TED Global 2013 Found in Translation Teddy Cruz

In the TED Found in Translation Session following his talk, Teddy explores possible solutions to the pressing issues surrounding urban development with a global panel of TED Translators and experts.

- Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the Open Translation
Lounge at TED Global 2013.

Today, we're happy to welcome Teddy Cruz

who just left the TED stage moments ago,

talking about a pretty bold way
of designing, planning

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

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

Irteza from Pakistan,

Jan from Czechoslovakia,

and Unnawut from Thailand.

And, on Skype, welcome to all of you.

Teddy, thanks again for joining us.

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

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

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

- Oh, gosh. You begin right away.

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

in those environments,
as the architecture, planning

and urban intelligentsia from all over
the world fled en masse

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

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

and maybe you guys can tell me,

but I just don't see one single idea

that emerged from those transformations.

In reality, the best ideas
about urbanisation in the context

of generating other modalities
of planning,

of rethinking infrastructure,

of affordable housing,

of mobilising other processes
of public participation,

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

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

in Dubai or Shanghai.

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

of urban planning that were generated

in the United States in the last decades.

- I wonder what your strategy would be if,

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

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

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

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

intervening in projects
that have to do with public space

and the politics of housing.

And I investigated many
of those neighbourhoods

that were slated for demolition.

And it was amazing to investigate
the amount of informal economies

of social organisational practices
embedded in those neighbourhoods.

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

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

a co-operative model to sustain
the economy

of that immediate environment.

It's hard to imagine

that those entrepreneurial
social economic energies

are completely eroded.

Fine, we know the city needs to transform.

I'm not talking about preserving
those neighbourhoods intact.

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

Right.

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

on the border between Mexico
and the United States,

is that density needs to be reimagined

as an amount of socio-economic
exchanges per area,

and that's what defines
many of those neighbourhoods.

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

So, how do you sell that
to the power brokers

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

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

As we all know the world
of architects and designers

has been eroded to some degree,

but when you're dealing
with a massive problem,

I wonder what your strategy
is for tackling it?

- That's a fantastic question.

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

and planners that can begin
to act as facilitators or mediators

of the bottom-up knowledge,

and the logics,
economically and politically,

of top-down organisation.

Because even the activists working
in those neighbourhoods

were not aware of that knowledge.

They are resisting the developers.

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

- So they're not giving them a solution?

- Exactly.

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

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

in the end, the amount of profit.

I think that enabling
housing projects, or processes,

that enable a community to profit
from its own infrastructure

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

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

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

in producing new models
of political representation,

but also community participation.

And this is what is absent.

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

T. Cruz: Exactly.

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

but it's difficult to.

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

I'd like to bring in some commentary.

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

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

how could developers
reinvent their business?

Are there new ways for them

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

Is there a way that developers
can change their business

and bring a good legacy to cities?

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

They are not our clients.

I think we need to begin by ourselves
gaining the knowledge

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

urban planners, become the developers
of new housing models,

because the knowledge
is out there to be mobilised.

The kind of intelligence the developer
has in manipulating resources

and time is all embedded
in the spreadsheet.

And that knowledge has been away from us.

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

Second, or primarily, in fact,
the communities.

The idea that informal settlements
or neighbourhoods

facilitated by existing
community-based practices,

whether NGOs or other modes
of representation,

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

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

And only then can they get a sense.

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

of the many
have been moved to the very few.

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

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

will have to happen
with very small scale examples

and models that can emerge
from these communities.

But I would argue the importance
of architects becoming

developers of affordable
social housing in our time.

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

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

where people create
rather than just consume,

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

as something else than just consumerism?

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

And that's the reason Latin America,

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

What produced the transformation?

The urban transformation of places
like Medellín in Colombia

that was considered
the most dangerous city in the world

in the late '80s and early '90s

to becoming now an exemplary model
of urban transformation.

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

It was about a political
transformation of institutions,

seeking a new type of interface
with the public.

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

architects and planners need to engage,

how to produce a new civic education,

engaging what the Colombians
call a civic culture,

an urban pedagogy
that begins to raise awareness

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

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

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

mediation and investment
in education, particularly.

A huge amount of work.

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

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

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

that I want to follow in the next years.

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

- I come from Bangkok.

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

But for those
that are already established,

especially in the city centre,

where you already have
all the spaces occupied,

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

- Yes.

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

to elaborate on in the 13 minutes.

It's the role of programming.

While certain buildings
remain static, fixed,

that the orientation should be
to rethink the retrofitting,

not necessarily through
physical strategies,

but through intelligent
programmatic hybrids,

or conditions that could anticipate

the intensification of economic
and social activity.

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

that's what I was saying earlier.

- You need to own your own cities?

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

And that's the reason, I think,

public participation in reforming
governments is necessary.

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

for guerilla warfare,
in terms of the design space.

To give concrete examples.

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

is a huge problem.

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

We think because we are educated
in architectural schools,

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

We could be designing many other things,

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

political processes
can be an interesting topic

that has been absent
from our debate, I think.

- One more question
from our viewers on Skype.

Sergio, would you like to ask a question?

- Yeah.

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

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

And it was interesting to me
for two reasons.

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

active in their citizenship.

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

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

something that could
grow more organically.

And then it went to an NGO.

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

So, are we seeing two different models?

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

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

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

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

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

they're not able to advance
socio-economically -

is that they lack representation.

Not that they "lack", they contain it,

but sometimes the instruments
to formulate new forms of organisation

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

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

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

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

No, they continue to organise themselves

by enabling forms of access
into the magic of insurgence.

But they now have resources.

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

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

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

into particular calibration
of the planned,

but without selling out.

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

because we've been polarising
ourselves based on this way

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

I think there is much
to be constructed there,

in terms of new politics
of urban development.

- We're going to have to end there.

We need to get people
back into the session.

Teddy, thank you
so much for joining us today.

- Thank you, and thank
you for your questions.

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

- Come any time.
- Thank you.

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

Thank you so much.

(Applause)