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
Legacy
What lessons can we learn from past urbanists about how to build a better future for our cities? We discuss everything from how to make a good urban design outlast its designer to rebuilding from the ground up and Kenzo Tange. Plus: Vienna’s Nazi past.
The Urbanist Live – London special
In this special live episode of The Urbanist, Monocle editor Andrew Tuck hands over the floor to city-planners and urban leaders to discuss how to build a better London. Featuring Peter York, consultant and author, Sharon Ament, the director of the Museum of London, Peter Wynne Rees, professor of places…
Water
We’re all hydrated and ready to go. This week we look at water-sensitive urban design, unpack our relationship with the ocean, discover the joys of cycling by the river and examine the devastating effects that water can have.
Sport and the city
Dust off those sport socks and lace up your trainers – this week we’re all about sport in the city. We discuss everything from urban regeneration and sport to the origins of Australian rules football. Plus: the abundance of Olympic pools in Belgrade and what football clubs in Istanbul reveal…
Mapping the city
Compass and ruler in hand, we examine the history and politics behind the mapping of our cities. We look at new approaches in Toronto and find out more about the Graphia project, where Scandinavian aesthetics meet Hong Kong.
Changing dynamics
Can old manufacturing towns hold the key to innovation? A new book called ‘The Smartest Places on Earth’ believes that rust-belt cities are now brain-belt ones. Plus: can you guess which city is set to be the first in the world to have its own bike mayor?
Density
How do you tackle overcrowding without expanding a city’s footprint? We explore a new study by Hassell and chat with Joel Kotkin, who’s challenging the conventional “pack-and-stack” and high-rise strategies. Plus: 60 years of designing Hong Kong.
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.
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.
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.
