Can You Prosper Without Building Proper Cities?

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1:05David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast. How you doing there? It is time for the podcast. It's a pretty eclectic one today because it is basically the tale of two bridges. One bridge, which will be well known to many people in Ireland, is the bridge, the ancient bridge at Killaloo in, well, I was about to say, County Clare, but it's disputed. Could well be County Tumorary. Controversial. We're going to talk about the bridge over Loughdurk, and we're going to talk about the bridge over the Drina in Visegrad in eastern Bosnia. So it's a fusion of Bosnia, the Balkans, Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, what could be described, John, as the Balkans of Munster.

1:59David McWilliams: That area of Munster. The tri-state area, as the Yanks say. The tri-state area. The Yanks would say the tri-state. But as I am in Serbia, John, as I'm in Serbia, I'm more inclined to be more balkan about this. So basically it's the area where Tipperary fuses with County Clare and is also threatened by the encroachment of County Limerick so that these three ancient tribes, these three ancient traditions fuse up against each other in a sort of an uncomfortable settlement. But what unifies all the traditions is the bridge over Loch Derg, which has been standing for many, many centuries. The latest iteration was built in the 17th century.

2:41David McWilliams: It is a beautiful, beautiful seven arch bridge that spans the river. That part of the river is the closest crossing point at the lock where the lock goes into the Shannon. And people have been traveling there for hundreds of years. And how do we know this? Because Killaloo was the seat of the last high king of Ireland, Brian Beru, John. The man who gave the Vikings a slapping at the Battle of Clontarf in the 11th century. So we are going back a long, long way. But equally, equally, John, we are also in Bosnia. Well, we're in Serbia. We're in former Yugoslavia. And The Bridge Over the Drina is a book that if you want, and I know, John, it's not you get up every morning thinking, oh, I'd really like to understand the ethnicities of Bosnia.

3:30David McWilliams: But if you really want to do that, there is a book written by... a Yugoslav writer called Ivo Andrich. And it was written in 1947 to 1949, when Andrich had been released by the Nazis who had occupied, obviously, Yugoslavia. And he wrote about the three, but particularly the two main ethnicities in Visigrad, which is in eastern Bosnia. People who remember the war in Bosnia will remember a place called Srebrenica, where there was a massacre of the Muslim population by the Serb militia. Visegrad is in the same locality, the same region of Bosnia. It's an ancient patchwork of tribes. The Muslim tribe who had converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire's occupation of Bosnia.

4:21David McWilliams: And of course, the local Serb population that refused to convert to Islam. But the book is amazing because it tells a five centuries. It's a real epic. It's kind of slightly magic realism, if you actually get really into it. But it's a five-century epic, and it tells the story of this area. It's not a whodunit. It's not a whodunit. Because if you're listening to the Serbs, it's always the Austrians. They did it. It's always the Ottomans. They did it. And if you listen to the Muslims, it's always the Austrians and the Serbs who did it. And of course, there's a Croat population there, but it's a fantastic book.

4:54David McWilliams: And of course, the way Evel Andridge, he uses the device of the construction of the bridge by the Sultan. and what happened on the bridge. And of course, it's the same thing in effect, because basically he's saying that all these tribes live on either side of the river, but they come together on the bridge. They trade on the bridge. They fall in love on the bridge. They have tragedy on the bridge. The bridge is fought over by different people, by different ethnicities, by different empires, all that sort of stuff. And as I was sitting, Joe, in a bar called Goosers in Ballina on the Tipperary side of the Killaloo Bridge, and I was listening to the locals.

5:28David McWilliams: I was at a lovely little festival called Resonance last week and I was to the locals complaining about the bridge. And I was thinking to myself, I was kind of whisked away from Kihlalu to eastern Bosnia as if I was listening to the various tribes. Because of course, as you know, between Clare and Tipperary and Limerick, there is enormous GAA entity, particularly in Harlan. And come the summer, they'll be knocking strips, and there'll be hair and fucking skin flying. For sure, definitely. out of each other. Right? But what actually unifies them is the bridge. Because that's when all, where everyone has to come to do business, to cross, et cetera.

6:09David McWilliams: And what has happened in that part of the world? It was just very interesting. When I was listening to them and I said, fellas, I'm a tip man and I do this and I'm a chairwoman and I'm a little bit, I was thinking, am I an awesome thing here? This is the real dub. You know me who gets, I get nervous when I go past the universe cross. I break out of a rash. I don't know what to do. But I was listening to them, you know, anyway, what intrigued me we are in Serbia we're going to do a podcast on Serbia for Thursday but I want to talk about is what has happened in Killaloo is the following the ancient bridge was being replaced by a new Brian Baru bridge and the new Brian Baru bridge is a pretty impressive construction in fairness I drove over it the other day right but the local council didn't reveal that one of the upshots of the new bridge was that the old bridge was to be completely closed to traffic.

7:03David McWilliams: And this has caused all sorts of uproar against the villagers. Some people suggesting that they're not getting business, that traffic flow has changed, that the pedestrians aren't spending. All the usual stuff. So it would steer people away from the village. Steer people away from Killaloo. Just to keep traffic flowing. Just to keep traffic flowing. So as I was sitting there witnessing this with my beak shut, taking mental notes, I thought to myself, And there was a sort of a rumbling of, oh, that was Clare County Council and Tip County Council, we're not doing this, or we're delivering on it.

7:34David McWilliams: There was that sort of slightly little ethnic, slightly what I would call GAA sectarianism. That sort of stuff was going on. I thought, you know, that's not the story at all. The story is, John, and this is what we're going to do the podcast on, is mass suburbanization of Ireland. It is the way in which Irish cities, in this case Limerick, have spread out so significantly that these previously rural towns, which existed absolutely on their own in terms of the relationship with Limerick, or there's lots of towns in relation with Dublin, have now just been kind of subsumed into a greater commuting conurbation.

8:17David McWilliams: And so the idea behind this podcast is using what's happening in Killaloo to explain what's happening all over Ireland, which is that Ireland is the least urbanized country in the Western world. I digest that. Not the second least, not the third least, not the fourth least. And when I say urbanized, I'm talking about dense living, living on top of each other, right? Living in dense areas. I give you one statistic that I'd like the listeners to digest, that 8%, I thought it was 12%, but it's actually 8 % of Irish people live in flats or apartments. That is in contrast to 46 % of Europeans. That's outrageous.

9:05So we have an aversion, a sort of almost endemic aversion to living in apartments.

9:12David McWilliams: And the result of that is suburban sprawl. And the result of all that, John, is what I would call extreme commuting. Are you fear of extreme sports? It's extreme commuting and extreme commuting by cars. Why is it that we're not into living in flats? Like, is it something deep in our psyche? Like, do we need a front garden or a back garden? Is that what's driving us? I don't really know, John. I mean, it is a total outlier in terms of Western European living experience. What I want to do the podcast on is the difference between the way we live and where we live. So what we have in Ireland, I think it is, now my own feeling is the following, that the land lobby in Ireland, landowners, has been so hand in glove with planners over the years that the only way you can rationally explain why the Irish housing market is skewed towards three-bedroom semis is that three-bedroom semis are built on greenfield sites.

10:23David McWilliams: That means that the value of greenfield sites, when they change from agricultural zoning, John, to residential zoning, goes up dramatically. Yes. Okay. So therefore, who benefits? Qui bono? who benefits are strong farmers. This is a very old term that used to be used in the old days, largely describing Fine Gael farmers. Sorry, strong farmers, as opposed to weak farmers. Yes, yes, yes. It was really interesting. So I think what we're really looking at is a heist, a financial heist, dressed up as bad planning. Right. I was thinking, John, if the Irish planners were doing nixers in effect for the Irish car industry, for the large importers of cars, this would all make sense.

11:15David McWilliams: But I have no evidence to say that the Irish planners are in the pocket of the car distributors because the only people who really benefit, there's only two people who really benefit from what's going on in Ireland. One are the owners of agricultural land who lobbied to get that land rezoned and in the process get a massive windfall gain because we know that what happens to land when it's rezoned is it goes up in value. That's number one. That explains where we live, number one. And the only other people who benefit are the people who import cars into our country. Now, there is a very interesting phenomenon, John, that the people who imported cars were given license in the 1950s and 1960s to import cars.

12:06They were usually very, very close to the main political parties.

12:12David McWilliams: Why? Because getting a license to import a brand of a car was in effect a license to print money. Because you were the only person who could import, I don't know, Fiat's or Toyota's or Ford's, right? But this was an extremely lucrative business. because in effect, you were given the keys to the Mercs and the BMWs and the Ford. You buy the monopoly. You buy the monopoly. Now, who gives you that monopoly? Oh, isn't that amazing? The Department of Transport. And who makes those decisions? Isn't that amazing? Some politician. Right. All I'm saying is, John, people who got licenses to import cars in the 1960s and 70s ended up been very rich.

12:55But now everyone's on bikes, so could the same be safer? No, they're not.

13:00David McWilliams: This is the thing. We are the most car-dependent society in Europe. Right, okay. So we have this strange situation. We have planning, which is encouraging urban sprawl. We have absolutely no real profound investment in, let's say, a light rail system or an intercity rail system are something that can be used. Because the problem with the buses is they compete with cars for space on the road. And as a result of that, people find buses, even though people using buses has gone through the roof, it still is not seen as a almost guaranteed alternative to driving in terms of will I get there in time?

13:47David McWilliams: Why? Because the bus competes with the cars. So the more cars on the road, the less car space. the fact that Ireland doesn't and refuses to actually tax car space at certain times. So for example, you could have a congestion charge, which is between the hours of eight to 10 or seven and nine, whatever you decide, because the premium on car space goes through the roof. In an economic world, you'd actually tax that. So you would encourage people not to use their cars between seven and 10, and you'd encourage them to move at different times. But be that as it may, this is what we're going to talk about.

14:21David McWilliams: The problem with Killaloo, although it has been framed in the pub as a local council and amenities between various different counties, what it is, is the fact that Ireland has turned our beautiful country into a country of sprawl. Suburbs are creeping into the ancient countryside, traditional villages, so much so that we need to build these new bridges because the old infrastructure is creaking and the old towns are choked with traffic, but it's a planning problem that is driving almost everybody to be compelled to drive. You know, there used to be a train from Killaloo into Limerick. And of course, that's gone.

15:00The only way you can get around the country is by driving.

15:04David McWilliams: And I will give you an amazing statistic, John, right? According to the latest census, there is a massive gap between how people in Ireland live and where we live. So what the census does is it breaks down every area into densities, right? The most dense, the least dense. And I'll give you one statistic, right? So the top 20 % most dense urban areas in Ireland account for 83 % of all workplaces, all school places, and all college places, which makes complete sense. So the most urban areas account for 83 % of the places that people go to work, go to school, go to college, go to hang out, go to shop, all that stuff, right?

15:48David McWilliams: So that makes sense. So the vast majority of schools and jobs and retails and social ventures are in urban areas. So you'd imagine, therefore, John, that in a well-planned, normal country, 83 % of the people would live in urban areas where 83 % of the work and of the college and of the socializing goes on. But not in Ireland, not in Ireland. The top 20 % of these urban areas where 83 % of us work and commute to account for only 65 % of the population. Wow. So the gap between the 83 % of people who go to live and work and play in the urban areas. And the fact that only 65 % of the residents are in those areas, that gap is filled by commuter sprawl.

16:42It's so easy to see. Yeah, you know, just thinking about this, on one of your recent lectures on the Trinity course that we're putting out on Patreon, you talked about how urbanization happened in the Dark Ages and people moved into urban areas. And then also during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, how the land kind of emptied out in the UK and moved to cities like Birmingham and Manchester and all the rest. Whereas we kind of skipped that Industrial Revolution phase and we were still mainly an agricultural economy. So it's only now that we're moving to urban areas and kind of we're not doing it particularly well, but it does take time.

17:30You're absolutely right.

17:31David McWilliams: By the way, if you do want to do the course with us and learn economics with me, if you're a member of the crew, you get it all for free. If you're not a member of the crew, you can join us at davidmarkwilliams.ie forward slash crew and we will learn economics. We have Q &As, we have book lectures, all sorts of things together there. And it's a bit of crack. And the last lecture John is right was about urbanization in the Dark Ages and what it did and why money was a part of that. And we also touched, I think, on a podcast last week or the week before on the industrialization of the United Kingdom and the Industrial Revolution.

18:08David McWilliams: I think I conflated both of them, but there you go. That's grand shot. That's the sign of an agile mind, Johnny Boy. The sign of an agile mind, you know? I don't know who said this. One person once said that consistency is the hobgoblin of the curious mind, okay? So we should be inconsistent and change our minds all the time and take little ideas from here, there, and everywhere. But I come back to the point, you're absolutely right. We should be getting this right because we should be looking at people who got it wrong in the past because Ireland didn't have an industrial revolution. We basically had, as I've always said before, we had a beer and biscuits economy for years, right?

18:44David McWilliams: The only industrial output of this country up until the 1950s, in effect, was beer, Guinnesses, and biscuits, Jacobs, right? both of which were derivatives of agriculture. Why didn't we have the industrial revolution? Because we didn't have any source of power. And that's the key. And the industrial revolution was all about proximity to the sources of power. And the sources of power and energy were largely coal. So that's why you see, for example, the Ruhr development in Germany, you see the North of England development in the industrial revolutions, because in effect, people moved to where the energy was.

19:20David McWilliams: And what I'm saying now is that people no longer have to move to where the energy is because we import energy. And as a result of that, we should have much more long-term strategic planning, but we don't. So if you think of that, 83 % of all the work is in urban areas, but only 65 % of people live densely packed together in urban areas. So the gap in that in Ireland is commuter sprawl. And this has made Ireland uniquely car-centric. Suburban sprawl in Ireland is, and one-off housing again, and we see that around Killaloo, has made the car the default mode of transport. 65 % of Irish workers commute by car.

20:07David McWilliams: And even in Dublin city and Dublin suburbs, half workers drive to work. And the same is the case for Cork and Limerick. 60 % of people in Limerick drive to work even though they live within the city and county bank of Limerick. And of course, among schoolchildren, this has gone through the roof. I mean, you'll see if you're stopped in traffic in Dublin, anywhere. I mean, sometimes on the Vespa, I can't understand why people are stuck in traffic because the Vespas are great. It just zooms up past them, right? Although it hasn't seen the line of day now because of the monsoon. It's been under that cover for a long time.

20:42David McWilliams: It has the Monsoon and the Vespa are not great mates. But when I'm on the Vespa, it's interesting. You know, you see all these school kids that trust open these massive car seats in the back. I was just thinking, you know, if you think about the seats that Neil Armstrong was strapped into in order to be propelled to the fucking moon, John, right? It was more rickety than the things that are in the back of Ford Focus's. And, you know, to take little Johnny one half mile going at five miles an hour because everyone's stuck. I suppose you're going to say now that back in my day, we walked to school 10 miles in our bare feet.

21:20Well, I'm going to give you the stats, John.

21:22David McWilliams: We did walk to school and we did get the bus and we did cycle to school. I don't think I was ever driven to school. Yeah. In 1986, 50 % of Irish primary school kids, kids in a national school, little kids, walked or cycled to school. Today, it is 25%. Wow. Wow. Now that is of little kids. Yeah. And in general, in general, 43 % of secondary students are driven to school. Secondary students. These are like teenagers. They need to kick up the arse. Get out there and... Well, my point is, my point is, John, is that we have become extraordinarily car dependent. Yeah. And it's this car dependency. And this is why I think the planners should have been on a nixer.

22:07David McWilliams: I mean, if we could prove that, if the planners were on a mixer for the carbon, but they're not. They're not. So we're doing this willingly or else we're doing this because they are being lobbied by landowners. It's amazing that when I was in California quite a number of years ago, particularly Orange County, you can't move. Like there is no proper public transport. Everybody drives. But the difference, though, in Orange County and California and here is that the distances were so much greater. We have, you know, you hear about sunbelt states in America. Yeah. And California being one and Arizona being one and Nevada and all those places, right?

22:49David McWilliams: They're the sunbelt states and they have sunbelt developments, which is based on cars. We have sunbelt developments, but we've no fucking sun. Rainbelt. It is. It's a sunbelt developed without the bloody sun, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's get back to it, okay? 64 % of Irish people only live in urban areas. That's far below the typical 80 % to 90 % of residents in similar wealthy countries. So that's the first thing. So we are a non-urban. We have an adversity to density. Lots of people say, oh my God, Dublin dwarfs the rest of the country. In fact, Dublin at 1.4 million out of the 5.1 million who live here is not excessive by international standards at all.

23:36David McWilliams: The issue isn't the over-concentration of people in the capital, but it's the fact that the urban population is usually low. And the best stat for that is the 8 % of us who live in flats as opposed to the EU average is 46%, right? Yeah. So 90 % of Irish residents live in detached or semi-detached houses spread out all around the country. And this means, number one, that we become extreme commuters. But number two, it drives up the cost of infrastructure. But why is that? It's because infrastructure that has to be spread over a much greater land footprint is inefficient, right? So you need, if you want to have efficient infrastructure, you need dense buildings.

24:23David McWilliams: So that's the argument against a metro system in Ireland, which is that lots and lots of areas where the metro may well be built are not sufficiently dense to actually justify the expense. Why? Because not enough people are living there. But the interesting thing is Irish people still work in the cities. We haven't decentralized factories. We haven't decentralized fabs. We haven't decentralized the civil service. We haven't decentralized the public service or any service. For example, we built the IFSC right in the center of Dublin, but we didn't build any flats around them. We didn't build sufficient flats, right?

25:05David McWilliams: It's kind of mental, right? And as a result of all this, John, half of our working and student population commutes into Dublin from outside the city. And 25 % of all workers in Leinster travel to Dublin for work. And these commutes have gone through the roof. Right now, there are around a quarter of a million people spending two hours and more in a car every day. God, it's such a waste. A waste of time, of productivity, of fuel and energy coming on. It's just like there's no upside to that at all, apart from listening to podcasts. Well, listening to podcasts, we are in league, John, with car distributors and landowners as the people who benefit most from congestion.

26:01David McWilliams: No, but I'll give you some more statistics, right? All these patterns show up in global rankings of congestion, right? Dublin is now the third most congested city in Europe, and it's tiny in comparison to European cities. It's the 11th most congested city in the world. Wow. That is not a claim to fame at all that you want. You're talking about cities like New Delhi and Jakarta and Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro and, you know, Mexico City. Like, we are up there. The 11th most congested city in the world. Drivers into Dublin are losing an average of 95 hours a year sitting in traffic jams. And the same problem, but on a less extreme basis.

26:46is in Cork, Galway and Limerick,

26:49David McWilliams: leading us all the way back to Killaloo, John. All roads lead to Killaloo. So all roads, John, lead back to Killaloo. Well, do you know what, Mac? It's actually an argument, which is another debate that's going on at the moment, for remote working and working from home where you don't have to commute. Well, I'll tell you, John, I'm going to just say that the system then in Ireland lends itself to objections to density. So the solution to what we're trying to do here is to have a much denser Limerick, a much denser Cork, a much denser Galway, a much denser Dublin, and RR build an entirely new city somewhere in Athlone.

27:30David McWilliams: Like build a new city. Like most countries build new cities. We haven't built a new city for years. In fact, Ireland hasn't built a new city since the Brits left, obviously, but we haven't built a new city since the 1700s, which is an extraordinary thing to actually try to digest. But we've built plenty of ghost estates. We've built plenty of ghost estates we were talking about last time, but we've no planning, right? And of course, when the council says, okay, well, we're going to have to be more dense, people go bonkers, right? So I'll give you an example. Step aside, pitch and put. Now, this is hyperlocal for a non-even Dublin listeners.

28:07David McWilliams: I'm just going to give you an example. I'm not going to go. Step aside is a suburb of Dublin. It's in the county of Dunleary, Rathdowne, which is the county that John and I live in, the county council, which is in South Dublin. So this is part of the city. And there's a pitch and put course there, and they're going to put new housing on the pitch and put course, right? The objections poured in, right? And I love to call it a disgrace and a travesty, accusing the council of destroying the fabric of the community. And this is one, one submission fumed, how dare you try to turn this area into nothing but housing estates against the will of the local people, right?

28:41David McWilliams: And other residents insisted it was already overcrowded. Now, here's a great one, right? The infrastructure is creaking. The countryside has been ruined. Enough building in this area. The people need amenities and green space. No more houses. Apartments are flats. And it's declared absolutely criminal that our amenities are a target for rezoning. This passionate language. The language is great, John. So concrete jungle destroying the unique area, absolutely criminal monstrosities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This shows how deep-rooted the anti-density mindset is. Yeah, yeah. Of course, the irony is, this isn't someplace in the middle of nowhere.

29:17David McWilliams: This is a Dublin suburb. So this is the sort of resistance that the councils in Ireland are coming up against. and therefore they're slow to rezone land because of so many objections, particularly for higher density. And this means that the local councils can't do their jobs because the local residents are challenging everything. And the local residents are challenging everything because they don't want density. They have an aversion to density, which in my estimation, John, is totally irrational. But what you get is a sort of a low-density lock-in, in effect, that areas that should be mixed-use, mid-rise urban neighborhoods have now essentially outlawed, outlawed is the word, mid-rise, mixed-use urban areas in favor of protecting low-density areas are large housing estates miles away.

30:23David McWilliams: and the large housing it's miles away do you remember I wrote that book The Pope's Children yeah yeah yeah right The Pope's Children was basically a sounds a bit wanky but a sociological view of Ireland and I remember I created these characters like the the Kells Angels yeah yeah yeah and the reason they're the Kells Angels is because I went to places like Kells and I thought hold on a second and I went really early in the morning and I travelled around and I watched how people lived and I you know I referred to a place called the Buckle of the Baby Belt which was Nace these hugely rapidly growing places But all of this was just a sort of a pop sociological account, 20 years ago now, Joe, of the sprawl.

31:00David McWilliams: And the Kells Angels were basically people who commuted from Kells, which used to be miles away in the sense that, not just geographically, but philosophically and psychologically, Kells was a rural town. Yeah, I mean, they were day trips to come from Kells up to Dublin. And now they're day trips, but they're commuter day trips. Exactly, exactly. But tell us, if we are the 11th most congested city, where is a city that actually does this well? Well, John, before we answer that, let's do a bit of this.

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33:33Okay, Mark, we're talking about, you know, the whole idea of urbanization in Ireland and the lack of good planning and foresight and all the rest. And you were saying that we are the 11th most congested city in the world. So the question is, who can we learn from? Who does this well? Okay, John.

33:55David McWilliams: The podcast started in Killaloo. It went to Visegrad, Bosnia. We are going to conclude by the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area. They're going to Japan. So the Tokyo Yokohama metropolitan area is the most densely populated place on earth. It has 38 million people live in this enormous urban area. But for Irish listeners, I will actually give you a statistic or a sense, right? It is in effect an area which is about the same as the stretch between Dublin and Portlaoise. Really? In that area of Tokyo, they've put 38 million people and we've put five apple greens. At least you've got our priorities right.

34:43David McWilliams: So how do the Japanese do it? Wow. How do the Japanese do it? The Japanese do it because they have what they call prohibitive zoning rather than prescriptive zoning. So what they do is they specify what cannot be built. Okay, yeah. Rather than what can be built, right? So they'll say, you cannot build this, that, and the other, but you can build whatever else you like here. And that means that Japanese urban areas have houses, schools, clinics, hospitals, little factories, all co-located in the same area. So the other way in Ireland, we zone for residential. And then we zone for leisure. And then we zone for retail.

35:23David McWilliams: The Japanese don't do that. They just say, you can't build this and this and this and this, but you can build anyone else you like. So what you get then is extremely dense, mixed-use developments. and of course that makes public transport really efficient because what they basically say is look this greenfield site this area what you can't build is let's say for example a factory or a nuclear power station yeah but you can build anything else and away you go and what that allows there is this sort of organic way in which people live because people want to live beside schools they want to live beside shops if possible they want to live close to where they work and what you get then is mixed residential commercial retail all on top of each other right and what is extraordinary is they do it so efficiently that people live close to where they work close to where they shop and they live in apartments and what you have then is all these neighborhoods are kind of convenient.

36:27David McWilliams: They're vibrant. They reduce the need for car trips. Japanese cities prioritize public transport and walkability. So the transport system is therefore world-class, making it easy to live without a car. They have these mixed-use developments, which are centered around transit stations. So they build the public infrastructure first, like the train station, and then they say, okay, you can build whatever else you want around this. and therefore it manages to have a huge population that's relatively affordable, right? The city adds more units per year than Dublin, London, or New York put together.

37:08David McWilliams: Wow. This keeps the average amount of rents down and therefore Japanese families live in apartments, they enjoy the services, they have parks and playgrounds and schools and all that sort of stuff, typically within walking distance. Now, interestingly, crime rates are incredibly low. Streets are safe for children. Parents have peace of mind because, as Jane Jacobs always said, a populated street is a safe street. What makes streets dangerous, John, is when there's no people on the board. They're dark and there's nobody around. And when there's nobody around, bad things happen. And, of course, in Japan, there's never nobody around because everyone lives on the street.

37:46And were they following the planners there in Tokyo? Are they following the Jane Jacobs way of thinking? Or, you know, is it just so happened to turn out that way?

37:57David McWilliams: No, I just think that they're very, very efficient planners who know what they want to do. And what they want to do is they want coherent areas where people can, as they say in the Mars ad of the 1970s, John, work, rest, and play. And that is really, that's the watchword. In Ireland, what we have managed to do with a much smaller population, is create a traffic commuter sprawl nightmare for people. So much so that people are commuting two, three hours a day in their cars. They are living miles away. But I'll just leave you at one. What happens then is it means the system is unbelievably fragile.

38:40David McWilliams: Because so many people are driving and the public infrastructure isn't sufficient. There's no proper railway network. There's no alternative. Now, what that does, and people remember this, is it makes the system unbelievably fragile to shocks, like getting bad weather. Rain. So when it starts to rain in Ireland, the entire system is gummed up. Now, only a gobshite would say to an Irish person that rain is a shock. We can hardly be taken by surprise when it rains. So what you see is the transport system, the school system, the healthcare system, everything which is dependent on good planning becomes more and more fragile in the face of shocks.

39:28David McWilliams: Why? Because the thing is overstretched, because it's not dense enough. Yeah. And again, what we need to do in Ireland is go to Japan, see how they do it, and then replicate it here. Because otherwise, this is just going to be an endemic problem. Yeah. A sort of a chronic problem. So you just go back to Killaloo. Yeah. To Gooser's Pub. So when I was listening to the balkanization, John, of North Tipperary, East Clare, and that region. Yeah. What struck me is I know that in the middle of the summer, these people will be kicking lumps out of each other, shouting and roaring right at the Harlan. But the real problem, John, isn't the inter-ethnic rivalries of that disputed territory.

40:12The real problem is the absolute lack of any vision or

40:18David McWilliams: central planning. That is the root of Ireland's dilemma. And unless we fix this, Ireland is going to become a country of commuters, of people wasting their time, of highly expensive public transport, of highly expensive public infrastructure like our children's hospital, and eventually of very, very decreasing returns to what we call quality of life, which may explain why the kids are leaving in huge numbers. A, because sprawl creates expensive housing. B, because they don't want to commute. C, because the denser the city, the more culturally, socially, and creatively vibrant it is. And lastly, they don't see anything changing.

41:04Yeah.

41:04David McWilliams: So they're hightailing out of the place. We will leave it there. We'll be back to you from Serbia on Thursday.

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