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Transformation 2050.
A podcast in EOL about equal development.
My name is Kacper Nosarzewski and I'm pleased to welcome Joanna Erbel,
a member of the Rynku Najmu laboratory and author of the book "Besides Ownership"
towards a successful housing policy in our podcast about the future of cities.
Joanna, I'm very pleased that you wanted to meet and talk about the future of cities.
And I'm very curious what you will say.
Good morning.
Good morning. Listen, you are a city politician, activism, but also politicians.
In the sense of policy, in the sense of indicating the direction of housing development.
You also had further and wider ambitions,
applying for the position of the Warsaw City Council President.
I would like to ask what should be your opinion of this city of the future,
taking into account the entirety of your experiences, but also the vision you are currently working on?
I think two dimensions are key here.
One dimension is the climate dimension.
The city should be balanced above all,
where these climate decisions determine our answers and also determine questions.
But it should also be a city that is sensitive, humanistic, responsible for the people who live here.
Another short picture of the future is published by National Geographic.
The city of the future is a city or an agglomeration divided by wild terrain and agriculture,
a part of agriculture is in cellars, in hydroponic farms, in places where cars once stood.
But there is an element that is disturbing, which is the constant quest to minimize housing.
Something that is optimal in terms of artificial intelligence, as if it would design the future for us,
but it is not necessarily completely humanistic.
Of course, micro-apartments are said only when there are common spaces, intergenerational ones,
so all these things that would seem good,
but at the same time we have to be focused on one space.
This is one of the important discussions, how to deepen the city, because we have to deepen the city.
Because the spread of the city is also a huge financial expense,
there are around 84 billion a year the costs of the spread of the city,
how much can we build schools in the urban areas or revitalize parks.
But we should remember that we as people, especially after the pandemic,
we need this space to have a place for ourselves, and also to make this house space not so optimized.
In other words, to make this vision of the future not such an eco-capitalist optimization,
but to make this thread appear there, more humanistic,
and rather to build local neighborhood on a scale larger than a stone,
because it is known that we will not replace all our stones with some tiles or co-housing,
although this kind of comfort should probably remain in new projects.
But we should think about our city more locally, so here I have a much closer thinking,
which is very present in Paris, the 15-minute city.
Warsaw already had the first approach to this perspective, which assumed that each area should have its own local center,
where in the course of 15 minutes of walking, a free walk, which is probably a walk with a child or a free walk,
we have all the necessary services, everything so that we do not have to use the car in everyday life.
And this also has its economic dimension, because for me the future of the city is also such a thinking of locality,
where if we have a choice, and in such a well-designed, local space, in these 15-minute cities, we will have a choice, because everything will be close to us,
we will be able to buy local things, which will not necessarily always mean that we have to go there physically,
but it will probably be some kind of hybrid model.
Anyway, in Great Britain, something called Digital Enabled Streets is called something like this.
Garnier also wrote an article in his time, where the digital reflection of the urban space was one of such visions of the future.
In practice, it is that we take our smartphone and enter a space that does not necessarily have to be global at once,
I mean, not necessarily something immediately in the Chinese market, which sends very cheap, not environmentally friendly.
But we can find out what the promotion is in a local store, in a local vegetable shop, order shopping,
and we can only pick them up.
So for me, such a city of the future is the climate, humanistic approach, and the technology that is a tool to maintain these visions.
These three elements that you pointed out are interwoven in my imagination in the unified, optimistic vision of the city's future.
But listening to you, especially when you mentioned the foresight National Geographic, I remembered that the task of the foresighters,
or in a sense we can both consider each other representatives of this profession, is to follow the assumptions.
The strongest assumption is the assumption that the city is its inhabitants.
A bit of a slogan, but it is also quite an honest expression of how people look at what the city is.
Do you think we can also underline this assumption and ask the question whether the city in the future is mainly its inhabitants,
whether the physical systems that serve their needs, buildings, infrastructure, services, etc., or what you just said,
also the virtual layer, the digital layer of the city, whether it becomes a full-fledged resident of the city,
and whether it becomes the property of the city's inhabitants?
As you said, the task of the foresighters is to follow the assumptions, that is, for me, my task as a person who deals with the future and has better or worse intuitions,
is to show positive scenarios, because without positive scenarios you don't know where to go.
That's a polarizing vision of the future. One is cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, unfriendly space, full of technology, but generally ugly, like in post-apocalyptic movies.
The other vision that is much closer to me and I think it is necessary for our brain so that we just have a sense of security, is a vision called solarpunk.
It is a very high-developed technological vision, locality, connected with elements of something called dump city, which would seem like a Tempe city, if we compare it to the Flintstones and the Jetsons.
Yes, it's a dump city and it's the Flintstones with the animals that eat up the waste with some kind of local analogous solutions, and the Jetsons are the world of the technological future.
Solarpunk says that these are not counter-stabbing visions. That is, we, knowing what we need, how we want to create this world, and how we want to create it for people and for the environment, should use two tools,
one is hyper-technological and the other is low-technological. And it's happening, because I am very close to the heart of the creator of cyberpunk, Liam Gibson, that in the past it is only unevenly distributed, and such an example of the dump city is April Fools.
Very beautiful thing, colorful, bioreferect, but at the same time it is a form of savings, this is a form of investment in green maintenance, which is low-cost, good for the climate, and you could imagine an alternative strategy,
entitled "Under all evenly-prevented lawns, infrastructure to be constructed, controlled remotely or with artificial intelligence that will keep a golf field lawn everywhere".
Technologically possible, completely pointless, even from the point of view of this wider perspective. So I think that the question of talking about the future also requires you to choose which perspective you want to represent.
What more, I think that the critical approach is easy, in the sense that it is a shortcut, because it is also known that every project that is implemented is imperfect.
And we all know that pioneers and pioneers have the most difficult, I learned it very well, working in urban structures, that sometimes certain things cannot be done right away, because they limit you legal frames.
Democratic legal frames, so you cannot throw them all into the trash, as some people would like to, because it's great to be a great planner, but you can do it writing science fiction books or drawing on paper.
It's always a compromise, so what I've learned over the years, it's very important to plan two horizons. One horizon here and now, so what we will do for the next two years, three. And the second, where we want to be in the years 30, because if you look at what every country looked like a few decades ago, the changes are huge.
I recently had a conversation about whether renting a flat will work in the future, because after all Poles like property and will always choose property.
And I thought then that if we talked 10 years ago about cars, for example, and someone would say that in the future Poles and Poles will not have their own cars, but most of them will be in Leasing, and some will be in Karsherin, then someone would say, how is this a car, after all it is a symbol of prestige for every man in Poland, but now it turns out that it is completely different.
People need the symbols of prestige and technological fetishes, but they change over time, and this is a bit of us, it depends on people, also in the sense of designing the future, showing that we can do our needs in a completely different way.
One of such dreams about an ideal apartment or a place to stay is a house in the suburbs where children run on the lawn.
But to unpack this, one has to think about what people really want, and in my opinion they want to have a comfortable place to live, where they can let their children play, making sure they don't get killed by a car. But they don't say, we want to live in a place where the arrival to work will be connected with two hours of standing in a traffic jam, plus carrying children, plus being dependent on the plan of the road.
With family conflicts, when children will be 15 years old and they will be imprisoned in these suburbs, they don't want to take part in this, so maybe the answer is, they will have well designed housing.
The child has his time, he is safe, the school is by the corner, and thanks to this, the whole family has a bit of free time to spend together, not necessarily in the car, because I, as a child, I went to school every day for half an hour, and I imagine better ways of spending free time, even with teammates.
There is also another person, who I like to call here, who is Kevin Kelly, and who talks about something, about something he calls "Protopia".
Protopia is a pragmatic utopia, a thinking about the future, that is inclined towards this utopian vision, but at the same time, it is embedded in everyday life.
So, in order not to run away from thinking about what will happen in 100 years, and how we will reach Mars, what buildings and society will look like, and who will be able to fly there, we only think about what we can do as part of these tools, and which ones we can change.
For example, in the city there are such tools as different types of falls, if someone will make a green roof, or green walls, Wrocław uses such tools to encourage people, and that this package of their, how do you call it, architecture of choice, made that the obvious choices they will make, they will be good choices for them and for the environment.
What did you come across as another question, inspired by what you said about the city here and now, and the city in 30 years?
What links these two perspectives is the obligation, resulting from the principle of balanced development, that in 30 years the city could function in general.
The next generations would have the necessary resources for life and to provide for their needs. If you were to express your vision of balanced development, what would you focus on?
Would you focus on environmental, social, economic development or would you find them in perfect balance, or which of them seems to you, in principle, balanced development, from your perspective, most important?
On locality, and making sure that all the things we need to be close to us, recreational areas, green areas, all kinds of shops. You ask yourself a question, since I have a great equipped vegetable garden, close to home, a shop with tools, and the rest I can order through the internet, do I really need this car?
If children go to kindergarten. It's completely different when you get involved. Locality teaches us diversity.
Polish cities, due to some historical decisions, like the fact that fortunately we still have a communal apartment in the city centre, in expensive districts,
50% or 30% of people live in the same house, makes us live among people who are different from us, which is good, because, even if someone is a vacillator, they are very selfish, they are very simple-minded,
it increases our perception. I mean, if you are in a group that is very homogenous, you are stupid, you don't see the whole world. It's harder to stigmatize the other group,
like if the person has different views on someone we meet in the vegetable garden, with whom we can talk, or if our dogs play in the yard. It's a bit different than if it's some kind of an anonymized person.
Besides, if the local base doesn't work, we get involved to change its actions, which raises the whole community, and not necessarily send children to school far away. It's completely different, it's different to the movement.
Also, local communities are more resistant to the crisis. It was visible during COVID, when all these groups started appearing, like the "visible hand", the cards, that someone will buy something for someone, or help someone.
We started to appreciate that being among people, some of whom are kind, raises our quality of life, or can be a guarantee of survival, of safety, that we won't be alone in a crisis situation.
COVID has accelerated all these trends, both technological and social. The question now is what to do to strengthen what was good, and to counteract what was bad.
The bad is the excess of garbage. And how companies are packing their products. The good thing is building the neighborhood. The good thing is that we learned that technology can be our ally.
If I think about the future, I make a checklist. The good thing is that, in housing policy, which is not talked about much, that the government decided for the first time since the time of the transformation that the private rental market is something that is an object of interest.
First, there was an emission ban, written as a ban on the automatic extension of rental contracts. And second, there was a pool of additional payments for people who met the conditions for additional payments to the municipal housing.
What actually meant was that when someone lost their job, the government saw that there are people on the commercial rental market who are in therapy, maybe we can help them.
There was no such discussion. These are small things that can be used to build new solutions. The creation of the future is a patchwork.
I talk a lot about the positive vision of the future. I have the impression that the future is something that is materialized every day.
We make certain strategic choices every day. And sometimes less strategic ones. The fact is that we live in various potential scenarios.
Depending on how many people will support which scenario, something that can be quite niche can enter mainstream.
Especially here in Poland, which is a very interesting space, where these innovations surprise in a surprising way. Even people introducing. You probably remember when the Vetturila bikes appeared.
There was a lot of discussion whether it was too early or not. There is no road infrastructure. Who will ride it? And so on.
Then it turned out that even the company Nextbike, which introduced these bikes, did not appreciate the interest. The demand was so high that it was necessary to service them every moment.
And suddenly it turned out that Warsaw became very friendly. Not in all places, of course, we could snow in winter. This is another strategic decision that you are making.
There, the city president made a mistake. Not snowing in winter, when all the vehicles were snowed, he made a decision that if you have to snow in winter, you should ride an auto.
The second such question was that Warsaw suddenly became one of the vegan capitals in the world in two years. In the country where all girls eat meat at home and have a snack.
From the point of view of a futurologist, a futurologist studying a statistical image, completely unthinkable.
Suddenly it turned out that some people said that it will be radically vegan, and a large enough part of society decided that this food is tasty, we like diversity, it is healthy, we do not want to torture animals.
So they went on a diet called flexitarian. These are very interesting things that show how giving people the opportunity to make good choices can completely change the future.
You have already started talking about public services, both legal and life-based. Not everything must always be given to a purely commercial game.
There are certain services and resources that must be shared in a way that takes into account, above all, the possibilities of their recipients.
In this city of the future, how organized would such services be, such as energy, both heat and electricity, waste management, water supply, transport.
Do we have to look at them very analytically? Do you see a common denominator for services experienced in the public interest in cities, especially these so-called media, which is consistent with your vision of a city of climate, sensitive and technological?
I would say that it is a tax policy. If we can finally segregate the trash, pay less, and assign it to every household, Poles and Poles will start segregating the trash very well.
Today we have a system on which the population is a little bit distributed, and the responsibility is a bit more collective.
What's more, it is impossible to convince the Ministry of Public Works, or it is very difficult to go with the assumption that when garbage collectors assign trash bins, the first step should be to mix the trash.
In practice, if someone is not interested in aggregating garbage, and thinks that this is a pointless system, the first basket to open is the one that can be used for everything, but not, for example, a paper basket.
It is the most delicate, because when it is too wet or too greasy, it loses its value as waste, which is then reused, or as raw material. If it gets to this system, it loses its wastefulness, and gains the possibility of reusing it.
Yes, I throw it into the trash, and that's the situation I have under my own stone, which I personally frustration.
All these recycling machines are a nice solution. Now one of the networks will allow you to collect points for recycling bottles.
I think you remember that in a moment, when you bought a beer or some other beer, you had to have a paragon so that the lady in the shop would take the bottle away.
It is a very pragmatic approach, but it leads to the same thing. You give the bottle away, and you get some bones back, which is a very nice form of encouragement, also for children.
I imagine that children, wanting to collect it for additional pocket, will walk around neighbors asking to throw the garbage behind them. Very small things.
As for energy, I hope that in the future we will come to a tokenization system, where besides the gold exchange rate, there will also be another form of energy exchange.
Money is energy, only materialized, but you can also imagine tokens where you exchange for buying a beer in the neighbor's coffee shop, especially if it is in a city center.
I think that energy will come to this package, depending on how much energy we will use, and how much energy we will produce.
I will probably remember that in the future, energy will be produced, just like the so-called Wrocław solar power plant.
It is a very progressive cooperative in Wrocław, which has an app to manage apartments and sheds.
It is something that appears every once in a while in different places of the world. My favorite is a currency called Juliet, a new blockchain system in the DQVL in the north of Amsterdam.
They are doing a lot of experiments with the economy in the closed environment. For me, the energy of the future is something that will be tokenized, and we will be able to exchange with each other.
At that moment, we will know exactly how much things cost. All these smart living solutions such as inserting a adapter to know how much our washing machine or oven uses, are the first step.
We will aim to live in a circuit where it will be similar to good.
And this is a promise that the smart energy and digitalization networks bring.
Finally, I would like to return to your native land, that is, to the apartments, the housing of the housing policy.
What concept or vision supports your city of the future? What is the vision of housing? Is it compatible with it?
This is a very close question to the one we touched on earlier. The vision of housing as a housing policy is a public policy.
Housing is not something that is your private worry, but something that is in the public interest.
We live in a system where for the past 30 years the dominant paradigm was that you have to have an apartment for your own.
Now it is slowly changing and it is for two reasons.
One reason is that these apartments are expensive, and the second reason is that another generation entering adulthood will not be able to buy an apartment for their own for two reasons.
Firstly, the rent is high, and secondly, these young people are largely self-employed, so you cannot compare the experience of people born in the mid-70s,
between the mid-70s and the late 80s, to the situation of people who were born at the turning point of their lives.
Some of these apartments will be rented by the generation of a demographic institution called the Baby Boomers,
a generation that created the framework of transformation, so most of the people used it.
If someone belongs to the middle class, they have at least one apartment, often more than one that they rent later.
These are things that cannot be seen in statistics, because all the apartments that are now being rented are in statistics as property apartments.
But if you answer the question what does someone do with five property apartments when one person has two children, then you know that these apartments are rented.
So for me, the question of the future is an attempt to answer the question of how people should live in 2050 and a calm pursuit of it.
I think the system will be mixed then, the rent system will be professionalized, plus institutional actors will come in.
The reports show that for the first time buying institutional funds, they buy more than people individually.
Often Baby Boomers who will have income to the retirement, which is a rational way of keeping their perspective.
So I wanted us to design our future rationality so that it would be possible for people not to pay more than 30% of their income to the apartment, which is a threshold of availability.
And you can do it in two ways. One is to build urban apartments and this is the direction the solutions proposed by the Ministry of Development, which gave a lot of support to TBSs, which are now called the Social Housing Initiative.
And the second thing is a package of additional payments, which I imagine in practice that you as a private owner rent an apartment at a certain price that is regulated, which means that you can't speculate.
But in return, if your landlord or tenant should be affected, you can say, we will give additional payments.
A safety net.
A safety net that is a form of management of risk for the owner or the owner of the apartment.
Because it is known that the loss of the tenant is a renovation of some unpaid rents, as a person who has not paid for three months before. These are large sums that may not necessarily compensate for raising the rent value.
Thank you, Joanna, for sharing your vision of the city of the future and its specific systems, which are integrated in the way you presented it into a joint and positive, optimistic, encouraging vision, to which you would like to invite a close person to live in the city of the future.
I hope that in such cities of the future we will come to live. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
That's all for today's podcast.
You can listen to the podcast "Transformation 2050" on popular podcast platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcast and SoundCloud. Each episode is also available on the "Transformation 2050.pl" website, where you will find interviews, interviews with experts, expert materials dedicated to energy transformation, and a lot more.
and balanced development.