The best part of a Reg Hartt presentation is what he has to say.

All through organized history, if you wanted prosperity you had to have cities. Cities are places that attract new people with new ideas.

Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda popon stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: "This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn't be on the street!" That judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home.

(The psuedoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.)

Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.

To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.

But look what we have built ... This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.