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- [00:12]
Raquel Cazares
There are some challenges of living in a place that is very commercial and also touristic. We have a lot of restaurants, bars and discotheques and sometimes it happens some conflicts. So is needed a kind of policies to protect the people that live here.
- [00:26]
Andrew Tuck
How does a historic centre remain attractive to both residents and tourists? This is the Urbanist Monocles program all about the cities we live in. I'm your host Andrew Tuck. This week we explored the old town of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to see how it strikes a balance between long term residents and visitors. We also head to Sydney to browse its famous waterfront fish market which has recently reopened in a brand new venue. And we revisit one of the conversations I had on stage last week at the World Government Summit in Dubai with the co CEO of autonomous mobility brand Waymo. That's all ahead right here on the Urbanist with me, Andrew Tuck. Historic city centres are popular tourist destinations the world over. But what about people who actually live in them? Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, is one such centuries old colonial city undergoing a very 21st century infrastructure upgrade. The result is an increasingly popular residential neighborhood with growing tourism appeal too. So how is Santo Domingo striking a balance between visitors and locals? Monocle's Gregory Scruggs donned his Panama hat under the Caribbean sun and hit the cobblestones to file this report.
- [01:51]
Gregory Scruggs
As Dominicans are fond of pointing out, Christopher Columbus landed here on his initial voyage across the Atlantic in 1492. And six years later his brother established the city of Santo Domingo, the oldest European settlement in the Americas. It's a treasure trove of 16th century buildings, Spanish style plazas and narrow streets. But for upwardly mobile Dominicans, the colonial city has long been viewed as a place for museums and monuments. Not moving in. The largest city in the Caribbean is a sprawling metropolis of 4 million people that has emulated the likes of Miami. It's a tropical tangle of highways and shopping malls, as Nelia Barletta, author of multiple books about the colonial city, recounted when she first told her family she was moving into the old quarter, her grandmother sniffed, they still have mosquitoes from Columbus Day down there. Friends living in brand new high rises questioned whether she would even have running water. Those kinds of prejudices make it all the more surprising that businessman Claudio Suarez would become an accidental property developer responsible for the old city's most striking new residential building, Casa Velazquez, that has drawn buyers from across Europe and the Americas. After a tour of the lush courtyard and rooftop deck with sweeping views, Suarez explained how the landmark Project came to be.
- [03:10]
Claudio Suarez
We come from the shoe business, and what happened is that we went out to buy a property for a shoe store, and we end up buying these beautiful buildings that are three from 16th century, one from 1926. And I think we did something very nice and something very unique. And we're here.
- [03:31]
Interviewer
Well, let's back up for just a moment. This is a lot of square meters for a shoe store. It seems like you and your business partner stumbled upon a diamond in the rough, you might say, while you were on the hunt for retail space. What was the state of these nearly 500-year-old buildings, or at least some of them that old, when you first encountered them on your real estate quest?
- [03:54]
Claudio Suarez
The building was in very bad shape and it was a lot of work. The streets were all messed up with all the cables out and everything. We didn't know it was going to change, but we believe it was going to change.
- [04:07]
Interviewer
What was the investment climate like in the colonial city at that time? I mean, as you said, that was before. A lot of the major urban infrastructure revitalizations, like burying the overhead electrical wires, repaving the streets. Was that considered a risky investment? Were you a bit ahead of the curve in that respect?
- [04:26]
Claudio Suarez
For Dominican people, it was very risky because they didn't believe in this. So I have my partner, who's Dutch, he really showed me that history maintains their value. So what he told me is when I told him, hey, you want to buy this? He goes like, if you take all the old buildings from Europe, will you go to Europe? Europe, it's the people, but it's the buildings we go and see, and we see the history and stuff. So I really believe in that. Another thing about Ciudad Colonial is that you cannot take down anything and go up like you can do it in some other places. So prices really maintain here, and they go up all the time. We don't have bubbles here. I seen a lot of properties that were for, say, $300,000, and they didn't sell it for six years. And at the end they sold it.
- [05:15]
Interviewer
For 800,000 and beyond. The dollars and cents, or the pesos and centavos, if you will. You and your partner hired Moneo Brock architecture firm out of Madrid and New York and have transformed this complex of buildings into a quite remarkable residential living space with a beautiful courtyard in the middle, as well as some quite lovely restaurants, cafes on the street level. That is a big transformation from four abandoned buildings that you first purchased. Did you have a vision right away for what you wanted to do? With the space.
- [05:51]
Gregory Scruggs
How did you come up with the.
- [05:52]
Interviewer
Idea of what Casa Velazquez would become?
- [05:55]
Claudio Suarez
We bought it and we didn't know we were going to do if we were going to want to be a hotel or something. We just knew that we were buying something special. Then we begin to see if we do apartments of hotel. Then we wanted to live here. So we believed that we were going to have a very nice life here. So we did residentials Instead of doing 25 apartments, small Airbnb and stuff like that. We do not do Airbnb here. We did big apartments so families can live here. We believe in tourism, but we have a lot of residential people here living too. So we believe it's that mix. It's very good. I think that makes a difference.
- [06:36]
Interviewer
You have a lot of, as they say, skin in the game. Not only in terms of the financial commitment, but if you yourself are going to live in this building, you care deeply about the result of the renovation.
- [06:48]
Claudio Suarez
Every apartment here is like a piece of art. It's something unique in a unique space. So it's like buying a nice painting. Like I have good paintings in my house, but I see them every day. But it's that you live in it, so it's more enjoyable if you live in the painting. It's like living in the art, you know, so you enjoy it more with your friends, your family and everybody else. That's the point here.
- [07:13]
Interviewer
Clearly you and your business partner succeeded in pushing through any red tape or bureaucracy to go through a major historic renovation and take four buildings and combine them, in a sense. Can you tell me a little bit about that process?
- [07:28]
Claudio Suarez
When we started, it was 2009, so rules were different in that time. And the government, the people that were in the government were very like old fashioned. They were not into it. So things were very complicated. Now it's not that it's not complicated. Of course, if you're going to work in a historical place, it's going to be complicated. But things have changed a lot and it has been much better now than before. We had a lot of problems to get apartment permits because of the heights and everything, you know, so we had a lot. I got sick like four times here. I had ulcera, like four times. I almost divorced myself, my wife, like three times. So we went through a lot here, but at the end we did it. But now it's a lot easier. I think it's not easy, but it's a lot easier than before when we started it. So the government has made a lot of Improvement with the permits and stuff. So now to come here and do something, you will not go through what we went 15 years ago.
- [08:35]
Interviewer
Have you seen other real estate developers come into the colonial city? And also instead of say Airbnb short term, lets to think that they could. In fact, are you an inspiration that yes, you can build family sized apartments, you can turn a profit and you can contribute to, to the livability of the colonial city?
- [08:55]
Claudio Suarez
I think there's a lot of Airbnb doing it, but there are a lot of houses. Dominicans are starting to believe in what they had before. They used to see something old and ruined there and they didn't see the diamond that you have to work on it. Now they're seeing it. And there's a lot of people that I know buying houses here, not only for rent, for more to live here because it's a different kind of life here. You live in Santo Domingo, but here when you wake up, you don't hear the cars, you don't hear anything. You can walk around. You know, it's different from everything else in the city.
- [09:30]
Gregory Scruggs
Walking around Santo Domingo's colonial city has become a lot easier over the last decade. In 2016, the Inter American Development bank loaned $90 million to rehabilitate the streets and public realm. There was construction everywhere I turned as workers ripped up asphalt and laid pavers by hand. Some doing more than just whistling while they work. Around the corner. From the singing workers, I met up with architect Michel Valdez, editor of Dominican architecture and design magazine Architecto, for a stroll around the block to gather some additional context.
- [10:08]
Michel Valdez
B street, where we just passed through, it's called El Conde and it's a street that has a lot of very interesting buildings from different times and styles. They are monuments that are heritage and are well kept in order that you can do something there. But you have to maintain the facade so you can in the inside you can reconstruct and do a lot of things, but you have to maintain the architectural elements that are typical from the style that the building is.
- [10:42]
Interviewer
There's quite a bit of construction work going on here right in the middle of the street. As we're standing, the street's completely dug up. I see PVC pipes, workers in hard hats. We were just passing through a street that's not pedestrianized, but that there's some bollards preventing cars from parking along the sides. Tell me a little bit about the street transformation, the infrastructure work that's going into the Ciudad Colonial at this moment.
- [11:07]
Michel Valdez
In this second phase of the program, what they are trying to do is convert the streets in a more livable part of the city so people can walk. Because before the car was the main character of the city. So now they are trying to transform that in order that people can go biking or another more sustainable mobility.
- [11:29]
Interviewer
And of course, we're in a part of the city that was first built in the 16th century when there was no such thing as the car. So this is very much a return to the way that things used to be, a return to the original urban form of this neighborhood, is it not?
- [11:44]
Michel Valdez
Well, the thing is that the city was not completed in that time. So when you have the fortress, the city was not complete till the 90s. The Calle El Conde has a lot of buildings from the 1950s and the 1960s and so on. So the city was really completed in the mid century. So when the boom of the car came, the city was still building on.
- [12:10]
Interviewer
And indeed that's the case as you come across the streets that have not been transformed with more of a balance between pedestrian and vehicular access, you do see a bit more of the car dominance.
- [12:22]
Michel Valdez
And you see that the sidewalks are very narrow. So like if we want to walk together, we have to struggle.
- [12:29]
Interviewer
And even to see the gutters that have this drop off is less accessible as compared to the reformed streets just around the corner where you have the smooth surface.
- [12:40]
Michel Valdez
Exactly. And you can also see ramps and that kind of stuff. And also it's very important that in the other parts you can see that all the electricity and all the things are, are going underground. So it gives you a more clean look of the city and it's safer at the same time because this is not safe.
- [12:58]
Gregory Scruggs
We survived our walk unscathed and ended at the Casa Melorusso, one of the seemingly countless 16th century buildings that have been painstakingly preserved and modernized, in this case into a jewel box museum of Dominican art. But the crowd sipping sangria in the courtyard was not there for the latest exhibition. Rather, they were gathered to celebrate another year of accomplishments by the recently formed Colonial City Owners and Renters Association, a civic organization that advocates on behalf of the 7,000 odd people who make their home in the Old quarter. The association's founder and president, Raquel Cazares, stepped away from the festivities and into the museum's library to tell me why she chose to raise a 21st century family in a 16th century neighborhood.
- [13:48]
Raquel Cazares
The Colonial city, from my point of view, is a perfect place to raise a family. Because here you can go walking everywhere, you have different parks, you have cultural activities every day. You have access to the monuments and you have also a lot of kind of services. For example, you have supermarkets, you have pharmacies. And maybe one of the challenges of the colonial city are the schools, having good quality schools to bring our children. And I think that is something that we have been bringing to the authorities all the time, the importance of making the colonial city more friendly for the families. Because at the end, we are a very important attraction for the people that visit the city to see how we live. For example, when I open the door of my house, sometimes I see tourists that are looking, looking inside, like thinking, who is living there? This is this beautiful front of the house and then what is inside? So it is a city that is alive, it is a living city with people. And I think that this is the most important value of the colonial city.
- [14:55]
Interviewer
And in the four years that you have been organizing your neighbors and this community to have a more structured, formal voice, is the city government paying attention? Have you changed hearts and minds in city hall to think differently about the role of the colonial city and what they as a government need to provide to their citizens?
- [15:18]
Raquel Cazares
Yes, I think so. Because for example, when we started to work with the government, we started to use the word residents of the colonial city. And now they have integrated a lot this kind of language in their approaches. But I think that we need to give another step in terms of implementing or creating policies to protect the neighbors here. For example, there are some challenges of living in a place that is very commercial and also touristic. We have a lot of restaurants, bars and discotheques. And sometimes it happens, some conflicts because the noise, the traffic, there is maybe more traffic that will be recommended here in the colonial city. So it's needed a kind of policies to protect the people that live here.
- [16:01]
Interviewer
And lastly, as the colonial city becomes more attractive, there is always the risk of more short term rentals, more Airbnb, of disrupting the balance between the residents and the tourism as you described being the goal here, to strike that balance. What's the best way or the most important way to keep the that balance from tipping too much in the wrong direction?
- [16:27]
Raquel Cazares
Well, there are some things that are pretty difficult to control because it is happening globally with the historical centers. This is something that is happening, more Airbnbs, more short term rent apartments. But I think that what we have to do is to be constant and persistent with our demands and also our positionings. We need a city that has to be for the people. It has to be a city to keep the Balance, because the balance is the value. The value also for tourism. It is something that we, in all our meetings, we try to position with the authorities because, for example, I think that in some recent surveys to the tourists, the people say, what do you like most of the colonial city? And is the people that I can interact with people. So it's not only to have experiences, cultural experiences, is interactive, is to sit in a colmala and have a beer with the local population or sitting in a park and to see how the families are interacting. So I think that this is the important value and it's something that we have to be constant with that.
- [17:29]
Gregory Scruggs
For Monocle in Santo Domingo, I'm Gregory Scruggs.
- [17:41]
Andrew Tuck
Sydney has a fish market is both wholesale operation for restaurants and shops as well as a destination for the public to visit, buy their seafood and perhaps grab some fish and chips to eat by the water. But few cities have what Sydney has. A stunning harbour location that makes for one of the most picturesque fish markets in the world. The Sydney Fish Market has just reopened after an 850 million of Australian dollar makeover which took five years to complete. Monocle's Artie Betigeri visited to find out what makes the new market so appealing.
- [18:20]
Artie Betigeri
It's early morning at the brand new Sydney Fish Market. This is the auction room packed with dozens of buyers bidding on fish and seafood products from around the country. And this is the operations centre where workers check the fish and seafood. Trolleys come and go and there's even a tour group.
- [18:43]
Interviewer
We're going to talk about Mudcraft.
- [18:44]
Claudio Suarez
Dan, Dan, do you want to take.
- [18:45]
Interviewer
A look at Mudcraft really quick?
- [18:47]
Artie Betigeri
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [18:47]
Interviewer
Let's go, let's go.
- [18:48]
Claudio Suarez
Dan's our mud crab expert.
- [18:49]
Interviewer
I love mud crab.
- [18:51]
Claudio Suarez
Living the dream.
- [18:52]
Artie Betigeri
It's one of five tours that will be held today. Because as much as the brand new building housing the Sydney Fish Market is a place of work, it's also one of the city's favourite tourist destinations. The market's head of operations, Gus Danoon says they expect to get more than 6 million visitors this year.
- [19:11]
Interviewer
Given that we are the only fish market in Sydney, I think it's that connection between what the market provides. We're unique in many ways.
- [19:19]
Fred Holt
You know, we still have an active.
- [19:21]
Interviewer
Fishing fleet that actually work and deliver.
- [19:22]
Fred Holt
Product directly to our wharves.
- [19:24]
Artie Betigeri
The fish market has been located in this spot right on Black Wattle Bay in the inner city suburb of glebe since the 1960s. But the old building was falling apart. So 10 years ago the state government announced A new purpose built structure to be built right next door. The new building finally opened on January 19, and immediately it was embraced by Sydneysiders. The tender for the design was won by Danish firm 3xn Architects, who engaged local architecture company BVN to help in the delivery. 3xn's Fred Holt says the cultural positioning of the market added to the complexity of the project.
- [20:07]
Fred Holt
So when we were designing the fish market, our job was to create an operating fish market, but also a destination not just for tourists, but for Sydneysiders again. And the idea was, why would you come over to Blackwater Bay to have your fish and chips or fresh seafood? You do it because of the authenticity. You want to see an operating fish market. Earlier today, a couple of times I recorded a fishio with his gum boots pushing around wet fish on ice in the blue bins that everybody knows or associates with the fish market. So that had to be on full display. So we took this inward looking industrial building, an operating fish market, and we made it more extroverted. We turned it inside out, so the backup house now becomes the show. But in order to make a place feel authentic, even though it's brand new, you also need to connect it to place. So the building's shape, the ground level with the sweeping stairs, the undulating stairs, that's actually to draw people out up towards the upper ground, but also provide a place for Sydneysiders just to enjoy the harbour view. You could almost call it the city's living room in a way. You don't have to spend money on mud, crab or fish and chips in order to enjoy the public seating.
- [21:25]
Artie Betigeri
BVN's Katherine Skinner says it's built on newly reclaimed land, so there's a tiny.
- [21:31]
Katherine Skinner
Edge that we connect to that was the original sea wall, or the wall that had been in place since colonial days. And there were a few kind of structures on this site previously that had to be removed as part of this. But the whole of the building sits out in the water, so there's marine piles that have been constructed to then place the building on top of it. It actually sits in the water, but tides go up and down, so sometimes it's much deeper than at other times. But the whole building sits over the water.
- [22:01]
Artie Betigeri
Perhaps the standout feature of the building is its roof.
- [22:05]
Fred Holt
So one of the more salient features of the new Sydney Fish Market design is the undulating roof. It's not conceptually thought of as a wave or fish scales as it's been labeled, but what happened is we tried to reduce the height of the building as much as possible. But we also had mezzanine program that we had to actually place above upper ground. So what we needed to do is make sure we had two high points. We had to pick up the roof in a couple of locations, which allowed the other part of the roof to stay low. And then we pushed it down a little bit lower. That created two low points where this large 200 meter by 100 meter roof canopy collects every drop of water that hits the roof and then reuses 50% of it for washdown grey water as well as irrigation. The canopy itself, the height of the canopy allows air to flow over the voxels or boxes of retail that are scattered about. The large east and west circulation corridor as well as the north, south, not only allow you visual connections to park and harbor, but it also allows for natural ventilation. The beams, the timber beams, we wanted to go with something quite warm and inviting, so something also more sustainable. The embodied carbon on the timber that's from northern Italy, from a place called Rubner, has a lower embodied carbon footprint than if we used local timber.
- [23:30]
Artie Betigeri
That's a lot of timber.
- [23:31]
Fred Holt
594 beams and the longest span is 32 meters. The majority of them around 20 meters.
- [23:38]
Katherine Skinner
One of the things that I think is really interesting about the way that the roof was considered friction from an engineering perspective was that it's been designed as a topography. So it is like a piece of land. It's a piece of civil engineering more than anything else. As Fred said, the flow to two low points is kind of key to the way the whole structure works. This building doesn't have any gutters. It has pathways for water to flow across it and through all of the cassettes into these two massive bins where all the water is collected.
- [24:09]
Artie Betigeri
So would you say this is on track to be the second most famous roof in Sydney?
- [24:13]
Fred Holt
Well, we will never say this roof is better than the Sydney Opera House, but we are quite proud that it actually gets compared to the Sydney Opera House. Again designed by a Danish designer, Johan Utzen. 3xn being a Danish firm, we're proud of the comparison. But we'll say the Sydney Fish Market is a close second.
- [24:37]
Andrew Tuck
That was Fred Holt, architect behind the new Sydney Fish Market. And my thanks to Artie Betigeri for that report. And finally today, what if the world's most trusted driver is not a driver at all? Well, that's what autonomous driving technology company Waymo is hoping to achieve. In 2025, Waymo was responsible for some 15 million rides. And the company's expansion continues at speed as it enters international markets such as Toky and London this year too. Last week I was at the World Government Summit in Dubai where I was joined on stage by Tekidra Marwakana, the co CEO of Waymo. She told me more about her company and how it is redefining the cities that we live in.
- [25:22]
Tekidra Marwakana
I think we have to be significantly safer than a human to earn the right to be on the roads. If we're not safer than a human, then we're just safe simply like every other car on the road. So for us that's foundational. So making sure that we can drive a safety impact not just for fatalities, but all of the people who are living with life altering injuries. So being able to address both of those. And then because we are satisfied with where we are in safety, we get to focus on things like giving time back. You know, you get into the car, you can have your confidential conference calls, you know, you can have your time to take a nap, there's no one in there with you. And then it's use cases that are very important to people. Late night travel for women traveling alone. You know, we have a teen product in Phoenix where 14 to 17 year olds are able to go to, you know, their athletic appointments after school on their own. There are all of these additional use cases and then access to mobility options for the hundreds of thousands of people globally who will never have the opportunity to have a driver's license. And so if you can't have a driver's license, then you will always be driven by someone, which means you are never in a car by yourself until you are in a Waymo. And we've had so many magical moments with people who shared that first time. Not a girlfriend, not a parent, not a ride hail driver, not a limo driver, not a taxi driver. They were in a car going safely from point A to point B with vision impairment, with epilepsy, you name it. They had that experience, I think that magical and transformational experience. Those are the use cases we couldn't have imagined that were needed. That's really exciting. Safety is foundational and then there's just a world of delight light on top of that.
- [27:21]
Andrew Tuck
And just while we're here, you started off in city cores, places where you geo mapped them for the vehicles. But now you're breaking out as well. You're on highways as well.
- [27:30]
Tekidra Marwakana
Now we are. We started our first service in 2020. We removed the human from behind the car over five years ago and then we moved to San Francisco Los Angeles, sort of denser areas where dealing with pedestrians and delivery trucks and density was a big part of what the Waymo driver had to learn. The learning is shared across the fleet. And when I refer to the driver, I am talking about the suite of technology, you know, hardware, software, cameras, lidar, radar. That's what we refer to when I say the Waymo driver. You know, we're here, we're sitting in Dubai. You know, we're at the World Government Summit. You know, when we think about cities around the world that are really appealing, we think about cities like Dubai. You know, we think about territories and regions where the governments are very innovative. You know, they're forward thinking, they're interested in investing in a future that's safer, that's more convenient and that's technologically driven for value.
- [28:29]
Andrew Tuck
You mentioned Dubai. You look at the uae, I think you have one or two competitors in this world who are already eyeing up this market as well. When you look at the competition, because other players are saying, look, we have different AI systems, we're going to use cameras to make this a more affordable way. Perhaps in the future of delivering autonomous vehicles. Some people are making their own vehicles. There's lots of different routes through this. At this point, I think it's widely accepted you're way out in front when you look at the competition. What sets you apart from the competition? Competition?
- [29:04]
Tekidra Marwakana
I think first and foremost it's that we have been maniacally focused on safety. Starting with safety, I think means that we made some deliberate choices in the beginning. And so I think this goes back to how we approach and build the technology, how we approach and build the culture at our company. In the early days, having a culture where everyone could raise a red flag, where we didn't just talk about safety, but we lived towards the safety. Now driving the output data and sharing it transparently, there isn't anyone else doing that. And to us, that's part of the social contract. You know, we're introducing a technology on roads next to houses of worship, next to schools, next to homes. We need to be willing to be transparent about how this technology works, how it's performing and why we believe it's safe enough to be in communities. And so that's the biggest differentiation. In addition to the technological investments that we've made, we're the only company that's been at this for 17 years. We know what it takes and we also know how close the end can feel. And so getting started is easy going all the way to full autonomy and then to delighting riders is quite a journey.
- [30:21]
Andrew Tuck
If we get to the inflection point where more than 50% of all journeys are done in AVs, how will that change how our cities look?
- [30:29]
Tekidra Marwakana
I think that over time we will see, and we're seeing it. You know, in a lot of cities already, people deciding how many cars they need sort of core, especially as younger people in the family age into driving, whether or not those folks will even need car to have their own car. I think that's one place and one place that cities talk to us a lot about is parking infrastructure. Like they're really excited to not need so many cars sitting idly during the day in city centers and they'd love to recapture that space and redevelop it for use because now you can get dropped off and get picked up and you don't have to deal with the parking.
- [31:10]
Andrew Tuck
Takedra Marwakana, the co CEO of Waymo, speaking to me on stage at the World Government Summit in Dubai. Well, that's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism too. Just visit monocle.com the Urbanist is produced by Carlotta Bello and by David Stevens, who also edits the show. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City lovers.