Future Forward

Seyi Fabode (00:02.117)
Hello, hello, hello. This is the Future Forward podcast and we are back for episode two, Reza.

Reza (00:10.828)
Hey everyone, happy to be here, excited to chat again.

Seyi Fabode (00:14.373)
Yes, yes. We hope you listen to the first episode. And in the first episode, we shared that this is a podcast about the future of cities. And we are just bringing a conversation Reza and I have been having for years now. And we're bringing you in the listener into our conversations. Today's episode is about the future of infrastructure. What do you say about infrastructure Reza?

Reza (00:41.868)
Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this today. Like Seyi, you have so much background and knowledge on it, having worked at a utility, having done two startups that are very much trying to address problems with infrastructure. So yeah, this is going to be a really rich topic for us to explore. So Seyi, maybe a place to start is where we always start with a little bit of history. Take us backwards. Why is infrastructure important?

to cities, you know, as civilization has grown, this has become increasingly important and as we've become more urbanized, it's become increasingly important. So maybe let's start over there.

Seyi Fabode (01:20.005)
Let's start there. Yes. It's a great place to start. I always use a story when I talk about the history of infrastructure. This won't be the very beginning, but I think it is a bridge between what used to happen before and how we got to this point. So the story I always use is of Ma Bess. Ma Bess owned a food, what you'd call a restaurant now, beside one of the

early rail tracks on the west coast of the US. The train drivers would stop at this train station to load up some coal into the trains but Ma Bess had this small inn where they could eat and sleep overnight.

Seyi Fabode (02:14.501)
After some time, one of the train drivers who sort of fancied my best decided, you know what? We now have this thing called electricity on our train and I can give you one of the, I guess we'll call it little turbines that we have to power your inn, which will give you light.

the ability to give us hot food at any time because she could now cook. And it became this, my best ever, the enterprising innkeeper rigged up what was literally a mini, super mini grid at the inn. So, and it really, that story encompasses the things about infrastructure we don't see.

Reza (03:02.22)
Wow.

Seyi Fabode (03:11.909)
There was transportation because infrastructure has to do with moving people or things from one place to the other. There's a transportation infrastructure. There's the power infrastructure, the flow of electricity from the fuel to the conversion to heat for food or power for light. And between the...

transportation and the electricity grid and there was water involved as well. She used some of it to pump water from her well to provide water to the train drivers who stopped. So you had water infrastructure in the form of a well, power infrastructure in the form of a mini electricity grid she had, the transportation infrastructure that came through on the trains and they didn't have telecoms then but.

Reza (03:46.156)
Hmm. Hmm.

Seyi Fabode (04:10.021)
at that because fundamentally infrastructure is those things we don't see, hard assets we don't see, we see them but we don't pay attention to them that keep things moving. It is all about flow. Flow of power, flow of water, flow of people, and now flow of information in terms of telecommunications, yeah.

Reza (04:18.54)
Mm -hmm.

Reza (04:28.972)
Yeah.

Reza (04:35.18)
Hmm.

Yes, yes. So it's almost like, as you were saying, I was like, this is almost like the bottom level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, food and shelter, you know, maybe communication and transportation is one level above, but it's, you know, how we need to interact in the world. That's an amazing story. I just love that story. I love that you started with a story. I can just see that. I can just see that. I get the convictor in my mind like,

Seyi Fabode (04:47.749)
Absolutely.

Seyi Fabode (04:58.629)
Yep.

Seyi Fabode (05:02.757)
Thank you. Thank you.

Reza (05:08.14)
from that story, like why infrastructure is important in, you know, creating the ability to, I don't know, live better, you know, get higher up on the Myasla's hierarchy of needs or something like that.

Seyi Fabode (05:19.589)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Seyi Fabode (05:24.581)
And Reza, this is the thing you always talk about, which I love about you. It's that you use that phrase, it's bringing people together. Because literally all that was doing was enabling people to come together and live better lives, which is how we ended up with cities. Which is how we ended up with cities. It was at the individual level. It was at the individual level and...

Reza (05:45.548)
Yeah. Really, tell me more. So, if we... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (05:53.957)
Fast forward a few years, Samuel Insull, one of the most recognizable names in infrastructure, realized he could aggregate these like mini -grids, because that was what they were. And he formed the first sort of power grid.

by aggregating small mini -grids and centralize the source of the power where the fuel would go to, where the transportation system would take the fuel to, to convert the fuel into electricity. On the West Coast, you had Leyland Stanford, who is, well, the son is what the Stanford University was named for. But Stanford, one of the richest men in America at a point,

was one of the people responsible for the transcontinental railway system. Longer story, there are a ton of really good books about that, but it was essentially the same thing. People were in small communities and these rich, wealthy or capitalistic individuals decided, you know what, what does scale look like here?

And so they would take and aggregate or connect vast distances through the transmission system or bring fuel to one place to convert it into power. And we went from those individual small communities and cities to connections over large distances or transportation of power and telecoms over large distances to the point where.

We now have about 600 ,000 miles of AC circuit mileage in the US transmission lines.

Seyi Fabode (07:57.957)
Exactly. It's crazy. There are 3 .9 million miles of public roads and streets in the U .S. There's a fun stat here. 72 % of those, about 2 .8 million, are rural roads. Only 1 .2. The interstate highways that we all know so well, there's only 1 .2 % of the roads in the U .S.

Reza (07:59.084)
Yeah.

Reza (08:17.516)
I didn't expect that.

Reza (08:22.028)
Yeah, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (08:27.397)
but it accounts for 24 % of total travel across the US. A lot of flow on exactly, exactly. And all that underlying is now we're now at this point where we have like just massive infrastructure that to the point where we've used more concrete.

Reza (08:34.7)
Yeah, yeah, a lot of flow on those arteries there. It's like there's the arteries, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (08:57.573)
than anything else combined in terms of the mass of concrete we've used in human history, if you add everything else we've made, built, it would still not add up to the mass of concrete we've poured across the world.

Reza (09:14.732)
Wow, mind blowing. This is like, what I loved about how you described this is like, I have this picture of a system of things flowing and how that enabling that system of these, you know, transport or water or electricity or communication flowing, how that led to the ability to form cities at scale that we...

Seyi Fabode (09:15.973)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (09:25.941)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (09:40.613)
Yes. Yes.

Reza (09:44.732)
So Seyi, maybe like bring us into the present and kind of let's talk a little bit about some of the challenges that we face with these systems. Cause we're at this unique time of like grappling with just a fast growth of cities and the struggle with infrastructure and the failure to understand what you call these invisible systems that we take for granted, but.

Seyi Fabode (09:48.229)
Yes.

Reza (10:13.58)
are so critical to our ability to thrive as communities.

Seyi Fabode (10:17.637)
Yeah, it's you invisible is the word because unfortunately we rely on them so much. They're invisible, which means we've just left them in disrepair. That is really fundamentally where we are. One in three bridges in the US is in need of repair. About half of the US is currently obtaining.

Reza (10:30.092)
Hmm.

Seyi Fabode (10:45.061)
water from water systems that are in vast need of repair. The electricity grid is not set up for some of the things the electrification of our cities that we're seeing electric vehicles, electrification of transportation, more devices, our electricity grid, which is still a marvel in the world. It's it's

Reza (11:03.628)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (11:13.061)
Kind of mind blowing. People switch on their electricity and they don't realize the size of the facilities required to make that flow happen. I worked in one and every day I would walk past these turbines, just huge. And we've just left them. The bridges are collapsing. It's kind of sad, but it also speaks to...

Reza (11:31.628)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (11:42.405)
what I think the future of the industry is. Because the aggregation of all the infrastructure we've poured, more concrete than ever, we have more transmission lines across the country than at any point in time. At the same time, one of the things COVID did was really localize our attention. Because you couldn't really go too far.

with outside of your local area during COVID. And there was a trend anyway, before COVID towards this distributed nature of things. So centralized grids have stopped being in favor. We now have more distributed sources of energy, solar, some of these geothermal that can be really

individually owned. There were more wells in use in the US because people moved into some of these rural parts of the country where the infrastructure hadn't really reached. So it became super localized. And I think that's where things are going because we don't have enough will or money.

Reza (12:54.54)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (13:09.765)
political will, collective will to spend the close to $500 billion that is required to fix the electricity grid, just the grid, the electricity grid, not to talk of anything else. So we've gone from micro, Ma Bess, large, Hoover Dam,

which was also Leyland Stanford, the same guy who worked on the transatlantic train system, this large piece of infrastructure to a time where we don't have the money. And some people say the U .S. doesn't have the skill. I don't know how true that is to rebuild those things at the size they used to be and consequently will end up with micro infrastructure.

Reza (13:39.34)
Mm -hmm.

Reza (13:53.58)
You okay?

Reza (14:03.596)
Yeah, I can see how you're talking about the challenges today with trying to address it on a macro scale that probably seem insurmountable and we're going to move to the sort of micro and decentralized approach to it. That leaves a little bit lacking. I don't know if that's the right way to do it because there are inefficiencies.

I'm assuming, you know, I'm not an expert on this, but I'm assuming that there are some inefficiencies with doing it in a microwave that, like, I mean, I'll just use an example. Like if people say, hey, my water is not being provided in the way that it should be, I'm going to dig a well. Well, you know, depending on the laws in that area, like I can dig a well and take water out as much as I want. But it's a shared resource, right? It's a groundwater table that's a shared resource. It's not my water.

Seyi Fabode (14:57.253)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (15:01.093)
Yes.

Reza (15:01.26)
And so oftentimes I feel like when we get into this more decentralized and micro approach, we actually break down the bonds of community. Like the purpose of having things centralized makes you see a shared purpose or a shared need, a common good. And so we think of the resource as ours, not as mine.

Seyi Fabode (15:19.877)
Come on good.

Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (15:28.101)
Yes.

Reza (15:28.108)
And so I want to challenge you on like, tell me a little bit more about this trend towards the micro and how we overcome this, you know, misstep we could make with the common.

Seyi Fabode (15:39.493)
my goodness, you are so, so I am, I am, this is why we enjoy having these conversations, Reza, because at the same time, even as I, as I intellectually believe, because things happen, we, it disaggregates, aggregates, disaggregates, aggregates. It's the cycle of, of most things. The pendulum, yeah.

Reza (16:02.124)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pendulum. Yeah. It's a pendulum. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (16:08.517)
So I know we're at the point of disaggregation. It is what we're hearing with decentralized electricity, even decentralized water for the most part, transportation hubs that are less, just difficult to manage. Maybe it's the best way to frame it. But at the same time, you are 100 % correct about.

the tragedy of the commons when each one of us believes we have a right to some of the resources, because that's really what the infrastructure is bringing to us, or we're going to resources to do the things we need to do, or meet the people who want to come here with. So I agree with you, but I also...

Reza (16:41.644)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (17:07.525)
worry because the government and the infrastructure or Inflation Reduction Act and then the IIJ, it is tens of billions of dollars. I think the IIJ is $1 .5 trillion over 10 years or some over five years. The IRA is $740 billion.

over 10 years to take all that money and rebuild the systems we had before would be to I think miss

the opportunity to rebuild anew. And I think the aggregation, disaggregation thing is as much about distribution as it is about refreshment, or just new ideas, new technologies, new clusters of resource sharing. So maybe not at the individual home level, maybe at the neighborhood level.

Reza (17:59.916)
Mm.

Reza (18:10.06)
Mm -hmm.

Reza (18:17.516)
Mm -hmm.

Reza (18:24.972)
Mm -hmm. Okay. So you're saying that there is opportunity with this decentralization or disaggregation of forming clusters that is not necessarily on the individual level. Like you see a good, like you're optimistic about a world where it doesn't have to be fully centralized. There might be smaller pockets of, you know, utility type infrastructure that could.

Seyi Fabode (18:25.733)
Yeah, so.

Reza (18:54.348)
provide shared benefit in a way that we can't imagine today.

Seyi Fabode (18:59.781)
And that's the thing. It's that, it's that, the thing that I think drives you and I, the curiosity to say, you know what, we got economies of scale with the aggregation, which is great, but then it led to resource utilization at a scale that I don't think nature is able to handle for lack of a better way to frame it.

Reza (19:11.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (19:22.86)
Hmm.

Reza (19:27.308)
Sustain hmm. Yeah

Seyi Fabode (19:28.517)
And consequently, how can we bring it to a size, maybe it's the Dumbar number of infrastructure, I don't know, something that is sustainable, but is still not taking away the opportunity to build communities around maybe mini.

Reza (19:39.38)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I love that

Reza (19:53.932)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (19:55.973)
Infrastructure, I don't know, but I agree with you. There's something we lose if we go right back to individualism in the resource utilization framework. Yeah.

Reza (19:57.836)
Mm -hmm.

Reza (20:03.02)
this, there's something in between like Dunbar's numbers say, you know, there's 150 people that you can know well, well enough. And that's the size of a tribe. It's really how our brains evolved to form tribes and there were 150. Yeah, I really like that. I'm, you know, I like what we will do in every one of these episodes is like we're learning with you listeners. And so,

Seyi Fabode (20:13.221)
Yes, yes. Yes. Yes.

Seyi Fabode (20:28.485)
Yes. Yes.

Reza (20:30.06)
We'd love your perspectives on like, do you see a similar path to this sustainable form of infrastructure? Are there things that you've heard of or know of that we can pick up on or talk about or learn from? We imagine this sustainable infrastructure future. And so come with your ideas, come with your questions, come with your challenges. We might be just making shit up over here.

but having a lot of fun doing it with you. So, so yeah.

Seyi Fabode (21:00.549)
Yes. This is awesome. I 100 % agree. So we'll close it out at that because to sort of a final line on that, this idea is that we want to build sustainable infrastructure for people in clusters that are usable because when it's decentralized, failure doesn't happen at scale.

It's just small nodes and resilience is built in. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Great. Great.

Reza (21:30.7)
Resilience, yes. Yes. That's great. Yes. A lot of benefits there. So I love that. I love that. That's a great way to summarize it, Sheyi. So Sheyi, I mean, like one of the things that we do is take questions from listeners. And we got some great feedback last week from our episode last week. So let's share and let's talk about it.

Seyi Fabode (21:44.485)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (21:54.277)
We did, we did. Yeah, so Red, a good friend of mine, who is in finance. And so this, I guess, it hit home for him when we were talking about this idea of adapting office spaces into homes and multipurpose use. And he pointed out that there are a few.

things preventing that from happening at the scale that would make it make sense. Not insurmountable, but there. And so he shared some information from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association that suggests that a lot of zoning changes, design constraints, an example of the design constraints, every room should have a window that looks to the outside. And what you end up with in

commercial buildings, offices in the center that don't have external windows and consequently, how do you convert that without breaking those zoning laws? And then financing, financing is a hurdle. So we admit, we aspire and dream of these futures, but recognize and we want you to keep sending us these.

Reza (23:00.076)
Yeah.

Reza (23:03.724)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (23:17.669)
questions, comments, pushback, feedback to continue to educate us because Reza and I love to learn.

Reza (23:21.228)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to add one thing that, you know, from one of our listeners, this listener is my daughter. She's in high school and she's taking a class called AP Human Geography. And after listening to our episode, you know, I asked her, hey, what else should we talk about? You know, what would you be interested in? She said, well, I'm interested in the future of third spaces. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, it from...

from what I've read and what I've learned in my class, there are fewer and fewer third spaces for people to congregate. And we talked, we touched on third spaces a little bit in our last episode. And so yeah, we've added that to our list of episodes. Thank you, Ali, for a great suggestion. And if you don't, like, we'd love to hear from you, if there are topics that you want us to hear about, that you want us to talk about, that you want to hear about, please let us know.

Seyi Fabode (23:56.293)
Mm.

We touched on this, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (24:07.141)
Thank you, Ali. Yes.

Seyi Fabode (24:13.733)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (24:21.381)
Yes.

Reza (24:21.388)
where we encourage everyone to join this Future Forward community and learn with us.

Seyi Fabode (24:30.181)
Yes, and on that note, we say thank you. And I think we're doing this every week. We don't know how long it will be, but till the next episode, thanks so much, Reza.

Reza (24:45.324)
Thank you, Seyi. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you on the next one.