
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

Work & the city
We continue to unpack our new book, ‘The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities’. This week we turn our focus to chapter 7, looking at the places where we work.

Building Better Cities: Barcelona
We continue to explore the pages of ‘The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities’. This week we’re off to the Catalonian capital to hear how the city has changed through the years and what…

Building better cities
All this month we’re dedicating the show to chapters from our new book: ‘The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities’. We start off with a series of essays that look at some of the…

Rediscovering London
There is something magical about finding an old photo of a familiar place and seeing how much it has changed. It is a powerful reminder of the life that unfolded on the streets long…

Urban thoughts
We tour a new exhibition shining a light on Jerusalem, meet the architecture duo building libraries to bring the community together and ask: if everyone else was giving up their data, would you do…

Book club
We profile two new books: Alexandra Langue’s ‘The Design of Childhood’ and Kelvin Campbell’s ‘Making Massive Small Change’.

Privacy
Our thoughts on what should be private or off-limits are changing in every aspect of our lives, including the way we inhabit cities.

Shhh, be quiet
What role does the humble public library play in cities today? Join us as we hear about the impromptu libraries popping up in private houses, reminisce about the bookmobile, discover how one library has…

Crime and the city
We focus on our home city, London, because recent statistics back up what many Londoners have been feeling for months: that we are living through a spike in crime. Andrew Tuck is joined by…

Beirut Design Week 2018
Beirut’s Design Week wants to encourage designers and planners to engage more in solving the city’s many urban issues. So can some tactical urbanism improve quality of life in the Lebanese capital?