Shows
Urban Political Podcast92 - Radically Legal Politics and Housing Expropriation in BerlinDeutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen
This episode is a talk by Joanna Kusiak at the Think&Drink Colloquium of Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies at Humboldt University Berlin. It gives insights into her new book Radically Legal: Berlin Constitutes the Future (2024).
Right in the middle of the German constitution, a group of ordinary citizens discovers a forgotten clause that allows them to take 240,000 homes back from multi-billion corporations. In this work of creative non-fiction, scholar-activist and Nine Dots Prize winner Joanna Kusiak tells the story of a grassroots movement that convinced a million Berliners to pop the speculative housing...2025-06-2344 min
Urban Political Podcast91 - The Suburban FrontierMiddle-Class Construction in Dar es Salaam
African cities are under construction. Beyond the urban redevelopment schemes and large-scale infrastructure projects reconfiguring central city skylines, urban residents are putting their resources into finding land and building homes on city edges. The Suburban Frontier examines how self-built housing on the urban periphery has become central to middle-class formation and urban transformation in contemporary Tanzania. Drawing on original research in the city of Dar es Salaam, Claire Mercer details how the “suburban frontier” has become the place where Africa’s middle classes are shaped. As the first book-length analysis of Africa’s suburban...2025-06-0959 min
Urban Political Podcast90 - Looking Back at Eight Years of Municipalist Government in BarcelonaThe movement-party Barcelona en Comú
In this episode, we reflect on the rise, evolution, and legacy of Barcelona en Comú, the emblematic movement-party that governed the city of Barcelona from 2015 to 2023. Joined by long-time activist and former political advisor Elia Gran, as well as researchers Silke van Dyk and Luzie Gerstenhöfer (University of Jena), the conversation explores the key ambitions, successes, and tensions of this bold experiment in municipalist governance.
The episode draws from the sociological research project „Public Politics and the Future of the Commons“ to unpack strategic shifts in areas like housing, municipalization of public services as well...2025-05-251h 24
Urban Political Podcast89 - Book Presentation: Turkish Muslim Women in BerlinNavigating Boundaries in the City
Kulkul presents her ethnographic work with Turkish Muslim women in Berlin as evidence that community is not an entity but is produced by instrumentalizing specific forms of identification and boundary-making.
In examining the role of community in the case of her participants, Kulkul finds that religion and culture are important not for the values they perpetuate, but for their role in forming and sustaining the community. She looks at the importance of boundaries and especially their reciprocity. Social boundaries are a set of codes of exclusion often used against migrants and refugees, while symbolic...2025-05-1231 min
Urban Political Podcast88 - In Conversation with Heather Dorries (The Urban Lives of Property Series V)The Urban Lives of Property Series
In this episode of The Urban Lives of Property, Markus Kip and Hanna Hilbrandt speak with Heather Dorries, about the intersections of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in urban property regimes. Drawing on Dorries’ recent publications and her wider expertise on property, Indigeneity, and urbanism the episode centers the ways in which planning practices contribute to Indigenous dispossession while also serving as a site of resistance and assertions of sovereignty. We foreground three themes: First, the conversation addresses planning’s complicity in processes of dispossession, examining how legal frameworks and land sales have hist...2025-04-2845 min
Urban Political Podcast87 - Infrastructures of Urban CitizenshipWith Examples from the UK, Lebanon and Germany
This talk focuses on the role of public services in delineating the boundaries of belonging and possibilities of participation in cities. Drawing on the notion of 'infrastructural citizenship', it asks how non-citizens navigate access to urban circulations and how rights and responsibilities are negotiated at these interfaces. Based on ethnographic, participatory and design research conducted with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, Lebanon and Germany, it concentrates in particular on the physical and social infrastructures supporting the circulation of food and waste. The talk will outline the various ways...2025-04-1537 min
Urban Political Podcast86 - Book Review: Concrete CityMaterial Flows and Urbanization in West Africa
Concrete City: Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa delivers a theoretically informed, ethnographic exploration of the African urban world through the life of concrete. Emblematic of frenetic urban and capitalistic development, this material is pervasive, shaping contemporary urban landscapes and societies and their links to the global world. It stands and circulates at the heart of major financial investments, political forces and environmental debates. At the same time, it epitomises values of modernity and success, redefining social practices, forms of dwelling and living, and popular imaginaries.
The book invites the reader...2025-03-3152 min
The Chatterbox85 - Authoritarian Urbanism in Eurasia Podcast: Urban Political Podcast (LS 27 · TOP 10% what is this?)Episode: 85 - Authoritarian Urbanism in EurasiaPub date: 2025-03-12Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationExamples from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
This episode is part of our Think&Drink Series in collaboration with the Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies working with the Humboldt University Berlin. Today’s speaker is Andrei Semenov, an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Authoritarian urbanism has recently become a buzzword appli...2025-03-2431 min
Urban Political Podcast85 - Authoritarian Urbanism in EurasiaExamples from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
This episode is part of our Think&Drink Series in collaboration with the Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies working with the Humboldt University Berlin. Today’s speaker is Andrei Semenov, an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Authoritarian urbanism has recently become a buzzword applied to different settings and situations. Andrei attempts to clarify the conceptual foundations of this term by using a combination of political science and urban sociology analytical frameworks. He shows that the authoritarian part refers to the dictators' response to...2025-03-1231 min
Urban Political Podcast84 - How Cities Can Transform DemocracyUrban Political x Groningen University: Where Is Urban Politics?
This is the first seminar in the series 'Where is Urban Politics?' a hybrid seminar series hosted by the University of Groningen, in the academic year 2024-2025. For more information on recent and forthcoming events: https://sites.google.com/rug.nl/where-is-urban-politics-series
This talk by Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch provides a novel way of thinking about the relationship between democracy and the urban based on two main arguments. First, across the globe claims for and forms of urban collective self-rule signal that the city retains democratic...2025-02-1241 min
Urban Political Podcast83 - Book Presentation: Dithering for the Common GoodProductive misunderstandings in cooperative urban development
This is a new episode from our Think&Drink series in collaboration with the Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies and the Humboldt University Berlin.
Co-operative urban development is the buzzword of the moment. It stands for the pursuit of a fairer city that is orientated towards the common good. In new partnerships - public-civic partnerships - actors from politics and administration work together with actors from civil society. Contradictory practices of urban design lead to misunderstandings, controversies and uncertainties in these co-operations.
In this book, the authors explore the processes of two extraordinary experiments...2025-01-2745 min
Urban Political Podcast82 - Book Review Roundtable: Infrastructural TimesTemporality and the Making of Global Urban Worlds
Whether waiting for the train or planning the future city, infrastructure orders—and depends on—multiple urban temporalities.
This agenda-setting volume disrupts conventional notions of time through a robust examination of the relations between temporality, infrastructure, and urban society. Conceptually rich and empirically detailed, its interdisciplinary dialogue encompasses infrastructural systems including transportation, energy, and water to bridge often-siloed technical, political-economic and lived perspectives.
With global coverage of diverse cities and regions from Berlin to Jayapura, this book is an essential provocation to re-evaluate urban theory, politics, and practice and better account for...2024-12-2259 min
Urban Political Podcast81 - Urban Political x Think & Drink: Maroš Krivy.
Valuing indeterminacy: Terrain vague, temporary use and the production of urban expertise in Barcelona and Berlin.
This is the first episode of a new series from Urban Political. In collaboration with the Georg Simmel Center for Urban Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, this series will feature speakers from the center’s Think & Drink Colloquium. The colloquium invites international speakers from across urban studies to present their work and offers an informal setting for exchange between students, faculty, and the general public.
Much ink has been spilled in urban studies on the dynamics of abandoned industrial sites, rubble areas and ot...2024-12-0427 min
Urban Political Podcast80 - Spatial Planning in Israel/Palestine and the Gaza War
In this episode, we explore the role of land policies and spatial planning in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Our two guests, Oren Yiftachel and Orwa Switat, discuss the historical context of the conflict, focusing on how settler colonialism and land regimes have shaped hierarchical types of citizenship and exacerbated tensions. The conversation looks at the impact of the recent war in Gaza on planning and development policies, especially in relation to Bedouin communities in the Naqab/Negev and their responses. This episode concludes by exploring prospects for peace, the potential for redevelopment in Gaza and the broader Palestine-Israel region, and...2024-10-311h 28
Urban Political Podcast79 - Not in my Gayborhood!Gay Neighborhoods and the Rise of the Vicarious Citizen
In this episode, we are discussing Theodore Greene’s latest book, Not in my Gayborhood! Gay neighborhoods and the rise of the vicarious citizen, published by Columbia University Press in July 2024. This book is a lively and generous study of gay neighborhoods in Washington DC, highlighting the evolving dynamics of LGBTQ spaces in urban settings. Drawing on empirical fieldwork as well as Ghaziani’s concept of “cultural archipelagos”, Not in My Gayborhood! reveals the plurality and fluidity of LGBTQ spaces, illustrating a complex network of attachments and loyalties that link gay Wash...2024-08-2934 min
Urban Political Podcast78 - Book Review: Waste and the CityAuthor: Colin McFarlane, Critics: Vanesa Castan Broto and Julia Wesely
Our Guests:
Vanesa Castan Broto is a Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield where she takes a feminist perspective on questions of sustainable urban innovation, just transitions, urban resilience and infrastructure systems.
Twitter - @VaneBailo
Colin McFarlane is Professor of Urban Geography at Durham University. His work focusses on the experience and politics of urban life. This includes an interest in urban knowledge, learning, densities, fragments, and infrastructure, especially sanitation. He is author of Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation...2024-07-171h 16
Urban Political PodcastEpisode 77 - Post-Socialist Infrastructure
In this episode we talk about garages, trams and trolleybuses! Our guests for this episode, Tauri Tuvikene and Wladimir Sgibnev, help us think about post-socialist mobility in terms of continuities and ruptures. Using examples from Estonia, East Germany, and the former Soviet Union, they question the future of mobility, highlight the importance of studying mundane infrastructural issues as social subjects, and explain how we could also make policies and knowledge travel westward.
Tauri Tuvikene (PhD in Geography, UCL, 2015) is a professor of urban studies at the School of Humanities, Tallinn University. His research covers comparative urbanism in...2024-06-1949 min
Urban Political PodcastEpisodio 76 - En conversación con Clara Salazar (The Urban Lives of Property Series IV)Ejidos y asentamientos autogestionados en Mexico
In this inaugural Spanish-language episode of the Urban Political Podcast, Clara Salazar delves into the history and concept of the ejidos—collective forms of land ownership introduced by the Mexican Revolution in 1917. Following this, the state began redistributing land to impoverished farmers under the condition that they organize themselves into collectives. Ejidal land, which was typically rural land, could not be sold. The significance of the ejidos persists to this day, although this form of collective ownwerhips has been the subject of numerous struggles and controversies. In 1992, the rights to ejidal lands were li...2024-04-291h 05
Urban Political PodcastEpisode 75 – Book Review Roundtable: Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology
Lively Cities departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities—human and nonhuman—that make up the material politics of city making. Generating fresh conversations between posthumanism, postcolonialism, and political economy, Barua reveals how these actors shape, integrate, subsume, and relate to urban space in fascinating ways.
This podcast is produced in collaboration with the Urban Geography Journal.
Our Guests:
Mara Barua leads a major ERC Horizon 2020 Starting Grant (2018-2024) on Urban Ecologies, involving multiple partners and a research team across two continents. This work has culm...2024-03-271h 00
The Unlaced Podcast with Jake Barker-DaishHayden Crozier Talks Ross Lyon, Nat Fyfe At His Peak & Why The Bont Is The Best In The Comp #126Hayden Crozier has just announced his retirement from the AFL after playing 140 games across both Fremantle and the Western Bulldogs through its entirety. Croz goes through in this episode the brutal nature of the AFL and how he had to transform his body by adding weight to it just to stand a chance of playing a game in his early years. Some of the players Hayden has played with in his career are special and we detail the levels of Nat Fyfe, Matthew Pavlich and Marcus Bontempelli just to name a few. Having worked with both Ross Lyon and Luke...2024-03-051h 07
Urban Political PodcastIn Conversation with Jean-David Gerber (The Urban Lives of Property Series III)Property, Planning and Institutional Power: A view from Switzerland
This episode of the Urban Lives of Property Series expands discussions geographically and conceptually: Our guest in this episode, Jean-David Gerber, helps us think property from Switzerland and other places. Starting off with the observation that there is no single understanding of property, Jean-David argues that it is important for any consideration to be context-specific and to realize that property is not the same as propriété or Eigentum. Jean-David elaborates on his approach to property on the basis of the Institutional Resource Regime framework that he has been working on...2024-02-291h 16
Dangerville#72 feat. Jessie Beveridge of Rockit KingRoss, Matt, and Lenz are joined by Grand Rapids legend Jessie Beveridge, best known for his band Rockit King. We hear Jessie’s stories of growing up playing in bands with his Dad, we address analog VS digital gear, discuss the best Grand Rapids venues, and our mutual love of ZZ Top. Then we reach into the Mail Sack to hear letters from our beloved fans. Later, Ross nerds out about the We Are The Wold documentary again, then we riff on Megadeth, Judas Priest VS Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamossa, Dokken, Jackyl, and tons more. Soak it in.
2024-02-192h 37
Urban Political Podcastthe Far Right and the CityWith the research network Territorialisations of the Radical Right (Terra-R).
Tune in for our new episode on the far-right and the city! In this discussion, members of the Terra-R (Territorialisations of the Radical Right) network examine the developments of the radical right in Germany beyond simplistic urban-rural and East-West attributions, and outline the current and future challenges for academia and civil society alike.
The aim of Terra-R is to analytically bring together two different forms of territorialisation: they understand the radical right both as an actor and as an object of territorialisation. Thus, they explore territorialisation on the part...2024-02-0953 min
Urban Political PodcastRent Strike Series Episode 3The third in an ongoing series hosted by Mathilde Lind Gustavussen
This is episode three of the Rent Strike Series, focusing on the Veritas Tenants Association’s ongoing multibuilding rent strike in San Francisco to demand a say in the terms of sale of their buildings. In November 2023, the Prado Group assumed ownership of 20 Veritas-owned buildings, while on January 18, 2024, Ballast Investments and their partner Brookfield Properties took over the remaining 75 buildings in the largest-ever sale of rent-stabilized units in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the rent strike has expanded to six buildings, and some of the strikers have secured concessions through collective bar...2024-02-0127 min
Urban Political PodcastCosmopolitan SolidarityA talk on Hope, Affection, and Welcoming the 'Other'
To live in the age of precarity is a tolling, everyday struggle. It erodes one's strength to carry on, live another day, and keep the hope for a modicum of prosperity due to come in some vague future. And when things get unbearably harsh, when the hegemony of neoliberalism has individualised the problems and told those who sustain life by the skin of their teeth to keep their head above the surface without having an eye for care from the retreating state that sees no obligation towards the lesser-able citizens...2024-01-121h 02
Urban Political PodcastProperty Rights Versus Tenants in PolandBeata Siemieniako on the restitution of housing and tenants' struggles
Unregulated restitution of property to prewar owners (or rather their legal successors) remains a major source of conflict over housing in Poland, most notably in Warsaw. This episode features Beata Siemieniako, a Warsaw lawyer and urban activist who has been supporting tenants in their struggle against ruthless developers for years. In her book „Re-privatising Poland. The History of a Great Scam“ (Reprywatyzując Polskę. Historia wielkiego przekrętu, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej 2017), she tells the story of conflicting claims to urban property and reflects on the pitfalls of restituting past pr...2023-11-3026 min
Urban Political PodcastRent Strike Series Episode 2The second in an ongoing series hosted by Mathilde Lind Gustavussen.
This is episode two of the Rent Strike Series, focusing on the Veritas Tenants Association’s ongoing multibuilding rent strike in San Francisco to demand a say in the terms of sale of their buildings. On August 30, corporate landlord Ballast Investments won the auction for Veritas Investments’ delinquent debt and will take over 75 Veritas-owned buildings. And on September 1 the strike expanded. In this episode, we get an update on these developments and the implications for the strike from Brad Hirn, lead organizer with the Housing Rights Committee of San...2023-09-2124 min
Urban Political PodcastBook Review Roundtable: Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning
Against the Commons underscores how urbanization shapes the social fabric of places and territories, lending awareness to the impact of planning and design initiatives on working-class communities and popular strata. Projecting history into the future, it outlines an alternative vision for a postcapitalist urban planning, one in which the structure of collective spaces is defined by the people who inhabit them.
Host:
Nitin Bathla is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich, where he works as part of the transdisciplinary project on agri-urbanisms at the Chair of Sociology. He also coordinates t...2023-09-011h 10
Urban Political PodcastRent Strike Series Episode 1the Veritas Tenants Association’s (VTA) in San Francisco
Episode description: This is the first episode of the Rent Strike Series from Urban Political, a multi-episode series about the Veritas Tenants Association’s (VTA) on-going rent strike against San Francisco’s largest landlord, Veritas Investments, Inc. The episode brings in tenants and organizers from the VTA to discuss organizing against corporate landlords, organizing multibuilding rent strikes, and what happens when corporate landlords default on loans.
Bios:
Mathilde Lind Gustavussen is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on housing...2023-08-2548 minUrban Political PodcastBook Review Roundtable: How Cities Can Transform DemocracyRoss Beveridge, Philippe Koch and their critics
We live in an urban age. It is well known that urbanization is changing landscapes, built environments, social infrastructures and everyday lives across the globe. But urbanization is also changing the ways we understand and practise politics. What implications does this have for democracy?
This incisive book argues that urbanization undermines the established certainties of nation-state politics and calls for a profound rethinking of democracy. A novel way of seeing democracy like a city is presented, shifting scholarly and activist perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces...2023-08-0159 min
Urban Political PodcastBook Review Roundtable: Migrants and Machine PoliticsAdam Auerbach and his critics
As the Global South rapidly urbanizes, millions of people have migrated from the countryside to urban slums, which now house one billion people worldwide. The transformative potential of urbanization hinges on whether and how poor migrants are integrated into city politics. Popular and scholarly accounts paint migrant slums as exhausted by dispossession, subdued by local dons, bought off by wily politicians, or polarized by ethnic appeals. Migrants and Machine Politics shows how slum residents in India routinely defy such portrayals, actively constructing and wielding political machine networks to demand important, albeit imperfect, representation and...2023-07-011h 00
Urban Political PodcastIn Conversation with Vera Smirnova (The Urban Lives of Property Series II)Thinking about Appropriation, Dispossession and Expropriation in Theory and Practice
In this second part of the series Urban Lives of Property, Hanna and Markus talk to Vera Smirnova, a human and political geographer to discuss property and territory from a Russian perspective. Smirnova’s genealogical account moves from the Czarist period to this day, illuminating also the current Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Smirnova offers a tour de force through Russia’s moving history of the last 150 years, addressing practices of serfdom, enclosures in the early 20th century, land collectivization following the Russian revolution and waves of privatization after 1991. Thro...2023-06-191h 17
Urban Political PodcastRussian Academia and Urban Activism in Times of War: Insights from St. PetersburgConversation with Oleg Pachenkov
Meet urban scholar Oleg Pachenkov who left Russia few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. Markus speaks with him about his personal and professional trajectory as a critical scholar bringing him to Berlin. The conversation covers the breakdown of the public sphere in Russia within weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine and Oleg's personal confrontation with a repressive system ready to crack down on critical voices. Self-censorship, Aesopian language and the retreat to the private sphere are aspects that now characterize dynamics of discussion in the attempt to cope with the authoritarian...2023-05-221h 51
Urban Political PodcastIn Conversation with Nick Blomley (The Urban Lives of Property Series I)Thinking about Appropriation, Dispossession and Expropriation in Theory and Practice
This podcast series explores the "life of property" in urban theory and practice. In conversations with scholars who have led the way in property debates, it aims is to advance conceptual and theoretical groundwork on this notion that fundamentally shapes everyday urban lives and political discussion about the city.
Within the social sciences and critical urban research property has lived a mostly implicit and underexamined life for several decades. Over the last years, it has become more central to conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work. Taking up this...2023-04-021h 20
Urban Political PodcastAre Community Land Trusts Transformative?
Community land trusts are proliferating across the globe, promoted as a potential solution to the ever-worsening affordable housing crisis. CLTs provide a mechanism for decommodification, collective ownership, and community control; however, those ideals are hard to operationalize, and many CLTs function more as traditional affordable housing providers than as urban commons. This episode discusses the causes of this tension as well as regional differences and issues of funding and scale framed around the question: are CLTs transformative?
The moderator of this podcast is Mathilde Lind Gustavussen. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Freie Universität...2023-03-171h 00
Urban Political PodcastOn PeripheralisationA discussion with Shubhra Gururani, Christian Schmid, Michael Lukas, Giulia Torino, Metaxia Markaki, and Faiq Mari
How do “peripheries” form? And how does urbanization generate processes of peripheralization? Today, urban research is increasingly confronted with processes of extended urbanization that unfold far beyond cities and agglomerations: novel patterns of urbanization are crystallizing in agricultural areas and in remote landscapes, challenging inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded and dense settlement type. While certain territories of extended urbanisation experience growth, others are affected by peripheralisation, experiencing deep socio-economic and ecological restructuring, marginalisation and inequality, and the re-articulation of power and...2023-02-091h 36
New Books in Public PolicyRoss Beveridge and Philippe Koch, "How Cities Can Transform Democracy" (Polity Press, 2022)We live in an urban age. It is well-known that urbanization is changing landscapes, built environments, social infrastructures and everyday lives across the globe. But urbanization is also changing the ways we understand and practise politics. What implications does this have for democracy? This incisive book argues that urbanization undermines established certainties of nation-state politics and calls for a profound rethinking of democracy as a project. Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch provide a novel way of seeing democracy like a city, shifting scholarly and activist perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of collective urban life...2023-02-011h 09
New Books in Urban StudiesRoss Beveridge and Philippe Koch, "How Cities Can Transform Democracy" (Polity Press, 2022)We live in an urban age. It is well-known that urbanization is changing landscapes, built environments, social infrastructures and everyday lives across the globe. But urbanization is also changing the ways we understand and practise politics. What implications does this have for democracy? This incisive book argues that urbanization undermines established certainties of nation-state politics and calls for a profound rethinking of democracy as a project. Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch provide a novel way of seeing democracy like a city, shifting scholarly and activist perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of collective urban life...2023-02-011h 09
Urban Political PodcastInside the Woman Life Freedom Movement in IranReflections from urban scholar-activists in Tehran
Listen to this gripping account from the current „Woman Life Freedom“ movement in Iran and its impact on cities and their inhabitants. The movement was sparked by the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini in the custody of the Islamic regime’s „morality police“ in September 2022. After several weeks of uprising, the media coverage in Western countries has become more silent, in part, due to the extremely repressive acts of the government in which several people have been killed and many imprisoned. The regime has also made a deliberate attempt to control communication channels and even s...2023-01-301h 02
Urban Political PodcastForums of Discussion: sub\urban - journal for critical urban researchRoss speaks with Gala Nettelbladt and Nina Gribat
Having just celebrated the 10th anniversary of the important German-language journal for critical urban research, Ross speaks with sub\urban editorial members Gala Nettelbladt and Nina Gribat about why it is important to foster discussion around urban research in German, the challenge of organizing a horizontal editorial collective, of realizing an open access publication strategy, and of relating to political struggles of the current moment - among many other topics!
First part of a series of episodes on forums of discussion and publication outlets in different geographical contexts.
About...2023-01-121h 04
Urban Political PodcastBook Review Roundtable: Art & Climate ChangeMaja & Reuben Fowkes and their Critics
The book provides an overview of ecologically conscious contemporary art that responds to today’s environmental crisis, from species extinction to climate change.
Art and Climate Change collects a wide range of artistic responses to our current ecological emergency. When the future of life on Earth is threatened, creative production for its own sake is not enough. Through contemporary artworks, artists are calling for an active, collective engagement with the planet in order to illuminate some of the structures that threaten biological survival.
Exploring the meeting point of decolonial re...2022-11-2548 min
Ross Jackson presents Element SessionsShimmer @Beveridge Park Hotel - KirkcaldyShimmer @Beveridge Park Hotel - Kirkcaldy by Ross Jackson2022-11-151h 21
Urban Political PodcastUrbanization: A Contested Concept (Urban Concepts Series)Conversation with Johanna Hoerning and Hillary Angelo
Urbanization has become central in recent political discourses, as well as a contested concept in experts' spheres. This podcast of the Urban Political delves into the phenomenon of urbanization and traces back how the idea of "expanding cities" is causing disagreement in urban studies and leading researchers to raise questions that have haunted the discipline since the times of Georg Simmel. In this episode, Nicolas Goez, one of our new members of the editorial board at Urban Political, talks with Johanna Hoerning and Hillary Angelo about current discussions around urbanization, against the...2022-10-0556 min
Urban Political PodcastDispatch from RC21 Conference 2022 – Ordinary cities in exceptional times
The RC21 Conference 2022, “Ordinary cities in exceptional times,” was held in Athens from August, 24 to 26. A large group of participants from all over the world gathered for was the first in-person conference of the RC21 network since the start of the pandemic. However, the pandemic continued to dominate the conference with a number of participants being unable to travel to Athens due to the uncertain visa regimes. On the opening day of the conference, the
participants gathered in the historical building of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in the Exarchia neighbourhood in downtown Athens. At the reception in t...2022-09-1254 min
Urban Political PodcastDispatch from INURA Conference 2022 in LuxemburgSmall State Big Transitions
The 30th annual INURA Conference entitled "Small State Big Transitions” was held in Luxembourg from June 25 to 28. Over 60 participants gathered at the conference to learn about the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and to celebrate the 30 years INURA. This year’s conference was organised by the Urban Studies Group at the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Luxembourg.
With a population of just over 600,000, Luxembourg is a small, multilingual, sovereign state. But these diminutive attributes belie a cosmopolitan space where daily life frequently involves using three languages, and encountering perhaps four...2022-07-2752 min
Urban Political PodcastLandscapes of Care and ControlA comparative conversation on the urban impasse of state interventions and everyday logics under COVID19
This episode looks at urban landscapes of care and control that emerged during the pandemic in Santiago de Chile (Chile), Bogotá (Colombia) and Berlin (Germany). It is a comparative conversation on the urban impasse of state interventions and everyday logics under COVID19 in each of these cities and discusses the following questions:
How, if at all, has the pandemic affected state interventions in health in these cities? What new discourses and routines have been announced?
How, if at all, has the pandemic worked a...2022-07-141h 13
Urban Political PodcastBook Review Roundtable: Fragments of the City: Making and Remaking Urban WorldsAuthor Colin McFarlane and his Critics
Cities are becoming increasingly fragmented materially, socially, and spatially. Fragments of the City examines the fragments themselves, what they are and how they come to matter in the experience, politics, and expression of cities. How does the city appear when we look at it through its fragments? For those living on the economic margins, the city is often known as a set of fragments. Much of what low-income residents deal with on a daily basis is fragments of stuff, made and remade with and through urban density, social infrastructure, and political practice. From...2022-06-011h 26
Urban Political PodcastRacism and Social MixRoundtable with Javier Ruiz-Tagle, Julie Chamberlain, Martine August, and Moritz Rinn
Social mix has become a central planning discourse worldwide to address urban inequalities and segregation as key urban problems of the 21st century. Far from being benevolent, the discourse of social mix and its related implementations are subjected to a fundamental critique highlighting racist underpinnings and consequences in targeted neighborhoods. The conversation draws on insights from Canada, Chile, Germany, and the US. Kudos for this important discussion to guest editor Julie Chamberlain!
Guests:
Javier Ruiz-Tagle is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Urban and...2022-05-081h 14
Urban Political PodcastCommunity and Commons (Urban Concepts)Louis Volont and Thijs Lijster discuss with Talja Blokland
In this first episode of the Urban Concept series, Louis Volont (MIT, Boston) and Thijs Lijster (University of Groningen) discuss with Talja Blokland (Humboldt University, Berlin) the concepts of community and commons and consider implications for urban research and action. The key argument revolves around the idea of community as a practice, not an owning, its relationship to the common and the exploration of the urban dimension.
The Urban Concept series introduces key urban concepts and reflects on their relevance in the fields of theory, research and politics.2022-03-311h 10
Urban Political PodcastUkrainian Cities at Warwith Michael Gentile, Tatiana Zhurzhenko and Vlad Mykhnenko
Listen to urban researchers sharing their insights on the situation in Ukrainian cities at war, from Kyiv, Kharkiv to Mariupol. Our guests discuss Putin's identity politics and the way his propaganda hits a wall in the context of the shelling of Ukrainian cities. Countering the images of an opposition of "Ukrainian vs Russian" inhabitants as a backdrop to the war, the discussants offer a different perspective on how ethnicity and language have played out prior to the war. At the same time, they take on predominant Western European understandings of politics...2022-03-021h 16
Urban Political PodcastTroubling Graffiti and Street ArtA conversation with Emma Arnold, Jeff Ross, and John Lennon
What do graffiti and street art do? This is the key question of the intriguing podcast conversation among Emma Arnold, Jeff Ross, and John Lennon. While we learn about the unruly and disruptive features of graffiti in urban space, our guests also trouble its effects by asking questions about its relation to gentrification, racialized capitalism and right-wing media strategy. Highlighting geographical variation, the conversation covers the political regulation of graffiti and street art in the US, Scandinavia, Cairo, and Beirut.
Guests:
Emma Arnold (PhD) is...2022-01-241h 14
Young Hearts Run Free PodcastS4 Eps 9 - Young Hearts, Run Free - Rosco Runs with Ross Beveridge - 3 December 2021Hello December!! The festive season is upon us, but that's nae excuse for us not to keep churning out the podcast goods. In fact we hear Santa is a big fan, and we wouldn't want to disappoint the big man this month. We like to speak to athletes from the front of the pack, the back of the pack and of course the middle of the pack. Our episode guest today admits to being a bonafide member of the middle of the pack gang. It's an esteemed gang with John's membership being stamped for approval at the mo and...2021-12-031h 48
Urban Political PodcastHousing Expropriation Referendum in Berlin: How it was won and what comes next?Updates from Andrej Holm and Joanna Kusiak
On the 26th of September over million Berliners voted to expropriate and return to public ownership over 200,000 homes in the city. Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen targeted a number of large real estate companies in Berlin that had control of what had previously been social housing stock. The referendum is not legally binding, requiring the support of the governing parties in the Berlin parliament, who are now tasked with legislating on the issue. The composition of the governing coalition has yet to be determined, although it is clear that the Social Democrats...2021-10-0140 min
Urban Political PodcastUrban Political Special: RC21 Conference Antwerp
In this Urban Political Special, Elisabet Van Wymeersch, Stijn Oosterlynck, Claudia Seldin, Roger Keil, Luce Beeckmans, and Manuel B. Aalbers are talking about their experiences at the RC21 conference 2021 – the annual conference of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 21 on Urban and Regional Development.
Our guests share their insights and key findings on the various conference discussions such as ‘Sound and the City’, ‘Fascism – Urbanism | Aesthtics’, ‘The Urban Governance of COVID_19’, ‘Space/Subject: Vernaculars of Endurance in Delhi's Slums and Streets’, ‘The Food Frontier: Consuming Gentrification in Sunset Park Slope in Brooklyn, NY’.
Our guests:
Elisabet Van Wymeersch...2021-07-2057 min
Urban Political PodcastHousing Commons & Collectives: European & US Perspectives
After discussing expropriation efforts in Berlin recently, this episode will widen the discussion of housing commons to perspectives, differences, and potentials in Europe and the US.
Housing was and remains one of the crucial social issues of our time. From Friedrich Engels discussion of the housing question to the idea of ‘commons’ gaining more traction in urban activism and research, we delve into recent developments in collective housing experiments, activism, policy models, and the role of intersectionality in the debate.
Follow Amanda Huron, Mara Ferreri, Matt Thompson, and DJ Madden discussing central questions regarding commons, coop...2021-07-021h 28
Urban Political PodcastDecolonize/Decenter: Planning in the South
‘How can academic research be of service to envisioning alternative planning agendas that reflect the realities of the so-called Global South?’ is the central question that our guest host Inhji Jon stresses in this episode.
Since Western-centric planning approaches imposes norms on places and times where they are inappropriate, we need to explore the possibilities of city making and planning which recognize the value of informal and transient structures of the lives the people have that make up the city itself. Follow the discussion between Smruti Jukur, Prince K Guma, and Mark Davidson on what needs to be a...2021-06-181h 20
Urban Political PodcastGreen Cities and Contemporary Climate Planning: Politics and Practices
Green cities and green infrastructure have become common planning practices. But why is nature good and how does green matter? Do all people have equal access to nature, or are some left out of contemporary climate planning? Furthermore, what impact will COVID 19 and climate crisis have on future green city planning? These and other questions are discussed in our episode "Green Cities and Contemporary Climate Planning: Practices and Policies."
In this episode, Mais Jafari talks with Hillary Angelo and Isabelle Anguelovski about greening cities and contemporary climate practice, its limitations and consequences, especially in post-industrial regions and...2021-06-0351 min
Urban Political PodcastHousing struggles in Berlin: Part II Grassroots Expropriation Activism
On April 15, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court overturned Berlin’s rent cap. This immediately led to a massive spontaneous protest with 15,000 people voicing their concerns and proclaiming their right to the city. Moreover, within a week after the court’s decision the number of signatures for the grassroots campaign ‘Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen’ increased tremendously to an overall number of 130,000 signatures by Berlin residents.
In this episode Joanna Kusiak talks us through the transformation of the Berlin housing market and the constitutional basis for Deutsche Wohnen & Co’s goal of socializing housing in the German Capital. She explores the...2021-05-041h 00
Urban Political PodcastHousing Struggles in Berlin: Part I Rent CapInterview with Andrej Holm
From Friedrich Engel's series 'Zur Wohnungsfrage‘ to the decision of Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court on the #Berlin #RentCap last week: housing was and remains one of the crucial social issues of our time.
Together with Andrej Holm, we discuss the social and political consequences of the Court's decision that the Berlin state government had no right to impose a rent cap in the German capital. Therefore, we explore the history of #Mietendeckel, rising rents, and growing housing #activism in Berlin that led to the legislation in the first place. We debate the effe...2021-04-2451 min
Urban Political PodcastThe urban politics of density in and beyond the pandemic
This podcast explores how the pandemic is changing density around the world and generating forms of politics. With a diverse group of scholars and practitioners from around the world, the podcast addresses the following specific questions/ themes:
How should density be conceived and why is it important to understanding cities (and the pandemic)?
What is the pandemic doing to different forms of density?
Is the pandemic changing the ‘where’ of density?
Is the pandemic changing how we understand density? Do we now need to think about density in a different light or c...2021-03-301h 22
Urban Political PodcastThe Urban Hinterlands of SlaveryDecolonizing Engagements in Bremen and Lancaster
The transatlantic slave trade had a lasting impact not only on the development of big ports like Liverpool, London, Nantes or Bordeaux, but also in cities that far less frequently associated with slavery. In this episode, four researcher-activists from Bremen and Lancaster speak about how slavery is not just a bygone period of cruel practices far away. Our guests reveal the involvement of these places within the geographies of slavery and emphasize the "absent presence" or "present absence" (T. Morrison) of enslavism in contemporary Bremen and Lancaster. As a challenge placed in front...2021-03-081h 22
Urban Political PodcastFilm-Making as Urban Researchwith Nitin Bathla, Sandra Jasper, and Tino Buchholz
Emerging film-makers and urban researchers Nitin Bathla, Sandra Jasper, and Tino Buchholz speak about their avenues into film-production, why film amounts to a vital medium for urban research, and what it would mean to enhance its role in urban studies. This episode is also full of urban film inspirations and recommendations!
Guests:
Nitin Bathla is an architect, artist, and educator currently pursuing Doctoral Studies at ETH Zurich. His work focuses on labor, political ecology, and housing in the extended urbanization of Delhi. Aside from academic writing, Nitin...2021-01-291h 03
Urban Political PodcastUrban Climate Finance at the edge of viability?Hanna Hilbrandt in conversation with Emma Colven, Zac Taylor, Sarah Knuth, and Sage Ponder
Amidst the rapidly unfolding ecological crisis, current research is witnessing ever new financial strategies that aim at making money from urban climate risks. In this episode Hanna Hilbrandt invites Emma Colven, Zac Taylor, Sarah Knuth, and Sage Ponder, to discuss the financial and socio-material limits to the viability of urban financialization in the context of climate change. When climate disasters increasingly destroy financial assets and erode returns, how much longer will it take until some financial strategies become unviable? What are the multiple mechanisms finance...2021-01-121h 17
Urban Political PodcastMobilization and advocacy in contexts of massive urbanisation - Part 2
Throughout the global south, many urban regions have become massive. In the familiar renditions of this notion, urban regions, mushrooming in population and spatial footprints, teeter close to chaos, environmental disaster, and ungovernability. Populations are being reshuffled, moved from one area to the other, something which an extensive landscape of built projects that never really worked has allowed as buildings are repurposed for other uses as they also take advantage of contiguities with new developments—sub-cities, new industrial zones and logistical centres. The sheer heterogeneity of developments at all scales, from thousands of small developers to large real estate co...2020-12-191h 35
Urban Political PodcastMobilization and Advocacy in Massive Urbanization Contexts - Part IReflections from Delhi, Karachi, Lagos, and Manila
Throughout the global south, many urban regions have become massive. In the familiar renditions of this notion, urban regions, mushrooming in population and spatial footprints, teeter close to chaos, environmental disaster, and ungovernability. Populations are being reshuffled, moved from one area to the other, something which an extensive landscape of built projects that never really worked has allowed as buildings are repurposed for other uses as they also take advantage of contiguities with new developments—sub-cities, new industrial zones and logistical centres. The sheer heterogeneity of developments at all scales, from thousands of...2020-12-041h 23
Urban Political PodcastRadical Municipal Politics in Latin America since the 1990sA conversation with Gianpaolo Baiocchi
Gianpaolo Baiocchi offers us an historical overview of what he terms Radical Cities in Latin America and draws out some lessons from the past 30 years. Comparing these experiences to municipal politics in Europe and elsewhere, he highlights the distinctive features and charts the ups and downs of these urban movements. Massive suburbanization, metropolitan fragmentation and reactionary backlashes in Brazil and elsewhere have been posing key challenges for reconfiguring a municipalist politics in this part of the world. Taking cues from our recent podcast roundtable on Murray Bookchin's work, Gianpaolo discusses radical misunderstandings around the...2020-11-0257 min
Urban Political PodcastCOVID-19 and its impact on public life and use of public spaceInternational perspectives: cases of Dortmund (Germany), San Francisco (USA) and Isfahan (Iran)
This episode discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the behavior of people in public spaces in Dortmund (Germany), San Francisco (USA) and Isfahan (Iran). My guests, Teresa Sprague and Ghazal Farjami, and I (Mais Jafari) explain how people in these societies perceive and react to social distancing, mask wearing, and other measures in a variety of public space typologies such as city streets, parks, beaches, plazas and indoor spaces like shopping malls and restaurants and other social centers.
Finally, we share our views from our own observation...2020-09-1451 min
Urban Political PodcastMurray Bookchin, Municipalism, Popular Democracy and Left Politics
In this podcast we discuss the work of Murray Bookchin, relating it to the experiences and debates around municipalism and wider left political practices and theory. With our guests (Blair, Hilary and Kate) we focus the discussion on the recent edited collection of Bookchin's work: The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (Verso), edited by Debbie Bookchin and Blair Taylor.
Reflecting, but going beyond, the broad range of topics addressed by Bookchin in the book, we cover a lot of ground, such as the role of the state in left politics, sources of...2020-07-051h 16
Urban Political PodcastMultiple Crises and Radical Urban Research (AfterCorona #13)Margit Mayer on Tipping Points and Scholarly Politics of Mobilization
Starting off from her latest agenda-setting article "What does it mean to be a radical urban scholar-activist, or activist scholar today?" published earlier this year in the relaunch issue of the journal CITY – analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action. It was published before the pandemic shock and the current wave of Black Lives Matter protests took off. In our conversation, Margit will thus discuss with us her notion of three tipping points in light of these pressing concerns but also highlight the opportunities for political change and ho...2020-06-281h 03
Urban Political PodcastThe Revolutionary Movements in Algeria and Lebanon (AfterCorona #12)protests and movements in the time of the pandemic
This episode delves deep into the ongoing revolutionary movements in Algeria and Lebanon. Ratiba Hadj-Moussa and Rana Sukarieh provide us with a rich and inspiring account of developments, offering social-economic background to the events of the last two years, outlining the main contours of the political struggles in the two countries and drawing comparative insights. In particular we gain: a clear sense of the geographies of the movements, the solidarities and tensions within them, the crucial place of women activists and gender as a focal point, and how the state...2020-06-171h 41
Urban Political PodcastGenealogies of Liveability (AfterCorona #11)Neoliberal urbanism and the rise of Jan Gehl
Nina Stener Jørgensen and Maroš Krivý offer us the broader picture of the contemporary urbanist discourse of liveability and Jan Gehl's rise to prominence. In a tour de force, they walk us through Gehl's original work within the Danish welfare state of the 1960s, his indebtedness to the contributions of his wife Ingrid, his rise to stardom following Al Gore's liveability agenda, and why his success throws a shadow even on people like Richard Florida. The political responses to the Covid-19 situation show no significant disruption with the liveability discourse but...2020-06-101h 21
Urban Political PodcastUrban Commonwealth (AfterCorona #10)Margaret Kohn on Solidarism, Scales, and the State
On the basis of the book The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth, we discuss with Margaret Kohn her resuscitation of the early 20th century solidarist ideas and the links to the Lefebvrian notion of the right to the city. We challenge her on the question of scale and the role of the state in solidarist thinking, how all of this may enlighten the response to the Covid-19 moment, and recommend that you listen to her smart and thoughtful reflections.
Margaret Kohn is a professor of political science...2020-06-0247 min
Urban Political PodcastTeaching and Learning in Urban Research (AfterCorona #9)Experiential approaches, risk and discomfort
Robin Chang and Meg Holden discuss how the Covid-19 situation has disrupted teaching and learning practices in urban research, deepening existing and exposing new inequalities. They consider in particular the short and long term implications of on-going restrictions for experiential learning, what this means for urban research methods, drawing on concepts like discomfort and positing a notion of an ethics of experience.
Robin A. Chang is PhD Researcher and Instructor in the School of Spatial Planning at the Technical University of Dortmund in Dortmund, Germany. Her comparative research investigates temporary and adaptive...2020-05-2931 min
Urban Political PodcastSpatialities of Shock (AfterCorona #8)Comparing Urban Responses to the Pandemic and their Implications
Reflecting on how shocks are applied as tools to further political agendas, Creighton Connolly, S. Harris Ali, and Roger Keil consider the implications for racialized inequalities and the Global South-North divide. Two months after the first conversation with out guests, at a moment when the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, Creighton, Harris, and Roger analyze how cities have responded in different ways and what kind of lasting effects we should expect in our urban lives.
Guests:
Creighton Connolly is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies...2020-05-2159 min
Urban Political PodcastMigration and Labour Struggles (AfterCorona #7)Experiences in India and Canada
How is the pandemic affecting conditions of labour and migrant workers? How are Unions and other organisations reacting? In this wide-ranging and forensic discussion with Michelle Buckley (Toronto), Rajan Pandey (Bangalore) and Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay (Mohali) tell us about on-going struggles around mobility and labour in Canada and India. We hear about how the Indian state is seeking to unravel regulation and working rights under the guise of enabling the economy to deal with the crisis and how the situation is deepening inequalities and conflicts around ethnicity and religion. We also discuss how labour organisations...2020-05-1642 min
Urban Political PodcastDark Clouds over Informal Settlements II: Responses to the Pandemic (AfterCorona #6)Insights from Kenya and South Africa with J.A. Akallah and M. Huchzermeyer
Reporting from Kenya and South Africa with Jethron Ayumba Akallah and Marie Huchzermeyer provide us with a detailed account of the coronavirus-pandemic in their context, the conditions within the informal settlements, the state approaches and the responses by civic organizations. Marie and Jethron share their perspective on the opportunities and threats of this situation and the lessons they have learned so far as public intellectuals.
Guests:
Dr. Jethron Ayumbah Akallah is a Lecturer in the department of History and Archaeology at Maseno...2020-05-0553 min
Urban Political PodcastDark Clouds over Informal Settlements I: Politics of Land and InfrastructureKenya and South Africa with J.A. Akallah and M. Huchzermeyer
This episode explores contemporary politics around land and infrastructure in informal settlements in Kenya and South Africa with Jethron Ayumba Akallah and Marie Huchzermeyer. This is the first part of the episode on informal settlements and provides the context for the second part which focuses on the situation of the unfolding coronavirus pandemic, state responses and urban logics of action.
Guests:
Dr. Jethron Ayumbah Akallah is a Lecturer in the department of History and Archaeology at Maseno University in Western Kenya. He holds a...2020-05-0327 min
Urban Political PodcastPost-growth, Post-Covid? (AfterCorona #5)Rethinking Planning with Viola Schulze Dieckhoff and Christian Lamker
In the episode we speak to Viola Schulze Dieckhoff (Technical University of Dortmund, Germany) and Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) about the paradigm of post-growth and its relation to cities. In particular we discussed the roots of this concept and movement in academia and beyond, what it means in terms of planning, living in cities and understanding wealth and its political potential as we deal with the Covid-19 situation.
Guests:
Viola Schulze Dieckhoff is a Research Assistant at TU Dortmund University, Faculty of Spatial...2020-04-2935 min
Urban Political PodcastBlaming Density (AfterCorona #4)Colin McFarlane on politics, opportunities, and research ethics of the crisis
Is density really the key variable to explain the dynamics of the pandemic? Colin McFarlane takes a critical look at accounts that blame urban density for the drama that is unfolding in many cities. McFarlane discusses how racalized divisions are exacerbated in this situation and how new inequalities are produced. Considering Arundhati Roy's metaphor of the crisis as a portal into a new world, he points to political opportunities, the changing role of the state, and a new urban outlook for leftist politics. As urban research plays a...2020-04-2241 min
Urban Political PodcastUrban Logics of Action (AfterCorona #3)Insights from Mexico and Canada with Julie-Anne Boudreau
Drawing on insights from her latest book "Global Urban Politics", Julie-Anne Boudreau puts the current response to the coronavirus in Mexico City and Montreal in a larger frame of understanding. She elaborates on the difference between urban and state logics of action and its importance to grasping the divergent situations. As a point of hope, she highlights that there is nothing inevitable about the current crisis developing into forms of authoritarian technocracies.
Guest:
Julie-Anne Boudreau held the Canada Research Chair in urbanity, insecurity, and political action from 2005...2020-04-1839 min
Urban Political PodcastInequalities of the Lockdown (AfterCorona #2)Labor, Homeschooling, and the Practice of Community
Drawing on her understanding of community as an urban practice and her recent research on social and educational inequalities in Berlin, Talja Blokland underlines how the lockdown exacerbates inequalities in view of labor, education, and social capital. She presents her argument why digital media cannot replace the vital functions that social interactions in physical space play for addressing everyday concerns. And rather than celebrating the current moment of homeschooling as an alternative pedagogy, Talja exposes a highly critical view of how homeschooling deepens educational inequalities.
Guest:
Talja Blokland...2020-04-0839 min
Urban Political PodcastThe New Municipalism (part 2)Laura Roth on Democracy and Feminism
In the second part of the New Municipalism series, Ross talks to Barcelona-based scholar-activist Laura Roth. She talks about the Spanish experience, particularly in relation to Barcelona en Comú, the movement party, which has been in minority government since 2014. Laura talked about a range of issues, including the importance of feminism to new municipalism, the vision of state power in this form of politics and the setbacks experienced in Spain in recent years.
Guest:
Laura Roth holds a PhD. in Political Philosophy and has focused her recent academic work o...2020-04-0537 min
Urban Political PodcastDigital Community Organizing (AfterCorona #1)Cooperatives, Social Media, and Local Impacts
In a moment of self-isolation and physical distancing, digital media promises ongoing civic deliberation and community organizing. Nathan Schneider helps us explore the role of social media for mutual aid and peer production in times of corona. He elaborates on the key decision we face between subscribing to corporate platforms and digital cooperatives that are accountable to local communities.
This is the first episode of the series "#AfterCorona: Advancing Urban Society" in which we discuss what our confrontation with the corona-pandemic reveals about the urban fabric and how our lives are...2020-03-3132 min
Urban Political PodcastThe Urbanization of COVID-19Containment, States of Exception, and Solidarity
Three prominent urban researchers with a focus on infectious diseases explain why political responses to the current coronavirus outbreak require an understanding of urban dynamics. Looking back at the last coronavirus pandemic, the SARS outbreak in 2002/3, they highlight what affected cities have learned from that experience for handling the ongoing crisis. Exploring the political challenges of the current state of exception in Canada, Germany, Singapore and elsewhere, Creighton Connolly, Harris Ali and Roger Keil shed light on the practices of urban solidarity as the key to overcoming the public health threat.
...2020-03-1446 min
Urban Political PodcastUrban Sustainability as New Financial Fix?Mexico City's Green Municipal Bonds and the role of standard setting organizations
The crisis of 2008 has set into motion a growing influence of finance in municipalities. In particular, financial actors have identified an enormous "investment gap" in cities in the Global South. This trend intersects with a new set of urban development strategies, that present the financial market as a catalyst for sustainable development. Standard setting organizations facilitate this process by providing norms and standards that offer transparency and reliability for financial actors.
Hanna elaborates on how these trends and actors have come together in the municipal...2020-03-0331 min
Urban Political PodcastChile Despertó! Social Uprisings in SantiagoExploring the urban dimension of the protests with Azun Candina and Daniel Opazo
Chile despertó - Chile woke up - is a key slogan oft he ongoing uprisings in Chile that began in the capital Santiago in October 2019. Since then, heavy confrontations happened with the regime of president Piñera. For the first time since the dictatorship that ended in 1990, the army was deployed and curfews were installed in an attempt to quell the unrest. Although the protests have disappeared from the title pages of most international media outlets by now, the protests are ongoing and a new wave of...2020-02-1933 min
Urban Political PodcastThe New Municipalism (part 1)Interview with Bertie Russell and Matt Thompson
What is "New Municipalism"? In this first of a new series Ross seeks clarification from scholar-activists Bertie Russell and Matt Thompson who give us a conceptual and historical take on this new urban movement, offering reflections on UK examples like Preston.
The interview was recorded at the end of August 2019 at the Royal Geographers Society / Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference Annual Conference in London.
Guests:
Dr Bertie Russell is a research associate at the University of Sheffield's Urban Institute. He has recently worked on the...2020-01-3035 min
Urban Political PodcastEditorial TalkAfter the Test Phase
Having successfully completed its initial test-phase, our podcast steps into higher gear. A good time for us to reflect on our experience so far and to plan for the next couple of months. Join us in our 15 mins editorial talk!2020-01-2116 min
Urban Political PodcastOh, What Do You Do To Me? the City says to TinderQueer Urban Space and Online Dating
Looking for Love? Over the past decade, the market for online dating has been booming. And this did not leave the offline city unaffected. Listen to Sam Miles' sharp account on what online dating is all about and what it has to do with the urban. Far from being an innocent tool of the lonely hearts, online dating has been accused of a range of real life issues such as racism, lookism, the casualization of sex, or the de-queering of the city-scape. And Sam tells us like it is.
Guest:
Sam...2019-12-1927 min
Urban Political PodcastOn MetrolingualismThe Language of the City
In a city, the idea of "standard language" falls apart. Linguistic researchers explain how urban space becomes a vital part of our ability to communicate in multilingual contexts. Think about "spatial repertoires" as the basis for communication. A market in Berlin-Kreuzberg, one of our guests' research site, is the backdrop to illustrate how Turkish, Kurdish, German, English, and other languages are turned into linguistic resources that vendors and customers draw on, switching from one to the other. We discuss what follows from this pedagogically and politically.
A metrolingual poem written and read...2019-11-2633 min
Urban Political PodcastBe Water! Urban Protests in Hong KongAn in-depth interview with Sampson Wong
Activist-scholar Sampson Wong offers captivating insights on the current wave of protests that has galvanized Hong Kong since June. Sampson explains what is at stake, how the political dimension has gained predominance over economic concerns of the population, and why the protesters have become radicalized over the past few months.
If you want to find out about the "be water" tactics of the movement, its experimental approach to urban space, the smooth transitions between online and offline activism, and the harsh confrontations with the police - make sure you listen in. 2019-11-081h 11
Urban Political PodcastHeritage vs. GentrificationRoundtable on cultural heritage as a resource of community resistance
Among critical scholars and urban activists, the care for heritage of an urban area is often associated with strategies to commercialize, to touristify the area and ultimately to pave the ground for gentrification. Neighborhood development based on its heritage all too often is geared towards creating a unique selling point of the area to attract more visitors and to create commercial services to accommodate visitors: from tourist shops to pricey restaurants, hotels and furnished holiday appartments. Facades may be rehabilitated, streets renovated, but at the same time rent prices...2019-11-0437 min
Urban Political PodcastWhen Social Housing was BigThe Future of Post-War Settlements
Post-war mass housing is at a crossroads in Western Europe. Demolition, densification, adaptation, or conservation? Two experts help us sort it out. Maren Harnack proposes what it requires to take advantage of the existing settlements from that period. And Miles Glendinning draws lessons of what we may learn from the experience of mass social housing construction from the 1950s to 1970s.
On October 11, Markus met our two guests at the conference „Adaptive Reuse! Strategies for Post-war Modernist Housing settlements“ at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.
Guests:
Maren Harnack is an a...2019-10-1827 min
Urban Political PodcastReviewing Suburban PlanetA Roundtable with Theresa Enright, Bérénice Bon, Philippe Koch, and Roger Keil
Roger Keil's new book, 'Suburban Planet', is a major contribution to (re)thinking the urban age in terms its peripheries rather than its centres. He seeks to provide us with a way of coming to terms with the process of suburbanization and the diversity of suburban forms. But does he succeed? And what are the political implications of his arguments? Listen to our book forum with Theresa Enright (University of Toronto), Berenice Bon (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, Paris), Philippe Koch (Zurich University of...2019-09-2337 min
Urban Political PodcastTake Your Eyes Off the City Center!Interview with Roger Keil on his book "Suburban Planet"
We are living on a suburban planet, if you ask Roger. He even wrote a book with that title. In the interview, he elaborates on the political implications of that condition. Situating his work on global suburbanisms in relation to the L.A. School and the debate around planetary urbanization, he flexes his intellectual muscles to make us believe that it is the suburbs that Marx and Lefebvre would pay most attention to today. Plus, find out about his surprise as Markus read a book passage back to him. “I mu...2019-09-0936 min
Urban Political PodcastBridging Urban Research and ActionRoundtable with Richard Wolff, Kate Shaw, Tomislav Tomasevic, and Ulrike Hamann
The call to make academic research more socially relevant has become a commonplace. But what does it mean to for academic research to benefit urban activism? What is to be done when the logics of academia obstruct deeper activist engagements?
This roundtable engages these challenges with four seasoned activist-scholars. Kate and Uli work in academia using different strategies to relate their job with activist engagements. Tomislav and Richard both have a background in urban research and have entered local politics. Tomislav recently entered Zagreb city council...2019-09-0936 min
Urban Political PodcastReclaiming the Tourist City - Part 2Part 2: Regaining Democratic Control
The second part examines the extent to which democratic control has been exerted in the Checkpoint Charlie case and how development plans have been modified under increased pressure from societal groups. Listen to hear about the possibilities of contesting tourist-centred developments in inner cities and why activists should never automatically trust a leftwing government…
Our studio guest:
Christoph Sommer is completing his PhD in geography at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin); using Berlin as case, he is exploring how conflict-prone urban tourism is (un-)governed. He is co-founder of the Urban Research Group New Urban Tou...2019-09-0930 min
Urban Political PodcastReclaiming the Tourist City - Part 1Berlin's left-wing government and the redevelopment of Checkpoint Charlie
Part 1: Heritage Preservation and Urban Development
Much-visited by tourists and generally avoided by Berliners, the site has faced growing conflict over plans to develop a hotel, Hard Rock Cafe and museum. This first part details the historical importance of the empty plots at the former Cold War border crossing and reflects on wider debates about heritage, tourism and urban development.Find out why urban emptiness can have heritage value.
Our studio guest:
Christoph Sommer is completing his PhD in geography at Humboldt-Universität zu B...2019-09-0934 min
Urban Political PodcastIntroduction EpisodeThe teaser to what we are up to!
Welcome to the Urban Political Podcast! In this brief episode, we introduce ourselves, tell you about the motivation and purpose behind the podcast and what you should expect to hear in our pod in the following months.2019-08-2806 min
Leadership Today - Practical Tips For LeadersLeading through ChangeSummary Being able to effectively manage change is an essential skill for any leader. In this episode we explore the stages of change that people work through, and what they need from their leaders to support the change. Transcript Welcome to episode 25 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. Change is an essential part of the modern workplace. Hardly a week will go by without some kind of change that we need to manage. Some autho...2019-02-1707 min