Sponsored by
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
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,…
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?
Peace and quiet
Peace and quiet: how do we find a little calm in the big, loud city. From a fruitless hunt in the construction capital of Shanghai to an ode to mindfulness with meditation expert Andy…
Exploring trains
Trains: we explore the history of trains in cities in locations such as Beirut, Buenos Aires, Sydney, LA and New York. Plus, a love story that unfolded from London to Paris on the Eurostar.
Weather
Weather: how an oyster can help protect a city from hurricane damage, we look at Vancouver’s wet-weather architecture slip-up, and meet a very enthusiastic weatherman, to learn how the oncoming forecast affects all elements…
Documenting the city
Documenting the city: how we record our urban areas, from the museum curator with a collection you can’t display to a documentary film that’s both fantasy and fiction, along with maps, photographs, audio and…
The missing and the unbuilt
The unbuilt: we speak to the City of London’s former planning officer about how to say “no” to those who want to build, find out why residents are thankful that Lisbon doesn’t have a…
City eccentrics
Oddballs: Why a city that accepts its eccentrics wins out, featuring the Parisian toilet attendant (and self-styled dame), the Sydney transgender bubble-bike rider and Rio’s own Batman who are all helping add to a…
