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Hi, good evening. My name is Ricky Burdett. I'm director of the Urban Age, which is part of the Cities Program at the London School of Economics. And it's my great pleasure this evening to introduce Gerald Krug and to chair the evening and the discussion. I mentioned that I'm the director of the Urban Age, which may be familiar to some of you in the room, but not to others. And it's in fact, through the Open Age project, which I'll describe briefly, that Jerry Crew has become not only a key intellectual player in what, for us, as an interdisciplinary project in understanding how cities work, but he's also become a friend. And he's become a friend to the whole of our group here at the London School of Economics. And this friendship has been not rewarded. That's the wrong term, but recognized by the fact that, in fact, he's been made a visiting professor here at the school. And we're delighted that we can welcome you here. So this is a sort of mini introduction to the extraordinary things that Gerry has been involved in over the years in the world of law, but also very much in the world of cities. Now, I mentioned that the Urban Age is a project which is funded, wholly sorry, by the Deutsche Bank's Harvard Herrhausen Society and run by a team here at the lse, which really has one aim. And that aim is to understand the links between the way cities are made physically and the way they are actually organized socially, economically and politically. And when Philip Rose and I started this project a number of years ago, I can assure you that the one thing we were not thinking about, and that's our naivety, you might call it that in trying to make the link between the physical and the social clear in our minds through this investigation, was that actually the decisions that people took in governing cities was as important to the shape of cities as anything that people like me, architects or planners, but actually do. And it's that line of research which has intrigued certainly colleagues here, but for many years has informed the work that Jerry has been doing. Now, you will have seen his CV is of great interest. He's the Louis Brandeis professor of Law at Harvard University, where he's now taught for 35 years. I think we've just come up to that. But that interest in law and in local government law is stemmed in the reality of everyday practice. He was, in fact, running what must have been one of the most complex things, the health service of New York City before that, and has been involved in the structuring and organization of sort of Real life projects. So his work as an academic, which is obviously of great value, value at Harvard, is very much connected to the real world. And that's where his connection with the urban age is significant. And that's why his subject of tonight, which is the rule of law is a good for cities, is so central to the discussion that we are having. I mean, what I remember in connecting with Jerry Krug now, in fact 2001, 2002, when he was introduced to us by Richard Sennett, is that he came to London at a time I'd been working as a member of something called the Urban Task Force, which was an attempt to influence British government thinking about what to do with their cities. And it was the first time that I'd actually heard someone explain to us those who were involved in it, where we fitted into the decision making process and what possible impact we might have or very likely might not have as a result of that. And through the years of the urban age, he's been involved in a number of conferences, is in fact now teaching with a number of people here, a seminar with PhD students from MIT, from Harvard Law School and of course the LSE, in trying to understand what the problems of Mumbai are and how one can resolve them not just by restructuring the physical landscape, but very much by also restructuring the political landscape and the decision making system. He's also extremely controversial behind this polite background of an academic at Harvard. I remember three occasions that he spoke at the different conferences in London and New York and then in Mexico City. I mean, in New York he shocked all his fellow New Yorkers by actually saying that London was run rather well. This caused enormous anxiety and anger by them saying is this an anti New Yorker? To which the answer was no. It's just simply making it clear how different structures actually ended up with different results. Why the New York mass transit system couldn't really work as effectively as transport for London simply because decisions are taken in Albany and not in New York City. I mean, it's that simple level of analysis which really makes you understand things in London. He spoke very carefully and very clearly about this terrible thing called the P word. What is this P word? Well, it's the partnership's work. London. Everything in London is done through partnerships where everything in London is not done through partnerships. You're involved, as I am, in trying to redevelop the Thames Gateway. And probably more famously for many of us, he was the only person who was able to speak to the mayor of Mexico City and the governor of the state of Mexico which is the neighboring state where most of this enormous urban expansion, which takes you to a city which you can't even see where it ends. He was the first academic to sort of talk to them and said, do you realize that your decisions about infrastructure, about water, about policy, about housing just don't line up? And, in fact, that has led to the beginning of discussion, we understand, between the sort of regional hinterland and the city proper in trying to understand rules and regulations which actually structure city growth. So that is very much the context within which Jerry operates. And it's very much the context of why we're so pleased to have them here. And to talk about the rule of law is a good facility. So could you please join me in welcoming Jerry? What I should say, which I haven't, is that Jerry will Talk for about 45 minutes, and then we have an opportunity for questions and discussion with you.
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Thanks very much, Ricky, and thanks, everyone for coming. I want to talk to you tonight about the rule of law. You've no doubt heard that the rule of law is essential to a civilized society. But what is the rule of law? And whatever it is, is it good for cities? As I will suggest to you, whether it's good for cities depends on what it is. I also think you probably know that there's a vast literature about the rule of law, from Aristotle to Hegel and from Av Daixi to Zhang Ji Min. I don't know whether you'll be happy or sad to hear this, but I don't intend to talk about any of this literature. I intend to talk about the rule of law as applies to cities. Not only London and New York, but cities who are developing around the world, like Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Mexico City. So let me state my conclusion at the outset, thereby robbing my thoughts of any dramatic tension. The core value I associate with the rule of law is the importance of. Of restraining the exercise of arbitrary power, the need to protect the weak against the strong. This is the task we want the rule of law to perform. And it's a valuable function. The easiest way to recognize this is to think about Mogadishu or Sao Paulo. The endless violence, insecurity and corruption in these cities has unleashed the kind of arbitrary power that we want the rule of law to restrain. The same point, however, can be made everywhere. The immigrant communities in London, Paris and New York, the financial investors in Mumbai and Shanghai, the people living in shacks and gated communities in Mexico City and Johannesburg, they too seek protection against the exercise of arbitrary power. To the extent that the rule of law provides this protection. It's a good thing, and it's a particularly good thing for cities. Otherwise it would not be possible for millions of people to live together in the same space. The problem with this conception of the rule of law, I'm sure you'll recognize, is that it's utopian. The protection against arbitrary power is always incomplete, imperfect. Nowhere does the formal legal system actually achieve it. Most people see this point most easily when they think about the arbitrariness that derives from the power wielded by governments, not only authoritarian governments, but by democracies. We see this arbitrariness every day, everywhere in the world, including in the United States and the uk. Even here, civil liberties abuses occur. Markets are improperly regulated. Courts step outside their bounds or refuse to act when needed. Cities are restrained too much on some issues and too little on others. But government is not the only problem. There are also dangers posed by the private sector, by employers, business leaders, and financial institutions. To protect against their power, we rely on government to regulate financial markets, prohibit employment discrimination, and penalize fraud, to mention only a few examples. Arbitrary power is also wielded by other private individuals through violence, intimidation, and the refusal to help those in need, no matter how easy it would be to do. To deal with this threat, we sometimes impose fines and penalties. And sometimes we do nothing. When faced with these kinds of private exercises of power, the current system is also incomplete. More worrisome than this incompleteness is the fact that the combination of the two roles I've just mentioned for the rule of law, the need to restrain governmental power and the need to restrain private power contradict each other. We rely on the government to regulate the market and to punish antisocial activity. And at the same time, we seek to limit governmental power. We seek both to empower government and to disempower it. We seek both to empower private discretion and to regulate it. And these conflicting assignments are not the only basic structural problem presented by the formal legal system. As every architect and designer knows, no matter how we work out the details of the rule of law, legal rules can take on a force of their own. Rule following can itself become a source of arbitrariness rather than a protection for human creativity. That's why the rule of law should not be equated with whatever the formal legal system provides at any given moment in time. Even at its best, the formal legal system cannot fully protect us against the abuse of power. It's important, then, not to reduce the idea of the rule of law to the formal legal system. Instead, the rule of law should be understood as an unachieved and indeed an unachievable ideal. The phrase engraved on the entrance to the Harvard Law School library not under man, but under God and law, captures this ideal. This famous phrase, following a line that goes from Brachton to Cook to the present day, seeks to place everyone in society, even the king, under law rather than under the power wielded by other human beings. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Unfortunately, laws are man made, legislatures can be capricious, administrative agencies can be captured by the very groups they're supposed to regulate, and even the most honorable courts have their own institutional role to protect and staffed by educated elites, can fail to see abuses even when they exist. The basic question facing cities is what to do about these inadequacies. The classic answer is to try harder to improve our current formal legal system. I'm not against this project. Indeed, I'm for it. But it's not enough. In this talk I want to address an additional strategy. If we're interested in restraining the exercise of arbitrary power, we need to invent new institutions to promote the core value of the rule of law, not only in the cities and the developing world, but in the UK and the United States. I have in mind democratic institutions that would supplement the current legal system in order to address abuses it does not now prevent. I can summarize the point I want to make to you tonight in a single sentence. The protection against arbitrary power is too important a task to be left simply to lawyers. To spell this out, I will focus tonight on two aspects of city life. The first is the part of the city that the formal legal system currently does not adequately address, best illustrated by the informal economy and the informal housing so prevalent in the developing world. The sixth is an aspect of city policy that the formal legal system regulates in detail. The example I have in mind is the way cities organize decisions about urban economic development. Notwithstanding the legal system's substantial role in urban development policy, I shall argue its fundamental structures can still enable the exercise of power by the strong over the weak and not the other way around. I want to offer some ideas about the kind of institutions that might supplement the efforts of the current legal system in these two contexts, whether the threats of arbitrariness come from the government or from private individuals. Before I turn to this agenda, I want to make sure that we're on the same page about the connection between the formal legal system and city life. When dealing with the development of cities, the notion of the rule of law is normally invoked in four different ways. First, there's the relationship between the rule of law and the development of the kind of market economy necessary to promote urban economic growth. You can't have a market economy without legal rules. Indeed, some exist without the right kind of legal rules. Consultants by the thousands therefore, travel the world trying to design legal rules to promote their vision of a thriving local economy. Next, there's the organization of local democracy. Democracy can't mean that the city policy should be determined by whatever the majority wants to do. Majorities, after all, can invade the rights of minorities. Indeed, popular passions can generate oppressive policies of all kinds. A functioning democracy, in other words, has to be subject to the rule of law. Then there's the institutional meaning of the rule of law. If the rule of law is essential for the functioning of the city economy and city politics, who decides what the right legal rules are? The city, the national government, International norms? The highest horse altogether. Decision making about the rule of law itself requires rules of law. Finally, even after we address the economy, local politics, and institutional design, there remains the question of the relationship between the rule of law and the built environment. Planners often complain that decision makers do not pay adequate attention to the plans that they have worked so hard to draft. For plans to have meaning, they seem to be saying, they have to be inscribed into law. You might think from this account that just about everyone agrees that the rule of law is a necessity for city life and that it's a good thing too, actually. However, on every one of these points, there are those who fight against law and legal rules. Consider the economy we often hear these days, often hear these days that fostering a market economy should focus on the repeal of legal rules. Deregulation is the word currently in fashion. Government, people say, should get out of the business of trying to manage the economy. The organization of society should derive instead from the operation of the free market. Next, consider the issue of democracy. The idea of relying on legal rules to foster democracy is currently very much under attack. What's in vogue instead are references to governance stakeholders, non governmental organizations, and community organizing. A lot of people who defend these alternatives seem to think the legal rules get in the way of what they're trying to do. Then there's the institutional question. Many people claim that the way government is organized is now so hopeless that there's nothing that can be done to fix it. If so, modifying legal rules is not going to solve the problem cities face. The institutional mechanisms that might address these problems have to be found elsewhere in public private partnerships, Empowering civil Society and privatization, even courts, are being replaced by arbitrators. Finally, when thinking about the built environment, we have all heard architects complaints about their frustrations with the endlessly complicated legal rules that affect their work. Planners often say the same thing. As one important Indian urban planner said recently, talking about Delhi, if we want to make the city a peaceful place, then we will have to remove the fingers of the state apparatus that have got into the planning process, and we have to restore to planners the legitimacy of planning. Don't legal rules, he seems to be saying, whoever drafts them, just make things worse? Shouldn't architects and designers and planners be free to do their work without all these lawyers nipping at their heels? There is then more controversy than you might think about the current relationship between cities and the rule of law in practice. This controversy is resolved in the design of the institutions that meet city policy. The rule of law is inscribed in the way we organize government, the roles we allow it to play and prohibit it from playing, and the checks and balances we build into the system. The relevant legal rules come from the government, some from city government, some from central government, some from popularly elected legislative bodies, some from executive agencies, many derive from court decisions. This fragmentation of authority is the way we regulate the market and the way we protect against possible abuse of democratic power. We check the possible abuse of local democracy by having national oversight. We check the possibility of national the possible abuse of national oversight by having local democracy. We take some matters, like the money supply, out of politics to check against legislative abuse. And we subject other matters to a popular referendum in America, establishing the maximum level of the property tax to ensure the carrying out of the democratic will. We entrust the courts with an enormous amount of power, while at the same time insisting they're doing nothing but implementing the law, not making it. As this description suggests, nothing about our system is completely worked out. Competing ideas are always in play, and rules are constantly being brought revised in light of experience. I emphasize this because, as you'll see, the alternative I'm going to propose will be equally open, contestable. You won't pay any attention to my alternatives. If you think the current legal system is predictable and determinate, and that any alternative should therefore be equally predictable and determinate, you need to see how the rule of law operates to be open to any proposal for change. Consider the popular idea that we need to protect the operation of the free market from government intervention. Obviously, this slogan represents the best hat truth. Market societies need legal rules even more than they need to escape from them. Let's say I live next door to you and I want to develop my property in a way that will destroy your property values. Does private property mean I could do with my Walmart on my own property? Or just to protect your ability to do what you want on your property? Or let's say I want to sell you my house and then it's riddled with termites because I want to sell my house at a high price. I don't tell you about the termites. Am I guilty of fraud or are you guilty of not protecting yourselves? Just in the United States, both answers to both questions are now accepted as law. These basic points about property and contract, the kind of thing that students learn in their first year of law school, are just the beginning of the different kinds of societies. The different kinds of legal rules enable securities regulation provides another example. Different legal regimes governing securities markets enable different levels of trust for investors and therefore different levels of investment. There is, in short, no such thing as the free market. Different definitions of private property, different definitions of enforceable contracts, and different securities laws create different kinds of market societies. There are as many markets as there are combinations of legal rules. And in fact that the rules in the UK and the United States have changed dramatically over time as the nature of the economy and the society has changed. Even now, the rules of the UK and the United States are not the same simply in the United States they vary from state to state. That's why it's so surprising, at least to me, that the many people so confident that many people so confident in our legal system that the most important Rule of Law project now taking place around the world is the effort to fought our system to developing countries. When President Bush and Prime Minister Blair held their Press Conference on April 9, 2003 under the heading Iraq will soon be liberated, they said explicitly that one of their principal goals was to make the rule of law the foundation of Iraqi democracy. What did they mean by that? It's hard to know exactly, but perhaps some indication might be gleaned from the countless projects initiated by the World bank and many others designed to bring the rule of law to developing countries. What are they trying to do? One basic idea is they're trying to they're trying to export the rules we have adopted to structure our market economy to their market economy. The Rule of Law project also involves fostering particular forms of government organization, not just elections, but ideas about ways to decentralize power, the organization of public private partnerships, the creation of public corporations, and findings. Currently, the Rule of Law Project is particularly focused on the courts. The goal is to ensure or create an independent judiciary as the bulwark of protection against government abuse. Sometimes the Rule of Law project also promotes legal rules that don't exist in.
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The United states and the U.K. for.
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Example, in the effort to promote human rights, world organizations, including the United nations nations are seeking to promote rights such as the right to housing, the right to education, and the right to health. One problem with this current Rule of Law project is that it relies almost entirely on the formal legal system to establish the rule of law. Even though many people in the world cities make their living in the informal economy, live in informal housing, and rely for survival on informal networks that escape the reach of formal rules. Speaking recently of an informal neighborhood in Cairo, a New York Times reporter wrote that the residency government is an utterly unreliable source of health for the average citizen. This is not surprising because the informal economy and informal housing result from the government's withdrawal from portions of the economy and the housing sector, leaving them unregulated, untaxed and unprotected. The informal housing in Johannesburg and Mumbai is built without legal permission and is not in compliance with legal standards. The informal economy includes people engaged in building the housing, selling food and other commodities, and providing services such as transportation by vans or rickshaws. One form of arbitrary power threatening these communities is exercised by the government. Large scale mass evictions that drive people from their homes and equally importantly, robs them of their economic livelihood. But the government's intervention is intermittent. Sometimes the government adopts the opposite policy, seeking said to improve services to the informal sector rather than to eliminate it. The more pervasive form of arbitrary power is exercised by landlords taking advantage of those who rent housing from them, criminal gangs seeking to skim money from local vendors, and the police and other officials taking payoffs to look the other way when these abuses occur. The informal sector is filled with people who pay money for housing, depend for their livelihood on a particular location for their stall, and rely on access to transportation and infrastructure. If trouble arises, the formal legal system is not there to help them. Calling in the police is not the answer, because the police themselves can be the problem. It's important to recognize that that the informal economy and the informal housing sector as I just described them, are set up in accordance with law. By this I mean the law sets up rules of formality, licenses to operate businesses, building codes for housing, zoning laws, taxation schemes. And these rules define the limit of legality. Those outside these limits are by definition illegal. For that reason, they're vulnerable both to Public and private power. To understand the role that law is playing in the informal sector, it might be helpful to draw an analogy to a very different rule system. Criminal law in 18th century England. In a well known essay, Douglas Hay tells the story of the enormous increase in the reliance on the death penalty in England during the 18th century, with capital punishment writing from 50 different crimes to more than 200 in a little over 100 years. The story he tells, however, is not of mass executions, but of non enforcement. Many people could legally have been executed, were saved. Decision makers withheld penalties from those who have been condemned, making them quite understandably grateful. One could see the system, however, not as the gracious exercise of mercy to criminals, but quite the contrary, as a system that gave enormous power to those with authority to forgive trespasses, those who decided that the penalty would not be imposed. This is the structure I suggest that those living and working in the informal sector now experience having been declared illegal. They are subject at any time to the penalties of illegality. These penalties can be, and often are, withheld. This withholding of sanctions is what enables the street creditors to work and those living in the shacks to call them home. But officials can change their mind at any time. One response to the situation might be to extend the formal legal system to everything. Now, in the informal system, this would mean bringing all housing and economic transactions within legal requirements, regulating them, bringing them up to code, subjecting them to taxation, giving them the rights to property owners. In many parts of the world, this simply cannot be done. The government does not have the resources or the capacity to create a totally formal world. Indeed, it's because of its inability to provide housing that informal housing has become so widespread. And it's because of its inability to create an economic system that provides enough jobs that the growth of the informal economy has been so substantial. This is the structure that dominates places like Mumbai and Mexico City. But even in the UK and the United States, bringing every element into the formal system, every illegal immigrant working as a maid, every business transaction made off the books, every building not strictly in compliance with the regulatory codes is unachievable. Another problem with eyeing on the formal legal system is that it depends so heavily on lawyers and courts. I'm not one to join the general chorus of condemnation of lawyers. A lot of lawyers have made an enormous contribution to values I associate with the rule of law in their practice, in government service and on the bench. But even in the United States and the uk, lawyers can also frustrate the rule of law by endless motions and delays. By clever exploitation of technical problems and by a kind of devotion to a client that frustrates the general welfare. Courts, too, can be a problem. At the time of the Warren court in the 1960s, many people in the United States looked regularly to the courts to solve problems of injustice no longer. Court decisions, it's now clear, can undermine important protections for racial and gender minorities by invalidating protections enacted by local and state governments. Besides, reliance on courts and lawyers has been likely to be useful in many cities around the world, given the limitations of their legal institutions. The problem now is that the only alternative to relying on lawyers and courts is doing nothing. No protection either from the arbitrary power of government or from those within the informal neighborhood who prey on others. We have to come up with a third option. The one I would like to suggest to you is local democracy. The basic idea is to empower neighborhood people, themselves, working collectively, to intervene against the power of corrupt police, landlords, and the criminal underworld. This would require the decentralization to the neighborhood level of two kinds of authority. The ability to make rules that limit the current forms of abuse and the ability to resolve the disputes that arise under the new rules. These are familiar rule of law taxes, But I would not assign them to lawyers, judges, or other professionals. I see the establishment of basic rules as an example of neighborhood self government. The analogy is to the legislature. I see the application of the rules as an example of empowering ordinary people to make decisions about disputes in their own community. The analogy is to the jury. Both institutional forms can be vehicles for involving ordinary citizens in the experience of protecting people from the exercise of arbitrary power. More than that, they can enable ordinary people to assert some control over their own lives. Control that can begin by limiting the excess kinds of exposure imposed by some neighborhood residents of those who are even more vulnerable. This process can then lead to another form of power. It can contribute to political organizing, so that when the danger arises from the city or state governments rather than from fellow residents, the neighborhood would be better prepared to confront it. Your first reaction to my idea may be one of alarm racial suspect, of vigilante justice, of group oppression, of unleashed prejudice. It could too, unless, that is, it were subject, as I was subjected, to the kinds of organizational restraints traditionally associated with the rule of law. I'm not proposing a form of community empowerment disconnected from the legal system. I'm proposing a new kind of institution that would fit within the legal system and that would strengthen the legal system. Like the rest of the legal system, any neighborhood process needs to be subject to institutional checks and balances no rule of law regime, enables a group of people to exercise unchecked power. The issue here, very similar to the one that confronts the formal legal system, is how to give the decision makers enough authority so they can be empowered, while at the same time limiting the dangers and abuse that they themselves impose. This is the problem involved when the legal system subjects city decision making to state or national oversight, subjects jury judgments to judicial and appellate review, and subjects legislative judgments to declaration of their unconstitutionality. Moreover, the role of outsiders is not just a limit power in the name of checking abuse. It's also to reinforce neighborhood power, providing assistance and cases that a neighborhood can't handle. Sometimes neighborhood residents may be too vulnerable to retribution by powerful actors in the community to be able to make a decision. Still, the structure I'm proposing is not just an addition to the traditional formal legal system, It's a modification of it. As I've stressed, the decision makers would be ordinary people, not lawyers or judges or experts. No one thinks that setting up the system will be easy. There will not be one model for the world. But if a structure can be designed and can begin to work, there can be a new way for the most vulnerable people in the world, cities, to limit arbitrary power, arbitrary power that the formal system now either permits or or disregards. Let's turn now to the second situation I want to discuss, one far from the neighborhoods. My first example. I'm talking about the places where the government and developers are concentrating their efforts to further the economic growth of cities. I mean, places like King's Cross, White City and Canary Wharf in London, the Atlantic Yards in New York, the Santa Fe neighborhood in Mexico City, the Mill area in Mumbai. These are not places like the sites where the informal sector designed to be marginal. They are at the heart of the city economy, and as a result, they are the places where the formal legal system is most in evidence. The way that the current legal system structures the development is not the same everywhere. So to discuss the process requires engaging in generalization, indeed over generalization. But it usually takes the form of pre legally constituted negotiations. One between the city and the developer, another between the two of them and the surrounding neighborhood, and the third involving efforts by all interested parties to get approvals from other regulatory government bodies, often at the state or national level. These three negotiations create an enormously complex process. Legal rules affect every part of it. Yet it seems to me the most important issue that these developments raise is not addressed by the legal system at all. To consider what's left out of the process I need to say what's left in the focus of the negotiation between the developer and the government is devising a formula that allows the developer to make enough money to be willing to sign the deal and enables the government to accomplish enough of its current objectives to be willing to go along. The government's focus might be on the accommodation of affordable housing, the size of the buildings, the need for improvements of the infrastructure, or similar matters. The developers likely be focused on the bottom line to deal with the neighborhood. To deal with the neighborhood is different. The neighbors have to be persuaded not to try to block the project, so enough has to be offered to them in terms of local amenities to buy their compliance, even if ultimately they'll be forced to move out of the neighborhood. The regulatory authorities will have still other objectives, very often environmental concerns, but they can involve almost any aspect of regulatory power. These additional regulatory requirements are often used strategically by opponents of the development to attack a deal they're against on other grounds. One thinks of the defeat of Westway, the highway once proposed to the west side of Manhattan, torpedoed for its danger to strike bets. If these three negotiations are concluded successfully, the deal is blessed as consistent with governing law. Does this process allow the exercise of arbitrary power? I think it does. The source of arbitrariness can vary. Sometimes it could come from the government when it interprets the legal rules to allow the developer exemptions from standard practice, or when it interprets the law to prohibit the developer and doing something that might just as easily have allowed. Sometimes it's the neighborhood organization, operating under the cloak of the word community, that can hold up a project by demands that outsiders would consider unreasonable. Sometimes it can come from the architects when they seek to defend the unchallengeable creativity of their design. Sometimes it can be based on a disputable invocation of environmental or other rules. Since the background legal framework does not determine the results of the negotiations, there is a considerable amount of individual discretion exercised in all of them. The four rules are often crafted precisely to allow this discretion, thereby circumventing the pocket of protest that another process might have produced. The overarching question left out of this process is whether the current economic development strategy embraced by these projects will improve the lives of the majority of people affected by them. This is not a question to be negotiated with the developers. It's also not likely to be addressed by the detailed technical objections laws of regulatory agencies. And it is not a question appropriately answered by the neighborhood where the development is located. The current assumption in planning circles about popular involvement Is that the relevant community to evaluate development decisions is the neighborhood and not the larger population. One can understand why people think this. After all, a development is likely to have a very significant impact on people living nearby. But that's also the reason why the neighborhood might be the wrong focus group. The way neighborhoods evaluate their future is likely to be different than a citywide evaluation. Change has to take place somewhere. And if every neighborhood parochially resisted or be prevented from happening. To be sure, the public sector itself, and not just the neighborhood, is always one of the negotiating parties. Perhaps the overall question of economic policy is handled by them in the negotiation. Often, however, it's not the city that represents the public. Instead, it's a public authority, a public corporation, or a cuengo that has been carefully organized to be less responsive to democratic decision making than the city itself. Even when the city is involved, the desire for attracting investment can overwhelm the mayor and other executive officials. They often feel that the city is so threatened by competition with other cities, so desperate to get the deal done, that an examination and debate about the conception of the city's future that the deal is fostering would seem a distraction. Another basic assumption about the current negotiation structure embraced by planners and architects is that the focus should be on land use. But much more is at stake in development decisions than how land is to be used. Even more important is the idea of the city that the proposed development will foster the kind of population the city is trying to attract, retain, and exclude by adopting this particular definition of economic growth. Most of the major projects I'm thinking about, not just in London and New York, but in Mumbai, Shanghai, Mexico City, Johannesburg, are focused on pursuing the image of being a global city. This means attracting finance, high tech, and international investment, and therefore providing the office buildings, high end shopping, and secluded housing complexes that these target audiences are thought to demand. Those who are pursuing this agenda rarely have to defend it before representatives of the city as a whole. They rarely have to articulate how this strategy will improve the lives of most city residents. They rarely even have to spell out what trickle down means by defining the issue in terms of land use. The question of the city's overall economic policy is not usually even raised. But as long as the larger issue of defining the city's future remains unexamined, economic development strategies can strengthen the strong over the weak, not the other way around. That's why we need to open up the contestability of economic development policy to democratically organized institutions. Unlike my proposal for the informal sector, I think that the institution should represent people citywide rather than be neighborly focused. In some cities, this can be done by giving greater authority over this issue to the city's legislative body as city council or assembly. In other cities, this institution might not be organized in a way that adequately represents the variety of people from the very different kinds of neighborhoods that have at stake in the outcome the effectiveness of the local legislature pencil upon its size, whether it's neighborhood based or elected, a large its legally defined role in city decision making and the quality of the democratic process that produces its members. If the local legislature is not now adequate, another organization will have to be established. I don't see this democratic process as one more step in an already too convoluted development process. I see it as establishing the framework for all development decisions. I don't see the goal to be a planning document in the conventional sense. I see it as a mechanism that structures a continuing struggle over the city's future, one that will require constant revision as the consequences of different projects on the lives of different kinds of residents become apparent. I don't see the meetings as like the kind of community group meetings so often associated with planning decisions. The role of the democratic process should not be to offer advice and criticism to experts. The participants should be empowered to establish the city's strategy for economic growth with the experts advising the decision makers rather than being the decision makers. And finally, I don't see this proposal as a way to open up governance decisions to stakeholders. What people mean by stakeholders is never obvious to me, but it usually includes prominent business interests, selected non government organizations and civic leaders. I've in mind another group, ordinary city residents. The goal is to include the very people left out in the reigning economic development strategy in the decision making about what the strategy should be. These are the people who most need to be protected by the rule of law, as was the case for the neighborhood process. For the informal sector, I see this process as an integral part of the existing legal structure, not independent of it. It adds new voices to the legal structure. It too needs to be subject to checks and balances. No institution is ever allowed to do anything at once. To give unrestrained decision making power to any particular group would enable arbitrary power, not limited. After all, citywide coalitions can target poor neighborhoods for undesirable uses, thereby perpetuating the power of the strong over the weak. The formal legal system is the way we now organize the democratic process and integrate it into the overall government structure, and I seek to build on this model. It should be clear, in other words, that I Consider the formal legal system an indispensable ingredient in establishing the rule of law. But it should be equally clear that I think that the current system needs revision. I seek to add more democratic ingredients to it in the context of the informal sector. The problem I identified was the limits of formality on the issue of economic development. The problem is the way the formal system currently organizes the decision making process. In both cases, new institutional structures are needed to empower the people not now in the process, to be able to make decisions not now adequately addressed. In my view, my proposal dealing with economic development and my earlier proposal about informal neighborhoods constitute one agenda, not two. For me, the most vulnerable residents of major cities that threaten today by events in two different parts of town. Some of their vulnerability derives from the neighborhood where they live. Some comes from the effect on their lives produced by the pursuit of development elsewhere in the city. The changes I propose to the way we now organize the rule of law in our cities are designed to protect these people from decisions made regarding either kind of neighborhood. This is not just a necessity for the developing world. London and New York are justly proud. The immigrants have become a major part of their population. But their views are rarely represented in the debates about the city's future. To address this omission, I propose a more democratic form of the rule of law. No doubt my proposals, like the idea of the rule of law itself, will have to be revised as their imperfections become apparent. Framing the rule of law for cities is an endless task. Not a single model that can be exported around the world. The way we perform this test is by designing and redesigning institutions, different institutions in different contexts, in order to protect the city's most vulnerable residents from the exercise of arbitrary power. If we do this, the rule of law will be good for cities. Thank you.
- [49:05]
A
Questions and issues there.
- [49:06]
B
I just want to just ask, though.
- [49:10]
A
One opening question, which is you talked about, appropriately, given the nature of the type of the book of the rule of laws, this effective and abstract concept. But we together, and you in particular, have studied cities which are changing in their physiognomy, in their scale, between Mexico City versus others. The rate of change is dramatic. The nature of people who are moving in and moving out is very, very difficult. And I was wondering through your talk, whether how you address these issues in terms of. You're talking about a very abstract notion, without even coming to the point of local democracy or other structures. How do you feel that your model or your idea copes with these changes, these shifts? Very visible.
- [50:06]
B
Yeah, very visible. I think there are many ways we plan or fail to plan cities. And one of them is architectural and planned. And one of them is done by designers and architects. But another is done by the legal system. And what concerns me about the growth and the change in the city and the city's population and the growth outside the city boundaries is how it affects vulnerable people. And if the vulnerable people inside one boundary are affected by the prosperity of people outside of another boundary. That's in part the product of the way the legal system sets up the organization. So I see when you see the cities developing and growing in this way, one of the things we need to do various things about science. Some of it is visual and some of it is. Is institutional. We need to revise our institutions to see what they're doing to the ability of people to protect themselves against arbitrary. Let's open up.
- [51:06]
A
I'll come to you in a moment.
- [51:07]
B
One at the back.
- [51:10]
A
You tell us who you are also.
- [51:12]
B
That would be nice.
- [51:13]
C
I'm actually I found there are a lot of points.
- [51:19]
B
I agree with you. But there are two points I wish to raise here. First, concerning the empowerment of the local communities. Actually they have a lot of work done on this.
- [51:31]
C
The 1983 famous work done by Arta in the study of 10, you know, countries.
- [51:38]
B
She mentioned that the low crime rate in these countries actually was attributable to the empowerment of. And so. And there are other studies in the area as well.
- [51:51]
C
But my concern is when you mentioned.
- [51:54]
B
Those empowerment as local communities. At the same time he said about those empowerments must also be under check and balance within ecosystem.
- [52:04]
C
And it seems about this relationship between legalism and empowerment.
- [52:10]
B
Or what we call like populism is.
- [52:12]
C
Not very clearly contested.
- [52:15]
B
So how do you institutionally and philosophically contest this leadership between these two?
- [52:22]
C
And the second issue is concerning.
- [52:25]
B
There was one point that you raised in your speech about this contract.
- [52:30]
C
Actually I think that's a matter of equity.
- [52:33]
B
And I mean for equity. Of course this is a very controversial field.
- [52:38]
C
But at least actually I would regard.
- [52:41]
B
It as a magnitude. We mean the rule of law system that can correct Quigga. The law by itself.
- [52:48]
C
So I can't think that's actually, you.
- [52:51]
B
Know, a very closely related topic.
- [52:54]
A
Thank you.
- [52:54]
B
Philosophy. I don't think of that as a matter of empowerment versus legalism. We distrust all institutions. We worry about the locality and therefore we have national oversight. And we worry about the nation and therefore we insist upon decentralization. We worry about the public sector and therefore we build up the private sector. And we worry about private abuse and therefore we want the government to correct it. So this is just built into this by adding new voices to the system who I think are left out. It's true what you said. There's a number of places in which communities have done a lot but by and large if you look at where the power lies, it's high, not low. And a lot of places disempower local communities from basic decisions that affect their life. So to the extent that it not exist, it's a good thing. Okay, try again.
- [54:16]
A
Don't take it personal. My name is Jim Kennedy. I've been coming to a question after a very brief intro. Far from being alarmed by your position I was very much encouraged by the.
- [54:44]
B
Fact that it's a refreshing set of reservations such as one rarely hears in.
- [54:52]
A
Circles like the legal constitutionalists at the Institute of Convalescent Legal Studies or at academic lawyers. It is not a common position. And matthews me gradually to the question.
- [55:10]
B
I've been very much envied by the.
- [55:13]
A
Ideas of of Richard Bellamy of the School of Public Policy at Newbury College London now plugging institution.
- [55:25]
B
There's a lot in common between you. It seems that your observation is about.
- [55:31]
A
The need to modify the new law.
- [55:34]
B
Your recognition of its complexity and it seems to me there are certain domains where the public opinion actually gets ahead of rules. This things we have in common with Richard Bellary he cites the example of climate change and he also recognizes the problems of the majority. Finally the question quotes from his just.
- [56:06]
A
Re released book Humoristic Dress it isn't available yet.
- [56:13]
B
But he may have asked you to comment on these two core sentences. He argues that the democratic I quote the democratic mechanisms of open election between.
- [56:26]
A
Competing parties and decision making five or six the majority rule which he later.
- [56:32]
B
Qualified offers superior and sufficient methods for upholding rights and the rule of law. Attention should be paid to improving democratic processes through such measures as reform electoral.
- [56:52]
A
Systems and enhanced public parliamentary scrutiny. He's developed all these objects into the sphere of the political constitution. Let's ask carry proof to this moment. Thank you.
- [57:06]
B
Well I'm happy to hear about that. I have someone who shares Brutus and I'm happy thank you for the suggestion. I think I have last faith in the elections as being the center of the democratic process and the I see democracy as a lived experience a day to day experience of people trying to engage in something about control over their lives and that's why I want a neighborhood organized itself like a legislature and a jury to deal with abuses of wounded so it's not an election. It's very much another kind of institution. And I see the same thing on a citywide level when we deal with economic development. So I have a different, I think, emphasis on what we mean by democracy when we want to add democracy to.
- [57:59]
A
The formal question over here. Any other questions?
- [58:05]
B
Thank you again, very interesting lecture. How do you tackle the problem of extremely complex politics, technical policies and elements, for example water, infrastructure, waste policies, transcendental methods and so on? The world is incredibly complex and we need expert advice on what to do. I'm not we're getting rid of the experts even a little. I want to hear a lot from the experts. On the other hand, the experts disagree with each other and they ultimately can't tell us what to do. So I want to build the expert advice into the room when the ultimate decision makers are ordinary people who have heard the experts and are trying to figure out a policy based upon that. So it's true they won't understand how lot of the technicalities and they need to hear from the experts. And the role of experts is incredibly important in our society. But we can't leave to the experts the ultimate decision of what to do because in a democracy ordinary people, it seems to be, shouldn't be empowered to do that. And that's not trying to do here, both in the neighborhood and at the National.
- [59:28]
A
Jeremy, I think your point is a slightly different one, which I might be saying at Simon, which is the scale at which you take these decisions, not whether you just have experts who are part of that process. Because you know, we've lived through this in London effectively over a very short period of time. Decisions on environmental quality could not be taken under London that did not have an umbrella organization which is now the gla. And I think that's the nature of on that thing.
- [60:00]
B
I think we need to build more democratic decision making process into the gla. That's what I'm saying. So I don't think that a lot of these decisions should be made at the neighborhood level. I tried to suggest that economic policy decisions should not be made at the neighborhood level. But I'm concerned about a basic way in which executive officials, business leaders, leaders, key figures always identified as key. We're going to somehow agree with each other. I want to open it up in a way. How to design something at the scale of London. I've not decided, I've not proposed. I'm not to mention. But so I mean, what would be like to have such an organization? Is it more a matter of a Principle of concern about all of these negotiations between the mayor and the developers in particular cultures in the neighborhood don't add up to enough. Happy with that.
- [61:03]
A
Let's sit up there. And then on let's have both two questions together.
- [61:10]
B
So let's have one then.
- [61:14]
C
About your point about local democracy being part of the answer, especially in a context like Delhi or Mumbai, what kind of organizational restraint would restrain production? Because production can happen at any level.
- [61:30]
B
Right.
- [61:31]
C
And especially when you talk about the distinction between the weak and the poor, because I mean the weak and the strong. So in case of an illegal city dweller who is kind of regulated by the criminal underworld at any time, one could direct the other. So consuming your full legalized.
- [61:55]
B
That's a very good point. I mean, it's true that the weak can sometimes be strong and the strong can be sometimes weak and sometimes the victim will be perpetrator. I actually think that's a bad. That's good. The way I understand it in terms of trying to come up with rules about it, I mean, if one's on both sides of the transaction, then one has some understanding of what we're going to do about that. So let's ask the question, how are we going to deal with corruption at every level of. At every level, not just of government, but at every level of everything. And I think that we need to actually organize the people who are victimized by it, some of whom are also perpetrators, to come up with some basic rules and enforce them through the popular will. I think people have to organize. I don't think we can pass one more statute. We'll do it. Jonathan Rock of the Tony Country Values association is that very interested in lecture. He takes a lot of emphasis on the ordinary citizen. As a major actor from my series as research Human engagement in planning, there's very little evidence that the influence of worldly systems on a regional or national level. And I was going to ask you how you actually think this could be a possibility of something you address and the way the alternative will look. It's very hard to put the ordinary citizen at the national level. That's why my work focuses on the city.
- [63:43]
A
I mean, it's an avoidance. Right.
- [63:45]
B
On the other hand, there are things that you can do. So this has something to do with the expert role too. So I don't know about, you know, this idea about deliberative democracy. So that's a. James Fishkin from Yale University. So this is the basic idea. You ask some ordinary people what they think about a problem in the morning, they give you an answer. Then all day they talk to people and to each other about the problem. And then at the end of the day you ask them what they think about this problem. You ask the same question again. And what happens is an incredible change of mind. So I think ordinary people can change their mind and can be part of that process. And you can get. This is why I think about the jury. You can get an arbitrarily selected randomized selection of 100 people. I think we waste the idea of the jury on individualized decisions about guilt or innocence or whether or not you're feeling we should have randomized selection of ordinary people to engage decision makers about what they're doing and not doing. So you can do it. It's not so easy, but you can do it.
- [65:13]
C
My concern with your idea of local democracy is that power relations in a local community taking out codes and micro in developing countries, in developing cities, but they might apply in developed cities that high relations might be particularly strong, particularly one ex in a local community. And if that's the case, how do you begin to construct functional local democratic institutions? And perhaps a related concern is that when comes out of communities are safe is the local people have a lot of other things to do other than and one of the things that comes out of the project literature is that we need to use a people to do that. Maybe that's the thing you need to do at a local level at the institution as well.
- [66:10]
B
I don't have any trouble paying them to come. But other point is much more fundamental and some I don't think that there's one model for every community in the world about and it's sometimes the power relations that we're going to have to really worry about the structure that we create and its relationship to oversight. Because of the concern about the power relations. What I'm more concerned about is this. There's a lot of people interested in community organizing and community groups as if somehow they're going to be not connected to the rest of the world. Somehow we let them. So I'm trying to get the community connected to the legal system and the legal system connected to them. But I agree with you, Amanda. This is not to suggest that the organization is going to be the same. The other thing about participation the final thing to say is is no one's going to participate if there's. If you're not going to listen to. I mean what's the point? You do have other things to do. But I say to this. If you say to people you this Meeting is going to make a decision that's going to affect your life. Don't come unless you want to. You'll get people there. You will make the decision if you come. It'll be made without you if you don't come. Right now we just hear them and we do what we want having heard them.
- [67:40]
A
Two more questions.
- [67:47]
B
I was very happy to hear you talk in the beginning about formal institutions and the sort of deterministic nature that a lot of people have with formal institutions and inclusion control as a rule of law and not just creating and other informing institutions. So I got the sense that you were leaning a little bit more towards informal as well as formal institutions here. It's actually bringing it down to the level. And I just more curious because I've read last week at the New Chicago School, he talks a lot about this. You talk about you have the community level getting people headed and that's obviously not a formal thing to have social media. So what are other instruments perhaps getting people involved make it there? I'm not sure that I agree with the way you've set up the question. It's not so much that I'm for informal more than formal. I'm for redoing the formal. I think you've got me completely right about the beginning. So everyone thinks the formal legal system is determined, that there's just a law and that's the way it is. There's a rule of law.
- [69:02]
C
That's just ridiculous.
- [69:04]
B
You should stop thinking that the formal legal system is a contestation. People argue about it all the time. What is the rule is the question. And I want to add more people to that debate. So I'm inserting them into the formal system in a way that I'm not sure that I would characterize them. On the other hand, it's a different sense in which I'm not just treating the existing institutions as the end of the story. The current legal rules are not enough.
- [69:41]
A
I think we should wind up in a moment. But Gary, I think I would like to ask. I mean you started off very much and have continued to the answers to the questions to develop the notion of protecting the weak against the strong in cities. And we've talked about the fact that cities have different physio. Physiognomies, different scales and different processes. On the other hand, I want to go back and I would. Wouldn't I go back to trying to link in a way what you're saying to. In a way that even in the shape and the structure of cities themselves and Go a little bit underneath the skin of what you were talking about because I'm wondering to a degree whether there are different systems that work at different times of the economic and social and political cycle. It's as if you're saying everything can work well as long as you do it the way that you're proposing. As long as you sort of dig down that you work with the local democratic structure more effectively than one does with, let's say, more formal systems which serve seven masters. And I ask you this, perhaps by asking you to reflect on London, because here again we've gone through an extraordinary cycle in the last very short time, last 20 years from a city which.
- [71:07]
B
Had.
- [71:09]
A
One of the most comprehensive forms of metropolitan government ever invented effectively with the London county council in the 1870s, 1880s, exploded into the GLC in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and then sort of rudely taken away by Margaret Thatcher because it didn't suit her political interest, let's call it that. We then had a period in this city where without any real metropolitan authority, but with this double system of very powerful local authorities competing with each other and a centralized government which delved and got in, tried to resolve some of the issues which were raised before now, when you came onto the scene in terms of our life here, it was the first time that the mayor of London actually was appointed and has done the sort of things that you know and have studied well. And I'm interested to know whether in one way any of this could have happened to a city which had a different shape. Could the changes that have happened to the decision making legal system have happened in Paris, for example, let alone in Mumbai, let alone in New York City. And do we sort of get the rule of law we deserve is something that I'm also curious about. So I wonder whether you could stipulate on that.
- [72:29]
B
Well, let's just stick with London. So as you know, I think that Greater London authorities are real advanced. I have embraced it many times, but we don't know, having created it, what to do with the Burrows. We just don't know what to do with them.
- [72:50]
A
Livingston wants to get rid of them.
- [72:51]
B
He wants to get rid of them. That would be something do with them. They're not so happy with this. So you could, you could then consolidate them and you can make them pure and multiple and all this other stuff. And I think that we really, I think Livingston would be stronger if we had more local voices integrated into the central system. Not separated from each other, but integrated into the central system. I think it would be you would be more empowered to do what he wants to do if he had more of a connection, the boroughs themselves, with each other and with their people. I mean, it was more he found. So imagine you were involved in, say, the Olympics, and imagine that the mayor.
- [73:34]
C
Had Just a minute.
- [73:36]
B
And imagine the mayor had some views that he wanted to express. I think what he wants, what he needs is a real deep sense that when he talks to all of the other officials and all of the other public corporations at Frankos, they they've developed in the national government of democratic power, which. And how to do it, I don't know. But I mean, that's basically they do it in power, and then I don't think they're.
- [74:05]
A
Can you join me in thanking Jerry Cruden for very.
- [74:11]
C
It.