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
The office workspace
The office: being in an environment you love shouldn’t mean having to count down the hours until your commute home. We look at what makes the perfect space for work and what that has to do with the city around it.
The world of logistics
Fast packages: we cover the world of city logistics and lightning-quick services ranging from property maintenance to the use of UAVs, tricycles to miniature railways.
Dogs in the city
Dogs: we spend an hour with man’s best friend and look at the city from a dog’s eye-view. Why are city-slickers gaga over pricey pooch pampering?
What makes a home?
Homes: a look at the most important four walls. We find out what a housing association has been doing for Londoners for over 150 years, take a tour of a gay housing complex in Berlin, discover what it’s like to live in an apartment in central Tokyo and hop on…
City streets
City streets: we take a look at cities from the ground up, learning how much it costs to set up new a street, why one developer is eager to give new life to one of Lisbon’s oldest neighbourhoods, discover a hidden road in the heart of Manhattan and get a…
Suburban revival
Suburbs: how to bring them back to life, what a ‘sprawl index’ says about a city and what happens when neglected ’burbs fight back. Join us as we head to Istanbul, Washington DC, New York and London.
Building resilient cities
Resilient cities: how do you build a city that lasts? Seeking out stories of strong leadership, the right infrastructure (call in the landscape architect!), to communities whose bonds endure catastrophe, we visit San Francisco, Da Nang, Hong Kong and Calgary.
Icons and iconoclasts
Icons and iconoclasts: do cities need popular icons to unite them? What of the cities that have none? We visit Madrid, Vienna, Sydney, London and Lisbon to find out.
The Build Report
Build: The Urbanist reports from the Bilbao Urban Innovation and Leadership Dialogues conference, hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS).
Number wars
Number wars: whether it’s securing the right prefix for your phone number or naming a business according to the trendiest postcode – why do we care so much about our city digits?
