The Urbanist
Monocle’s guide to better cities. Explore urban innovation, cutting-edge infrastructure, and compact living with insights from planners, architects, and city leaders.
Latest Episodes
Tall Stories 9: Sydney’s Opera House
The Sydney Opera House opened in 1973 and has since become the city’s most recognisable building. Unique as an arts venue, nothing looked like it before and nothing has looked like it since.
The Urbanist Live – London special
In this special live episode of The Urbanist, Monocle editor Andrew Tuck hands over the floor to city-planners and urban leaders to discuss how to build a better London. Featuring Peter York, consultant and author, Sharon Ament, the director of the Museum of London, Peter Wynne Rees, professor of places…
Tall Stories 8: A tale of the River Thames
Running through the heart of London, the River Thames has long been the lifeblood of the city’s commerce, leisure and worship. We immerse ourselves in its rich liquid history.
Water
We’re all hydrated and ready to go. This week we look at water-sensitive urban design, unpack our relationship with the ocean, discover the joys of cycling by the river and examine the devastating effects that water can have.
Tall Stories 7: Vienna, a structure that is no more
Angelika Fitz, an architecture critic and the future head of Vienna’s Architecture Museum, takes us to the Vienna State Opera. There we look back to the year 2000 when an artistic intervention in front of the opera house left tourists and passers-by in awe.
Sport and the city
Dust off those sport socks and lace up your trainers – this week we’re all about sport in the city. We discuss everything from urban regeneration and sport to the origins of Australian rules football. Plus: the abundance of Olympic pools in Belgrade and what football clubs in Istanbul reveal…
Tall Stories 6: Cavenagh Bridge
This week we head to Singapore to take a tour of Cavenagh Bridge. This elegant suspension bridge showcased new civil-engineering techniques under British rule and has featured in many of Joseph Conrad’s novels. Our guide is Kelvin Ang, director of conservation management at the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore. ‘Tall…
Mapping the city
Compass and ruler in hand, we examine the history and politics behind the mapping of our cities. We look at new approaches in Toronto and find out more about the Graphia project, where Scandinavian aesthetics meet Hong Kong.
Tall Stories 5: Oslo Rådhus
We head to one of Oslo’s most famous buildings: Rådhus, or city hall. Designed by Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson, it is the proud venue of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and was named the city’s structure of the century back in 2005. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought…
Changing dynamics
Can old manufacturing towns hold the key to innovation? A new book called ‘The Smartest Places on Earth’ believes that rust-belt cities are now brain-belt ones. Plus: can you guess which city is set to be the first in the world to have its own bike mayor?
