Tea time in Yemen

Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

Transcript · Audio · Photos · https://devonzuegel.com/owd-1-tea-time-in-yemen

This first episode is an introduction to the Bertauds. I was going to title it "Keeping Up With The Indiana Joneses", but I was advised against it. In this first conversation, we traveled all around the globe for a whirlwind tour of the adventurous life they've led together.

We started in Tunisia to hear about Marie-Agnes' childhood, then hopped over to neighboring Algeria, where Marie-Agnes and Alain first met. This is also when Alain was first drafted to work as an urban planner in the midst of Algeria's independence from France.

Then, we made our way to the US, visiting NYC to hear about how Alain and Marie-Agnes started a family when they were penniless but optimistic immigrants to America.

Our next stop was Yemen, where Alain and Marie-Agnes worked for three years as urban planners and befriended Yemeni artisans, tribespeople, and farmers.

Then we picked up speed, zipping around the globe to learn about their experiences working in Bangkok, Port-au-Prince, San Salvador, and beyond and how their identity as foreigners played a role in what they were able to achieve.

The conversation then moved on to the topic of "city deflation", and how declining populations are a new challenge for cities this century. We made stops in France and Japan, and we visited cities in Russia that lost so much population after the Soviet Union fell that they were formally closed. Then we went to Detroit, where we discussed why the water was turned off and how it's a more nuanced story than is normally told when looked at through the lens of "city deflation".

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