← The Monocle Daily
The Monocle Daily
What’s in a number? Volodymyr Zelensky warns of $12trn deal between US-Russia
00:38:57
Loading summary
Transcript76 lines
- [00:00]
Patricia Cohen
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 9th February 2026 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:07]
Andrew Muller
Is Russia actually pitching a huge economic agreement to the United States? A mixed weekend for democracy in Southeast Asia. And do sporting events really need further entertainment beyond the sporting event? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests John Everard and Patricia Cohen will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll have a highlight of the first episode of Monocle in Milan, our pop up show from the Winter Olympic city. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily.
- [01:03]
John Everard
I'm Alex.
- [01:04]
Andrew Muller
Hi, I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Patricia Cohen, global economics correspondent for the New York Times, and John Everard, former UK Ambassador to Belarus, Uruguay and North Korea. Hello to you both. Hello there, John. You have recently been visiting another of your diplomatic postings and this was a diplomatic posting that you were concerned might not have you back.
- [01:24]
John Everard
That's right. I was not allowed into China for many years. They finally let me back in last June and again in January where I went to Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong and fulfilled one of my lifetimes ambitions. I actually went to see Window of the World, which is a completely bizarre theme park with scale models of all the major tourist attractions of every country in the world. So you can walk in a few minutes from the Sydney Opera House past various Mexican large statues, past the Moai of Easter island and to the pyramids of Egypt. Saving a fortune on airfares and of course saving your carbon footprint, saving the planet. It is full of the kind of Chinese who are not necessarily ever going to be able to afford an air ticket and just listen to the chatter. Is amazing. I was on the cable car that goes round all these exhibits with a mother and two young children who at one point with great authority pointed to an object and said that children, that is the famous Alhambra of Granada. And I whispered to her, no, actually that's the Great Mosque of Svahan. That she said, children switching around and pointing in the other direction without batting an eyelid is of course the Alhambra in Granada. And then she turned to me and gave me a kind of conspiratorial wink. And who's got another difference? In any case, it was altogether one of those memorable, completely surreal afternoons. And I'm very glad I went, I.
- [02:52]
Andrew Muller
I, I went to something similar, John, many years ago in Beijing. It was profoundly rubbish. And I got a picture of me taken by an attendant with a Polaroid camera standing next to their Tower Bridge of London dressed in what they apparently believed was location themed apparel, which was what looked like the dress tunic of a 19th century Bulgarian cavalry colonel. I'm not, I hope they have, I don't know what happened to that picture. I hope they have researched things a bit more thoroughly since then. Patricia, you are going, however, to the real New York City.
- [03:26]
Patricia Cohen
The real New York City, Yes. A trip back to the homeland. Like you, I think you're just in Australia for your home leave. Yes. So I'm gonna be going to New York and then also down to Florida for some warmer weather because son is a professional football player and football in the British sense of. Soccer. Soccer, yes, exactly. So we're gonna watch him play as the season's just opening there.
- [03:52]
Andrew Muller
And which team should our listeners be cheering on?
- [03:55]
Patricia Cohen
It's actually a new team in the USLE called Sarasota Paradise. Okay, so he's in paradise and we'll check out if that's true.
- [04:06]
Andrew Muller
Well, we will start in Ukraine and the prospects for peace therein. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has re. The United States wants the war to end by June and that Ukraine was willing to send a delegation to talks with Russia in the United States, probably Miami, as soon as next week. Zelenskyy also claimed that Russia had pitched the US an economic deal worth $12 trillion, a somewhat improbable figure given that Russia's entire GDP is $2.5 trillion, give or take. Meanwhile, Russian airstrikes on Ukraine over the weekend included drone and missile raids on energy infrastructure across the country. Today's minimum temperature in Kyiv is minus 17. Patricia, this figure of $12 trillion, does this sound perhaps like something got lost in the translation somewhere?
- [04:56]
Patricia Cohen
I mean, it's just a made up figure that's floated out there. I mean, you know, anything that is going to be crucial to any kind of peace agreement, we already know what the outlines are and that has to do with regional goals and land and borders and what Putin is trying to do. I and which he's done many, many times before in terms of these kind of feints and jab with Trump, is to try and get his attention focused on something economic. So in order to just undercut any US support for Ukraine in terms of money or weapons. And that's really what it's all about. I Mean, it's nothing I would take seriously.
- [05:43]
Andrew Muller
Assuming that President Zelenskyy hasn't miscounted the number of zeros on his piece of paper, what is he trying to accomplish by announcing this? Is he trying to thwart the prospect of any economic deal being done by Russia and the United States over Ukraine's head?
- [06:00]
John Everard
Absolutely. In fact, he said as much that he will accept no deal involving Ukraine without Ukraine being there. The 12 trillion figure is, of course, a fantasy. It can't possibly be right. But it's entirely possible that Putin, with a straight face, has put this to Trump and that, you know, the White House being the White House, nobody has fact checked it. Zelenskyy is trying to torpedo this because typically that kind of deal is the kind of thing that Trump might try and bounce Ukraine into. So that by announcing it in advance, Zelenskyy allows people, there are many of them on the Hill, in white American society who would oppose any such deal, to mobilize and to stop Trump doing this. He's probably succeeded.
- [06:37]
Andrew Muller
It is possible, Patricia, that these statements by President Zelenskyy are an extended exercise in, I guess, preemption. He also has recently said, if the Russians are really ready to end the war, then it is really important to set a deadline. And this back to this idea of June that he's talking about, does that sound to you like a man who knows that the Russians are not ready, have no intention of ending the war, and would not comply with any deadline?
- [07:04]
Patricia Cohen
I mean, look, the deadline game has been going on for a long time, ever since Trump announced on his first day in office that he would wrap up the Ukraine, Russia war. To the extent that Trump has his eye on the midterm elections and would like to kind of shunt aside any other issues that don't reflect positive on him in terms of this ongoing conflict? Certainly that has. You know, that's an issue. But it seems to me through every single one of these negotiations, and the latest ended last week, at the end of last week with a prisoner exchange, but virtually no progress, is stuck on the exact same kind of issues of land control and security that it's been stuck on for months. And so far, you know, we haven't really seen any willingness on either side to kind of budge, even though, you know, there has been some supposed guarantees of American security guarantees. But just what those mean and how much they're worth is still unclear.
- [08:14]
Andrew Muller
John Zelensky has also, in his preemption elsewhere, reiterated that Ukraine, I think its position now is that it will tolerate what we might think of as a frozen conflict. But he has said we stand where we stand, by which he's indicating that Ukraine is not going to give away territory that Russia has failed to conquer in, well, you might say at this point, what, 12 years of trying, Does Russia actually have any leverage? I mean, the Ukrainians aren't wrong about this. They do have a case. When they say Russia attempted to seize the Donbas the first time 12 years ago, they still don't have it. Why should we hand any of it over?
- [08:58]
John Everard
Yes, it's a very strong position. And of course, it's not just a question of territory. The Russians are effectively asking Ukraine to hand over core defenses. It's a very strong line that they've built that has succeeded in repelling hugely costly Russian assaults for a very long time. I mean, by way of comparison, one of the greatest British bloodbaths of the first war, Passchendaele, where we took a few yards of mud at terrible casualties, the Russians have advanced actually more slowly and at a higher casualty rate for a longer period than we did in Passchendaele. The whole thing has been a complete disaster. Yes. Why should Zelensky hand any land across? He almost certainly won't. Just picking up a point that Patty touched on there, the deadline. My bones tell me that it's already too late. The midterms close upon us. Trump already started to focus, sure. But on top of that, he has now got an armada sitting off the coast of Iran. Sitting, waiting for instruction, which may or may not come. He's still got an armada sitting off the coast of Venezuela. At a time when President Rodriguez has said that she will no longer take orders from Washington. He's got his hands full. I think the bandwidth's gone. I think these talks are dead.
- [10:10]
Andrew Muller
Well, to Asia now, where the concept of democracy is enjoying contrasting fortunes. In Thailand, a general election was held yesterday, an apparent victory for the incumbent party. And at the risk of tempting fate, that makes three elections in a row since the last military coup. In Japan, a general election was also held yesterday and was definitely a thumping win for the incumbent party, led by Japan's first female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi. In Hong Kong, however, a newspaper owner and democracy advocate and British citizen has been imprisoned. Jimmy Lai, former proprietor of Apple Daily, has received a 20 year sentence under Hong Kong's Beijing imposed National Security Law, which effectively criminalizes pretty much anything the Chinese Communist Party finds disagreeable. John, because you were just there. And at the risk of ensuring you are once again blacklisted why has China made such an example of Jimmy Lai.
- [11:10]
John Everard
That you've picked up that word example? Jimmy Lai was front and center of the democracy protests and appledaily, his newspaper, was the voice of those protests. He was the big man in all this. And China needed to show that it would tolerate no opposition from anybody. That even though his lawyers showed quite convincingly that all the actions he took that might have contravened the National Security Law, actually he carried out before the law came into force and so could not be considered in the trial, that didn't stop the Chinese prosecutors who slammed him down for 20 years in any case. And I think this raises big questions about just how much of the rule of law is now left in Hong Kong. If in front of a court, you get this kind of verdict handed down, nobody, frankly is safe.
- [11:55]
Andrew Muller
I can remember Patricia being in Hong Kong 30 odd years ago now, for nearly 30 years ago for the handover. And there was a lot at the time of somewhat Pollyanna ish chat to the effect that obviously the Chinese Communist Party won't crack down on Hong Kong. It's, you know, it's too valuable, it's too important a business destination. And they understand that its tradition of freedom, democracy, et cetera, is important to people who want to do business there. The Chinese Communist Party doesn't appear to care about that as much as people like to believe it did. But has it actually made Hong Kong less attractive as a business destination?
- [12:33]
Patricia Cohen
I mean, at the moment the stocks are up in Hong Kong, which also reflects other economic developments that are happening in the region. But I was struck by what you just said, though, in terms of these guarantees. And I think it's interesting, just in the context of the conversation we were having even about Ukraine before that, we are in a moment to state the blindingly obvious of an incredible transformation of the global economic order and the kind of rules of law and engagement as we've understood it in our lifetimes. And so it gets back to the question of if the US issues security guarantees, are they going to be good tomorrow? I mean, it's a question that Europe is asking itself now. And it's the same thing with international laws. I mean, the US has just withdrawn from a host of international organizations and basically is violating all kinds of international laws and arguably domestically is doing the same thing in certain cases. I mean, there's court battle after court battle on the state level and the federal level. So, I mean, I think we're moving into a time where the protection of law in lots of Countries and in lots of places where one would expect them to hold up. They are not.
- [13:55]
Andrew Muller
John, thinking about this with your diplomacy hat on. Jimmy Lai is not a young man. He is in fact 78. So a 20 year sentence is, as I think everybody understands, effectively a life sentence. But as I mentioned, he is a British citizen. So would the Chinese Communist Party be thinking of him to some extent as a hostage? Is there something they want from the United Kingdom which they might accept in due course in return for his release?
- [14:22]
John Everard
It would be nice to think so, but no, I don't. I think Jimmy Lai is just too big a fish in Chinese eyes ever to be traded as a hostage British citizen, as you rightly point out. And of course, Sir Keir Starmer raised his case with Xi Jinping during his recent visit to Beijing. Humiliating that the Prime Minister, despite raising this, sees the man go down for 20 years. It shows just how little Britain now counts for in China.
- [14:46]
Andrew Muller
Just to follow that up quickly, John, is there potentially though some sort of advantage here that the UK could grasp? I mean, it has been announced today that there will be an extension of the program under which people entitled or related to people in Hong Kong with what are called British National Overseas State, those who are under 18 at the handover in 1997 will be able to settle in the UK. That will be 26,000 people more over the next five years on top of 170,000 Hong Kongers who've arrived since 2021. I mean, that's actually quite, that's significant human capital for the Chinese to be waving off.
- [15:24]
John Everard
Yes, I agree, but I don't think the Communist Party of China sees it that way. They'll just be glad to get rid of all these troublemakers.
- [15:31]
Andrew Muller
And just finally to you, Patricia, going back to the Japanese election, the reaction of markets to that result have been nigh on ecstatic. What does that tell us?
- [15:43]
Patricia Cohen
I mean, basically there's lots of reasons why that's happening and certainly, you know, the Prime Minister has indicated that she's going to keep on with her kind of expansionary fiscal policies. And it also shows that markets are kind of shrugging over what is the longer term worry, which is this incredible debt that Japan is building up along with almost every advanced industrialized nation in the world. We've just got this unbelievable overhang of global debt that we've never seen of that magnitude before. And that bill is going to have to be paid sometime down the road. But people are too happy to be making money in the short term to.
- [16:30]
Andrew Muller
Worry about that, and just to follow that up quickly, that debt of Japan's is not going to get any smaller, given what her pitch has been about Japanese defense spending.
- [16:41]
Patricia Cohen
No, in fact, in fact there was a bit of a tremor in the bond market and we all know how all powerful that can be. Last week when she had announced that she was going to suspend a tax which would cut revenues of the Japanese government 30 to 40 billion and that put investors on edge and drove up the interest rate that the government would have to pay to bondholders because they were getting a little bit worried about, gosh, is Japan going to be able to pay this back after all? So a little bit more of a risk premium temporarily. It's out there. But clearly the reaction of the markets today show that there's more, there's more hope for, for gains in the short term.
- [17:30]
Andrew Muller
Well, now to the latest in our era's exciting dismantling of established knowledge, which almost certainly won't go horrifyingly wrong in ways we can presently scarcely imagine. With arguably characteristic lack of explanation, the CIA has scrapped one of the indisputably useful things it has ever done. That is compiling and maintaining the CIA World Factbook, a dossier of brisk basics on all the world's nations, established in 1962, substantially declass in 1971, first made available to the public in book form in 1975 before migrating online in 1997, since when it has prevented many a pub quiz from degenerating into something resembling the Bay of Pigs. John, did you ever have recourse to the CIA World Factbook or did the Foreign Office have its own obviously superior version?
- [18:21]
John Everard
The Foreign Office of course has superior version of everything. But no, it was a very useful book particularly. I spent a lot of my life dealing with various countries in sub Saharan Africa, which some people might struggle to place on a map. And finding information, even basic information on them was frankly quite difficult. The CIA Factbook was a key source. Its absence will be lamented.
- [18:43]
Andrew Muller
Is there, I mean, they haven't. No one's explained as far as I've been able to figure so far, Patricia, why it has been junked and it can't have been the most expensive of CIA programs. Is it imaginable to you why they would have pulled?
- [18:57]
Patricia Cohen
I mean, you know, I don't have any insight into the actual reason, aside from cost cutting, but what I will say is that it's very much in line with the administration's basically directive on everything, which is that it's. The information has a particular point of view and has to support the administration's point of view. And one thing about the CIA Factbooked that was quite notable was that it really was a kind of down the line, just the facts, ma' am information book without taking sides. And as we've seen again and again in, you know, whether it's Justice Department prosecutions, whether it's interpretations of laws, you know, policies, it's. There has to be a reflection of the Trump administration's view. And so anything that is independent is almost by definition something that the Trump administration, which is a very loose relationship with actual facts, is opposed to.
- [20:06]
Andrew Muller
John, does this strike you as the act of an actual full blown personality cult or more just like, I don't know, spite?
- [20:16]
John Everard
You can have spite and personality cults.
- [20:18]
Andrew Muller
That's true, yeah. The why not both? Answer was right there.
- [20:20]
John Everard
Why not both? Exactly. I mean, the whole thing stinks of political interference. Not just the fact that they have withdrawn the factbook, but the way they did it, simply switching it off, offline at zero notice. A school teacher I read about to tell his students to go away and check on the figures for various countries using the factbook. Suddenly he was told by students that the screen's gone blank, it's just gone blue. Very, very sudden and no explanation at all. Somebody has simply telephoned down from the top, said can it, Are they canned it?
- [20:51]
Andrew Muller
Are there concerns here, Patricia, for, well, not just for journalists, but for people trying to look stuff up. Because there's a knock on effect here because it's obviously not good enough to just say, just look at Wikipedia 1. Because Wikipedia, though, it actually does do a pretty serviceable job most of the time, is not a source you can take to the bank for obvious reasons. But quite a lot of that basic stuff that John was talking about, if you click on the little blue numbers in Wikipedia as to what the source is, it was very often the CIA World Factbook.
- [21:21]
Patricia Cohen
I mean, again, I think it's just this increasing reflection of this world that we're living in where every single fact and statement has to have a particular point of view as opposed to just this actual search for what's accurate, what's truth. And it's just all the more disturbing that there's so fewer and fewer forces that can provide that and, excuse me, sources that can provide that and you know, even sources, I would argue the New York Times and other news publications that try to, you know, give it down the middle are seen as being very one sided. If you don't happen to agree with the Viewpoint or the facts. So it's just a reflection, I think, of what's happening on a larger level in our society.
- [22:17]
Andrew Muller
John, do you still have a person who remembers the world before the Internet? I think there is a nervousness among those of us who can remember that world about entrusting everything to digital data. Do you still have shelves of ancient encyclopedias?
- [22:35]
John Everard
Yes. Okay, I've got my hand up. Yes, I do. I hoard encyclopedias, dictionaries on paper, remember them?
- [22:42]
Andrew Muller
I do own at least two of those.
- [22:44]
John Everard
I've got a few more than that.
- [22:45]
Andrew Muller
You speak more languages than I do, but yes.
- [22:48]
John Everard
And there's reference books from way back, including ones that contain facts that cannot be deleted on the Internet. So are probably quite dangerous now.
- [22:57]
Andrew Muller
How does this work now with the New York Times? Patricia, who's like with most American publications, is terribly proud of its rigorous. Those of us who've been through it might say tedious fact checking procedures. What are you allowed advance and not advance? Do they ever send you scurrying to an actual library to disinter some dust covered volume so you can prove your point?
- [23:21]
Patricia Cohen
Well, you know, I will say as somebody who has embarrassingly had to correct stories, we do really try to correct any mistake that appears. And I have often spent, you know, an entire day or sometimes two days if somebody has challenged a fact that has appeared in a story, trying to kind of track it down. And I think I will check this when I go home back to New York, whether there still is in the basement of the building of the Times, what's called the morgue, which is the collection of newspaper articles, everything that's been printed since the New York Times was first founded. And much of that, I think almost all of it has to some degree been digitized. But there used to be when if somebody would die and you had to write an obit, you'd get this little packet sent up from the morgue and it would be this packet of every article that some researcher back in the day had kind of clipped out and stuck into about this person. And I remember years ago getting those and it was great. It was just like this little treasure chest from the past and it would have all interesting details. But of course we also know that archival materials can also be full of errors as well.
- [24:47]
Andrew Muller
I am put in mind at this point of a colleague many, many years ago who used respond to any fact checking inquiries with the dismissal. Research is for Trainspotters. We move along to the world of sport. Specifically the set piece entertainments attached to two recent and or ongoing marquee events at halftime in last night's NFL super bowl. Viewers and those New England Patriots fans who had not already thrown their televisions into the street were treated to a performance by gajillion selling Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, as a consequence of which the professional pearl clutches of conservative social media presently feigning vapors. That was what was an altogether good natured celebration of Hispanic culture featuring many people dressed as trees. The Winter Olympics in Milano, Cortina opened formally on Friday evening. It's tableau including dancers dressed as opera singers and espresso machines. John, the Super Bowl. First, did you share my surprise that Drake May did not air it out to Stefan Diggs more often earlier with a view to discombobulating the Seahawks?
- [25:50]
John Everard
Second, I couldn't have put the question better myself. The answer is what?
- [25:56]
Andrew Muller
So you didn't watch the super bowl is what you're telling us?
- [25:59]
John Everard
I didn't watch the Super Bowl. I watched bits of Bad Bunny's halftime jamboree, which I thought was actually quite entertaining. I mean, and I was struck by the fact that despite what he's done in the past, he didn't actually gun for President Trump. The whole thing was sort of slightly zany. I mean, Lady Gaga's act I thought was memorable, but it was apolitical. I was slightly surprised that Trump reacted quite as sharply as he did.
- [26:24]
Andrew Muller
Well, see, thing is, I was not all that surprised, Patricia. In fact, I rather suspect he may have dictated that particular rant hours, several days, months in fact, before the thing took place. Is it clear to you when this happens, when some absurd culture war bun fight is enacted by American conservatives, which is more or less a daily occurrence? Do they actually mean any of this or do they. Are they just putting on a show much, you might say, like Bad Bunny, because they know it plays well their base?
- [26:55]
Patricia Cohen
I think with anything, it's probably sometimes both and different. But certainly Trump has shown a lot of enmity and hostility to Hispanic culture in general immigrants, even though again, which he may forget, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. And so I actually would not be surprised to learn that he really did object to a performance that was not in English and was in Spanish, which I think is just a sign and a signal to him and a lot of people who feel like him that, you know, America's kind of white tradition is being overshadowed by immigrant culture.
- [27:46]
Andrew Muller
I mean, we can presumably, therefore, John, look forward to the abolition of opera in the United States States at the very least.
- [27:53]
John Everard
I'm sure the tribes are working on it. You close the Kennedy center, you abolish opera. I mean, why stop there? And of course, Pat is absolutely right. Trump will see these people as immigrants. Puerto Ricans are not immigrants. They are U.S. citizens. You know, they just happen to live in a self governing territory of the United States. And yes, they speak something that approximates to Spanish, which he takes great exception to. America is multilingual. It's just that that's not Trump's America. It's not the America he wants to see. And anything that challenges that he stamps down on hard. And not always entirely rationally.
- [28:27]
Andrew Muller
I mean, John, in your years as a diplomat, were you ever compelled to sit through any sort of opening or closing ceremony? And of course, you would not have had the option of falling asleep reading a book or feigning appendicitis.
- [28:41]
John Everard
Oh, on the contrary, I often fell asleep. So did everyone else around me, provided you're sure there's no cameras around. Hey, you. You fall asleep, you get 40 winks and then you sort of make sure that you greet the host and say how much you enjoyed it.
- [28:55]
Andrew Muller
Where are you? Just finally, Patricia, on opening or closing ceremonies, I tend towards the view that if you're going to do them, just go nuts, be weird and eccentric. I mean, obviously it was my hometown, but I do often advance the closing ceremony of Sydney's 2000 Olympics with the enormous Dr. Frankenstein's inflatable kangaroos. There's a. And the. And prawns riding bicycles, et cetera, as kind of a model for how to go about.
- [29:22]
Patricia Cohen
Well, I miss that one. And I have to say I haven't seen a lot. But I will say one that really sticks in my mind very memorably and actually had a big impact on me was Britain's and their opening ceremony 2012, where they did a kind of, you know, in praise of the National Health Service, and they had dancers dressed up as doctors and nurses kind of wheeling patients around in beds, which on the one hand I thought was hilarious. But on the other hand I thought how wonderful that the thing that this country is so proud of and wants to, you know, kind of feature above all else, you know, not an apple pie or not, you know, all these other things prone on a bicycle, pro on a bicycle. But, you know, national health care, free health care for everyone. And I actually was quite touched by that, even as I thought it was kind of a crazy dance number.
- [30:21]
Andrew Muller
Patricia Cohen and John Everard, thank you for joining us. Finally, on today's show, Monocle's Winter Olympic Coverage kicked off this week with the first edition of Monocle in Milan. Monocle's Ed Starker spoke with Manfredi Cattella, CEO of the Milan based property developer coima. The company has transformed the city and its skyline. And with the world coming to Milan, it began by asking how his work on Milan's skyline makes him feel.
- [30:47]
Manfredi Cattella
The week starts nicely. I mean, when you take care about urban development, by definition you take care about a community asset because no matter if it's private or public, you will impact with on people for many years. So it's a, it's a great sensation, it's great responsibility that you have to take as it is so with commitment and, and being very open to people.
- [31:14]
Ed Starker
And also, I mean, you have a direct, I guess, relationship with these Milano Cortina Games in a way because koima helped develop the Olympic Village, you know, where the athletes here in Milan, in Porto Romana are sleeping. Tell us a little bit about that project.
- [31:32]
Manfredi Cattella
Well, it has been 30 months, very intense for us. Heads down developing these 1700 beds for the athletes first and at the same time designing and developing this campus to become a student housing village immediately after the Olympics. It has been like quite amazing in these days, listening all the athletes getting in the rooms and expressing themselves so nicely. This maybe is the best satisfaction of the whole work to date.
- [32:10]
Ed Starker
This Scala Porto Romana isn't finished though, right? Tell us, you know, the Olympic Village. What is happening now is only one part of the story. There's still more to come in the sense that obviously it will have a use when these games are over. Tell us about how the site is going to continue to evolve post Olympics.
- [32:30]
Manfredi Cattella
Well, Milan comparing to many European cities is a great advantage because it's late. Being late a lot of.
- [32:41]
Ed Starker
What do you mean late?
- [32:42]
Manfredi Cattella
Late in developing like a lot of raw materials. In our job, raw materials is fundamentally land. No sites that you can develop. And there is no other European cities with such, such as scale of brownfields. There were industrial sites to repurpose, factories, military barracks and so on, which need to be repurposed. So many other cities in Europe have already gone through this transition, but they did it in the past. And as we all know, the world has changed because of social aspects, environmental aspects, technology. So really Milan can have an updated agenda. And Porto Romana from this perspective is a railway yard dismissed and a brownfield which reconnect two very important parts of the city, similarly to what we did in Porto Nuova. So we're just at the beginning, but now, thanks to The Olympics we had an acceleration and a part of it is done ready.
- [33:43]
Ed Starker
You mentioned Porto Nuova. A lot gets made about how Milan changed from 2015 onwards with the Expo. I mean, I arrived after Porto Nuova was developed, but I hear stories, you know, people say, oh, you know, that area was a bit of a wasteland. There was a club there that people used to go to, there were car, you know, people used to park their car there. But it was sort of a semi, no go area. And you know, now looking at it today, you know, there are buildings there, there's a park, you know, super busy at weekends. You do cultural programming. Do you think that helps sort of change a little bit? Like we said before? Was that a moment, do you think? In Milan's recent development, when Porto Nuova was developed and it became a place that people from all over the city started to go to again, Porto Nuova.
- [34:30]
Manfredi Cattella
Was an impossible urban redevelopment because in the mindset of people of Milan, there was a bad area like despite less than a kilometer and a half from the dome, it was perceived and considered perceived as a place not to go, not to be. So the bed will of the area was amazing. So the challenge that we had was to reconnect the lack of Porto Nova is that the surrounding neighborhoods like Pereira and Isola and so on, they're very interesting and vibrant community. And our job was to rather reconnect and invent. And this is what we did. We took 10 years to make it. But certainly Porto Nuova reset a cultural benchmark reputationally for Milan, for Italy. Now we restart a design season with architects from all over the world. So certainly was the beginning of a transition of the city, which is continuing.
- [35:35]
Ed Starker
Yeah, you're not done yet. You've got plenty coming up. I mean, just give us idea of some of your future projects. Obviously I've been hearing a lot being based here about Scalafarini. Are there other things that we don't know about that have perhaps happened since then? Just give us a sense of some of the work COIM is doing at the moment.
- [35:53]
Manfredi Cattella
Well, I think Milan has three scale of development of the future. One is the one that I was mentioning, meaning a brownfield that are still to be developed, developed such as Scaloferini, Porto Romana and others. The second dimension is what is a metropolitan area, for example, Milano Sesto, which was again a factory site, very large, is a million square meters, but is 20 minutes from the dome by tube. So think of, think about London, when you have to go from one side to the other. How long you take. But if you take the measure of time to reach a location, think about the third dimension that Milan has that many European cities or cities in the world do not have. And this is the surrounding cities that thanks to the high speed train can be reached faster and faster. Now Torino is 40 minutes from Milan today. Genove now will be 40 minutes from now. Bologna is less than an hour. So if you take almost like a system of cities, this is what Italy can develop. And the same can be applied to Rome and Naples and so on comparing to other European areas.
- [37:13]
Ed Starker
Are you looking for. I need to ask you something. You know we can talk about your work some more if we have time. But I'm interested. You know we have the Olympics on our doorstep here in Milan. It would be be remiss not to ask you. Are you?
- [37:25]
Andrew Muller
I don't know.
- [37:25]
Ed Starker
Are you watching? Have you been consuming the Olympics over the weekend? Are you interested in sport?
- [37:31]
Manfredi Cattella
I certainly am. But when you take care about some part of the organization, in this case the Olympic Village, you always focus on the behind the stage. So the most relevant focus that we have in this moment is our next challenge, which is an Olympic challenge in a way. Meaning making the Olympic Village the fastest repurposing temporary infrastructure ever. So we're now, while we are the Olympic Games are going, we are thinking and planning how to make this fast and win another medal for Italy in the coming months. And opening to students September 1st.
- [38:15]
Andrew Muller
That was Manfredi Cattella, CEO of the Milan based property developer Coima, in conversation with Monocle's Ed Stocker. Our Olympic radio show Monocle in Milan is live every day this week and next at 9:00am London, 10:00am Milan time or wherever you get your podcasts. That is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Patty Cohen and John Everard. Today's show was produced by Chris Chermack and researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield with editing assistance from Steph Chungu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.