Alain Bertaud: prediction

Transcript context

…The YIMBY movement — yes, in my backyard — will it ever come about? There’s been a lot of force behind the YIMBY movement over the last year, but not that many concrete victories. Is it simply the case that opposition will be mobilized and the YIMBYs will lose? Or does it have a future? I think it has a future. Well, this is what this talk is all about, and your talk, in general. I think people have to understand, to learn, what is implied by freezing cities the way they are. Cities are alive because they change constantly. As soon as you freeze a city — and this is what NIMBY is all about, freezing cities — the city dies, like a human being that you tied in a straitjacket. But if we look around the world, we don’t see that many traditional cities that have overcome NIMBY. Houston has done it. Warsaw, Poland, has done it. There was so much destruction, people were happy to get rid of old communist buildings.…

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