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From our inner-cities to our urban fringes, what ultimately gets built is at the intersection of government policy and private markets.
Join Alain Bertaud, former Principal Planner at the World Bank and author of Order without Design: how markets shape cities, for an insightful evening exploring how this intersection between policy and markets can be made to work on behalf of all Australians.
By combining urban planning and urban economics, both practitioners and advocates will be better placed to achieve their goals. Only by measuring the outcomes of our policies can we begin to understand what truly works.
This is a vital evening for those passionate about solving the housing crisis, and building more affordable, liveable, and sustainable Australian cities.
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Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes.
Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens.
Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners' dream” created inefficiencies and waste.
Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities.
Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.
Order without Design: How markets shape cities was published by MIT Press in 2018.