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The Urbanist

With an influential audience of city mayors, urban planners and architects, this is Monocle’s guide to making better cities, be it new technology, state-of-the-art subways or compact apartments. Nominee in the Smartest Podcast category of the 2019 British Podcast awards.

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Heatwave:

Following one of the hottest summers on record, we look at the impact that rising temperatures are having on our cities.

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40915 Aug 2019
30 min

Heatwave: 

Following one of the hottest summers on record, we look at the impact that rising temperatures are having on our cities.

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★12 Aug 2019
6 min

Tall Stories 169: La Grande Motte: 

This week we delve into issue one of Monocle’s summer newspaper, ‘The Summer Weekly’, and head to the once-marshy, mosquito-ridden coastal commune of La Grande Motte in France, which has been transformed since the 1960s into a lush resort town with real beachfront appeal.

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4088 Aug 2019
30 min

Pedestrian zones: 

To make their centres more liveable, cities across the globe are looking to reduce the dominance of cars by creating pedestrian-only streets, plazas and walkways. They’re at the forefront of many urban-improvement initiatives so we take a look at where they have come from and why people love them or loathe them.

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★5 Aug 2019
7 min

Tall Stories 168: Bletchley Park: 

The former Government Code and Cipher School is now a heritage site in Milton Keynes, the newest of the UK’s new towns. We go on a journey through what was once the home of Alan Turing and the Enigma codebreakers.

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4071 Aug 2019
30 min

Homelessness: 

It’s estimated that as many as 1.6 billion people around the world lack adequate housing. And despite some serious efforts, urban areas still struggle to find a viable solution to the ongoing crisis. So what can be done? And who are the activists and civic leaders championing change?

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★29 Jul 2019
7 min

Tall Stories 167: Bratislava’s communist-era buildings: 

Architects and historians tend to admire them but members of the public usually associate them with the injustices of the socialist regime and want them gone. Is this architecture worth saving?

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40625 Jul 2019
30 min

Green New Deal: 

We unpack what this bold proposal is all about and find out how it wants to tackle both inequality and climate change at the same time.

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★22 Jul 2019
5 min

Tall Stories 166: Chain of Lakes: 

Minneapolis is home to the Chain of Lakes: a park system designed in the early 20th century that links together the city’s five biggest lakes. We look at how it has influenced the city – from its culture to the built environment.

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40518 Jul 2019
30 min

Catching up: 

We speak to Lisa Helps, the mayor of Victoria, about her ambitious transport agenda and Clarkston’s mayor Ted Terry about refugees. Plus: can The Tide, a project by the studio behind New York’s High Line, change London?

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★15 Jul 2019
5 min

Tall Stories 165: The Kiwi bach: 

The bach plays a leading role in New Zealanders’ summer holidays. Monocle 24’s David Stevens takes us to his family’s bach on Waikanae Beach to assess why this classic Kiwi dream might be starting to fade.

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40411 Jul 2019
29 min

Wellbeing and cities: 

We discuss wellbeing in our urban environments. Reporting from the inaugural Wellbeing Cities Forum in Montréal, we examine how to live well in a city and dissect the social, economic and cultural aspects of urban life.

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★8 Jul 2019
7 min

Tall Stories 164: Stonewall’s legacy: 

Stonewall is the most influential event in US gay-rights history; in 2016, Barack Obama made the site of the uprising a national monument. So why are many places that are critical to LGBT history under-documented and overlooked?

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4034 Jul 2019
30 min

Lessons from the Quality of Life Conference: 

Now that Monocle’s fifth annual Quality of Life conference has wrapped up in Madrid, we look back at some of the wisdom we took home with us and ponder how we can use these lessons to effect change in our own urban environments.

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★1 Jul 2019
4 min

Tall Stories 163: Moscow street art: 

Wander into a Moscow courtyard and you’ll often come across characters made of rusty metal tubes, bits of wood or, perhaps, an old washing machine. With its striking simplicity, this grassroots street art is a uniquely Russian phenomenon – but it might be on the brink of vanishing forever.

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40227 Jun 2019
30 min

Spotlight: Madrid: 

As we gear up to host our fifth annual Quality of Life Conference in Madrid, we look at the Spanish capital’s urban plans, promises and problems. Our man in the city, Liam Aldous, brings us this week’s special episode.

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