Lessons from Alain Bertaud

Lessons from Alain Bertaud

During decades as an urban planner for the World Bank, Alain Bertaud analyzed cities from Bangalore to New York. In Order Without Design, he argues that cities are primarily labor markets, and that planning fails when it prioritizes aesthetics over economics. This collection details his case for how cities actually operate and how governments should manage them.

Part 1: Cities as Labor Markets

1. On the primary function of a city: "The working of the labor market is a foundation for everything we like in cities." — Source: [EconTalk]
2. On what enables monuments: "The Colosseum or the Eiffel Tower... were made possible because there was a very efficient labor market in the city which produced those monuments." — Source: [EconTalk]
3. On the true metric of city size: A city's size is not measured by its geographic footprint, but by the number of jobs accessible to a worker within an hour of commuting. — Source: [Order Without Design]
4. On urban fragmentation: When commuting becomes too slow, a large city effectively breaks apart into several smaller, less productive labor markets. — Source: [Order Without Design]
5. On the limits of master planning jobs: Planners cannot dictate where businesses will locate; they can only observe where employment clusters organically and ensure infrastructure supports it. — Source: [Marron Institute]
6. On spatial mismatches: Forcing affordable housing to the far edges of a city disconnects low-income workers from the labor market they need to survive. — Source: [World Bank Papers]
7. On the goal of a mayor: The primary objective of city leadership should be expanding the labor market's reach, rather than chasing abstract aesthetic goals. — Source: [Order Without Design]
8. On the density of interaction: A successful city maximizes the probability that specialized workers will encounter the specific firms that need their skills. — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
9. On what planners forget: By focusing on sustainability or resilience without measurable definitions, planners ignore the concrete reality that people move to cities primarily to find work. — Source: [Charter Cities Institute]
10. On the definition of a successful city: If a labor market is efficient, the resulting wealth can be directed toward the civic amenities that make a city pleasant. — Source: [EconTalk]

Part 2: The Gap Between Planners and Economists

1. On ignoring gravity: "Ignoring land prices when designing cities is like ignoring gravity when designing an airplane." — Source: [QuoteFancy]
2. On the core failure of the planning profession: Urban planning has largely failed because it draws its methods from architecture and design, rather than from economics. — Source: [Order Without Design]
3. On understanding outcomes: "If there is an outcome you don't like, you can't change it if you don't understand it." — Source: [Toronto Metropolitan University]
4. On market blindness: "Markets... are like gravity: they exist everywhere. But while urban planners are quite good at taking gravity into account, they tend to ignore market forces entirely in their designs." — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
5. On repeating mistakes: "Urban policies and strategies... are often repeated even when it is well known that they failed." — Source: [Order Without Design]
6. On the illusion of the city as a building: "Planning is based on the illusion that a city is a complex building that needs to be designed in advance by competent professionals." — Source: [NYU Marron Institute]
7. On the need for collaboration: Planners have the legal tools to shape a city, and economists have the analytical tools to understand it; they must learn to work together. — Source: [Order Without Design]
8. On qualitative vs. quantitative goals: Planners rely too heavily on qualitative visions like livability, whereas economists demand quantitative metrics to measure outcomes. — Source: [EconTalk]
9. On action vs. understanding: Drawing on Angus Deaton, Bertaud notes that "the need to do something tends to trump the need to understand what needs to be done." — Source: [Discourse Magazine]
10. On top-down ignorance: When planners attempt to manually balance jobs and housing in specific suburbs, they demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how dual-income households search for work. — Source: [Order Without Design]

Part 3: Spontaneous Order vs. Design

1. On stumbling into establishments: Adapting Adam Ferguson, Bertaud emphasizes that cities "are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design." — Source: [Order Without Design]
2. On Hayek's influence: Bertaud relies on Friedrich Hayek's premise that "order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive." — Source: [Order Without Design]
3. On messy cities: "I'm very tolerant of messy cities," as the messiness is often evidence of a thriving, spontaneous market at work. — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
4. On the ideal role of a planner: "Mayors and urban planners should be enablers and facilitators, not the creators and shapers of cities." — Source: [Discourse Magazine]
5. On Casablanca: Identifying Casablanca as his favorite urban movie, he notes that in a small space, "you have a lot of people who are obliged to shock each other to deal." — Source: [Adam Smith Works]
6. On cities designing themselves: A city’s spatial structure emerges organically from the millions of daily trade-offs residents make between housing size, commute time, and land prices. — Source: [Order Without Design]
7. On the failure of master plans: Master plans freeze a city in a specific moment in time, ignoring the fact that a city is a dynamic organism that must constantly adapt. — Source: [Charter Cities Institute]
8. On socialist cities: The failed socialist urban experiments prove that without a land market to signal value, cities become sprawling, inefficient, and hostile to their inhabitants. — Source: [World Bank Papers]
9. On Brasilia: When asked about the designed city of Brasilia, Bertaud summarized its fatal flaw: "It's a city of bureaucrats. You have no choice." — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]

Part 4: Mobility and Transportation

1. On the purpose of transit: Transportation systems exist to expand the labor market pool for employers and the job pool for workers. — Source: [Order Without Design]
2. On average commute times: A city must track the average commuting speed across all modes of transport as a primary indicator of its economic health. — Source: [EconTalk]
3. On war against the car: Planners who actively try to slow down car traffic without providing faster alternatives are actively shrinking their city's economy. — Source: [Order Without Design]
4. On transit monopolies: Public transit systems should be evaluated strictly on their speed and coverage, rather than operating as jobs programs for transit workers. — Source: [Marron Institute]
5. On land prices and transit: High land prices in the center naturally encourage the use of public transit, as land becomes too expensive to waste on parking lots. — Source: [Order Without Design]
6. On motorcycles in Asia: In many Asian cities, the motorcycle provides an incredibly efficient, low-cost expansion of the labor market that planners frequently try to ban out of aesthetic distaste. — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
7. On walking distances: The viability of transit systems depends heavily on allowing dense residential and commercial development within walking distance of stations. — Source: [EconTalk]
8. On managing congestion: Congestion pricing is an economic necessity for allocating scarce road space, rather than a punishment for drivers. — Source: [Order Without Design]
9. On integrating modes: A successful urban transport network allows seamless transfers between walking, biking, driving, and mass transit, acknowledging that residents use different modes for different trips. — Source: [Order Without Design]

Part 5: Housing Affordability and Markets

1. On the root of housing crises: Severe housing unaffordability is rarely a market failure; it is almost always a regulatory failure that prevents the market from supplying floor space. — Source: [Order Without Design]
2. On floor area ratios: Artificial limits on Floor Area Ratios act as a direct tax on housing affordability by forcing developers to consume more land per unit. — Source: [World Bank Papers]
3. On trade-offs: Low-income residents constantly balance the cost of housing against the time and cost of commuting; regulations that mandate minimum house sizes eliminate their cheapest options. — Source: [Order Without Design]
4. On the illusion of affordability mandates: Inclusionary zoning and rent control treat the symptoms of housing scarcity while discouraging the new construction needed to cure the disease. — Source: [EconTalk]
5. On single-family zoning: Most American cities lack the charm of European cities because "most American cities are zoned for single-family housing... not enough customers within walking distance." — Source: [EconTalk]
6. On land as an input: Land is merely one input in the production of housing; if land becomes expensive, builders must be allowed to substitute capital by building taller to keep prices stable. — Source: [Order Without Design]
7. On the elasticity of supply: A city's housing market functions well only when developers can rapidly respond to price signals by adding new inventory where demand is highest. — Source: [Marron Institute]
8. On informal settlements: Slums and informal settlements are rational market responses to formal housing regulations that make legal construction too expensive for the poor. — Source: [Order Without Design]
9. On protecting incumbents: Strict zoning laws are primarily a tool for existing homeowners to protect their property values at the expense of newcomers and younger generations. — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
10. On changing regulations: Instead of subsidizing housing, governments should focus on converting available land into affordable floor space by removing height restrictions. — Source: [World Bank Papers]

Part 6: Land Use and Zoning

1. On arbitrary borders: Urban growth boundaries constrain the supply of developable land, creating an artificial scarcity that immediately inflates housing costs. — Source: [Order Without Design]
2. On parking minimums: Mandating minimum parking requirements forces developers to build infrastructure for cars rather than housing for people, subsidizing drivers at the expense of renters. — Source: [EconTalk]
3. On the cost of aesthetics: When planners mandate specific building materials or historic preservation, they impose a direct cost on housing that is ultimately paid by the poorest residents. — Source: [Order Without Design]
4. On dynamic zoning: Zoning regulations should not be fixed indefinitely; they must be regularly evaluated against market prices to see if they are causing artificial shortages. — Source: [Marron Institute]
5. On mixed-use development: The market naturally prefers mixed-use environments where commercial and residential spaces blend, but restrictive zoning forcibly separates them, requiring more driving. — Source: [Order Without Design]
6. On evaluating planners: Planners should be judged not by how closely a city matches their maps, but by how quickly and affordably a city responds to population growth. — Source: [Charter Cities Institute]
7. On the arrogance of planners: The assumption that a planner knows what type of housing a family needs better than the family itself is a fatal conceit of modern urbanism. — Source: [Order Without Design]
8. On building heights: Restricting building heights in city centers forces development outward, increasing commute times and carbon emissions. — Source: [World Bank Papers]
9. On property rights: Flexible land use relies on strong property rights, allowing owners to adapt their parcels to the highest and best use as city dynamics change. — Source: [EconTalk]

Part 7: Infrastructure as a Tool

1. On Robert Moses: "I would tell him infrastructure is important, but infrastructure is there to serve people... Infrastructure is there as a tool, not as a purpose in itself." — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
2. On the planner's true job: "You only need to provide the infrastructure to support the activities of all the people living and working in the city." — Source: [Daily Hive]
3. On street grids: A well-designed, continuous street grid is the most useful piece of infrastructure a city can build, as it allows for infinite adaptation of the land between the streets. — Source: [Order Without Design]
4. On infrastructure trailing development: In rapidly growing cities, it is normal for private housing to precede public infrastructure; the government's role is to catch up, not to halt the housing. — Source: [Order Without Design]
5. On location rarity: "Cities need a good location... And I don't think there's that many very good locations." — Source: [Conversations with Tyler]
6. On pricing infrastructure: Utilities and roads should be priced according to their use and maintenance costs, rather than subsidized in a way that encourages sprawl. — Source: [Order Without Design]
7. On transit-oriented development: Public investment in high-capacity transit is wasted if zoning laws prohibit high-density development immediately surrounding the stations. — Source: [Marron Institute]
8. On anticipating demand: Infrastructure planning requires economists to forecast where the market wants to go, rather than designers trying to dictate where the market should go. — Source: [Order Without Design]
9. On adapting grids: Cities must preserve right-of-ways for future infrastructure expansion, as this is the one task the private market cannot organize on its own. — Source: [World Bank Papers]

Part 8: The Role of Government and Social Policy

1. On homelessness: "Many cases of homelessness... stem from social welfare policies and require immediate government action." — Source: [Goodreads]
2. On mixing policy: "It is important from the beginning to clearly separate emergency social welfare from housing policy... The provision of homeless shelters is not part of housing policy." — Source: [Goodreads]
3. On market limits: "I want to make it clear that I am not implying here that all housing issues can be solved through market solutions." — Source: [Goodreads]
4. On providing public goods: The government should focus its limited resources on providing true public goods like streets, sanitation, and transit, rather than interfering in private housing markets. — Source: [Order Without Design]
5. On subsidizing people, not places: If a government wants to help the poor afford housing, it should provide direct cash assistance rather than building inefficient, concentrated public housing projects. — Source: [EconTalk]
6. On taxation: Property taxes should reflect the value of the land rather than the improvements upon it, encouraging owners to develop their land to its maximum potential. — Source: [Order Without Design]
7. On municipal boundaries: Political fragmentation allows wealthy suburbs to isolate themselves from the tax burden of the broader labor market they rely on. — Source: [Order Without Design]
8. On data collection: The most important job of a city planning department is to act as a data center, publishing transparent metrics on land prices, rents, and commute times. — Source: [Marron Institute]
9. On evaluating mayors: Citizens should evaluate their mayors based on a simple metric: Did housing become more affordable relative to wages, and did commute times decrease during their term? — Source: [Charter Cities Institute]