Chris Arnade on Walking Cities

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at Mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone, and welcome back. to Conversations with Tyler.

Today I'm chatting live and in person with Chris Arnotti. Chris has a long, interesting and varied history. He started with a PhD in particle physics from Johns Hopkins, was then a bond trader on Wall Street for about 20 years, had a life course shift around 2011, where he started traveling around lower income America, and he became quite famous for what you might call photojournalism, his writings about lower income America and also Trump voters, he published a very well-known book called Dignity, Seeking Respect in Backrow America. He is now, I would say, obsessed in the good sense with a new project, which is walking both walkable and non-walkable cities throughout the world.

And he writes a substack about his walking and his travels. Chris, welcome. Thank you for having me. If you had to live in either Beijing or Shanghai for 10 full years, which one would you pick and why? You know, I thought of I was actually thinking about that a lot on the airplane.

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