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 170: Cuba’s Coppelia
We take another flick through the pages of our ‘Summer Weekly’ newspaper, this week visiting the hulking modernist flagship of Cuba’s state owned ice-cream brand Coppelia. It’s been serving scoops for more than half a century and has become a symbol of the nation’s resilient culture.
Heatwave
Following one of the hottest summers on record, we look at the impact that rising temperatures are having on our cities.
Tall Stories 169: La Grande Motte
This week we delve into issue one of Monocle’s summer newspaper, ‘The Summer Weekly’, and head to the once-marshy, mosquito-ridden coastal commune of La Grande Motte in France, which has been transformed since the 1960s into a lush resort town with real beachfront appeal.
Pedestrian zones
To make their centres more liveable, cities across the globe are looking to reduce the dominance of cars by creating pedestrian-only streets, plazas and walkways. They’re at the forefront of many urban-improvement initiatives so we take a look at where they have come from and why people love them or…
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?
