Reid riffs on building better cities

Reid discusses what aspects of urban planning need to be reimagined. He advocates that prioritizing smart technology, clean energy, and data can vastly improve residents’ quality of life. Plus, Aria asks Reid about the potential of technologies existent and forthcoming—including self-flying cars. For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Reid Hoffman?

  I'm Reid Hoffman.

• 0:01Aria Finger?

  And I'm Aria Finger.

• 0:03Reid Hoffman?

  We want to know what happens if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way.

• 0:08Aria Finger?

  Typically, we ask our guests for their outlook on the best possible future. But now, every other week, I get to ask Reid for his take.

• 0:17Reid Hoffman?

  This is Possible.

• 0:21Aria Finger?

  Reid, you are an investor in California Forever, which we touched on in both of our last few guests on Possible, Jan Schramek and Devin Zogel. So what has either resurfaced or crystallized for you after those conversations about the future of cities?

• 0:37Reid Hoffman?

  Well, you know, it's funny. It's partially that so few people, we take cities for granted, and so few people think about what is first principles? What is the evolution? What is the design of them? And one of the things that was, you know, amazing and astonishing about both Jan and Devin was, you know, thinking about like, how do we make this a lot better for people? As opposed to just saying, well, the number of cities in the world is the number of cities, and they kind of increment the way they increment? That's it? And, you know, it's like, no, no. If we're really rethinking this, what are the things that we do? And obviously, there's a bunch of things that generally matter, what most people encounter, affordable housing. So how is it that we get more housing stock, more quality housing stock?

• 1:21Reid Hoffman?

  What are the methods for doing that? A lot of people encounter that. But they don't think about, you know, things that, for example, Devin surprised me with, which is narrower streets. It's like, that is a very counterintuitive statement, but might very well be correct. Or similarly, one of the things that we naturally kind of tend to be doing, kind of implicitly in a lot of our social planning, is separating out age groups. And actually, in fact, blending the age groups is positive for all age groups. It's kind of like, thinking about it in bold, new, fresh ways is what's excellent about both of them, and in kind of different directions. And part of the thing that people, like, you know,

• 2:05Reid Hoffman?

  you kind of think about like, and so it's like, well, would you rather be living in a city, you know, built in the 1800? Or would you rather be living in a city built in 2020? And it's the same kind of thing of technological stack, learnings, and a bunch of other things. Like, this shouldn't be the odd artifact. Of a couple of entrepreneurs, you know, going into what is almost the wilderness and saying, "We're gonna create a new city here," but should be kind of part of all of our thinking and all of our discourse. And I think that universality for everybody encountering it and everyone giving some thought because for various reasons that both Devin and Jan went into, like cities are what create

• 2:47Reid Hoffman?

  the majority of the population of people's lives. And they shape it and they amplify it and they they they create great options and opportunities. And they're also the thing that create challenges and environments and other things. So encountering that and making that a lot better is, I think, really important. And of course, building some new ones, just like anything else in life, is a super important part of that.

• 3:12Aria Finger?

  And I think a lot of people, of course, have nostalgia for the past in all different ways. And that also comes up in sort of architecture and, you know, you don't want new buildings. But I think, you know, Devin brought up Paris, and that's one of those cities that has actually been rebuilt, rebuilt, rebuilt. You, you know, you see a facade from like the 1700s and then you walk in and behind it is this beautiful new, you know, technologically advanced space. So I think we can have both. We can have sort of the old, like, take the best of both. And so, you know, Devin talked about electric leaf blowers and solar power. And we talked about remote work, sort of all of these technological advances that are letting us sort of build the cities of the future.

• 3:53Aria Finger?

  Are there specific technologies or data that we should be using to build the future of cities? Or are there any AI applications that you think about when we talk about designing cities? Like, what more technology should we be bringing into these discussions?

• 4:06Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I think the short answer is tons. But, you know, it goes it goes from the visible and the obvious to, you know, like, for example, how do you have green building construction? How do you have much more eco cooling and heating functions which are high energy things? To somewhat less obvious and potentially more controversial, which is like you could imagine, you know, with kind of modern micro reactor designs, you know, you could actually have little teeny nuclear kind of reactors and like space for that that can power things that by the way, if they go

• 4:48Reid Hoffman?

  wrong, all you basically do is shut the door and come back in 20 years, right? You know, it's like, that's it. That's as bad as it can go, right? And, you know, like there's that. And then there's data questions, like you could say, okay, well, think as opposed to doing, you know, Waymo and Waze with like the smartphone. Say, say, for example, you're reprogramming all the traffic and, and, you know, you're, you never get gridlocked because it's all automatically managed. And, you know, you've got like part of your emergency response things is you've got cameras everywhere, but the cameras, you know, the streets and so forth, but the cameras go, someone's fallen down,

• 5:30Reid Hoffman?

  go help them. Wait, there's a crime happening on Fifth Street. Turn on the alarm and shine a light. You know, you could just imagine a whole range of things that when you really begin to think about the cities of the future, which go from everything from super important kind of green things. And you can imagine kind of what is like walkable cities and all the rest to, you know, how does the world of, of AI and data and bits, you know, make everything better? It's like one of the more common, you know, kind of knee jerk responses is isn't AI using more electricity? And isn't that a problem? It's like, well, but AI is going to also use more electricity to make us much smarter on everything, including how we use electricity. So, you know, that's part of what progress is.

• 6:14Reid Hoffman?

  Anyway, so that, that whole range, I mean, we could literally spend hours talking about like, let's look at every single piece of technology in a city, both visible and present and physically there to underneath. And then that, that may not even be there yet and say, how do you upgrade?

• 6:31Aria Finger?

  I'm probably dating myself, but the movie Enemy of the State, I feel like is a really great example of when you were using computer programmers to stop people in traffic and to like keep giving people the red light. But to your point, why couldn't we do the opposite? Why couldn't when ambulances are coming down a road automatically lights change so that they can go through and it doesn't cause a traffic jam? Like, there is so much we could do with the data of how people move around that would make everyone's life better. So I'm waiting for the enemy of the state, too.

• 7:01Reid Hoffman?

  Yeah. And by the way, part of like that is you actually, in fact, when you envision the city of the state, you would actually have cybersecurity on someone's changing the lights. Why is it? Who is doing that? Right? Let's set off an alarm there.

• 7:16Aria Finger?

  Totally. I love it. Well, so speaking, speaking of sort of science fiction, science fiction authors have always, you know, entertained what these future cities will look like. And, you know, just over 100 years ago, we were just starting to, you know, take flight. And now we may be on the horizon of self-flying cars. And you are, in fact, an investor in Joby. And so what can we expect, you know, future cities to look like? And I know we don't try to predict too far in the future. But why is it like so captivating to, you know, predict this future where we have, you know, Joby e helicopters flying around everywhere?

• 7:54Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I think, you know, making the city, transport and network 3D, you know, we already have, obviously, cities with great subway systems and other kinds of things as ways of doing that. And you've got, you know, stuff that's on the ground. And going to the air is just that 3D, you know, high quality. And you can imagine anything from one of the weird things you have because of the configurations of space, like the most common one people experience is between the city and the airport. And the city and the airport, you know, whether it's JFK in New York or other things, just gets to be a nightmare. And if you just kind of go, hey, look, I can fly there. Right? It eases a whole bunch

• 8:36Reid Hoffman?

  of congestion, is green in that regard, both in environmental impact and also, of course, quality of life impact, and then makes that whole thing work better. Not only we have Joby doing this, but you know, you'll see things from zipline, right? Which is like delivery of stuff. Like if you kind of go- Oh God, I need an EpiPen, right? You might actually be able to hit a button and it's like the drone takes off and is coming to you at high speed to get the EpiPen there in the right time. That could save a life, you know? And so like the people thing is part of it and like, you know, airport commutes and other kind of geo configurations of things, but also logistics and delivery stuff.

• 9:16Reid Hoffman?

  And so I think they, you know, thinking through the 3D and you don't need to go to jets in anti-gravity. We still have no idea how anti-gravity might even be possible. But the notion of quiet, effective, making quality of life for the majority, like the city dwellers, much better, that's line of sight within the horizon.

• 9:42Aria Finger?

  Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting. Like there is so much we can do just with, again, the noise pollution that, you know, these, whether it's an e-bike, you know, electric vehicle, whatever it might be, that will just take cities in the right direction if we can apply this technology across the board. So I'm, I'm excited for that, that futuristic city that we'll see, like you said, not, not too far in the distance. So thank you so much, Reid.

• 10:10Reid Hoffman?

  Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It's hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Sarah Schlied, Adrian Bain, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.

• 10:28Aria Finger?

  Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Saieda Sabiyeva, Ian Ellis, Greg Beato, Ben Relis, Parth Patel, and Little Monster Media Company.