On this episode we are very pleased to have Philip Yang on the podcast. Philip is the founder of URBEM – a “do tank” for for urban change. We discuss some of the projects that URBEM has been involved in and what it means to build a “better city”. We also discuss both Canada’s and Brazil’s roles as “middle powers” and their roles in relation to the United States and China. We certainly learned a lot during this talk, you don’t want to miss this one!
Date: November 4, 2020
Episode: 28
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Philip Yang, Founder of URBEM – A “do tank” for Urban Change.
Subtitle: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because and only when they are created by everybody”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-28-social-change-and-urban-planning-w-philip-yang/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Philip Yang, founder of URBEM – a “do tank” for urban change.
Philip Yang is a former Brazilian diplomat, who explored the entrepreneurial world until he decided to establish Urbem.
If you are a new listener to I Know this Guy… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!
In this episode, we discuss:
Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section.
In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:
Join our discussion network here!:
Philip 0:00
But I believe that the major threat to our city is not the one represented by cultural segregation. But the one posed by the growing wealth and income inequality. In this realm, in the realm of the battle against inequality, city planning I think can make a huge contribution for mitigating the gaps that separates the haves and have nots.
Norman 0:36
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy. The podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell, what the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 1:11
So dad, who do we have lined up for the podcast today?
Norman 1:15
Yeah, this is from your buddy James Hill, he recommended Philip Yang and he’s an urban planner with a focus on social change and he’s located in Brazil.
Hayden 1:27
Very cool. Yeah. I saw it from some of my research here that he’s got a project that totally reshaped the downtown of Sao Paulo. Yeah, it’s really neat stuff and I feel like we’re getting to some topics that I’ve never thought about before. So I’m pretty excited.
Norman 1:42
Yeah, I am, too and also wait till you hear about this guy’s background. It’s the most diverse background I’ve ever heard of.
Hayden 1:51
That’s saying something.
Norman 1:54
I can’t wait to get started.
Hayden 1:55
Yeah, let’s dive in.
Norman 1:58
So welcome Philip to the podcast.
Philip 2:01
Thank you, Norman. Thank you so much for having me.
Norman 2:05
Oh you’re very welcome. So how is Brazil today?
Philip 2:07
Brazil’s fine, wonderful weather. We have a terrible president here, as you may well know. But other than that, we are heading towards a path out of the pandemic. Hopefully, all Canadians are, I think. But it’s a great day, it’s 30 degrees Celsius on a winter day. So it’s a very surprising temperature for winter day and it’s a blue sky and a perfect day for having this conversation on.
Norman 2:35
I’ve heard a lot about you. We’ve had a small talk before we started this interview. But you are an amazing individual. I want you to go back and talk a little bit about your background, and just the different lives that you’ve had. From what I understand, from what I know, you’ve had four incredible changes in your life starting from a musician, is that correct?
Philip 3:02
That’s correct. I was a musician. I have an interesting story. Perhaps that could be amusing to start.
Norman 3:09
Sure.
Philip 3:10
I started my college education in engineering school, the Polytechnic School of the University of Sao Paulo and the reason was that I always thought of myself as a scientist, or an engineer or mathematician or something like that. But then when I was about 17, I got to know a piano professor, an Austrian piano professor who lived in the neighborhood and I wanted to have lessons when I was playing the piano since I was a kid. But I was very interested in having lessons with this Austrian professor and then I came to my father before going into college, and I said, my father, listen, I wanted to have lessons with this guy and my father said, okay, it’s quite an expensive professor. So let’s do the following. If you manage to be admitted to the University of Sao Paulo, then I will pay you the piano lessons. So that was a challenge there and I had to go into the Engineering School of the University, so that I could obtain the piano lessons that I wanted. But after one year in the engineering school, I quit and I pursued a career as a musician. That’s how I became a musician. So I had a short career as a concert pianist and then I went on to Budapest, to study composition at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music there. So that was the beginning and then those were cold war years and I got very interested in international affairs. So when I finished my studies, I was already with my wife there, Patricia and then we decided to go back to Brazil and I decided to try to be admitted to the Brazilian Foreign Service career. So I became a Brazilian diplomat.
Norman 5:10
So, Philip, I’m just kind of curious. So you’re a musician, you now get interested in the Foreign Service. Where did you start to apply or to get into being a diplomat. I always thought that getting involved in being a diplomat, you’ve got either some sort of entrepreneurial background, or you’re already involved with politics.
Philip 5:37
For the Brazilian Foreign Service, there is an admission process. Every year they hold examinations and they typically select about 20 to 30 new diplomats every year. It’s a very competitive process. I got to know about this. I had no idea about this. But I got to know about this when I was a student at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. I got to know a few diplomats there and I got to know how the admission process functioned. So I got all these directions and there was a huge laundry list of books that the candidate is supposed to read. So I read all those books. There was language examination, those days were English and French, and of course, Portuguese as well, which was the native language of Brazil. When I started to study, and I came back to Brazil, I tried twice the examination. The first one was without any training, I had not finished the whole bibliography of the examination and then the second time, one year later, I had completed all the readings, I was doing a number of exercises in writing. So I had my successful shot in the second attempt and that happened, it was in 1991. So it was admitted in 91. There were two years of Diplomatic Academy in Brazil and then after that, I started to serve as a diplomat.
Norman 7:10
So where did that lead you?
Philip 7:12
Well, it was very interesting. I was born from a Chinese family in Brazil. My father fled China in 1955. He came to Brazil in 1955. Actually, he fled China in 1949. It was very linked to the US Yajima, the nationalists that were in power before the communists took over. So he decided to flee and he went to Japan, he spent like six years in Japan, in Tokyo, from 49 to 55 and in 55, he came to Brazil. So I was born here, he was an entrepreneur. He didn’t do well. He was a very wealthy man. He was an entrepreneur in China, and in Japan, he was very successful there, but not very successful here in Brazil. So when I was born, I was the last of five kids. My family was not doing well, I was a middle class kid going to school and so that was my original background. So going into diplomacy was a change, because I started to have all these possibilities of meeting different people, connecting to people in power in Brasilia, the capital of the city, also in business. So it was a total change in perspective for a middle class kid coming from Sao Paulo.
Norman 8:43
What ended up happening with that career. How long did you last?
Philip 8:49
Well, it lasted for 10 years. I served in Brasilia, it started in Brasilia, the Capital and I went to Geneva and then I went to Beijing. I served for two and a half years in Beijing and then I went to Washington. I spent another three and a half years in Washington and by then I started to think that diplomacy would not be a commitment for the rest of my life. So I started to think that government was too much to spend the rest of my life so I started to think of different things. So I went back to school, I went to Harvard, I did a master’s degree there in public administration and then when I left the service, I thought that I could explore alternatives in the private sector. I could start doing business. So that’s what I did and so I had a period doing business in Brazil and after a period doing business, I decided to establish Urbem, which I hope is the focus of our conversation today. It has to do with urban planning. It has to do with Sao Paulo, my city and it has to do mainly with the attempt of promoting urban change, which is the mission of the organization that I established.
Norman 10:12
Yeah, I can’t wait to get into that. So we had no idea when we were first talking to James, about first of all, how interesting your life was leading up to Urbem and I had no idea about these types of situations. So why don’t we just get into Urbem right now and tell everybody a little bit about it? Why did you get involved? What makes a better city?
Philip 10:40
Okay, so Urbem, this is the name of the institution, we call it a central vac, and we call it a do-tank as opposed to a think tank, because we are committed to promoting urban change.
Norman 10:55
So a do-tank rather than a think tank.
Philip 10:59
Exactly.
Norman 11:00
I like it.
Philip 11:01
It’s an interesting thing, because academia here in Brazil is producing a lot of knowledge and world class knowledge. But there’s little interaction between academia, the knowledge production centers, and actually the action that is taking place in the city. The market forces, the government forces. So we thought that a do tank would have a role in promoting a convergence of different forces at play in city making. So that’s why Urbem exists. We thought that Sao Paulo did not evolve well, from the Urbem development point of view. It is a city that is home to 20 million people now, out from 30,000 people in 1870. So in about one 100 years, we jumped from 30,000 people to 20 million people. So it’s very natural that with such a demographic explosion, the urban fabric would have suffered quite a lot and it’s quite an unfair and quite an asymmetrical, very unbalanced urban context that we face here in Sao Paulo. So I found that I decided to establish Urbem, there’s a whiff of legacy, there’s a wish to contribute to urban betterment off of the city,
Norman 12:29
I’ve got to ask, your accuracy. It’s got to be a major factor like things, how did you get things done?
Philip 12:38
Wow, that’s a huge challenge for every major city. As you see, as you know, every big city is a stage of conflicts, right? It’s no different here in Sao Paulo, it is a place where huge conflicts take place. Not only corporate interests, but also societal conflicts are taking place here in Sao Paulo. So the one of the roles that Urbem undertakes is to try to promote a convergence between all these different forces, not an easy task and I have a number of stories here to tell you the challenge that we face on a daily basis.
Norman 13:23
Well, in your eyes, what makes Sao Paulo, what could you do to make it a better city?
Philip 13:30
In our view, a better city is a city with more mix used, and mixed income areas with better infrastructure. Of course, this is a perspective of a city that is in a good global south. We have a deficit in many basic things like housing and sanitation. So we try to combine good infrastructure with mixed use and mixed income types of development projects. That’s what we basically do in a nutshell, we structure projects at Urbem, we try to provide government forces, market forces and society with projects that could transform the city into a better city.
Norman 14:19
I know I’ve even seen it here in Canada, where the government or at least the region is trying to bring in different income levels into certain neighborhoods, and they were met with heavy resistance. What was it like over there? I’m sure it probably was even worse.
Philip 14:37
It is and nimbyism, I don’t know whether you are familiar with the acronym. It’s not in my backyard. NIMBY is not in my backyard. It is a fourth year in Sao Paulo and this is one of the big struggles that we face when we do something that we try to mix different income brackets into the same development. Either you have people, developers not willing to undertake the project, because they understand this is a risky business, or you have neighbors around the project rejecting the presence of lower income residents in that project. So it’s not an easy combination to make. But we really understand that this kind of network of, this kind of social weaving is very important for the vitality of a given city and for Sao Paulo, of course, this is a very challenging, unnecessary undertaking.
Norman 15:40
Other than that, are there any major items that you are looking for, to change the city?
Philip 15:49
Basically, we see cities as a center stage of inequality. So we try to use as much as we can the Urbem project, Urbem policy tools to mitigate the effect of this blatant expression of inequality that is shown in the territory in the urban space. So we try to combine everything we can, in a project, we try to combine different sources of knowledge in order to fight against this terrible expression of inequality that is shown in urban space.
Norman 16:30
Yeah, I’ve traveled quite a bit. I’ve seen a lot of different major cities, Manila, comes to mind where the farmers were coming into the city to get better jobs and they all settled in this one area and it was very quick. So all of a sudden, this mini area came with no income, and there was no planning, it was just 10 check after 10. Very violent, horrible conditions, raw sewage, it was just, it was terrible. I could just overlay that over the next major city, and then over the next major city. These living conditions, first of all, are inhumane. I don’t even know how to express it from what I’ve seen, I’m talking about this is literally on the other side of the tracks. So in this cases, most of the time, it’s the other side of the river. So you’ve got a safe place to live and you can go and smell the roses and right across the way, you see kids playing in garbage and I’m serious, like just sewage just going into the river. Something like this has got to stop somebody, and I’m so glad that you are looking at something like this, because just people living in these types of conditions. It’s just inhumane.
Philip 17:53
It’s an acceptance, right and let me give you an example of what we try to do here. A few years ago, we conceived the project which is called Casa Paulista. Casa Paulista project is an affordable housing project that was promoted by the state of Sao Paulo and we contributed with a sort of an economic model and economic formula, and the Urbem design guidelines for the project. What we aim that by modeling this project is to bring into the city center a project of affordable housing and this is contrary to all public housing policies have been doing in the past few decades. Mostly what happens in Brazil is that affordable housing is placed very far away in the peripheries of the city. In that project, we try to model a sort of a public private partnership that made possible the construction of affordable housing at the heart of the city center right beside the metro station and a train station very close to the ground zero of the city. So that was very innovative for Brazil, I think for the world as well, because many of the housing policies, initiatives that are taking place everywhere in any major cities, takes these housing affordable housing is very far away and then we came up with this formula that combine your market interest, government interest and society’s interest to make this happen at the very heart of the of the city center.
Norman 19:42
So what was the outcome?
Philip 19:44
It was a very positive one. It was beaut, there is one part one section of the development which has over 1000 units of affordable housing. It’s very close to, as I said to the public transit. It was meant to be a mixed income mixed use project and it is like this. We have a setback there, which is the fact that it was meant to be a very open development with large sidewalks with a large boulevard with active facades with retail stores in the ground floors of every building, and a School of Music. So it was meant to be a very open project, and it was built like that. But when the project finished, that’s transitory setback that we have, the walls, the construction walls that encircled the area are still there, they were not removed. Because the city center, the downtown area in Sao Paulo is still very dangerous. So there was this request by the resident, the residents not to remove the construction walls. So it was meant and it is meant to be an open city is not yet an open city, but it soon will become, as soon as we overcome this terrible phase that we are experiencing at this moment.
Norman 21:12
So it’s a city within a city.
Philip 21:14
It’s a city within a city, but it’s gonna be a city, open to the city, without walls, hopefully, very soon.
Norman 21:22
So I love the idea of you creating this city, just people in general, feel better about themselves, just living in a nice spot, waking up in a nice home, in a safe environment and yet a block away outside of these other walls, you’ve got, like you said, it could be violence, it could be whatever. Because people and probably, the majority, there’s a beautiful new city, but outside of the walls, how do you face the violence and you can’t solve that, right? Like, you can’t just go into a major city, and solve the problems of people that have low income, the violence that’s in the street. Yeah. How do you face something like that in such a huge city?
Philip 22:15
Yeah, that’s an excellent question, a terrible question at the same time. When we were planning, when we were designing the project, we were thinking all of the economic models, we had hearings, and we were trying to have even social psychologists on the ground to hear the wishes of people while we were structuring all this project and we had this impression back then those days, 2012, 13, we had this impression that we were thinking of every possible variable. But all of a sudden, we came to realize that we could not figure out we could not imagine that the government would not exercise sovereignty over the downtown areas. So there’s a lot of governance, so there is no policing and downtown areas are very poorly managed in Sao Paulo. So that variable, we could not imagine that the government will not exercise sovereignty over that territory, with minimum management conditions for the development to flourish. That was a huge surprise and what can we do? There are a number of variables, there are macroeconomic variables, there are government and governance variables that play. So there are conflicts between different levels of government, local and state and federal government. So there are a number of factors that are beyond the control of the institutions that were involved in the planning of the project. I think, in spite of that challenge, I think we made a positive step towards a better city, because at least it’s a good project, at least it’s been built and at least people are living there and at least it is an affordable housing project, right in the heart of the city. So those are incremental evolution, it’s not revolution. I expected it to be very revolutionary. But in light of the difficulties that we face now with the walls and so forth, I see it as an evolution, incremental evolution towards a better city.
Norman 24:35
So you have to start with a bite sized piece, right? Bite size in the eyes of the world. Because I think it is really important and I guess the next question is going to be about other governments asking about what you’ve done and if they took that plan and brought it into different countries, but what you did in your city was an incredible achievement. But can you now take that and market that to the world?
Philip 25:04
But I don’t think so. I think it is too small and Brazil is too peripheral in the world stage to become a trendsetter. Though Sao Paulo is a huge city, a big megalopolis, I don’t think we are at a point in which we can set the trend or set the example for other cities. If you think of Anne Hidalgo in Paris, whenever she comes up with a consistent idea, concept, immediately all the world press is talking about it. It’s not like this in Sao Paulo, we are at the corner of the world. But what we did, which was interesting. Whenever we do something here in Sao Paulo, we try to mobilize international experts, international architects, international sociologists, international thinkers to our projects, and then because they get to know us, and because they get to know what we do, sometimes we do things together. Like we responded to a public house in Paris, which was called Claymont a party, which was meant to propose different projects for public properties that were owned by the municipality of Paris. So we went there. We went with a high profile team. We had Paolo Mendes, who is a Pritzker Prize Laureate from Brazil. We had Alejandro Aravena, the famous Chilean, another Pritzker Prize Laureate and we have Karla Rotti, who is a professor at MIT. We have this different, high profile architects in Paris, we Brazilian projects to contribute to the public Hall and then with Alex Washburn, who was working for Bloomberg. We also contributed with a project for the remodeling of Penn Station a few years ago, that was a competition which has not come to an end yet. We took part in a competition in London. But this is not something that we can say that, it was based on the examples that we set in Sao Paulo. As I said, we are in the corner, we are not in the trendsetting setting position, that would be too presumptuous to say that.
Norman 27:22
So at the end of the day, did you see a shift in the attitude of the people that went into the open city?
Philip 27:30
We are trying to measure that objectively, I think emotionally if you go there and talk to people, it’s a huge change in their lives. But we want to measure that, we are now creating the metrics for measuring the impact of what happened before and what’s happening now, in many parameters, like the time that people would take to and from the workplaces from their homes. The access to education, for facilities in schools, nurseries, the access to facilities, and so on so forth. But I think it’s very concrete. If you go there and talk to people, they express this in a very lively way. But we want to transform this into a very concrete matrix for knowing exactly what has changed in the project.
Norman 28:20
Well, you’re going to have to send us some pictures and we want to put this up on the website so people can actually see what you’ve done and this is an incredible accomplishment.
Philip 28:32
Thank you. Thank you.
Norman 28:35
So now Philip, we’re gonna move on to your favorite quote.
Philip 28:38
Let me say this. I would take advantage of Jane Jacobs being Canadian, right and she spent part of her life in New York, she was an activist, had a very prominent role in the development of New York. There’s a quote by her that I love. She says something like this, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because and only when they are created by everybody” and I like this quote. I love this quote, because my experience has shown that a good city or a good sustainable urban project is one that is made by a convergence of market government and societal forces. So what my experience has shown that whenever an urban project is undertaken by one of these forces alone isolatedly, the result can be really bad, right and there are several good and bad examples. I think a good example was given by the High Line in New York and that was something that was promoted or enticed by civil society, and later on down the road, they got the support of the government and then market forces came into the game to support the different alternatives that were open for participation. So that’s I think it’s a great example of this tripod of forces. Giving birth to an urban project that looks beautiful, seems very organic into the city and it gives a huge contribution for civic life in the city. Of course, in every urban project, there are detractors. But this is a side by side effect that we can understand. But overall, it’s a wonderful project. It’s a good example of a good outcome and there are examples of bad outcomes when this tripod of forces are not working as a tripod and a good example of a bad outcome is given perhaps by this project, I don’t know whether you know or if you have heard of it, it’s called the Proved Eagle housing project that was built in St. Louis, in the United States. It is a totally government led affordable housing that had to be demolished 10 years after it was built and it’s so curious, because it counted on a world renowned architect, his name was Minoru Yamasaki, and he was award winning, very celebrated architect, it was a beautiful project, but by the fact that it was totally, and solely government led, the project came out as a very, a project that did not met the needs, the real needs, of the potential beneficiaries, the dwellers of the housing units, and it had to be demolished. That’s why basically, because I think that the three forces were not there. Government did not hear market forces, the government just decided to build and did not hear what the needs were, the actual needs were, whereas placed when they conceived the project.
Norman 32:27
But doesn’t that happen most of the time? It’s typically the government dictates, okay, we’re gonna build the projects over here, this is how it’s going to look and these are the people that are going to go into the neighborhood. I mean, it really is, at least the projects that I’ve seen, for the most part, are all dictated by the government, and they don’t have that tripod.
Philip 32:50
This is an experience that happens over and over again. This is a type of mistake that repeats over and over again, in many parts of the world. I think you have seen this very recently in Toronto, right? You had this fantastic project. The Google city of the waterfront, it was meant to be a fantastic project. But in that case, I think it was the heavy hand of Google, and not willing to interact very much with government and society and there was a strong opposition from civil society groups, that were very much concerned with privacy over the use of data. In that case, I think it was the lack of public participation and in the inception of the project as a whole.
Norman 33:45
Yeah and I wouldn’t ever have thought of it that way, I would have always slammed the government for doing it wrong and you would think, oh, Google, they’re going to do it right. But again, there goes that tripod that you were talking about and, that’s almost like, anything you do. If you’re just getting your information from one source, something’s missing out, you’re missing an angle and I think if, people shift their mind or shift the way that they’re thinking, it’d be just a much better city or a much better neighborhood, just these three elements came together to do some talking. A lot of the time what I find Philip too, sorry, but a lot of the time, I always see posturing, I’ll see a lot of fake talk and I look right through it. I turn on the TV, and I might see, okay, this business talking about this. Some activists are talking about this, the government talking about this, and all of a sudden, like, you don’t know where the truth lies, and everybody’s trying to do something for their side, but not giving into the other. I mean, each one of those three that you talked about can be very stubborn. Right and getting through that stubbornness, so everybody can kind of get along. That’s the hardest part and I’m not an expert on this at all, you can talk about eCommerce, I can talk all day long about it. But just the logic behind this, if somebody could just drop their guard, and we can all get together and I’m going back to, like, treat people like people and it would just be a better place to live. But we’ve got to get people to talk about these three elements and do you have any suggestions on that?
Philip 35:38
I think, yeah, I have hopes that technology, we work for a better representation for better political systems. Nowadays, I think, all the technology tools that we have that have been developing in the past years have been used for the worse causes, it’s being used for promoting fake news, it’s being used for ill motives. I wonder whether it is possible to channel all the technological possibilities that we have now towards representation. If we could use data for sensing people’s aspirations, and make this as a tool for a better representation of political representation, better democracy in the end. That would be very, very helpful in all scales. From city planning, actually to municipal governance to country elections, right and I have this impression that all these technological tools have been used for ill purposes, not for good purposes. So whenever we have market forces, developing technologies, for better representation, for better consultation, for better hearing procedures, I think that that could be our way out for all the impasses that we face in this struggle of combining the three forces.
Hayden 37:10
I think change has to be a major issue too, right? With any of those three forces, I think, looking at the side of like the societal force. I mean, any change that you’re trying to enact is always going to be met with some kind of resistance, even if you have all your facts laid out perfectly. I think inherently people kind of like staying where they are, or in a city, like it’s hard to imagine maybe how, say a major construction project might actually benefit you, especially if there’s distrust in the technology or the government forces. So I’m actually curious like, how you might maybe mitigated that or even for your own project in Sao Paulo, like, was there some convincing that had to be done with the residents and if so, yeah, how is that process?
Philip 38:02
Change implies change of mindset, of attitudes and everyone has to convince the other party of the arguments. That’s the beauty of democracy. That’s the beauty of dialect, like if everyone gets stuck in its own original position, then there won’t be changed, there will be no impasse forever. So that’s what we try to combine and yeah, there’s this question that you asked me in the article, what is the hardest struggle that I faced in life? I think that’s the hardest struggle that I face in life. We are currently in the midst of the other debate around the project that we developed for one of the largest industrial groups in Sao Paulo. About entering the industrial growth group is called. After four years of planning, and discussions and debates, the project now is stuck because of the opposition of NIMBY. A small NIMBY group that opposes the project and why the group opposes it because we are bringing in closer and closer to them a residential complex for the lower income community that already lives there. But now they live in a slum in a favela in very terrible housing conditions. It’s very vulnerable, without any sanitation, basic sanitation, and we want to move them a little bit closer to that middle class complex, and they oppose that, and everyone else in the city, the mayor, all other stakeholders around the neighborhood is in favor of the project. But now we face this opposition of this small group that is fighting against the project, after four years of discussions. So that can be very frustrating, if you ask me what is the biggest struggle that you face in life? That’s the one that I would mention, the name of the project is Villa Leopoldina project. I will share with you a few images and the details of the project. So everyone is interested, and we’d be able to see.
Norman 40:22
It must be extraordinarily difficult, like a lot of times, entrepreneurs hit roadblocks. But when you’re working on a project like this for four years, four and a half years, and then you get the not in my backyard, it happens all the time. But you’ve got to just feel like hitting your head against the wall for another four years. How long do you think it would take? I’m just kind of curious, you’ve worked on this for four and a half years, you’ve got this opposition, probably the very small minority, how long is it going to take, do you think to get around this? If you can.
Philip 40:56
The way it works here in Brazil, this project was negotiated with the executive branch of the city and after 30, 70 public hearings, the project, which was proposed by Urbem and Votorantim, this industrial group, this project, it was converted into a bill. So the executive branch agreed with the project here. We negotiated with them, we negotiated with all stakeholders, and this bill was sent last year to the legislative branch of the city hall. Now it’s been sitting in the legislative body of the city hall for one year now and it has been submitted to the plenary four times in the past four months. So we expect it to be voted in the coming weeks, hopefully. Let’s see how it goes. But, what is sort of frustrating is the fact that we did everything that was within our reach, to discuss it, institutionally and rationally with every party involved. We tried to accommodate every conflicting interest during this three, four years of negotiation and now we’re entering a phase in which rationality does not prevail. We are in the realm of the imponderable, we don’t know, because then it’s an exchange of insults. It’s an exchange of emotions. Now, it’s not rational anymore. So it’s very difficult and of course, there are politics, political forces, political interests that get into the picture. So it’s very hard to predict what’s going to be the outcome. So let’s see, perhaps next week, I have good news for you.
Norman 42:52
I hope you do. So now let’s talk a little bit more about something different. It was interesting when we had our pre call, and you talked about a subject, I had no idea that we’d even get it. We started talking about COVID and so we decided that, look, this might be an interesting topic, because people don’t think about this that much, at least appearing in Canada. I haven’t heard too much about it. But can you speak a little bit about your thoughts on the anti Chinese material that’s being distributed around the internet?
Philip 43:28
It is very distressing to see. I have this Chinese face. You can look at me if you’re watching us over YouTube. But I don’t have a specific feeling of being Chinese. I don’t have Chineseness in me. But it’s very distressing to see how this material has been distributed on the internet. The anti China material has been flooding all the media channels around the world. That’s very distressing and it’s again, it’s not because I have a Chinese background. It’s just because that it’s so intriguing to see that this being distributed by bots, in the case of Brazil, it’s very interesting, because you see that this material is very professionally made. It doesn’t seem to be something that was produced in Brazil, but they have all Brazilian translation. The materials are being distributed in Portuguese already and this distribution has been massive. It’s very disturbing that to realize that this movement or this flow of information might have to do with a confrontation. I have a new ideological confrontation between China, and the US most likely. Especially because in the US now, we have a government and administration that is adamantly against the emergence of China’s economic power.
Norman 45:09
Being in Brazil right now. Do you feel less Brazilian because you’re Chinese?
Philip 45:19
No, no, I don’t. Definitely not. I think Brazil is quite a good melting pot. I think everyone who was born here feels Brazilian, like if I were born in the US, most likely I will feel myself as a Chinese-American, American-Chinese, something like this. But when people ask, I don’t think twice. I just state I’m Brazilian, I even forget that I have a Chinese face. It just remember when I am in front of a mirror. So I don’t think I feel more or less Chinese because of being in Brazil, because of the fact that I am in Brazil now.
Norman 45:59
I didn’t know that Brazil had such a melting pot environment.
Philip 46:05
It is. I think it’s a good melting pot. But of course, I have to remember that this does not mean that I’ve been complacent to a terrible reality in Brazil, which is the terrible and very dark injustice that was committed towards native Brazilians and the black Africans that came to Brazil as slaves and then there’s a huge disparity, economic disparity, disparity of opportunities that other blacks face in Brazil. It’s part of the inequality that we experience everywhere. But I think, Brazil, I would say that Brazil is a good melting pot, except for the fact that I think the native Brazilians and blacks suffered quite a lot, historically speaking and it did this heritage that they still experience until today. So except for that terrible dimension of injustice, of racial injustice, and socio economic injustice, Brazil is quite a good melting pot.
Norman 47:11
I’ve been watching, I don’t know why I do this, it’s crazy. But every night, I hit my app on the phone, and I watch the COVID virus numbers and Brazil is going crazy. What’s happening in Brazil right now? Are the hospitals filled? How are things within the cities?
Philip 47:33
Well, I think we had this terrible problem of the federal government especially the president not acknowledging the seriousness, the gravity of the pandemic. So the message that came from the highest leadership of the country was to one direction, and the message coming from other levels of government was towards another direction. So that was a total mismanagement of initiatives here in Brazil, towards the pandemic and I think the numbers that we face here in Brazil, this is all a result of this mismanagement that took place here, as a result of this terrible federal administration.
Norman 48:19
It’s kind of funny that the two main players out there that said, don’t have to worry about it. So you’ve got Trump on the one side, and then you’ve got your president, correct?
Philip 48:34
Yes.
Norman 48:35
Saying the exact I remember watching news footage, Nomazz is watching just denying everything and now there’s more cases in Brazil and the United States than anywhere else in the world. Which I shouldn’t be laughing. I mean, it’s just funny that the two that denied it got hit the worst.
Philip 48:57
Exactly. Yeah, I always say that. It’s terrible to say that it’s funny, but it’s a very sad outcome to have terrible presidents, negation presidents and having this outcome. Which is a terrible, very concrete indication of what happens when the country or the policies are poorly conceived. The good side of the story is that at this point, at least to my knowledge, we don’t have hospitals which are in full capacity. I think we have a few cities in the past a few months ago that had the intensive care unit flooded with people, but that is not the case anymore. So this is the good news at least and I think numbers are stabilizing. Now we have only out of our total states we have only two states which have an augmentation of cases but also the other states are either stable or declining. So we might have reached the peak of the pandemic here in Brazil.
Norman 50:09
I haven’t mentioned this on the podcast before, but one of the things I was trying to do is bring masks in and we’re doing it at a cost. We were trying to just help out as fast as we could, getting masks in. So we had connections in China, we had certified masks that we could get in. We could get them at the time for I think it was $1.37. However, and these, it wasn’t a few, it was like 50 million masks and we were trying to get them into the system. Well, what happens? First of all, we couldn’t ship them in because they were from China. Well, if you got over that hurdle, the material used, which is what you needed, wouldn’t get through the customs, the borders’ security. So no matter what you could do to try to help out the situation. When New York City was saying, we need masks, we need this. We couldn’t do anything if we wanted to try. I was sitting back and Hayden, you were at the house and I was fuming that we couldn’t do anything to help the cities that needed masks, that needed gowns, we had it covered, like we had so much of this covered that we could have helped. Anyways, I do know that one of my friends was able to ship I think 100 million masks to Brazil. So we couldn’t get them into the States. But he was able to get them into Brazil. So it’s always shocking to me what politics will do. We had it, we could have helped like the people on the front lines and yet, no matter if we try it or not, it was bound to fail and it took weeks and weeks and weeks until the frontline workers actually got some help.
Philip 51:56
Wow. That’s amazing and Norm, this makes me think of what the roles of Brazil and Canada could become in this new world order. It is fascinating to think that we are moving into a totally different world order. Countries like Brazil and Canada that are middle powers will possibly have totally different roles in this new context. Right and what you just told about having difficulties in bringing goods from one place to the other, I think is a reflection of the new situation that has been imposed not only by the pandemic, but also by the other order of conflict involving the new superpowers.
Norman 53:00
So Hayden, I know you were super stoked to get Philip on. Do you have any questions?
Hayden 53:08
All right. So this is a question I came up with in our talks, Philip and I think it’s really relevant with what Urbem is doing. So Canada and Brazil are both considered to be melting pots. How do you account for the integration of cultures in major cities, when people tend to settle in neighborhoods and this is mainly for my experience of living in Toronto, but you do see it all over the world?
Philip 53:35
Hayden, this is a very interesting and very complex question. My tentative answer I think, would have a few layers. I don’t know how many, but let me try to start with something here one a first perhaps more superficial layer. I would say that city planning and urban policy can be very powerful, a very powerful tool in in promoting greater integration of cultures in big city, especially because cultural differences are very much left behind perhaps, whenever the population at large is offered the possibility of sharing extraordinary spaces and public spaces of universal interest, like parks or even sidewalks. Think of places such as the Central Park in New York or more recently, the Highline as we mentioned earlier. Public spaces of these kinds are able to congregate people and instill a sense of belonging and social cohesiveness among individuals of completely different backgrounds, cultural, ethnic, or social, economic background. Places like these, the High Park in Toronto, the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, the Botanical Garden in Saint Petersburg, or the Brockwell Park here in San Paolo are a product of city planning, and they all have a very important role in integrating people and cultures. So, in a second layer, I would also say that we have to be realistic and remember that there are other factors as well, other forces that play in the cultural reality that have perhaps a much stronger impact as compared to city planning effort. One of these factors is demographics. For example, while we speak here, the birth of non white colored babies taking place in the US outnumber the birth of white babies. So the trend we have in a country like the US points to a potentially more mixed and culturally integrated society in larger cities. I don’t know enough about Canada, but the general trend must be similar right. So, what the statistics say is that by 2045, the white Caucasian population in the US will be a minority. So, this makes diversity could be at least potentially a source of further cultural integration, that is more potent than city planning. Well, another factor impacting cultural integration or segregation is given by migration flows. Migration flows can be determined by immigration policies, like the ones you have enforced in Canada, right and also by wars and natural disasters.
Philip 56:56
These flows of people may have a huge impact, positive or negative on cultural integration and many of these flows are well beyond control of any city planning. For instance, when Greek fellow comes to Toronto in the beginning of the 20th century, it is quite natural that he or she would choose to settle down in the Danforth in the Greek town, and not in in the Chinatown and this is how communities and neighborhoods, the leader of Italiy is the China towns, the Hasidic or Muslim towns are formed, right. So it is somewhat natural that individuals and families would seek kinship, blue blood or cultural kinship, when they choose where to settle. So what I mean here is that it is not realistic, not desirable, that a given policy divert people from their choices of neighborhoods. So coming back to your question, Hayden, I really think that city planning can help promote cultural integration through the provision of public spaces of universal interest. But on the other hand, city planning and public policy, in general cannot and should not do much about people willing to gather and settle in separate neighborhoods, as long as these neighborhoods do not turn out to be sectarian communities. Let me perhaps finalize my answer with a third layer. I imply from your question, Hayden, that you are concerned about how city planning could account for integration of different cultures. This is a very important concern. But I believe that the major threat to our city is not the one represented by cultural segregation. But the one posed by the growing wealth and income inequality. In this realm, in the realm of the battle against inequality, city planning, I think, can make a huge contribution for mitigating the gaps that separated the haves and have nots. Ghettos of poverty, much more than ethnic or cultural ghettos represent a threat to our futures, I believe and here in the context of rising inequality, city planning and urban policy is well equipped with tools to fight the negative effects of this ongoing process.
Norman 59:38
Philip, you touched on something there. Pre COVID well, even getting into COVID. I was trying to figure out what was going on and nobody knows what’s going on. But what I’ve seen over the last few months, several months now is something that I only started thinking about, and I hated thinking this and Hayden’s gonna roll his eyes. He’s not gonna, Dad don’t talk about this. But what I saw was another separation of wealth and it’s worse than ever. Like, if you take a look at the Great Depression, if you take a look at the 2008 sub mortgage crisis, housing crisis, take a look at what happened right now. Like across Canada, across the world, but in the US and Canada, how many businesses have gone out of business, the restaurants, the travel agencies, people that have gone under? Yes, the government has gone and subsidized a certain amount of money. But at the end of the day, a lot of this money, where did it go and I sit down, I’d have a cigar and I talked to Hayden about this in the backyard with the other guy, my other two kids, and say, if you take a look at it, how can the stock market be rising? If you’re looking at the Dow Jones, and it’s going up, and up and up, what’s happening, and then it’s just kidding. Big money, the guys that have it are making a ton and everybody else is eating dust and it’s really scaring me right now, of how bad the problem is, right across the continents. So I don’t know if you have an opinion on that. But I just thought I’d shove that in there because you start talking about separation of wealth and it is a huge concern and I don’t even think a lot of people have been addressing it because the government has been subsidizing the people that were unemployed, but it doesn’t help the people that own businesses that just lost everything.
Philip 1:01:48
First of all here in Brazil, I always talk in public that the major risk factor for having, for dying of COVID is not is not a biological condition. The major risk factor is a socio economic condition. So, if you see them, the number of people who are dying here in Brazil, most of them are poor. So, the statistics are very, very clear on that. Black people, poor people or or is where the cases are highest. But on the economic side Norman, this is something that is very puzzling, because if you see, first of all the differences of the tools that developed and in developed countries have to fight the pandemic is so asymmetrical. Think of, for instance, this is where I have a I don’t know whether I know the terms to express. But think of how the developed countries are able to use the quantitative easing tools for the emission of new debt, to finance for the new expenditures that are being incurred to solve the problems caused by COVID. You have the developed countries that have a number of monetary tools that are at hand to finance all these efforts, whereas Brazil, and other countries that do not have a hard currency, they do not have the same ability to finance this and this implies that the fiscal deficit in Brazil is exploding in other countries as well. So this is a huge asymmetry that we have between countries.
Norman 1:03:56
Alright Philip, let’s talk about your biggest success. What would you say that would be?
Philip 1:04:02
I think my greatest success was to establish Urbem 10 years ago. My greatest success perhaps was to be able through Urbem to help push forward the agenda of Urbem changing Sao Paulo, and to push for the battle against spatial territorial inequality and as I said earlier, but the best example of our work is the Casa Paulista project that I summarized here a few minutes ago. It’s very meaningful to me, the Casa Paulista because we were able to come up with a solution to bring about affordable public housing to the city center, as I said, right beside our Metro train station, as opposed to the typical housing projects that are built in very far, peripheral areas.
Norman 1:04:50
Congratulations again on that. I wish there were more people around the world that would get involved with exactly what you’re doing. It would be a better world
Philip 1:05:01
Thank you.
Norman 1:05:02
Oh, you’re very welcome.
Norman 1:05:03
All right, we’re hitting the end of the podcast. Philip, how can people reach you?
Philip 1:05:09
I will give you my contact details and perhaps you can leave it for the public who wishes to be in touch with us. That would be a great pleasure to tell me more about what is going on here in Brazil, how we can work together and that would be a great pleasure to have to hear the echoes of our conversation, Norman and Hayden.
Norman 1:05:30
Fantastic. All right, you’re off the hook. There’s only one last question and when we’re at the end of the podcast, I always turn to the guest and ask them if they know a guy.
Philip 1:05:42
I know a guy. I know a fantastic guy, who does green real estate developer in New York. His name is Jonathan Rose. He’s the author of a fantastic book. It’s called The Wealth Tempered City. Jonathan Rose, I think he’s gonna be a great talk and I hope you get to interview him very soon.
Norman 1:06:07
That sounds awesome. So thank you again, Philip, for being on the podcast.
Philip 1:06:12
Thank you so much, Norman and Hayden, it was great to be here together with you.
Hayden 1:06:19
Hey there guys and gals, thanks for listening. That concludes our interview with Philip Yang. Make sure to tune in next time to hear our interview with Nate Ackman. Nate is the founder of ULT eSports apparel and he’s doing some really cool stuff in that space. We end up getting into how he was able to synthesize all of his artistic passions, into a career in marketing and how all of that comes out and his current brand ULT. So make sure to tune in and check it out. You don’t want to miss this one. That’s enough for me, and I’ll see you next time.
