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
Should a city host a design week?
With more than 100 design weeks around the world, design worshippers are hard-pressed to visit them all. Yet new cities are always being added. So why are so many municipalities trying to link their names with ‘Design’ and what can being a host bring to a city?
The Urbanist: best of 2016
We bring you some of the best moments on ‘The Urbanist’ this year, including reports from Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Seattle – and even a chat from the top of a tree.
Tall Stories: best of 2016
We bring you highlights from 2016’s ‘Tall Stories’, including a tale of the river Thames, the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial and Singapore’s Cavenagh Bridge.
Jane Jacobs
In a special episode of ‘The Urbanist’, we look at the life and legacy of Jane Jacobs, one of the most influential urban thinkers and city activists of our time.
Come together
This week we report from the C40 conference where mayors gathered to discuss how to implement positive change in the world. Hop on a boat in Lisbon to talk about how collective action and architecture come together and we unpack the emerging trend of building over transit lines.
Grand tour
This week we head to Cairo to talk about how good design has helped the city change for the better, chat with Brazil’s tourism minister Marx Beltrão and catch up with Buenos Aires mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.
All aboard – choo, choo!
The city that is bringing back trains from the late 1950s, an award-winning station with no town and how Austria is aiming to become Europe’s largest night-train operator.
CityLab 2016, part 2
We continue our coverage of this year’s edition of CityLab, which brings together the world’s top mayors, urban leaders and innovators. Featuring the Good Chance Theatre in Calais, how Los Angeles is looking to transform its transport, a chat about housing with the mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, and a…
CityLab 2016
We report from CityLab 2016, a two-and-a-half day summit that has gathered the world’s top mayors, urban leaders and innovators for a series of conversations on ideas that are shaping our planet’s urban centres.
Water
We learn how Unesco is trying to save Thailand’s landmarks from floods, discover Seattle’s innovative way of catching stormwater and head to Lesotho to profile Africa’s biggest water-transfer project. Plus: ‘Water: California’, a new photo series by photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz, commissioned by the Syngenta Photography Award.
