choose my neighbor because it's white or hispanic or whatever. a lot more mixing of people when this city is growing and changing. so, that was actually a key to a lot of cities becoming more open ngthese people do not fight over what is their spirit you just do not see that as much in cities that are much more dynamic. >> going back to this concept of remote work. where do you see that going? o i see it as a constant question among planning circles. and a lot of attention being

paid to wanting to make the city an attractive place for people to return given that people have more choice than people that have the option to remote work. inhe terms of where they work. do you think that this is a change where we work differently going forward and if so how do you see that impacting the future of cities. >> remote work israel. i do not think that it is a game changing face-to-face work, death of office kind of thing. this is not the first time that we heard remote work will kill off the office in the city. writing in the third way that these newie technologies coming back, personal computers would need a massive increase in everyone working from home. causing a howling out of urban offices.

a continued decline of 70s. completely in total wrong. what happened over the past 40 years was there was a rapid increase in the returns to innovation about the increase of being skilled. an increase in the complexity oi the world. we are a social species that get smart by being around other smart people. more complicated and idea is, the easier it is for that to get lost in translation. comprehension or confusion. just lost when we are not in the same room with each other. i can't tell you how frustrating it is to teach a large class by zoom. you know, in two of the most clear work from home studies, stanford he was just an outstanding economists and one by our students find a very similar pattern which is in the

short one. they become more productive. doing a a good job. both studies show lower promotion rates for those workers sent home. you promote those calls. erhow to learn those difficult calls if you are at home. you have no one to listen to, it is not near you. it is so critical and features. talking about it 140 years ago. the misuse of the trade.. sort of this dynamic element. pulling people back. if you think about silicon valley before 2020, this was the industry that had the most access to all of the remote work is this what they did?

no. exactly the opposite. coming from downtown manhattan. going aroundd each other all the time. connecting people. one of the interesting things that comes out of microsoft is c it is a decrease in connections across different groups. really thinking it will lead to a decrease in creativity from microsoft. gthese work teams will come in more silos. it is a hard world for on boarding workers. the onboarding point is, you know, if you look at productivity and some suggest it is just fine, looking at new hires, that was down to 30% between february 2020 and november 2020.ec

a master decline of onboarding. t'it was possible for relationships to coast on pre-existing ties, people are very wary about onboarding new workers. you areld imagining an america thatgi will be unequaled for 20. if you think about may 2020, the height of the zoom world, 68.9% with advanced degrees. 5% t of high school dropouts. 15%. this is not something that involves large swaths of the population. it really is something that we should fight against. having it as an occasional tool, we should not be planning our cities.

>> there is just so much. there is a study of indian emergency setting you need to convey information from one person to another. it turns out it was conveyed better than the two workers in the same room. actually, it turned out that it was better when they were in the same room and when their desks were further away. because off the attractions that come from being together as opposed to being even a little bit farther apart. the other element study, i think that it is just wonderful, in terms of chess matches have gone to zoom. based on computer judgments, the chess players are not playing as well over zoom as they did in person. there's just somethinges about

being in person that makes people be more productive. >> as a society, i think people are realizing that an education will be entirely online. so, my senses, we would want to and it will be good for us to come back together at least somewhat. >> one of the things that really struck me over the course of the pandemic, earlier stages of the pandemic was when people have the opportunity to start to be together again, even if it was outside in a park wearing masks, people flock to the opportunity. it did indicate for me that there is something very human about being together and having that kind of connection. i saw that pole towards understanding that we work better when we are together.

it does not necessarily mean that wewi will choose the same places in city that we did pre-pandemic. we have certainly seen plenty of examples in the course ofha history where they have gone through major shock that have not recovered. they have lost population and changed dramatically whether it was through industrialization or previous pandemic or other experience. you can talk aif little bitou about what you thik those success factors are for cities going forward. as we start to get into this post pandemic phase in order to securere the success. >> i think that this is entirely correct. let's take a mythical tech startup. they are fed up with high prices in the san francisco area. do we really think that this

group of people will say let's just go to 10 different isolated caps. no, this does not sound like a recipe fore the group. we are on the map. are we going to go now that we can meet with our venture capitalists? maybe we t all like serving. maybe honolulu is for us. maybe we all want to live in texas. maybe austin is for us. it is not as if urban life is dead, but every city is more vulnerable than ever. it feels a bit to me like, it feels like the 1970s had a bit of a revolution in terms of urban mobility. having access to highways and in businesses who could rotate around the transportation networks. because of highways, container ships. the tax base came extremely

mobile in the 70s. cities like new york, you felt this in california, you did not have the same feeling. i was a kid growing up in new york city. there was this very strong progressive team of creating a city that was there for all. doing so by taxing the rich more this very large objective, the rich and the businesses just left. in 1975 new york teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. proven unable to pay their bills. this is in some sense what i worry about today. sian understandable progressive hunger to make our cities a greater place of opportunity. we cannot expect to do that just by taxing the rich and taxing the businesses in getting the money right. we need better government as well as better cities.

the federal government can raise taxes without this flood of credit of people integrating. federal spending just making sure it goes on things. fixing urban schools. we actually don't know all of the answers. two large-scale federal interventions. no child left behind. both of them were quite interesting. both of them were quite smart. and so we knew things needed to be more experimental. the idea of a wraparound vocational training program. teaching kids how to become good programmers and plumbers. leaving schools untouched. you can evaluate them. if it works, just scale it up. if it doesn't work, just scale it down. paying forid that for disadvantaged kids.

we can do plenty on these controls. providing housing for middle income people. making itd hard for the poor to start new businesses. one local expense that i think will be harder is the criminal justice system does a better job of taking care of the entire city. in a sense, thinking about the 1980s to today, in some sense successful. far lower murder rates. far safer. a very one-sided success in the way that we locked up millions of young men. we led millions of other young men to be stopped or harassed on the streets. thousands of young men to be shot by law enforcement. thisis should not stand.

we need to have a law enforcement system that treats everyone with respect. we need to have a dual requirement. what we think, you do not get to change without having metrics. you need to have metrics on crime. you also need metrics on how much theyee are being respected. we need to have surveys of customers. with that basically firing in failing to deliver. getting a police system that will be t over humane. treating everyone with decency. absolutely. do not accept the status quo. do not expect to spend less and get more. that is not something that happens. >> at the risk of invading ourselves,rv i will make one observation, when is the really

big agenda for city managers at the moment is the ability to manage well, to run things well. we need to reform the public health infrastructure to the city. you need people to do contact tracing. we need people to help organize a police department. better accountability. school options and so on. we are not in need of where do we want to go. what we are desperately in need of is a 10,000-foot how do we get ourselves there? associated with the public policy school. i am also associated with the health that treats graduates. we have not done enough to train

people and how to make things happen. not just to let things that you want to happen. what are the politics of it. how you actually get those good ideas to work. >> it is far more important than policy. the ability to get things done. >> i am going to turn to some of our audience questions. what is the best use of office skyscrapers if more people work from home? >> i think we may have lost ed for a minute. >> if more people are working from home, there will be less

demand. particularly true among the suburbanites and so on. probably two things that can happen to that. one is that some of the office space becomes used by startups. talking about that. a startup that could use some of the space that the firm no longer needs. less true for the super big skyscrapers. maybe true a little bit lower down. some of the commercial space could be turned into residential space. in the city of boston, and a lot of the housing is converted. wanting a house. they want that. the grooming office teller.

coming together both old and new the other things where the businesses are located more than converting into housing. >> we may have lost him for a minute. i will go to another. taking a look at the website next door. its tendency to create digital gated communities via social media. >> i think you have many natural circumstances that make people want to live in those areas. some cities absolutely will be on the brink if they don't have that. those businesses say maybe i am valid. you can sort of see that unraveling.

ii am less worried about everyoe wanting to be near san francisco and everyone wanting to be near chicago. the middle tier cities that maybe people are moving to because house prices are cheap. we could go elsewhere. then you can start a bit of a stampede there if you really suffer a lot. what will do well are the ones with these images. i mentioned also things like education institutions. a very, very strong educational institution. industry, financing, new york. so on. those are the kinds of things that can help cities maintain their vitality even when they get hit repeatedly by bad stuff.

>> i just wanted to prove the limitationse. even with a hardwired connection think about there being a 20% drop in commercial real estate prices. san francisco at $85 a square foot. a 20% drop still makes you one of the most in the country. those offices will be occupied. they may be occupied by scrap beer companies, so may be converted to residential. when the prices drop a lot of buffalo, cleveland, detroit, then you hear the prices going below what can sustain the landlord keeping it open. once you have a really long term empty office, then the whole thing spreads.

there's not demand for local businesses or restaurants. you can at the spillovers for the urban catastrophe. >> i am y glad you are back. thank you for illustrating the point. we are almost out of time. i have one final question for yield. throughout your book you talk about one of the solutions going forward and the stronger civic governance. that includes a relationship between us as activists and community members. you also talk just a few minutes before about it not being so much about where we need to go, but being focused on how we get there. you alsook acknowledge that you hold a quite different philosophy. i'm wondering c if you can describe what the process is like so the two of you can come together to produce this book together.

learning an enormous amount by with peoplewe you don't agree wh much. for example, the issue that we were just discussing, f, you know, 20% of the real estate, we have been around on that so many times. we have had e-mail conversations and in-person conversations back and forth. discussing it and talking about it. let's figure out what the truth is. ourpendent whatever readings are about policy. you know, had i been in charge of everything the book would be more in some places. having more of a libertarian then other things. the diagnosis of it.

how can we see the world differently. at least for me being able to understand that people can see the world differently. it is very important. you can then see why someone would read one point of view over another point of view. there is nothing wrong with that . >> i have known david and i've worked with david for 30 years. it has been an enormous pleasure every moment. one of the key things is we have to recognize even when you have slight differences on sort of values, there are still facts out there that we need to agree onon. i will give you a clear example. the viewer's differ slightly on this as well. things like drug use and food

use and obesity, smoking. there is no question that david is more positive about various opublic interventions for people harming their own body. that is where we are. >> everything on the core elements. what is because the change in opioids. we come from a slightly different place. in some sense it is we have politicized the pandemic. of allng bizarre things to politicize. shoveling snow. the technical job is being handled. it is the same in the pandemics.

we may change slightly we would end the mask mandate or the lockdown for personal freedom reasons, at least we would get a very clear message from the egovernment at this point in time. it is not safe to go out. all of this stuff got muddled because of this. politics stop at the water's edge. it should stop only get to these larger issues. weat need to recognize that only with a pragmatic fact based reason -based approach can we pandemic prove our world. >> thank you so much. we are out of time.

i encourage our viewers to pick up a copy of survival of the city living and thriving in an age of isolation wherever books okare sold. this is now adjourned. >> sunday after in-depth. joining us live to talk about the history of the united states. the civil war and the reconstruction area. redeeming great american. his latest robert e lee a life. a confederate general in the civil war. facebook comments and tweets. sunday at noon eastern on in-depth on book tvm before the program visit c-span shop.org.

>> here is a look at some of the most notable books of 2021. harvard university professor looks at three generations of black woman through their inheritance. a mother to her daughter separated by slavery. and all that she carried. best-selling author examining a development during world war ii. historian recalls a life and walk with me. reporting on the aftermath of the synagogue shooting in pittsburgh. its effect on the local community. looking at the life of the man behind a 9-year-old terrorist attack. the rise and fall of osama bin laden. these authors. in book tv. you can find your programs apple

tv.org. just type the author's name in the search bar at the top of the page. >> should business and politics mix? corporate america with culture increasing. here's a portion of his argument . >> 90% of both sides could actually agree on is people who are economically disempowered. live access to the educational system. access to participate in the economy. embracing the agenda that lists everyone out. sharing in the same way. the economic empowering everyone

over characteristics like race, gender and sexual orientation which is what i think we are focused on today. defining exactly what we need for inequities that we do need to address. inequities that affect people that have nothing to do with race. >> you can watch the rest of this interview along with all prior episodes on our website booktv.org justli afterwards tab near the top of the page. it is also available as a podcast. .... .... service. on about the books we delve into the latest news of the publishing industry with insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we also give updates on current nonfiction authors and books, the latest book reviews and we will talk about the current