Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Felton. When the coronavirus hit New York City,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers left, mostly from the
Speaker 1: city's wealthier neighborhoods. In San Francisco, rent for a one
Speaker 1: bedroom apartment is down at historic eleven point eight percent.
Speaker 1: There's no question that the coronavirus is changing what our
Speaker 1: cities look like now. But will these changes last? Will
Speaker 1: the people who left come back? How will we figure
Speaker 1: out what it means to live in a denser or
Speaker 1: less denser environment in an age of pandemic. Here to
Speaker 1: talk with me about the pandemic, about cities, and about
Speaker 1: protests is Jennifer Bradley. She is the founding director of
Speaker 1: the Center for Urban Innovation at the Aspen Institute. She
Speaker 1: has spent her entire career thinking about cities, how they function,
Speaker 1: and how we can make them better. Recently, she's been
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about the impact of Corona on city life. Jennifer,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. You spent your
Speaker 1: entire career thinking about and analyzing and making recommendations for
Speaker 1: how cities should operate and operate better. And now we're
Speaker 1: facing what feels to me like the biggest crisis for
Speaker 1: cities in our lifetimes. What has been your experience over
Speaker 1: the last few mad months in thinking through and rethinking
Speaker 1: the issues you've been working on your whole career. I
Speaker 1: think that the thing that strikes me over both the
Speaker 1: arc of my career and then particularly within the last
Speaker 1: three months, is that cities are resilient. You remember it
Speaker 1: in the early days of the pandemic, there were these
Speaker 1: kind of prefervid, hysterical articles. Our cities over density seems
Speaker 1: to be the key to the spread. So will we
Speaker 1: ever go back to cities? Will we ever go back
Speaker 1: on the subway? And what you realize now when restrictions
Speaker 1: are starting to lift is it's very hard, it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to keep people apart from each other. So there
Speaker 1: is this there is something in us as social creatures
Speaker 1: and social animals that brings us towards the congregation, the connection,
Speaker 1: and particularly now the novelty and variety of cities since
Speaker 1: we've been stuck in our houses for so long. So
Speaker 1: I think that resiliency is going to be what will
Speaker 1: help cities move into whatever it is we're going to
Speaker 1: encounter next. I think you're also seeing an understanding that
Speaker 1: the city is many things. The city is both a government,
Speaker 1: but it's also these formal and informal networks of support,
Speaker 1: protection and organization and practices. And I think the fact
Speaker 1: that cities are networked and distributed will help them moving forward,
Speaker 1: because what they have to deal with moving forward is
Speaker 1: radical shifts and declines in their budgets. Right when tax
Speaker 1: revenues go down, city budgets are decimated. So I think
Speaker 1: what we're going to see is our understanding of what
Speaker 1: is a city evolved from something that's more top down
Speaker 1: in government centric to something that's more distributed, flexible, a
Speaker 1: kind of diy urbanism, and that will be bumpy and unpredictable,
Speaker 1: but also truer to the spirit of cities, I think,
Speaker 1: and so that gives me some hope for the future.
Speaker 1: There are so many rich things in what you just said,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to tease out a few
Speaker 1: of them from you. Let me start with where you
Speaker 1: began about the city as a place of connections. One
Speaker 1: of the amazing things about cities is that, of course
Speaker 1: people have all kinds of connections in small towns and
Speaker 1: in suburbs, but they're a little more predictable. That is
Speaker 1: to say, we know a large percentage of the people
Speaker 1: in the place where we are, or we know how
Speaker 1: to think about those people. But in a city, we
Speaker 1: have all these surprising juxtapositions. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that we love about cities, and that makes city
Speaker 1: life distinctive and unique. How does that change when it's
Speaker 1: precisely the idea of the random juxtaposition that is frightening
Speaker 1: us by making us wonder if it's going to lead
Speaker 1: to our being infected. I mean, is there some danger
Speaker 1: that the most distinctive thing about city life, or one
Speaker 1: of the most distinctive things about city life, becomes a
Speaker 1: source of fear rather than a source of joy. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I think if you look at the
Speaker 1: way that the pandemic trends have unfolded or played out
Speaker 1: in the last couple of weeks, you see that there
Speaker 1: are super spread or events within intimate families, within funeral
Speaker 1: within birthday parties. So we are not necessarily safer with
Speaker 1: the people we know than with people that we don't know,
Speaker 1: and cities have always been about how to behave in
Speaker 1: public and how to behave civilly with strangers. And I
Speaker 1: think in some ways it might actually be easier to
Speaker 1: behave civilly with strangers to understand. I hope we get
Speaker 1: to the point where we understand that going outside during
Speaker 1: this period without a mask should be as unthinkable as
Speaker 1: going outside without pants. We begin to understand that we
Speaker 1: need to wash our hands. It can be easier to
Speaker 1: do that in the kind of semi anonymous public spaces
Speaker 1: than it can be with those who are close to us.
Speaker 1: Right when we wouldn't necessarily want to say, oh, Dad,
Speaker 1: you know I can't hug you. You really do need
Speaker 1: to wear a mask to keep you safe, to keep
Speaker 1: me safe. So I think that being in public with
Speaker 1: strangers is actually going to feel kind of invigorating, and
Speaker 1: we will find new ways and protocols, right the nod
Speaker 1: over the mask rather than the full smile, different ways
Speaker 1: of greeting people, and this feeling that we're all going
Speaker 1: through something on our streets together. I think we will
Speaker 1: want more public having been so radically private and privatized
Speaker 1: in all of our dealings. That's actually very inspiring, and
Speaker 1: I love what you said. Another word you used was resilience,
Speaker 1: that cities are places of resilience. What if people start leaving.
Speaker 1: My parents live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: which I like to refer to as the city that
Speaker 1: frequently sleeps, and the New York Times reported using cell
Speaker 1: phone data that something like two thirds of the census
Speaker 1: tract in which they live left the city. Now, that's
Speaker 1: an extreme neighborhood. Obviously in many way as a high
Speaker 1: percentage of that people they are can afford to go
Speaker 1: somewhere else. But one wonders if that is the harbinger
Speaker 1: of something to come. Do you have the sense that
Speaker 1: there will be a decline in the population of major
Speaker 1: cities over time? You rescue that question with the caveat
Speaker 1: of adding the word major cities. Cities are not all
Speaker 1: one thing. I think there may be less attraction in
Speaker 1: the near term for incredibly high cost, incredibly dense cities
Speaker 1: like certain parts of New York. People are talking about
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Whether engineers want to pay the extraordinarily high
Speaker 1: housing costs when if they're working from home, they might
Speaker 1: just as well live happily in Denver or Portland or Austin.
Speaker 1: Or Boise. I don't think though, that this spells a
Speaker 1: kind of end of cities or even end of big cities,
Speaker 1: for several reasons. One, cities are incredibly hard to kill.
Speaker 1: You look at a city like Detroit. Detroit's lost more
Speaker 1: than a million people, but it's still actually a viable city.
Speaker 1: It is still actually one of the larger cities in
Speaker 1: the United States. And what people are forgetting right now
Speaker 1: when people are able to work from homework from anywhere,
Speaker 1: is that that's essentially the interest off of the accumulated
Speaker 1: social capital that was built up through face to face interactions,
Speaker 1: through the random meetings, through running into a colleague in
Speaker 1: the hall. That's not going to be sustainable over the
Speaker 1: course of decades. Also, cities are important labor markets, and
Speaker 1: you'll need a wide number of opportunities for people who
Speaker 1: are in two career households. So it's fine if one
Speaker 1: person in the family is a Facebook engineer and can
Speaker 1: work from anywhere, but her partner may not have the
Speaker 1: same privilege and may need to be back in that
Speaker 1: dense labor market of a San Francisco or a Los
Speaker 1: Angeles or even a Denver or an Austin. So I
Speaker 1: just don't see this trend reversing and turning on its
Speaker 1: head and again, because there are other aspects of cities too.
Speaker 1: They're not just places to work, they're places for discovery, delight,
Speaker 1: for culture. I'm stunned. You can't keep people out of restaurants.
Speaker 1: I'm blown away by this. Right, people are risking their
Speaker 1: health for brunch. So that says to me that there
Speaker 1: is something about cities urbanity, And I don't make a
Speaker 1: strong distinction between city and suburb when I say this.
Speaker 1: I just think it's meets so deep a need in
Speaker 1: the human spirit that we will keep finding ways to
Speaker 1: gather like this. I completely share your instinct that it's
Speaker 1: kind of an inspiring fact about the human need for
Speaker 1: social contact that people, as you put it, are risking
Speaker 1: their lives for brunch, which is a great phase. But
Speaker 1: to say that is also to realize that all of
Speaker 1: my public health professional friends, you know, many of whom
Speaker 1: have been on the show, their responses, it's crazy to
Speaker 1: risk your life for brunch. It's a mistake. What we
Speaker 1: need our firmer regulations and maybe firmer social norms that
Speaker 1: make it clear that we shouldn't be doing this. They
Speaker 1: do not think, for the most part that restaurants should
Speaker 1: be open for brunch if people will risk their lives
Speaker 1: to go there, and I add it oar, but we
Speaker 1: will not be in pandemic forever. I recognize that that's
Speaker 1: part of the question, and maybe I should cash out
Speaker 1: that question. It's of course possible that this winter will
Speaker 1: know that there is a vaccine that will work, and
Speaker 1: that's the wonderful best case scenario, you know, Dao SX Machina,
Speaker 1: and we all get back to life. And in that scenario,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more. But there's also a possibility,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the experts seem to think it's
Speaker 1: a probability that what we'll find then is actually that
Speaker 1: we can't do that, that none of the vaccines really works,
Speaker 1: or that they work somewhat, or that they work for
Speaker 1: younger and healthier people, and that in that scenario, we're
Speaker 1: going to have to start accepting the long term presence
Speaker 1: of pandemic, not of the that kills everybody all the time,
Speaker 1: but that kills some of the people some of the time.
Speaker 1: And under those circumstances, you can already feel any here.
Speaker 1: The public health professionals saying we're gonna have to maintain
Speaker 1: social distancing for the foreseeable future. What about in that situation,
Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't that pose more fundamental threats to the
Speaker 1: aspiration to social life that we associate with cities. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there are very dense cities that seem to be
Speaker 1: managing and figuring this out. I think we will change cities,
Speaker 1: but plagues haven't killed cities. The times that we have
Speaker 1: dramatically reduced our density and shifted our gradient has been
Speaker 1: because of enormous public campaigns and massive amounts of subsidies.
Speaker 1: That's when we change the American landscape in the middle
Speaker 1: of the century through the nineties. Absent that combination of
Speaker 1: both significant campaign and massive subsidies, I don't see how
Speaker 1: it will work and where it will come from. And
Speaker 1: this just tells you basically that I'm an urbanist and
Speaker 1: I'm committed to cities, and I will endeavor to keep
Speaker 1: them strong and safe. But I don't know that my
Speaker 1: life would be necessarily better in a more suburban environment
Speaker 1: than it is living in an apartment building in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. I very much wish I had in unit
Speaker 1: washer dryer, But other than that, I don't see how
Speaker 1: it's better if I'm out in only Maryland. It's a
Speaker 1: hugely important insight that you've written about that the movement
Speaker 1: to the suburbs that we associate with the post World
Speaker 1: War two period wasn't just some accident, and wasn't just
Speaker 1: the result of market forces, but was also the result
Speaker 1: of government policies and subsidies. What I'm wondering is if
Speaker 1: we might not see over the next three to five
Speaker 1: years a kind of less explicit, but nevertheless present reorientation
Speaker 1: of how government officials think about cities, because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the urbanist picture that you've been describing
Speaker 1: has been embraced by lots and lots of public officials
Speaker 1: in the last decade or two. But that seems to
Speaker 1: me shapeable and malleable. And if you're a government official
Speaker 1: and you're going to be elected or voted out of
Speaker 1: office based on your COVID numbers, and if you're consistently
Speaker 1: seeing which I'm not saying will be, but imagine consistently
Speaker 1: seeing that it's in your urban areas that you have
Speaker 1: the largest amount of COVID cases, it is possible to
Speaker 1: imagine government officials, I think, saying you know what, let's
Speaker 1: de emphasize density. Let's not invest in the infrastructure that
Speaker 1: makes density work. Let's not invest more in our public
Speaker 1: transit systems, let's not invest more in bike lanes. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this will happen, but it does seem like
Speaker 1: there could be that kind of a reorientation of a
Speaker 1: historical type if we get this perception that cities are
Speaker 1: where the virus is fair. That said, if you look
Speaker 1: at the data from the most recent case surges, you're
Speaker 1: not seeing a tight correlation with density. So you're seeing Arizona, Florida,
Speaker 1: my home state of Texas. These are not exceptionally dense
Speaker 1: places as the American landscape goes. But aren't we seeing
Speaker 1: in those places that the spikes when you break it
Speaker 1: down within those states, are happening in relatively denser parts
Speaker 1: of those states as opposed to the more rural areas. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: or ex urban areas. Yes and no, right, I mean
Speaker 1: there can be You know, you also look at the
Speaker 1: meatpacking plants, which are dense within the walls but played
Speaker 1: out in a less dense, larger landscape. So the density
Speaker 1: I think that we have to be most worried about
Speaker 1: is essentially household and workplace density as opposed to neighborhood
Speaker 1: or city level density. What I would love to see
Speaker 1: is policy focusing on housing and overcrowding so that people
Speaker 1: were not living in dangerous individual unit conditions, that people
Speaker 1: who need housing can get housing. Where I would like
Speaker 1: all of this energy to go is in figuring out
Speaker 1: from an epidemiological point of view, from a social point
Speaker 1: of view, from an economic point of view, what do
Speaker 1: we need to do to make density safe. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment, Jennifer. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you spoke about was how cities are networks of support,
Speaker 1: networks of connection, and that in some way they're in
Speaker 1: that sense decentralized. That's a fascinating idea and it's counterintuitive
Speaker 1: to me. So would you say more about that. When
Speaker 1: I think of the city, I think of concentration rather
Speaker 1: than of diffusing of authority or responsibility. So please explain.
Speaker 1: You see this anecdotally in stories about people caring for
Speaker 1: their neighbors, right, looking out for somebody down the street
Speaker 1: who may be immunocompromised or who may be elderly, and
Speaker 1: bringing them groceries. Right. Those are informal, mutual networks of support.
Speaker 1: You see it in the way that different neighborhoods have
Speaker 1: responded to well intentioned but poorly thought out policy initiatives
Speaker 1: during this time. So, for example, Oakland decided to pedestrianize
Speaker 1: a large amount of streets without thinking about who might
Speaker 1: need those streets for car parking and commuting. So that
Speaker 1: was frontline workers in neighborhoods that were predominantly populated by
Speaker 1: people of color, and this notion of safe streets kind
Speaker 1: of imposed was not an appropriate policy response. So neighborhoods
Speaker 1: are organizing to get the kinds of things that they
Speaker 1: need during the pandemic and show that they are differentiated
Speaker 1: in a kind of self determining way. And we all
Speaker 1: know that power across the city and power across neighborhoods
Speaker 1: is not necessarily evenly distributed, and organizational capacity and interest
Speaker 1: is not necessarily evenly distributed. And I think we're seeing
Speaker 1: those differences in capacity play out and places that have
Speaker 1: not previously been organized organizing more forcefully. Right because your home,
Speaker 1: you're nearer your neighbors, you can kind of engage with them.
Speaker 1: You are now better able to organize and identify yourself
Speaker 1: and to speak up for yourself. Then I think this
Speaker 1: will come up more and more as cities have to
Speaker 1: make difficult choices about the distribution of resources during the
Speaker 1: next phase, once there is more economic activity. You use
Speaker 1: the phrase DIY urbanism, which is also really fascinating, and
Speaker 1: I want to hear more about that, because it seems
Speaker 1: to me that a lot of what we've seen during
Speaker 1: this Corona period is municipal governments how us what to do.
Speaker 1: Where I live Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is a weird city,
Speaker 1: but it is my city, is the one I grew
Speaker 1: up in and I love it. You know, long before
Speaker 1: the state had a mass coordinance, the city had a
Speaker 1: mass coordinance that it was enforcing I think practically not
Speaker 1: at all. But Cambridge being Cambridge, there was lots of
Speaker 1: moral enforcement from people on the streets. But that was
Speaker 1: the opposite of do it yourself. It was the government
Speaker 1: does it. When I hear DIY, I imagine sort of
Speaker 1: spontaneously organizing individuals rather than the institutions of the city.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's not what you meant by do it yourself.
Speaker 1: I think you can look at right, so you could
Speaker 1: say that Cambridge decided on its own that it was
Speaker 1: not going to wait for the lead of the state
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts that it had a better understanding of what
Speaker 1: residents needed. The other DIY urbanism I'm seeing is people
Speaker 1: reclaiming the streets in particular ways, shifting more street space
Speaker 1: to pedestrians as opposed to cars without waiting for an
Speaker 1: official city designation, spontaneous but socially stons gatherings. One could
Speaker 1: argue that these protests that have been rolling through the
Speaker 1: month of June and continuing in some cities are also
Speaker 1: a kind of reclaiming of public space in a powerful
Speaker 1: way that bespeaks a desire to use and shape space,
Speaker 1: even in a pandemic, in a way that responds to
Speaker 1: particular needs. So I think people will continue to use
Speaker 1: the city space to get what they want. People make
Speaker 1: the city as they live in it, I guess is
Speaker 1: the point that I'm trying to get at, and I
Speaker 1: call that DIY urbanism for short. But that's what makes
Speaker 1: cities so fascinating is they're not top down enterprises. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you have the government setting basic rules, you need to
Speaker 1: wear a mask, these businesses will and will not open.
Speaker 1: This is how commerce is being dictated, and then it's
Speaker 1: how people use in shape and play with and interrogate
Speaker 1: and even subvert those rules that I find interesting and
Speaker 1: compelling and profoundly urban. The Black Lives Matter protests, spurred
Speaker 1: most recently by the killing of George Floyd, are themselves,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, a phenomenon with great implication for urbanism,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, both
Speaker 1: about the spontaneous, self organizing, kind of inspiring aspects of
Speaker 1: the protests, and also about at the periphery of the
Speaker 1: protests the occasional looting and violence, which has also been
Speaker 1: a recurrent feature of urban life in the United States,
Speaker 1: not just since nineteen sixty eight, but going back even
Speaker 1: before them. I look at the Black Lives Matter protests
Speaker 1: as a commentarian, even an indictment about how racialized space
Speaker 1: is in cities. All spaces Cambridge versus Somerville, DC versus
Speaker 1: Prince George's County have been designated and racialized. And one
Speaker 1: of the things of the interesting to me about the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protest is they seem to be places
Speaker 1: of emerging integration in cities. That's interesting to me. What
Speaker 1: will as we play out the Black Lives Matter social
Speaker 1: and political changes what will that mean for city space integration,
Speaker 1: Who is welcome on what kinds of streets? Who we
Speaker 1: think of as our neighbors. To me, cities are like,
Speaker 1: it's two thousand years of political philosophy in your zoning code,
Speaker 1: right Like. The cities are where we play out our
Speaker 1: public and private philosophies, including a systemic racism which has
Speaker 1: been an important part of America's political philosophy, which is
Speaker 1: literally encoded in city streets and who gets to use
Speaker 1: them and who feels safe where? So, how is that
Speaker 1: going to change as far as looting and protests goes?
Speaker 1: When you say that, all I can think of is
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenty one Tulsa race massacre. That was looting, right,
Speaker 1: That was looting, and that was violence, and it was
Speaker 1: state sanctioned violence against a rising middle class black population.
Speaker 1: And I think that the disruptions that we're seeing now
Speaker 1: are a inexcusable and be nothing as compared to the
Speaker 1: kinds of state sanctioned violence, looting, economic disruption, property disruption
Speaker 1: that white people have perpetuated in neighborhoods of color for decades.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that heartened me is that
Speaker 1: many DC white shopkeepers you know whose businesses were vandalized, said,
Speaker 1: it's property, and I can replace property. And I think
Speaker 1: there is a appropriate understanding that the violence of some
Speaker 1: people who are using the protests as an opportunity doesn't
Speaker 1: invalid the larger undertaking. One last question. Your approach is
Speaker 1: I think measured, thoughtful, and on the whole optimistic. Do
Speaker 1: you have any dark thoughts? I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: structure of our conversation has been my asking dark questions.
Speaker 1: And you're telling me, you know, don't overstate at Feldman.
Speaker 1: You know you're taking it too far, and in fact
Speaker 1: that all these good things and they're coming back. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a good and a heartening set of responses.
Speaker 1: But do you have any worries? Maybe different ones than
Speaker 1: I've thought about. I do worry about public transit. New
Speaker 1: York does not work without public transit. There's no way
Speaker 1: that people are going to be able to move about
Speaker 1: in private vehicles at a volume that a place like
Speaker 1: New York once. And I do worry a little bit
Speaker 1: about temporarily defunding public transit. That I was worried about
Speaker 1: that before. I've been worried about that since people started
Speaker 1: making this argument with autonomous vehicles. I think public transit
Speaker 1: is hugely important. My hope is that there is a
Speaker 1: lip and that people say no. Public transit is actually
Speaker 1: a public good and it's what frontline workers are using,
Speaker 1: and we need to figure out again how to take
Speaker 1: what we have and make it safe. So that's that's
Speaker 1: one fear. I fear younger people remembering this and having
Speaker 1: a fear associated with being outside. I worry during this
Speaker 1: period about loneliness. I have a lot of love in
Speaker 1: my life, but I am going out of my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm desperate to see people, and I worry about As
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning, I do worry about the
Speaker 1: loss of social capital. We're living off the interest of
Speaker 1: all the relationships that we built up face to face.
Speaker 1: How long before we start diving into the principle and
Speaker 1: eroding important nonfamilial relationships because we haven't been able to
Speaker 1: tend them face to face. There are just their cues
Speaker 1: that we miss. I worry that this might go on
Speaker 1: long enough that will forget a little bit. Mostly I
Speaker 1: worry about public transportation. Public transporation out of loneliness. Both
Speaker 1: are existential, though inside the different ways. Yeah, But despair
Speaker 1: and optimism and they're so closely braided. Right. So I
Speaker 1: live on the edge of Rock Creek Park and there's
Speaker 1: a little like Parker exercise zone just underneath my apartment,
Speaker 1: and people are just Wow, they're using it. You can't
Speaker 1: keep them away from it. It's just body after body
Speaker 1: after body on those things. And I'm like, guys, that's
Speaker 1: really a bad idea. But the upside is, Wow, people
Speaker 1: have come to depend on public space and public trails
Speaker 1: and nature and cities more than ever, and much better
Speaker 1: to work out outdoors than to work out in an
Speaker 1: indoor gym. So is this an opportunity for people to say, Wow,
Speaker 1: we didn't know how much we needed the public realm
Speaker 1: until the private realm shrunk and all these third spaces,
Speaker 1: these spaces that are neither home norfully public, shutdown. So wow,
Speaker 1: let's invest in them. Can we make that connection? Can
Speaker 1: we say we loved these things and we needed them,
Speaker 1: so we want to protect them and continue to love
Speaker 1: them when Washington Sports Club or whatever is open again. Jennifer,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your thoughtful analysis and for
Speaker 1: your time, and for the amazing work that you've always
Speaker 1: been doing that you're continuing to do. It's more important
Speaker 1: than ever now. Thank you, Thank you. Listening to Jennifer's
Speaker 1: analysis actually made me feel a little bit better about
Speaker 1: the future of urban life in the United States that
Speaker 1: I was feeling going into the conversation. Sure, there will
Speaker 1: be aspects of cities that will change, but as Jennifer
Speaker 1: points out, the human need to connect socially, which cities serve,
Speaker 1: continues even in a pandemic and can evolve and change.
Speaker 1: Humans are resilient. Cities are resilient, They're hard to kill,
Speaker 1: their spaces of creativity, and they give opportunities for us
Speaker 1: to come back. What's more, Jennifer points us to what
Speaker 1: she calls a diy urbanism, where cities are taking the
Speaker 1: lead and trying to construct space and experience in ways
Speaker 1: that will facilitate making us safer and better off. There's
Speaker 1: no question that they're going to be challenges to cities
Speaker 1: in the years ahead, but as Jennifer points out, there
Speaker 1: have been challenges to cities almost since there have been
Speaker 1: cities at all. Every so often, I let the dark
Speaker 1: side of my fears begin to affect the questions that
Speaker 1: I ask on this show. And that's why it's so
Speaker 1: good to have a guest like Jennifer who turns me
Speaker 1: right around and points to the optimism that we ought
Speaker 1: to have when we think about the capacity of the
Speaker 1: human spirit and a human social interaction to overcome even
Speaker 1: the challenges that we're facing. Right now. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment and now for our segment that we
Speaker 1: call play back, where I choose a recent moment from
Speaker 1: the news, play it back to you and analyze it.
Speaker 1: So here we are. The Supreme Court, including the President's appointees,
Speaker 1: have declared that he is not above the law. That
Speaker 1: was the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking last Thursday about
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's ruling that the New York District Attorney
Speaker 1: may have access to the president's financial records as part
Speaker 1: of a grand jury investigation. At the same time, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court also held that Congress could not necessarily have
Speaker 1: access to the president's tax returns, but potentially would be
Speaker 1: able to get it if it satisfied a new legal standard,
Speaker 1: a test that the Supreme Court laid out. The central
Speaker 1: message of these cases is one the Chief Justice John Roberts,
Speaker 1: who wrote the opinions in both cases, quoted from the
Speaker 1: most influential Chief Justice in the history of the United
Speaker 1: States until him, that is John Marshall. The president is
Speaker 1: not a king, and therefore the president is not above
Speaker 1: the law. In practical terms, we probably aren't going to
Speaker 1: see Donald Trump's tax returns any time soon, but the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, per Chief Justice Roberts, vindicated the principle that
Speaker 1: no person, including the president, is above the law and
Speaker 1: open the door for lots of different kinds of investigations
Speaker 1: of a sitting president, including even criminal investigations at the
Speaker 1: state level. This result is gratifying, but it's important to
Speaker 1: understand that it reflects a process whereby Chief Justice John
Speaker 1: Roberts has truly been transformed. The transformation isn't in Roberts's
Speaker 1: political ideology. Rather, it has to do with the way
Speaker 1: his respect for judicial precedent is interacting with his very
Speaker 1: very strong sense that he must vindicate the rule of
Speaker 1: law in his job of Chief Justice of the United States.
Speaker 1: Roberts started his time as Chief Justice being prepared to
Speaker 1: defer to Donald Trump, including in the Trump vy. Hawaii case.
Speaker 1: Since then, little by little, it has increasingly taken on
Speaker 1: the role of holding Trump to account. Robert said he
Speaker 1: was deeply influenced by the President of Chief Justice John Marshall,
Speaker 1: a precedent laid down in a case involving, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, the treason trial of Aaron Burr, the same
Speaker 1: man who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton and subsequently led
Speaker 1: a conspiracy to try to start a new country carved
Speaker 1: out of part of the western part of the United States.
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson was the president, and he wanted to prosecute Burr. Marshall,
Speaker 1: who didn't like Jefferson, stood up to Jefferson. He demanded
Speaker 1: that Jefferson satisfy the terms of a subpoena that Burr
Speaker 1: sought in his own defense, namely that the President of
Speaker 1: the United States provide documents to the court that Jefferson
Speaker 1: had quoted in his message to Congress condemning Burr. The
Speaker 1: takeaway of this precedent for Roberts was that the courts
Speaker 1: must be able to stand up to the president. Without that,
Speaker 1: the president would not be subject to the rule of law.
Speaker 1: That same principle of standing up for the rule of
Speaker 1: law and the power of the courts was also present
Speaker 1: in Roberts's decision earlier this term to preserve Dhaka and
Speaker 1: not to allow Donald Trump to rescind it without meeting
Speaker 1: the necessary procedures. The upshot of this is that although
Speaker 1: John Roberts has not been reborn as a liberal, he
Speaker 1: has been reborn as a Chief Justice, fully willing to
Speaker 1: provide the deciding vote alongside liberals on the Court to
Speaker 1: hold Donald Trump accountable to the rule of law and
Speaker 1: to assure the principle that the President is no different
Speaker 1: than anybody else when it comes to confronting the rule
Speaker 1: of law. At the same time, Roberts is demonstrating his
Speaker 1: long standing concern that the Supreme Court not be seen
Speaker 1: as partisan political and indeed, by crossing party lines, Roberts
Speaker 1: has demonstrated that in his own case definitively and for
Speaker 1: the historical record, Robert's transformation has been little short of extraordinary,
Speaker 1: and I promise to return to it in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Until the next time I speak to you, be careful,
Speaker 1: be safe, and be well. Deep background is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Jane Cott,
Speaker 1: with mastering by Jason Gambrell and Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner
Speaker 1: is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis
Speaker 1: Gera special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Mia Loebell. I'm Noah Feldman. I also write a
Speaker 1: regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate
Speaker 1: of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. And
Speaker 1: one last thing. I just wrote a book called The
Speaker 1: Arab Winter Patragedy. I would be delighted if you checked
Speaker 1: it out. If you liked what you heard today, please
Speaker 1: write a review or tell a friend. You can always
Speaker 1: let me know what you think on Twitter. My handle
Speaker 1: is Noah R. Feldman. This is deep background