Translator: He Huang
By the time you retire,
you or one of your friends, one of your associates
will have wasted three years travelling to work.
If you could take that time back, I wonder what you would do with it.
Theoretically, you could travel to Mars and back in three years.
I've built many buildings in three years.
I could go back to university, you could go back to university
and get a degree in three years instead of sitting on a train.
[Wasted time]
When I started my career, I started in London.
London is a low-density city.
It took me one and a half hours from my bed to my desk every morning
and one and a half hours back.
I was spending three hours a day travelling,
and that was more time than I spent eating and recreating.
My whole life was governed by travelling.
And then I moved to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is a high-density Asian city.
It's extremely well-connected.
People live next to their work.
The downside is they don't have much recreation space.
It's a long way away from their homes.
The upside is that they have very short time to go to work -
less than half an hour.
So, only one hour a day wasted
on the extremely efficient public transport system.
And then in the '90s, I started working in Singapore.
And Singapore is also a high-density Asian city,
the same as Shanghai, the same as Hong Kong,
but it's a little bit more difficult to get to work -
it takes about one hour.
And here in Shanghai,
you're looking at about 1.5 hours from your bed to your desk.
OK, so our cities are not quite performing for us,
but let's try to look at what we want them to do.
I'm sure you all know that in the last five years,
you've noticed your lives are changing
from that of your parents, of people before.
The Internet generation has connected you.
You're brought together through the Internet
and all the devices of the Internet.
You can do things quickly, you can connect quickly;
you can make connections you could never make before.
And that's changed your lives.
You've become very, very efficient.
Unfortunately, the cities that you are living in are not efficient.
They're not keeping up with the pace of change.
They were planned and built for a different way of life.
They just cannot keep up with your new ways of life.
[New lifestyle, but old city]
[City choice and diversity]
Let's try to analyse what we like about cities.
Five hundred million people have been urbanised in China
in the last 20 years.
Eighty percent of the Western world is urbanised,
and over half of China is urbanised.
So, we need to understand why people like cities,
why people enjoy cities.
And I say it's about choice.
I think you have choices in a city - many, many choices of what you do.
And if you get something wrong, it doesn't matter, it's easy to fix
because there's plenty of other choices.
And it's about serendipity, it's about those happy accidents
because there's so many choices.
It's nice things happening all the time.
Do you all want to live in the suburbs?
At the moment, in cities,
most people live in suburbs, in residential areas.
But if I look around this room right now,
I'm seeing a lot of young people,
probably single
or young married with no children,
some middle-aged people with children.
I'm seeing some older people, maybe retired.
So, you don't all have the same requirements.
You younger people probably want to live right in the core where it's really buzzy,
next to the nightclubs and the bars and next to your work,
and where you can walk to work, and not have to get onto that subway.
And then, older people here with children,
they will want to be and probably live here in the suburbs,
next to the school so the kids can enjoy a good school,
but then when you retire,
you probably want to be in a connected place again.
So, why is it that all the housing looks the same?
You're all different, you all got different demands,
but our housing looks the same.
OK, there's something wrong, isn't there?
City's not meeting our expectations.
Shanghai is not unusual.
Most cities park the housing
outside of the business district,
and Shanghai is the same.
The one unusual thing about Shanghai
is it's all on the west, it's all on one side,
it's not on the east side.
But that means that you're taking one and a half hours
even by an excellent subway system which Shanghai has,
even by that excellent subway system,
you're taking one and a half hours to get to work.
Time travel.
Einstein solved that problem, I guess, but we can't do time travel, OK,
so we can't do relativity and all that goofy stuff, right?
So, we've got to work out another way to solve this problem.
You probably have all come across some very interesting developments recently
where you have residential and service apartment,
SOHO, loft, hotel, shopping centres and offices,
all clustered together into one development.
They're not huge developments, but they are live-work developments.
And they're the seeds for a new way of life.
I think, I predict that this is the way the cities are going to cope
with the pressures of the changing Internet generation,
bringing people together into a live-work-recreation way of life.
How does that work?
Well, these city hubs, as I called them,
are higher density, a little bit like Hong Kong -
mini versions of Hong Kong.
So, they're higher density.
You get more people in there, more bars, more things going on.
You have work in there, living in there, you have everything going on.
And you young people
that want to live that life, that connected city life,
you leave those suburbs to the west of Shanghai,
and you'll come here, you'll come to these city hubs,
and that will create less pressure in the suburbs,
which means the suburbs will have more parks, more openness.
And it also means less pollution
because now all of you people that lived in the suburbs
are no longer travelling into work.
Right, you're there, you're walking to work -
much more sustainable, keeps you fit too.
I predict that cities will develop a network of these hubs
around a central business district,
and that network will grow naturally
because of the pressure of travel on the central business district
will force this issue.
There won't be the old type of 'new town',
but it will be a true high-density live-work-recreation community
where everything will happen in one place
without the need for extensive travel.
Outside, in the suburbs,
you will have an even better quality of life
than you have now, with more parks, more openness, more space for schools -
this is actually Singapore - similar to Singapore,
which is actually at the same density as Shanghai.
'Wow', says this little guy here.
'Wow, it's a great idea.
I'm looking forward to living in a city hub.'
Well, he's going to have to wait a while because they're not here yet.
We're just starting to build these things, right?
But you see the seeds of it.
You'll recognise some of these images of live-work communities,
of work-live-recreation communities.
They exist.
They're not big, but they're starting to grow.
Even elevated parks that connect up buildings
so that you don't have to walk on the roads,
you don't have to travel on the roads,
you can walk across the city
at an upper level connecting all your facilities.
Public rooftops are now being made available,
and even connected rooftops across buildings.
Do you see where this is leading?
Our buildings are starting to dematerialise.
They're starting to become open to the public at all levels.
What's missing is the glue,
the glue that holds all this together.
What's going to bring all of these fledgling ideas together
to make the city hub, to make the new city?
[Where do we build city hubs?]
Maybe to answer that question,
we need to consider where the city hub will be located.
It's not a matter of putting pins on a map.
We have to approach this scientifically.
[City hub requires strong infrastructure]
A city hub requires connection.
All of you need connection.
So, city hub must have good road system.
It must have a great subway system.
And where the road system intersects with the subway system,
then you've got choice, and you've got connection.
[City hubs over subway interchanges]
Here's a map of Shanghai
showing what happens when you plot out the ring road
with the intersection of two subway systems.
That gives you north-south connections underground and above ground.
And what I've plotted out there is a few city hubs that are on their way.
You'll recognise them, you go there,
you'll start to see the type of development that I'm talking about.
And that sort of development,
because of your pressure, because of your demands,
will develop more and more towards this live-work community.
Maybe I should hand maps out later on.
[What might a city hub look like?]
I sense you might be getting interested,
you might be thinking,
'OK, sounds reasonable, but what's it going to look like?
All these people, all these towers - could be crazy, huh?
No, I'm not sure.
Show me what it's going to look like, OK?'
You're right, you need more public space.
So many people can't fit on those pavements.
There's no way.
You like this?
Need more space.
So, the buildings have to become porous to people,
no longer fortress-like towers.
They're going to have to be perforated and open:
space, it'd be one to connect up between buildings,
level two, three, and four connected up with bridges,
rooftops connected, even parks.
'That's a crazy idea.
A park? You are going to elevate a whole park?'
Trust me, this park exists.
It connects up over 20 buildings in Hong Kong.
It's at level four.
It's about 30 meters above the road,
it's an entire park system.
So, these concepts exist.
We can do it.
We can make our cities truly porous and public.
[How do I start?]
Have I convinced you yet?
How do you start?
'OK, all right, how do I buy into this crazy idea?'
It's not so hard.
First,
do you want to get out of the residential situation that you're in now in suburbia?
Do you want to get out of suburbia?
Does it fit you?
If you have children, probably not.
If your work is close to the suburbs you live, probably not.
But if you want to be in a live-work-recreation community,
you will probably want to take up this choice.
That means you're going to be living in a smaller apartment, taking less space,
you're going to be walking to work, so you need to be ready to walk,
and you want to have that type of lifestyle.
Not for all of you, definitely not.
[How do I start?]
And then you need to start looking.
That map of Shanghai, I guarantee you, will happen in the next five years.
As Shanghai develops, those city hubs will develop,
and your lives will change as you move there.
And so,
when you come to your retirement,
you will know that you did not waste three years.
Thank you.