Shadowing Practice: Dr Joan Clos - Principles of Planned Urbanization - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I am Joan Klose, I am the Executive Director of UN Habitat
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and my experience in local authority and city issues comes from the fact
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that I was mayor of Barcelona and before being mayor of Barcelona
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and I occupied different posts in the administration of the city for a long period of time, nearly during 30 years.
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And I want to talk to you today about the principles of planet urbanization.
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And it's very important to come back to these basic ideas
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because most of the organization that we are seeing in the developing world,
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it's a spontaneous urbanization, like in the past history of the developed world.
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It's very relevant to make a distinction between the planet urbanization and spontaneous urbanization.
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Because in planet urbanization we fully appreciate all the advantages of urbanization.
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The capacity to generate wealth, to generate employment, to generate conviventiality,
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to generate cultural interchanges, etc. etc. As opposed to spontaneous urbanization where we usually don't have enough public space,
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we don't have enough provision of basic services,
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we don't have enough attention to what constitutes the principles of good urbanization.
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This is why it's so important to distinguish between spontaneous or unplanet urbanization and really proper planet urbanization.
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Planet urbanization is based in three sets of ideas.
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It's a three -legged approach.
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It's a concept that requires these three parts to consider at once.
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One is rules and regulations.
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The other is urban design and the third one is the financial plan for urbanization.
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There's no proper urbanization if we don't approach these three aspects.
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There's a tendency to consider urbanization only as a design question and this is not the case.
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Urbanization requires the three -legged approach of regulation, design and financial plan.
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And coming to the first, the rules and regulations, we have a long history of rules and regulations in relation to urban planning.
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From the beginning of history on Mesopotamia or in the Chinese cities,
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on the Mesoamerican cities, there were from the first layouts already some rules and regulations.
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And rules and regulations are so relevant because they can even create the character of the city, the form of the city.
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There are cities which are defined by the layout or the landscape of the surroundings,
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the geography, but they are cities which their layout is totally defined by rules and regulations.
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I think that one of the things
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that we need to correct in the approach of urbanization in
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the coming years is to recover the relevance of rules and regulations in the urban form.
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Regulations, they are crucial to define three aspects of the good city.
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One is the definition of the public space.
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The other is the urban development rights.
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And the third one are the building codes and the rules that regulate the quality and standards of buildings.
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Of course, we can talk about very different experience worldwide on rules and regulations on every one of these three aspects.
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But I put them in such an order that the order in itself implies hierarchy.
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Then, for me, the first and most important responsibility of rules and regulation is to define the public space.
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because in a spontaneous urbanization usually we don't have enough public space.
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The public space, the common space, the unbuilt space is usually about 50 % of the urban area.
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And of this 50%, more than half should be allocated to the street pattern and the rest should be allocated to gardens,
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unbuilt areas, etc. The quality of the public space is what is going to define quality of the rest of the city.
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This is why it's so important.
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The second point that is very important in rules and regulations is the buildability rights.
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Usually, in the developing world, we are seeing that the buildability rights,
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the flow area ratio, the amount of square meters that finally we build,
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they are not really properly controlled.
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In fact, in legislation, in proper legislation,
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buildability rights should be directed and owned and they should be under the control of the urban authority.
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Because if the urban authority doesn't have the control of the buildability rights, then the urban authority loses one of the main leverage,
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one of the main instruments to guarantee that the city is planned in a good manner.
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And finally, the building codes, they are obvious, they are clear, and I think that they don't need much explanation.
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But this is what I think we should put again on the beginning of urban planning,
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the relevance of the rules and regulations.
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The second principles of urbanization, they are around the concept of urban design, is the design of the urban space.
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The design of the urban space also, like in legislation, begins by the design of a common or public space.
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And in that sense, we have been under the tendency in the last 30 -40 years, especially in the developed world,
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of talking about zoning and land use definition by different parts of the city.
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I think that this is a mistake.
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I think that if we are talking about sustainable urbanization,
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an urbanization that is going to guarantee some degree of compactness and some degree of mixed uses in the urban tissue,
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we need to go back to the principles of design of the street pattern.
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If we say that more or less 35%,
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30 to 35 % of the urban land area should be used by the street pattern,
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we need to focus on the design of the street pattern.
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In the normal practice of urbanism today, there is not enough insistence in the design of the street pattern.
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The street pattern is crucial in order then to define the blocks
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and the plots and it's fundamental in order to design the connectivity of the urban tissue.
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We recommend that on top of this 35 % of land allocated to the streets,
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the streets they have such a design and density that allows for around 80 to 100 street crossings per kilometer square.
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That is the kind of matrix that will allow for good connectivity.
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Another very important aspect of course of the design of the open space is the design of the gardens,
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buildings, parks and built areas which at least should account for around 10 to 15 % of the urban layout.
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Of course, the second part of the urban design addresses the issue of the built area,
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the built space, which is the other 50 % of the urban land.
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And this other 50%, the built space of the city, is of course divided by the built area.
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which is allocated for equipment and public services like hospitals,
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universities, schools, churches or whatever any society defines as public equipment,
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which usually tends to be of this built area about 10 % of the blocks and plots.
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And then the rest is the one that is allocated to housing or to office or to other kind of buildings,
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mixing all of them more or less in a tissue,
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an urban tissue that we would like a mixed use.
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Mixed use in modern urbanism,
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in contemporary urbanism should be promoted in order to guarantee that the urbanization attains the principles of sustainability.
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Mixed use, especially commercial with residential,
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with equipments, allows for walkability that a lot of the movements
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that they are needed in the city can be done at walking distances.
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And this is why it's
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so important to promote mixed use as opposed to the segregated uses that is common in the contemporary urbanisation.
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The third principle of urbanisation is the financial plan.
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We are submitted to this very sad reality of a spontaneous organization with no idea of financial structure,
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financial plan to sustain and to maintain the services in this urban area.
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When we plan the organization, we need to include the financial strategy.
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Of course, that begins with a budget, an income and expenditure budget.
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To keep a city, to keep an urban area,
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it requires resources because there are expenditures to be performed in order to keep functioning in a good shape the area.
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And then at any level of development, we require at least this mental exercise of trying to have a budget,
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an income and expenditure budget.
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And if we go to the sources of income, which is probably the most, the failing part of, in the developing world,
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we need to begin to think about proper local authority taxation system,
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a system to collect some taxes to keep the city going on.
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Of course, apart from the taxes that you can raise locally,
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usually as political development advances,
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you have some transferences from the central government in order to sustain the urban issue.
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But at a very basic level, we need, as soon as possible,
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to begin when we plan a huge city extension, when we plan a new town, when we plan a real important city in field,
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we need to see how this new urban area is going to be sustained economically.
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It's very important on these new sources of income to think in innovative manners.
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Of course, there's a lot of talk of private -public partnerships, etc., that we can think about.
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But also we need to think about value sharing.
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Once we urbanize, we generate value.
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Once we decide that this area is going to become a city,
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the land of this place immediately increases its value.
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This increase of value of the land should be, from the beginning, shared by the different stakeholders.
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Of course, the owner of the land has a right to keep part of the increase of the value,
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but also the rest of the land of the city, they also need to share this increased value
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that comes originally just from the fact that there's a political authority that decides that this land is going to become urban.
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This is why this initial foundation moment should be incorporated in the financial plan
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because if we don't do that from the beginning,
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then to introduce the concept that urbanization requires to contribute to their self -maintenance, it becomes very difficult.
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It becomes a political issue.
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And this is why it's so important that from the beginning we promote the concept of value sharing.
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Another concept that is very important
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and has been developed in many parts of the world
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and should be generalized because out of the 193 countries of the world,
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only 43 now they have a legal regulation of that is land readjustment.
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Once we have a rural pattern of plots that we convert in an urban pattern of plots,
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the way that we move from rural to urban is that in the process,
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we need to generate 30 to 50 % of the land as public land.
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That means that the different owners of the land,
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they need to contribute giving up land to the public domain in this process of moving from rural to urban.
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then this contribution of public land to the public domain should
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be done also in the initial moment of the generating of urbanization.
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And it should be contributed in proportion to the land ownership.
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This is what is land readjustment.
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Every landowner contributes a percentage of their property in order to generate the wealth,
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the value of urbanization.
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And this is a win -win situation
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because the owner of the land will gain value even giving part of their land to the public domain.
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And this is also something that is difficult to understand at the beginning, but is one of the fundamental principles of urbanization.
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Closing my speech,
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I would like to insist on how important it is that in urbanization we approach urbanization from this three -legged approach,
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rules and regulations, design and financial plan.
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Because I have seen many cases where the city has a very good design, but it has no rules and regulations proper,
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it has no financial plan, and everything fails.
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And the opposite also happens.
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You can have a very fantastic rules and regulations, but if the design is not well done, everything fails.
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And also again with the financial plan, You can have very good ideas, but if you don't have the minimal resources to sustain the urbanization,
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there is no such thing as good urbanization.
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And this is why it's so important that instead of going for the best of everything,
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like in a seat that is sustained by three legs,
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you need to care that the length of every leg is more or less proportional.
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Another very important thing on every one of the three legs is implementability, its implementation capacity.
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Whatever is not implementable doesn't exist.
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If the design is not implementable, it's like if it doesn't exist.
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If the rules and regulations are not implementable, they don't exist.
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And if the financial plan is not implementable, it doesn't exist.
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Then it's better to begin from the beginning.
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What is implementable?
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And act under the strategy of considering what is implementable and then to begin in a proportional strategy,
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proportional of manner the three legs, three principles of urbanization.
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Rules and regulation, design and financial plan.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Dr Joan Clos - Principles of Planned Urbanization”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: urbanization, urban, design, regulation, land. This video has 163 sentences and 2170 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:04. The speaker talks at a steady 114 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| regulation noun | /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/ | The act of regulating or the condition of being regulated. |
| principle noun | /ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/ | A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief. |
| generate verb | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ə.ɹeɪt/ | To bring into being; give rise to. |
| define verb | /dɪˈfaɪn/ | To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly. |
| spontaneous adjective | /spɑnˈteɪ.ni.əs/ | Self-directed; happening or acting without external cause or instigation; proceeding from natural feeling, temperament, or momentary impulse. |
| sustain verb | /səˈsteɪn/ | To maintain, or keep in existence. |
| aspect noun | /ˈæspɛkt/ | Any specific feature, part, or element of something. |
| contribute verb | /kənˈtɹɪb.jut/ | To give something that is or becomes part of a larger whole. |
| tissue noun | /ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/ | Thin, woven, gauzelike fabric. |
| layout noun | /ˈleɪ.aʊt/ | A structured arrangement of items within certain limits. |
| guarantee noun | /ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/ | Anything that assures a certain outcome. |
| domain noun | /ˌdəʊˈmeɪ̯n/ | A geographic area owned or controlled by a single person or organization. |
| expenditure noun | /ɛkˈspɛndɪt͡ʃə/ | Act of expending or paying out. |
| proportional adjective | At a constant ratio (to). Two magnitudes (numbers) are said to be proportional if the second varies in a direct relation arithmetically to the first. Symbol: ∝. | |
| resource noun | /ɹɪˈzɔːs/ | Something that one uses to achieve an objective, e.g. raw materials or personnel. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is based · are defined · is totally defined |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | cities which are · space, which is · one that is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · has been developed · have seen |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, tissue /ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/, partnership /ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, spontaneous /spɑnˈteɪ.ni.əs/, expenditure /ɛkˈspɛndɪt͡ʃə/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like regulation, principle, generate.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.