Challenger Cities EP100: How Big Things Get Done with Bent Flyvbjerg

This is the 100th episode of Challenger Cities. A bit of a milestone right? This thing started as an attempt to explore and make a difference specifically in Toronto, but early on took a bit of a turn to have conversations about cities and infrastructure that didn't seem to be happening anywhere else …

… the ones that fall between planners, architects, engineers, economists and what ‘regular’ people want in cities. I didn't expect to still be at it, let alone to have talked my way through 100 guests to get here.

I think Bent Flyvbjerg makes a fitting person to mark the occasion, having spent a career exploring perhaps one of the most consequential questions in the business of cities. How big things actually get done? And so often they aren't?

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At a time when so many cities and nations are discussing their need for new infrastructure, they are also often arguing over the cost and time required to build it. Bent, with Dan Gardner, pretty much wrote the book on why so many big infrastructure projects end up being so much more expensive than they should have been.

We get into some of the principles in the book, along with some of what's missing when these big projects start out.

His blunt takeaway after the data is that the biggest risk is ourselves as we systematically underestimate risk and assume our project is the exception. The remedy is to be a “realistic optimist,” keep a learning mindset and treat innovation as coming from learning. The episode frames this as fitting the podcast’s broader mission of examining how cities and infrastructure actually get built.

Here's to the next 100 episodes!