Alain Bertaud: Australia’s world-leading urban design

May 7, 2026 · 2 hr 2 min · 27 segments

Alain Bertaud has worked in over forty cities across the world. He has seen what happens when cities try to function without land markets — in Moscow, in Beijing, in post-apartheid Johannesburg. He has seen what happens when planners restrict the market's ability to produce floor space — in Mumbai, in New York, and, indeed, in Australian cities. In 2018, he synthesised sixty years of field work into a book: *Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities*, published by MIT Press. It became, quickly, one of the most important books in the canon of housing and land use reform, providing the most robust framework available for combining urban economics with urban planning. In two hours of conversation, we cover the functioning of cities as labour markets, what communist cities taught him about what markets actually do, and how to diagnose a city the way a doctor diagnoses a patient — with specific numbers, rather than adjectives. We also got, at the very end, an admission from Bertaud: that leaving the importance of urban design out of *Order Without Design* was a mistake, and Australia, of all places, is the one that convinced him this was so. Purchase *Order Without Design*: https://yimby-melbourne.square.site/product/order-without-design-how-markets-shape-cities-alain-bertaud/PQ5DV6J7VMNTEI3SC7W5XEDE

Speakers: Alain BertaudGuestJonathan O'BrienHost

The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said

Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes

Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline

Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode

Alain Bertaud: Australia’s world-leading urban design

We value your privacy

Alain Bertaud: Australia’s world-leading urban design

Sign up to see more

Sign up to see more