♪ carol: welcome to bloomberg businessweek. jason: we're headed inside bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: it is all about cities, 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. carol: stephen jenness -- steven dennis joins us to wrap up the week. let's start off with brett kavanaugh. steven: a lot of fireworks inside the hearing room. with 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. this key abortion decision hangs over all of these proceedings. it is the reason why you have people trust in -- dressed in "handmaid's tale" protest art outside the hearing room. the democrats are upset there have been even millions of documents that have been kept from the public. they are threatening to release some of them. you have a lot of fights, but it does not necessarily mean he is in trouble for confirmation. no republican has come out against him. carol: 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 questions about bias posting on social media and meddling in the election.

what is the takeaway? steven: these 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. he does not have the resources of facebook, which is hiring 20,000 people to work on security. dorsey cap is saying, we need to catch abuse, 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. jack 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. jason: 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 colleagues laying subtle and 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 lash out in public and on twitter. him 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. jason: 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. carol: 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. i ended up focusing on the idea that cities are really important, something everybody knows if we talk about. there are these megacities growing really fast, economically, cities are grabbing ever greater shares. 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. san francisco, seattle. there is this problem on top of that, housing. as these places grow, people 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. one is an 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. jason: that story is large and part due to the framing you described. every mayor in every city in america had a plan for hq2. deena lives in this neighborhood -- so you have nola andina --

noah and deena. deena lives in this neighborhood that has been utterly transformed by amazon, and not just by amazon, but by a billionaire, paul allen. max: i followed the tech industry very closely and i did not know there was this neighborhood north of downtown. there is a lake and then this neighborhood and the regular downtown. i did not know how dramatically -- how dramatic the change had been. this story started as a moody report about what things were like there. this other thing was going on, you have all these mayors going to this neighborhood to check it out. it's kind of a developers fall hollow. everyone wants to be like seattle.

the truth is people who live there aren't so sure. seattle is in this moment where it's at the height of its power. at the same time there are all these big questions. that paired with the essay about how to fix these things give us 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. i have to think miami is not the only city experiencing these issues around climate change, but not the obvious ones. max: 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. that is creating all sorts of

genuinely terrifying problems that could put the drinking water at risk. this story was originally a photo essay. we would work with the photographer who wrote it and we would take beautiful pictures of water in miami. and then the photographer delivered a spectacular first draft that was edited -- chris 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. jason: next, one city in china is dealing with congestion and a quiet environment all of a sudden. carol: and turning a no to yes 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. carol: it talks about how water could swallow a quarter of miami by the end of the century. we know that story, but there's an even more immediate threat. >> it's drinking water. that: the story looks a looks like a different way climate change is threatening a particular part of miami's infrastructure. if you lose that -- and we are not saying that's going to happen right away. if you lose that access to drinking water it's a real problem. you have either in or mislead expensive solutions or you start to lose people.

at where thosek threats may come from and where the answers may be. miami, inrous view of i'mboats and miami vice -- dating myself there. you saw a very different side of miami. take us there. >> miami is a great town. they are supported by an infrastructure of water in terms of cleaning water, moving water off the surface it occurs out of sight. i took a trip with the county water department. through some of the systems that pump this water to the ground.

also right where the everglades begin. field wherewell saltwater moves in. clean and fresh the longest. me they wereshow aware of these threats, they are working on them. some of them don't have good answers. the biggest problem is they don't know how long it will take for these climate threats to really push their water supply. the reason it's really hard is the money involved is enormous. you are talking billions of dollars to either protect infrastructure, build new infrastructure. ton did they start trying pay the cost of those upgrades? miami will hit that sooner than most.

>> described the infrastructure that has been impacted by climate change. you talk about a superfund site. about the mining and the impact that is having. >> we try to go one by one because these are all complex. in 2014, epa put a report saying that of all the various climate iseats, one real threat industrial sites around the country, they have more and more flooding nearby. toxins that are held in the soil could leach out and escape from where they are being held into the groundwater. miami is especially vulnerable to that.

much more industrial beyond that. and you have to get in very shallow groundwater. you could have more events where these get pushed into this very shallow aquifer and really tax to infrastructure trying clean those toxins out of the drinking water. you don't really know whether climate change will increase the threat and how quickly. things cities struggle with. help than they used to be. and this climbing pressure as you go down. it's a real challenge. worldlooked all over the to look at what the cities of tomorrow may look like.

editor aboutto an specifically how it's getting cleaner and quieter. >> we see the arrival of the electric buses and taxicabs, cars as the first technology taking noise out of the steam environment. just imagine taking the sound of all the cars and you get the experience. motors are replaced at such a rate. >> i feel like that's where some things began in terms of the development. >> one of the most interesting not ancient's history when you go back to the automotive times. of creation of

china's first quasi-capitalistic back when hongd kong was controlled by the british. you see rapidly over the space of a few years the arrivals of all kinds of modern infrastructure and transportation turn what was basically nothing into this huge mega-city. and those investors are still there. the city itself is centered around this old infrastructure. it may be one of the easier places for china to transform in this way. ratehina transforms at a that is unfamiliar and hard to imagine for most of the world. this transition from electric --

saw over the last 10 years, and certainly over the last five years. they created a time of incentives to save himself from the smog or for consumers to buy elected vehicles. they use the state to push the transition forward. bloomberg new energy finance has done new research. they are attracting -- they are tracking the adoption of electric buses. accounts for 99% as of 2017 over all the world's electric buses. company is the lead manufacturer. they are also the leading manufacturer of plug-in vehicles in the world. >> warren buffett has invested in them, they are a big player. >> they are huge in china. they are the main manufacturers of these buses or five years ago we were treated as a laughingstock. now it is transforming how

people in china get around. every five weeks they make about 9500 new electric buses, which is the size of the entire bus fleet of the city of london. you'd be hard-pressed to find their stuff outside of china right now, but they are starting to use the support of the chinese government and the fact that there is so much activity in so much support for these vehicles as a way to internationalize and bring electricity to the united states. >> coming up, running into a lot of problems. >> there are ways to get home prices under control. this is bloomberg businessweek.

welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. >> you can listen to us on radio and on a.m. in new york, one of

61 in boston, in washington dc, and in london on dab digital. big problem around the world. them it's one of the biggest problems that mayors, governors, the heads of countries, peter coy told us there are some solutions out there. >> places like silicon hat silicon valley, manhattan, the very places most need new talent because their engines for creativity for the u.s. and the world, why is it so expensive? because there's not enough housing for people who want to live there. the solution is obvious, fillmore housing. there are all kinds of rules that restrict that from happening. those rules tend to be put in place by the people who are

already there. of course who lack the incentive to change the rules, because if there is more and more demand than they are going to be able to sell more. so they benefit at the expense of everyone else, which includes local employers that are starved for talent. and people from all over the rest of the country, even their own children who would like to live there and benefit from that engine of growth. >> you have some pretty staggering stats about the cost in some of these places, starting in silicon valley. this is a two-bedroom one , $1.575 garage, no ac million is the asking price. that is job dropping. >> if you are watching the show you think it's not a big deal. anywhere else it's like, are

you kidding me? what are the economic aplications? what happens in place like silicon valley specifically when a house like that costs that much? >> it means the companies have to pay to attract people so they don't work in austin or places like that instead. that means they can't afford to hire as many people as they could. it also inhibits their growth to some extent. wins? clearly not the shareholders of baseball and google and so on. it's like a massive transfer of wealth where people happen to buy these. >> why aren't municipalities pushing it a little bit? say we need to do some development? >> some are.

it tends to be the ones where they can manage to get a massive amount of voters to see the downside. i talked to the mayor of mt. ville -- mountain view. he was still my best still vice mayor. put in a plan to build up to 10,000 units of housing right around the google plaques -- plex.e you don't have all these locals saying i don't want more housing in my neighborhood. they are happy to have it because it's not in their backyard. metaphorically it's a mountain view. wins, the new people in and the locals don't lose. becomeplace housing has an issue is seattle. we go to seattle to see how they deal with hq one.

>> this is bloomberg businessweek.

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♪ 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. >> we have a terminal charge to show this and how cool it really is. apple was 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. jason: 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

area, now more than $55 per square foot. relative to other districts, which are around the 45 to $50 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. jason: 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. when amazon asked for bids for their second headquarters, we had this real estate-economic

development tourist, crowding into lake union. but seattle is in a deeply uncomfortable moment. in the last couple of months, different situations have exploded into anger and thanks -- and angst about the growth, who it is leaving behind. what is doing in terms of traffic, housing afford ability and homelessness. 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. in the 1990's 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 walk because it was completely pedestrian unfriendly. that has changed. when you walk through the

neighborhood now, it is full of mainly tech workers holding their handbrewed 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. when we talk about what it has 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 it has had on 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 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. we spoke to the mayor that came 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. amazon asked these company's competing cities, what will you do about traffic and housing? amazon is 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 and talents in alibaba.

600 million people use us almost every month. if we do not put the kind of him love, respect, and responsibility into our business model, this giant alibaba could destroy a lot of things. do good things, do bad things. technology is cold, but you have to make the organization warm. >> are you succeeding? jack: 10 years ago i would say we should put 0.03% of the total alibaba revenue into the protection of 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? jack: 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 thinking all the time about am that. i can be a teacher and a mentor to many young educators. i don't call myself a successful business people, but i am very successful on life, though i that in life. -- in life. i have gone through a lot of tough days. this is very good for young people. i'm not going to teach math, english, business industries. i will teach young people have to face challenges.

tom: when you communicate with your counterparts, are there 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. the first technology revolution, 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. jason: we head over to europe. 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. as we have seen throughout the issue 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.

we think about it here in the united states and in new york city. it takes up space, it attracts rodents. it's really bad in every single way. there have been cities that have been doing some innovative things dealing with their trash collections. are putting it underground creating smart systems that are connected to these very large vents under the surface of the sidewalk above the surface, all connected with technology that tells them what are the traffic patterns and the garbage truck's can go a time of day. this is big and portugal. >> this is like walt disney. there is no garbage and it is all underground. dimitra: doesn't that sound fantastic? jason: especially during august in new york. the smell can be ascribed -- 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. it's really a smart way. again, there is 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, street fighting, brawls, peeing in public. dimitra: there is a district with lots of brawls.

police are called 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. dimitra: 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. in brighton, in the u.k., a 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? dimitra: certain types are more effective than others. jason: more ineffective at convincing you not to -- >> relieve yourself in the tunnel. these are the kinds of things,

mexico city, most congested city in the world. very bad air pollution, they are at the beginning of an effort. introduced double-decker buses 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. they seem in some respects very simple, like duh, and then like, others are like classical music! carol: moving to a city that talks to itself. jason: dimitra is talking about how 5g can bring people and institutions together seamlessly. dimitra: our big year ahead project is coming in the fall. 5g is coming every year. it is fifth-generation network activity like we have never seen, super fast. -- network connectivity like we

have never seen, super fast. an open air research lab, essentially. they are in the process of building the network. it will be fully operational by the end of 2019. and it's going to enable more communication between electric vehicles being developed. it's going to help the delivery of services, medical services and emergency medical services. we need to figure out how to respond to this huge fire and was the state of the fire. this is all because the quality of the video will be much more. seeing everything with such detail that you will be able to make a better assessment about how to respond.

jason: even doing remote surgery, apparently. dimitra: medical services are going to be transformed. that. a little bit of we certainly have a little bit about the way artificial intelligence is helping this. but it does seem kind of wild that you are able to have a medical professional in a hospital using five g technology. all houses are by -- carol or a house visit by a : doctor. dimitra: we are at the point of, 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." jason: you can also listen to us on the radio, on sirius xm channel 119, in new york, boston, washington, dc -- carroll: and in the 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. a single house and number, they just don't cut it anymore. tech companies have been looking for ways to solve this problem. carol: our reporter mapped it all opt for us. >> this company is really changing the way we think about addresses around the globe. >> they have divided the world into 57 trillion squares, three meters by three meters. each one is about 100 square feet and they have given each a

three word name, such as "probing thick spoon." crazy, weirdly strangely poetic. the way they have done this is they have divided, if you take the cube root of 57 trillion, it is only about 38,500. there are 100,000 plus words in english. it was very easy for them to get homonyms.se words and here.s hear and 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.

jason: part of the problem to solve come of event convenience for people like us, ambulances and health care -- >> areas around the globe don't have traditional addresses. david: i am on a street in berlin. you guys are in new york city, it's easy to find you. you are living in a favela outside of rio de janeiro , or on the outskirts of jakarta, or or in something like that, you have tens of thousands of people living in areas where there really aren't streets or addresses. how do you find those people for emergency services and health care, for delivering stuff to them they might order online? which is probably what we are really talking about here. 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. you can use it with some but not all of its cars. within a year, it will be within pretty much every mercedes car. you can say hey mercedes, take me to, what three words. and had a little trouble understanding my american accent. and tom tom is using it. service of eight countries are using it. including mongolia, nigeria. they countries and obviously developing countries.

domino's pizza will deliver pizza in the caribbean. >> there are other companies looking at disrupting -- thatss they had a system had alphanumeric code. it sounds like this is potentially where we are going. world --ion of the describing it potentially. >> i think it's a reasonable possibility it might. it's a start up, but they can also disappear. but i do feel like this thing has some traction. it is not only useful. google has this thing called plus-codes.

it is just as functional, but not as whimsical. it's not as fun. , a lot ofear about it my friends who don't generally read what i write, it's sort of taken -- it has sort of taken off read that taken off. 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? this new company is using three words to describe every kind of parcel on earth. i want to be like, cool news chick. jason: i will enter that in and come to your house. any time i can turn to our viewers chief -- our bureau

chief out in 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," where we bring you all of our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, big tech takes on washington as jack dorsey and sheryl sandberg testified before the senate. how is this time different from when mark zuckerberg was in the hot seat? plus, amazon joins the trillion dollar valuation club. the air is thin up there so how will the e-commerce giant amazon fare alongside apple? and bumble puts women first in the dating game. now the company is turning that