WEBVTT

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- Good afternoon, everyone.

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Welcome to the Open Translation
Lounge at TED Global 2013.

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Today, we're happy to welcome Teddy Cruz

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who just left the TED stage moments ago,

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talking about a pretty bold way
of designing, planning

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and building cities in the future,
which we're going to talk about today.

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Here in the Lounge today,
we have Bryant from China,

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Irteza from Pakistan,

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Jan from Czechoslovakia,

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and Unnawut from Thailand.

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And, on Skype, welcome to all of you.

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Teddy, thanks again for joining us.

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It's funny,
when people talk about planning cities,

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they always think of looking at these big,
giant ones, Shanghai, Dubai,

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why don't you judge those cities
as an inspiration?

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- Oh, gosh. You begin right away.

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Again, as I mentioned in the talk,
after the last year's of investment

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in those environments,
as the architecture, planning

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and urban intelligentsia from all over
the world fled en masse

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to those environments, and that explosion
of urbanisation from Dubai to Shanghai,

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to many of these enclaves
of economic power, I don't think,

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and maybe you guys can tell me,

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but I just don't see one single idea

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that emerged from those transformations.

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In reality, the best ideas
about urbanisation in the context

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of generating other modalities
of planning,

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of rethinking infrastructure,

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of affordable housing,

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of mobilising other processes
of public participation,

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and so on, were happening
in Latin America, but nobody was noticing.

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So, the provocation I have is that
not one single idea was advanced

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in Dubai or Shanghai.

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In fact, they were just imitating
and reproducing the worst recipes

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of urban planning that were generated

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in the United States in the last decades.

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- I wonder what your strategy would be if,

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let's say, we were
to transplant you and say,

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can we take some of these strategies
and do them in these different countries?

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When you have this kind of authoritarian
capitalism, how could you deal with it?

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- I've worked, in fact,
in South Korea as an artist

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intervening in projects
that have to do with public space

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and the politics of housing.

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And I investigated many
of those neighbourhoods

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that were slated for demolition.

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And it was amazing to investigate
the amount of informal economies

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of social organisational practices
embedded in those neighbourhoods.

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There was a man who built
a snail farm on four rooftops

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of his block, and, in doing so,
he also produced

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a co-operative model to sustain
the economy

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of that immediate environment.

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It's hard to imagine

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that those entrepreneurial
social economic energies

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are completely eroded.

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Fine, we know the city needs to transform.

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I'm not talking about preserving
those neighbourhoods intact.

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But before we destroy them,
let's understand what they've produced.

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Right.

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T. Cruz: And what I've been investigating
in my own section of the world,

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on the border between Mexico
and the United States,

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is that density needs to be reimagined

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as an amount of socio-economic
exchanges per area,

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and that's what defines
many of those neighbourhoods.

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But if a developer looks at it,
they can't monetise that.

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So, how do you sell that
to the power brokers

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or the stakeholders in the community,
who are actually driving everything?

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How do you come in as a designer
and say, it's really complicated.

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As we all know the world
of architects and designers

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has been eroded to some degree,

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but when you're dealing
with a massive problem,

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I wonder what your strategy
is for tackling it?

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- That's a fantastic question.

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I think that's where we begin to find
and expand the role of architects

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and planners that can begin
to act as facilitators or mediators

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of the bottom-up knowledge,

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and the logics,
economically and politically,

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of top-down organisation.

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Because even the activists working
in those neighbourhoods

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were not aware of that knowledge.

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They are resisting the developers.

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But they're not representing
the knowledge of the community.

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- So they're not giving them a solution?

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- Exactly.

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And I think that's a gap
that needs to be filled.

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It's a difficult issue
because it all has to do with,

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in the end, the amount of profit.

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I think that enabling
housing projects, or processes,

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that enable a community to profit
from its own infrastructure

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and its own housing
is what we need to talk about.

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But, yes, in this polarisation
between the bottom-up and the top-down,

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there is much to be said
and to be done, really,

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in producing new models
of political representation,

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but also community participation.

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And this is what is absent.

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- So it's the designer as facilitator,
translator, and mediator?

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T. Cruz: Exactly.

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That is one point that I wish
I would have said in the 13 minutes,

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but it's difficult to.

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- I'd like to bring in some people
from some large cities.

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I'd like to bring in some commentary.

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Nati, from Sao Paulo,
do you have a question for Teddy?

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So, based on what we are discussing
here, I'd like to ask you,

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how could developers
reinvent their business?

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Are there new ways for them

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to follow in which they do not provide
a kind of valorisation of improvements?

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Is there a way that developers
can change their business

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and bring a good legacy to cities?

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- The answer, in a sense,
is that we can't wait for the developers.

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They are not our clients.

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I think we need to begin by ourselves
gaining the knowledge

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of the developer so that we,
as designers, as architects,

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urban planners, become the developers
of new housing models,

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because the knowledge
is out there to be mobilised.

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The kind of intelligence the developer
has in manipulating resources

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and time is all embedded
in the spreadsheet.

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And that knowledge has been away from us.

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So, on the one hand,
our clients should be ourselves,

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Second, or primarily, in fact,
the communities.

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The idea that informal settlements
or neighbourhoods

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facilitated by existing
community-based practices,

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whether NGOs or other modes
of representation,

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can, in fact, also become
developers of their own housing.

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I would argue the examples need to be
driven by us and not by the developers.

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And only then can they get a sense.

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But part of the issue of the urban crisis
today is that the resources

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of the many
have been moved to the very few.

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I think it's very difficult to convince
the developer to have less profit.

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So, that's the reason I think
the early stages of transformation

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will have to happen
with very small scale examples

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and models that can emerge
from these communities.

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But I would argue the importance
of architects becoming

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developers of affordable
social housing in our time.

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- We're going to take another
question from Skype. Matti?

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- My question is, if we are to realise
this new way of citizenship,

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where people create
rather than just consume,

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how do we change
people's way of looking at citizenship

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as something else than just consumerism?

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- You're getting
to the core of the challenge.

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And that's the reason Latin America,

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as one of the speakers today suggested,
much more needs to be said about it.

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What produced the transformation?

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The urban transformation of places
like Medellín in Colombia

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that was considered
the most dangerous city in the world

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in the late '80s and early '90s

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to becoming now an exemplary model
of urban transformation.

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Again, it was not about buildings,
architecture or planning.

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It was about a political
transformation of institutions,

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seeking a new type of interface
with the public.

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And that being said, which is
another aspect that many designers,

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architects and planners need to engage,

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how to produce a new civic education,

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engaging what the Colombians
call a civic culture,

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an urban pedagogy
that begins to raise awareness

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of the relationship of social norms
and the construction of the city.

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I think to re-engage a political will
that invests the minds and hearts

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of people in constructing
their own city requires, once more,

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mediation and investment
in education, particularly.

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A huge amount of work.

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But some masochists, like you and I,
we can engage, hopefully,

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in producing new models of interface
to produce an urban educational process.

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I'm saying that because
that's one of the closest projects

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that I want to follow in the next years.

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- I want to give the panel
an opportunity to ask a question.

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- I come from Bangkok.

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A lot of what you said seems like
we need to change a lot of things, right?

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But for those
that are already established,

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especially in the city centre,

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where you already have
all the spaces occupied,

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how do you think that area
of the city could be changed, or not?

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- Yes.

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I think that this is what brings up
an issue that was difficult also

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to elaborate on in the 13 minutes.

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It's the role of programming.

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While certain buildings
remain static, fixed,

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that the orientation should be
to rethink the retrofitting,

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not necessarily through
physical strategies,

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but through intelligent
programmatic hybrids,

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or conditions that could anticipate

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the intensification of economic
and social activity.

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So, we could be designers not only
of space but of protocols,

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that's what I was saying earlier.

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- You need to own your own cities?

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- A sense of ownership
of your own city is essential.

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And that's the reason, I think,

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public participation in reforming
governments is necessary.

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- I feel like you need to come up
with an urban handbook

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for guerilla warfare,
in terms of the design space.

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To give concrete examples.

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How can we deal with these conditions
on a lot of different levels

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is a huge problem.

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At the end of the day,
that's what I'm saying.

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We think because we are educated
in architectural schools,

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that what we need to do as architects
is just to design objects.

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We could be designing many other things,

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and I think the designing of social
relations or even, at times,

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political processes
can be an interesting topic

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that has been absent
from our debate, I think.

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- One more question
from our viewers on Skype.

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Sergio, would you like to ask a question?

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- Yeah.

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One of the things that struck me
the most in your talk was

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when you spoke about the people
who were building the skate park.

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And it was interesting to me
for two reasons.

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First because it shows that there
are people who want to be

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active in their citizenship.

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And the fact that they were told,
or they were required, to build an NGO.

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But I see this as something that began
as something much more unplanned,

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something that could
grow more organically.

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And then it went to an NGO.

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It required it to be more planned,
more managed, as you say.

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So, are we seeing two different models?

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Would you prefer to have some growth
that is more unplanned,

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more organic, more typically reactive,
if it's not as planned?

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- I get it. In fact, it's one of the most
provocative questions.

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Yes, while we want to protect
and uphold the magic of the unplanned,

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part of the problem in terms
of these communities being suppressed -

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they're not able to advance
socio-economically -

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is that they lack representation.

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Not that they "lack", they contain it,

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but sometimes the instruments
to formulate new forms of organisation

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and management that can push
against the top-down institution.

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So I think I do believe that in order
to really get to the next step,

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the next layer, we need to construct
other forms of governance.

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That's not to say that skateboarders
have to become rigid and planned.

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No, they continue to organise themselves

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by enabling forms of access
into the magic of insurgence.

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But they now have resources.

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They now have a space
which is physical and they call the shots.

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In fact, they are inspiring other
environments to do the same.

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I wouldn't be afraid of that
translation from the unplanned

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into particular calibration
of the planned,

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but without selling out.

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It is that middle, grey zone
that needs to be activated

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because we've been polarising
ourselves based on this way

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of looking in such a patronising way
at the informal and the unplanned.

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I think there is much
to be constructed there,

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in terms of new politics
of urban development.

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- We're going to have to end there.

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We need to get people
back into the session.

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Teddy, thank you
so much for joining us today.

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- Thank you, and thank
you for your questions.

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Some of you, if we can keep in touch,
and invite me to Portugal--

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- Come any time.
- Thank you.

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- Thank you, everybody.
We're back tomorrow.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)