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
Tall Stories 168: Bletchley Park
The former Government Code and Cipher School is now a heritage site in Milton Keynes, the newest of the UK’s new towns. We go on a journey through what was once the home of Alan Turing and the Enigma codebreakers.
Homelessness
It’s estimated that as many as 1.6 billion people around the world lack adequate housing. And despite some serious efforts, urban areas still struggle to find a viable solution to the ongoing crisis. So what can be done? And who are the activists and civic leaders championing change?
Tall Stories 167: Bratislava’s communist-era buildings
Architects and historians tend to admire them but members of the public usually associate them with the injustices of the socialist regime and want them gone. Is this architecture worth saving?
Green New Deal
We unpack what this bold proposal is all about and find out how it wants to tackle both inequality and climate change at the same time.
Tall Stories 166: Chain of Lakes
Minneapolis is home to the Chain of Lakes: a park system designed in the early 20th century that links together the city’s five biggest lakes. We look at how it has influenced the city – from its culture to the built environment.
Catching up
We speak to Lisa Helps, the mayor of Victoria, about her ambitious transport agenda and Clarkston’s mayor Ted Terry about refugees. Plus: can The Tide, a project by the studio behind New York’s High Line, change London?
Tall Stories 165: The Kiwi bach
The bach plays a leading role in New Zealanders’ summer holidays. Monocle 24’s David Stevens takes us to his family’s bach on Waikanae Beach to assess why this classic Kiwi dream might be starting to fade.
Wellbeing and cities
We discuss wellbeing in our urban environments. Reporting from the inaugural Wellbeing Cities Forum in Montréal, we examine how to live well in a city and dissect the social, economic and cultural aspects of urban life.
Tall Stories 164: Stonewall’s legacy
Stonewall is the most influential event in US gay-rights history; in 2016, Barack Obama made the site of the uprising a national monument. So why are many places that are critical to LGBT history under-documented and overlooked?
Lessons from the Quality of Life Conference
Now that Monocle’s fifth annual Quality of Life conference has wrapped up in Madrid, we look back at some of the wisdom we took home with us and ponder how we can use these lessons to effect change in our own urban environments.
