♪ carol: welcome to bloomberg businessweek. jason: we're headed inside bloomberg headquarters in new york. cities,t is all about including some home prices, great for some and not for others. jason: and the world's first 5g

broadband network to bring everything to your phone a lot faster. carol: all of that coming up and more as we take you to this very special edition of bloomberg businessweek. jason: congress is back from summer break. hearings on everything from social media to a supreme court nominee. -- stevenphen jenness dennis joins us to wrap up the week. f withstart up with -- of brett kavanaugh. a lot of fireworks inside the hearing room. democrats trying to bore in on the question of whether he would overturn roe versus wade and would give the president a pass from subpoenas on things like the mueller investigation. and hot topic issues like abortion and health care. brett kavanaugh did not really answer the key questions.

unlike a lot of supreme court nominees before him, he would not rule out or rule in overturning roe v. wade. key abortion decision hangs over all of these proceedings. it is the reason why you have people trust in -- dressed in tale" protest art outside the hearing room. the democrats are upset there even millions of documents that have been kept from the public. they are threatening to release some of them. a lot of fights, but it does not necessarily mean he is in trouble for confirmation. no republican has come out against him. another set of hearings involving jack dorsey of twitter and sheryl sandberg, coo at facebook.

google officials were missing in washington. but they were answering onstions about bias posting social media and meddling in the election. what is the takeaway? companies still have a huge amount of work to do. it is not clear they have a handle on these problems. they have both kind of admitted that, especially dorsey. the resourcesve of facebook, which is hiring 20,000 people to work on security. orsey cap is saying, we need to but he got kind of embarrassed by lawmakers who were able to pull tweets be real-time showing people trying to sell cocaine and other drugs on his service.

-- he had to do a lot of apologizing. it is going to be hard for twitter to scale up some of their solutions. twitter stock took a hit. dorsey was talking about massive shifts in how twitter operates. but he did not really get into too much detail as to how this was going to work. we have to ask you about the drama at the other end of pennsylvania avenue. bob woodward's book week earlier in the week. there was an anonymous op-ed in the "new york times." what effect has this had on the white house? steven: the hits keep on coming for president trump, whether it be the omarosa book, the john

mccain week, all of his subtle andlaying not-so-subtle attacks on the president, than this op-ed from someone inside his own administration saying they are part of a resistance to the president. you have seen the president flash out in public and on twitter. -- lash out in public and on twitter. he attacks jeff sessions, saying his lack of interference in the russian investigation could cost them seats in the midterms. it has been a perfect storm for the president. every week, we are getting more of this and coming closer to some kind of cataclysm, it seems. it does not feel like we are in anything close to stability before the election. this special issue of

"bloomberg businessweek" is all about cities. cities have to solve a watch of problems to live up to their economic potential, pollution, noise, housing. we check in with our editor for the thinking behind the story. max: our framework was the future, the sooner than you think cities issue, the framework we use to think about technology and where things are going. ideaed up focusing on the that cities are really important, something everybody knows if we talk about. there are these megacities growing really fast, economically, cities are shares. ever greater that is creating all of these problems that need to be managed. that is what gave the issue shape initially.

there are these tech hugs all around the world -- hubs all around the world. there is this problem on top of that, housing. grow, peoplees cannot afford to live there. that is creating all sorts of interesting issues that are political and can slow down economic growth. we look at that from two different ways. essay that argues that a lot of these housing issues can be solved with political work. the second story is about seattle and the tech industry, particularly amazon. this story is due to the framing you described. every mayor in every city in america had a plan for hq2.

neighborhoodn this that has been utterly and notmed by amazon, just by amazon, but by a billionaire, paul allen. max: i followed the tech industry very closely and i did there was this neighborhood north of downtown. know how dramatic the change had been. this story started as a moody report about what things were like there. you have all of these mayors going to this neighborhood to check it out. developersme a valhalla. everyone wants to be like seattle. people who live there or not so

sure. -- are not so sure. seattle is at the height of its power, but there are all these questions. that paired with the essay about things give use an interesting picture of how to change these things is what the solutions are. jason: the miami story is terrifying. it is the only word that captures it. is not thehink miami only city experiencing these issues around climate change, but not the obvious ones. : everyone things climate change is going to come from rising sea levels, and washing homes away. but the water is coming from below in miami. sorts ofreating all

genuinely terrifying problems that could put the drinking water at risk. this story was originally a photo essay. work with the photographer who wrote it and we would take beautiful pictures of water in miami. the photographer delivered a spectacular first chris that was edited -- delivered a spectacular first draft that was edited. it's an amazing read, like a horror story about the future. as scary as this is for miami, it can be addressed, it would just be wildly expensive. next, one city in china is dealing with congestion and a quiet environment all of a sudden. yesl: and turning a no to to solve the affordable housing problem. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back. jason: you can also find us online. carol: and on the mobile app. jason: we just heard about this story on miami. it was a big highlight, scary. water it talks about how could swallow a quarter of miami by the end of the century. but there is a more immediate threat. jason: drinking water. ris: climate change is threatening one particular part of the miami infrastructure, and ability to provide drinking water to its population. if you lose that access to cheap drinking water, it is a real problem. expensive solutions, or

you start to lose people. the story looks at what the answers might be. this: everyone has glamorous view of miami, whether it is south beach or the gleaming towers color -- or miami vice. i am dating myself. you saw a very different side of miami. tell us what you saw. miami is a great town and those parts are real. they are supported by infrastructure that occurs out of sight. it is being tested and threatened by climate change. i took a trip with the number two at the county sewer department. his job is to think of what these threats are and how to deal with them. systems that the

clean this water and pumping underground, and right where the everglades begin, there is something called the northwest wellfield. as water moves in through the aquifier, that water will stay clean and fresh the longest. they want to show me they are aware of these threats and working on them. some of them do not have good answers. does not know how long it will take for these climate threats to really push their water supply. they have to plan for a timeline. enormous,involved is billions and billions of dollars to protect their infrastructure or build new infrastructure. when do they start trying to pay the cost of these upgrades, not knowing how soon these threats will hit? miami will head back sooner than most -- hit that dilemma sooner

than most. carol: you talk about a superfund site, the toxins leaking in. you also talk about the rock lack and mining -- rock lake and mining and feces. christopher: you took my line. these are all complex, so we try to go one by one. of all the various climate threats, one real threat is that superfund, as they have more and more flooding and on this site, some of those toxins held in the soil could eastgate from where they are held into the groundwater. vulnerable,ecially because you have a dozen or so superfund sites.

you have that very shallow groundwater. the concern in miami is that as flooding gets worse, you could have more even's where -- events where these toxins get pushed tax the aquifier and infrastructure to try and clean those toxins out of drinking water. citizens in miami have to worry about this because you don't know whether climate change will increase the threat and how quickly. funding for water infrastructure is really expensive. there is less state and federal help them to used to be. -- help than there used to be. and you have this climate pressure which means you have to spend more even as funding goes down. issue, we look at what the cities of tomorrow may

look like. carol: we do this often just by listening. we talk about one's city specifically and how it is getting a lot cleaner and quieter. the arrival ofg the first kind of technology taking noise out of the city environment. nzhen is a huge city with 20 million people, and imagine taking out all of the noise out of the cars in new york and you get a vision of what this is like. this is missing from the audio fabric of the city. take us back to 1980, because i feel like that is where some of the development again. aron: this is not ancient history when you go back to the automate of times --

pre-automotive time. pre-automotive zone happened in shenzhen because of its proximity to hong kong. of allu saw the arrival kinds of modern infrastructure and transportation turn what was basically a fishing village into , where thereacity is now 20 million people. city isn'tre of the centered around this old village centered around this old village structure. a lot of people don't have cars, which made it easier for it to transform. how did china make this shift from electric to combustion? of the motivations

was how terrible pollution conditions got. we have seen this change over the last 10 years, a kind of ton of incentives being created for consumers to buy electric vehicles and the state pushing disincentive forward. the adoption of electric buses is being tracked, anti-china accounts for 99% as of 2017 of all of the world's electric buses. company is a leading manufacturer, as well as the leading manufacturer of plug-in vehicles. carol: warren buffett has invested in them. they are a big player. aaron: they are huge in china. five years ago they were treated as something of a laughingstock,

but they are basically transforming how people in china get around. they make about 9500 new electric buses every five weeks, entire-- the size of the bus fleet of the city of london. you would be hard-pressed to find their stuff outside of china right now, that they are using the support of the chinese government, and there is so much support for these vehicles in china, which allows them to internationalize. jason: coming up, cities that experience lots of growth, run into a lot of problems. carol: there are ways to get home prices under control. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ jason: welcome back to

"bloomberg businessweek." you can listen to us on the radio, sirius xm channel 119, in new york, boston,

washington dc -- >> and in the bay area and in london. carol: bloomberg cities are great unless you are trying to find affordable housing. jason: this is one of the biggest problems that mayors and governors and heads of countries face. but there are solutions out there. crisis so housing incredibly expensive? cities are the very places that most need new talent because they are engines of creativity for the u.s. and the world. there is not enough housing. to live there. building more housing is the obvious solution, all kinds of rules restrict that from happening, and they can be put in place by the people already

there and they lack the incentive to change the rules, because if there is more demand, they are going to be able to sell more. they benefit at the expense of everyone else. includes local employers, that are starved for talent, and people from all over the rest of the country, even their children, who would like to live there and benefit from that engine of growth. you have some pretty staggering statistics about the cost of living in some of these places, starting in silicon valley. two bedroom, one bathroom, detached one car garage, no air-conditioning. peter: 880 square feet. jason: one point seven 5 million -- 1.57 $5 million is the asking price. peter: if you are watching from silicon valley, you are

thinking, what is the big deal? jason: what are the economic implications of that. a place likein silicon valley specifically when a house like that cost that much? peter: companies have to pay more to attract people so they do not go work in austin or someplace like that instead. there are fewer opportunities for workers. this also inhibits their growth, to some extent. who wins? not the shareholders of facebook and google -- >> whoever is selling the house. transfer is a massive of wealth to people who just happened to buy before the boom. carol: why are municipalities pushing back a little bit? peter: some are. be the ones that

manage to get enlightened voters who see the upside ways the downside. i talked to the mayor of the heart of silicon valley. view put through a plan to build up to 10,000 units of housing right around the world headquarters of google, where it is very badly needed. it is not a presidential area -- area, or has not been until now. they are happy to have it there because it is not in their backyard. view,in mountain metaphorically. google and the new people win and the locals don't lose. jason: one place where housing has become an issue in seattle. there is a lot of talk about the amazon second headquarters. carol: and south korea's

seamlessly networked city. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back. ahead, much more on cities and the changes they could undergo in a 5g universe. jason: and one startup is devising new ways of mapping the world. carol: amazon is topping a $1 trillion market cap, only the

second company to do so. jason: it is one of the metrics that sums up the rise of amazon and jeff bezos. charge to a terminal show this and how cool it really is. the first u.s. company to do that. it took them a pretty long time to get that last $200 billion. it did not take amazon that long, only a few months. it is now hovering right around the $1 trillion mark. amazon has also made its mark on seattle, occupying some 8.1 million square feet in the city. this has changed the rental market there. taylor: it has affected the price per square foot. it has affected the retail and commercial industries. one city where amazon has made an impact is the lake union

more than $55 per square foot. other local business districts are around the $40-40 five dollar mark. carol: taylor, thank you. amazon has led much of a change we see in seattle. you probably don't know the other billionaire who helped build a section of that city. one of our editors explain why a mayor is clamoring for amazon's second headquarters and why they should be careful what they wish for. seattle has undergone huge growth in the last decade. seattle seems to be at the height of its power and prominence. for amazon asked for bids their second headquarters, we

had this real estate-economic t, crowding touris into lake union. but seattle is in a deeply uncomfortable moment. months,ast couple of different situations have exploded into anger and thanks to about the growth -- and angst about the growth, who it is leaving behind. i tried it to look at these trade-offs and what is going on in our home city. jason: you have lived in this area for some time. what has that transformation been like in your neighborhood? dina: i moved here in 1999. what we looked at in particular

is a neighborhood called south lake union. it was built up by paul allen, the microsoft cofounder, and largely inhabited by amazon. a lot of google buildings are going up there right now, facebook, medical facilities. when i moved here, this was an out of favor neighborhood. no one went there, even though it was right near downtown. it had been a light industrial area. and 1980's, it had become this pedestrian-free area of warehouses and floral supplies. even though it was near downtown, people did not go there. if they went there, you did not completelye it was pedestrian unfriendly. that has changed. when you walk through the

neighborhood now, it is full of mainly tech workers holding coffee, rushing off to their jobs. it is full of office buildings, whole foods, trendy restaurants, craft cocktail emporiums. carol: and amazon has 8.1 million square feet, pretty amazing. dina: it is. what it has about done to the city, it has brought in more than 50,000 jobs, but on the flipside, it has caused a lot of disruption. you put in 40 or 50,000 workers and only build about 10,000 housing units. those people have to go somewhere. they have gone into all of these outlying neighborhoods. we have talked about the impact a particular neighborhood, a historically black neighborhood, where paul

allen is now building a massive apartment and retail complex in a way the neighborhood is finding very disruptive in a neighborhood that is already now below 20% in terms of the black population. allen is mounting this next act of moving into other neighborhoods with residential and maybe neighbors are not happy about what is being done to the their neighborhoods -- to their neighborhoods. jason: so all of the places scrambling for this second headquarters, was this lightning in a bottle caught by two billionaires by accident? what should people take away from what they can do to make amazon happy? dina: what seattle folks say people should take away from this rapid expansion is to try and be a little more thoughtful. that cameo the mayor up with the policies that enabled this, and he said, it

would have been better for the city if the development had been slower and if there had been better planning. 'sazon asked these company competing cities, what will you do about traffic and housing? looking towards not having a repeat of the negative consequences. carol: seattle and silicon valley and beyond. the massive impact of technology around the cities 10 be seen around the globe. i don't think you can talk about the growth of technology in china without mentioning jack ma. jason: we got an exclusive sit down with him. he went from being an english teacher to a billionaire, one of the most influential voices in technology and business. he has set his sights on philanthropy now. jack: we have so much resources in alibaba. 600 million people use us almost

every month. not put the kind of love in for spect in responsibility into our business andl, -- and respect responsibility into our business alibaba couldant destroy a lot of things. cold, but you have to make the organization warm. >> are you succeeding? put 0.03%id we should of the total alibaba revenue into the environment and education. nobody cared 10 years ago. we had no revenue. now we have such a big revenue. i said, we have to do this. in terms of technology, how

do you bring that to play in your mission for transforming education? ack: everything we have taught students at the past hundred years is about knowledge and science and industry. in the future, what we teach the kids is about innovation, creativity and construction. how can you do the things that machines cannot do? i am picking up a time about that. -- thinking all the time about that. i can be a teacher and a mentor to many young educators. e,am very successful on lif though i don't call myself a successful and jupiter. i have gone through a lot of tough days. peo is very good for young ple.

i will teach young people have to face challenges. tom: can this help which divides -- rich divides? jack: i think it will. people in china and america have the heart of love and respect and trust. this is the common language we should have. revolution,chnology close to world war i and world war ii. now we have the third. if there is a war, the war should fight against poverty and disease. we should work together on common things. it is easy to complain and finger point. if we work together, it is an

opportunity for all of us. that is something i hope i can do. europe.e head over to carol: and we know there are things you don't like about living in cities, but we are on it. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can find us online. jason: and our mobile app. cities are laboratories for innovation. carol: some of this is about common sense. jason: our reporter brought us two stories. the first is about nuisances everyone is familiar with.

>> garbage takes up a lot of space. it takes upcity, space and attracts rodents. some cities have been doing innovative things with the way they are dealing with trash, collections and how they are putting it underground, creating smart systems that are connected underneath the sidewalk, with servicebins above the connected to technology that full them if the bins are and what time of day to be collected. carol: i think of walt disney. there is no garbage and it is all underground. dimitra: doesn't that sound fantastic? jason: especially during august in new york. dimitra: the company that did it in portugal has been doing a lot

of work in israel. several cities have the system. beirut introduced a similar system recently. a space and a cleanliness issue and a smell issue and a quality of life issue. how can we save money based on when this needs to be collected and when these trucks can collect so they are not creating traffic? jason: there are a couple of things we need to talk about, peeing fighting, brawls, in public. dimitra: there is a district with lots of brawls. police are called and often. .- in often researchers showed the sense of citrus can have a calming

effect. carol: aromatherapy. jason: if i smell citrus, i will not punch you. piping the smell into this district has reduced brawls tremendously. it has been a test. this is a city that has done a lot of innovative things. u.k., aton, in the particular tunnel that was prone to vandalism, which included public your nation -- one of the people in the story said it was essentially a public toilet. music was piped into this tunnel. carol: any music? types are moren effective than others. jason: more ineffective at convincing you not to -- >> relieve yourself in the tu nnel. mexico city, very bad air

pollution, they are at the beginning of an effort. buses wereer introduced on one of the most busy avenues because it cuts down on the number of buses and increases the number of people on that one bus and is helping to bring down the co2 emissions. it is like duh, and then like, classical music! carol: moving to a city that talks to itself. talking about is how 5g can bring people and institutions together seamlessly. aheada: our big year project is coming in the fall. 5g is coming every year. networkfth-generation

activity like we have never seen, super fast. open korea is saying one air research lab will essentially be the first 5g city. network will be fully operational by the end of 2019. it will do everything in that city. 5g will enable more communication between electric vehicles. it will help the delivery of various services, like medical services. it will help other things that are not as dire, we need to figure out how to respond to is because theis quality of the video will be much crisper. rones will see everything with such detail you will be able to make a much smarter assessment

about how to respond. jason: even remote surgery. services arecal going to be transformed. we have learned a little bit about the way artificial intelligence is helping this. be able wild, you might to have a medical professional in a hospital using 5g technology and there will be a setup up somewhere that enables them to operate remotely. carol: for a house visit by a doctor -- or a house visit by a doctor. of,tra: we are at the point after seeing many years of this promise, we are finally getting to 5g. jason: coming up, and address system no driver can mess up. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." you can also listen to us on the radio, on sirius xm channel 119, in new york, boston, washington, dc -- >> and in the ay area -- bay area and in london. jason: one more glimpse for you into the future of cities. carol: they grow and evolve and have systems that don't necessarily work. jason: like addresses. tech companies have been looking for ways to solve this problem. carol: when company is really changing the way we think about addresses around the globe. divided the world into 57 trillion squares, three

meters by three meters. about 100 square feet and they have given each a three word name, such as "probing thick spoon." strangely poetic. if you take the cube root of 57 trillion, it is only about 38,500. it was very easy for them to get red -- grid of curse words and .omonyms they still had at least 50,000 words to choose from. they combined these pretty much randomly to give each place on earth and address.

part of the problem to solve, ambulances, health care -- >> areas around the globe don't have traditional addresses. i am on a street in berlin. it is easy to find you in new york city. but if you are living in a rio de janeiro for bella -- favela, or on the outskirts of johannesburg, you have tens of thousands of people living in areas where there really aren't streets or dresses. how do you find those people for emergency services and health , for delivering stuff to them they might order online? jason: who is using it and how much is it being taken up?

david: it is just gaining traction. the company is about four or five years old. the company is just picking up speed. they have a deal with the maker of mercedes. they bought 10% of the company earlier this year. but notuse it with some all of its cars. within a year, it will be within pretty much every mercedes car. the app works pretty well. it had a little bit of trouble understanding my american accent. tomtom is using it. the postal service in eight countries is using it, including mongolia and nigeria, big places.

dominos will deliver your pizza in the caribbean to a 3 word address. carol: other companies are looking at disrupting addresses. had a system that used alphanumeric codes. google has been doing something. it sounds like this is where we are going in terms of addresses. that section of the world will have that mark, potentially, the three words potentially describing it forever. david: that is what this company wants to happen. it is a reasonable possibility. it is a startup, and they could also kind of disappear. i do feel like this thing has traction. it is not only useful. google has this thing called

plus-codiees. it is just as functional, but not as whimsical. -- a wantear about it of my friends who don't generally brief what i write, this story has taken off among my friends. they are like, what is my address? carol: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands. jason: and on our mobile app and online. carol: simplifying addresses. who knew they were such a problem? using threepany is words to describe every kind of parcel on earth. i want to be like, cool news c hick. jason: i will enter that in and come to your house. seattle, i know i can talk to her and get the

inside scoop. amazon and a couple of billionaires, so much there. bloomberg television starts right now. ♪

♪ emily: i am emily chang and this is the "best of bloomberg technology." we bring you all of our top interviews from this we can technology. big tex takes on washington as jack dorsey and sheryl sandberg testified before the senate. . how is this different from when mark zuckerberg was in the hot seat? giantll the e-commerce amazon there alongside apple. bumble puts women first in the dating game.