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
Chasing zero
Cities around the world are making commitments to reduce their net carbon emissions to zero. But what are the steps being taken to ensure this goal is achieved, and who is leading the race towards a greener urban future?
Tall Stories 357: Verkehrskanzel, Berlin
Paige Reynolds visits a relic of Berlin’s infrastructure that speaks to our cities’ less automated histories.
Better community policing
Monocle’s Chris Cermak reports from the Professionalizing Law Enforcement-Community Engagement Training Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, to explore how police can better interact with the communities they serve and gain their trust.
Tall Stories 356: Cermak Road, Chicago
Chris Cermak looks into the local Chicago history that is invoked by his relatively rare surname.
The fate of the department store
In this special roundtable discussion, The Urbanist debates what is best for our grand old department stores. Should they be revitalised, repurposed or removed? Henrietta Billings from SAVE Britain’s Heritage and Toby Pentecost of the property developer Candour join us to consider the options.
Tall Stories 355: The Barnes Dance
David Stevens investigates a particularly well-choreographed way to cross the road.
Planning ahead
We explore the virtues of second cities as master-plan test-beds, speak to a Ukrainian mayor hoping to build back better after the war and look into how virtual reality can improve the way our buildings sound.
Tall Stories 354: Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, Valencia
Conor Faulkner visits the City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia’s best-known piece of modern architecture, to explain its bumpy creation story.
City lessons from Salone del Mobile
We explore some of the promising plans and inspiring ideas for our cities that we have heard while floating around the exhibition halls of this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan.
Tall Stories 353: Çamlıca Tower, Istanbul
Hannah Lucinda Smith admires a beautiful piece of telecommunications infrastructure in the hills of Istanbul.
