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
National identity
What is it that makes us feel like we belong somewhere? From Estonia and France to Canada and Italy, it’s all about the sense of a nation as a whole – and often, what makes them proud too.
Tall Stories 2: Queen Square
The starting point for this week’s ‘Tall Stories’ is a tiny square of metal screwed on to concrete in London’s Queen Square. It’s all about memory and healing, an explosion echoing across 101 years. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought to you by the team behind ‘The Urbanist’.
Urban experiences
This week is all about how we experience our cities. We discover the joys of urban tree-climbing, hop over to sunny Portugal with our Lisbon Passport and hear the sounds of the Amazon in Times Square.
Tall Stories 1: The Casson Pavilion
In the debut episode of ‘Tall Stories’, Monocle’s editor Andrew Tuck takes us on an urban journey through a house that was never intended for people to live in: London’s Casson Pavilion. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought to you by the team behind ‘The Urbanist’.
Going forward
We hone in on a debate underway in Montréal and ask if all heritage has to be beautiful. We also discover a company that’s connecting people in Porto through a mesh network and hear an audio essay on city cycling by our editor Andrew Tuck.
How do we age in our cities?
As more and more people move to cities, it is important to ensure the built environment is prepared to receive them at all stages in life. This week it’s all about urban ageing: from an architect’s solution to the global ageing crisis, to designing “age-friendly” cities. Plus: we examine Tokyo’s…
One step at a time
The floor we step on every single day is an essential piece of urban design. We examine Portugal’s limestone calçadas, Singapore’s unique ‘five foot ways’ and Turin’s covered pavements. Plus: we imagine a world in which every single step we take in a city is converted into energy.
Tech fixes
It’s all about simple tech fixes this week as we explore some of the small tweaks that are taking city living to the next level. Can technology actually make the cities of tomorrow better places to live? We sit down with Boston’s chief information officer Jascha Franklin-Hodge to hear his…
Down under
We’re off to Australia, a mighty nation with some big city challenges. We look at a one of the country’s biggest urban renewal projects in Melbourne, visit Sydney’s William Street to see the state of brick-and-mortar retail in a nation that’s been a big adopter of e-commerce and hear how…
Up, up we go
High-rises are associated with a certain culture and lifestyle but it’s not always a case of ‘us vs. them’. We explore the cultural legacy of some London gems from the 1960s, discover the unique skyline of São Paulo and get a window into the iconic Torres Blancas housing complex in…
