Green Urbanist - Sustainable Placemaking, Planning and Urban Design
100+ episodes exploring climate action in cities and neighbourhoods.
This show provides actionable advice and case studies on:
- Sustainable urban design and placemaking principles.
- How to design cities and neighbourhoods for biodiversity net gain and wildlife.
- Climate adaptation: How to build resilience to climate change in cities.
- Net zero carbon masterplanning and architecture.
- Circular economy: How to minimise waste and emissions in new development.
- Transport: How to transition cities away to sustainable and active travel.
- Regenerative Design: Delivering positive benefits for the environment and communities.
Who is it for? Urban designers, planners, developers, architects, landscape architects, urban ecologists, engineers, transport professionals and urban citizens.
The Green Urbanist podcast is hosted by Ross O'Ceallaigh, an urban designer and sustainable placemaking consultant.
- Update frequency
- every 12 days
- Average duration
- 48 minutes
- Episodes
- 129
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
#68: Urban Rewilding
What is urban rewilding? Can it be done in cities? Is anyone doing it?
In this episode, we explore:
- History of the rewilding concept
- Current best practice in rewilding
- How rewilding can be applied to ci…
#67: Co-designing for Spatial Justice with Jane Wong, Lydia Toohey and Tom Greenall (DSDHA)
This episode is a conversation with Jane, Lydia and Tom of architecture and urban design studio DSDHA. We discuss their research project 'Towards Spatial Justice: A guide for achieving meaningful par…
#66: Designing a Sustainable Neighbourhood at The Phoenix with Xavier Smales and Andy Tugby (Human Nature)
Xavier Smales is an Architect and Andy Tugby is Head of Sustainable Construction at Human Nature, a developer based in the south of England. They join me to discuss their approach to designing sustai…
#65: Joe Morris - Morris+Company Office Tour, Architecture, Circularity and Food
Joe Morris is Founding Director of Morris+Company architects, based in London and Copenhagen. In this episode, he gives me a tour of their newly refurbished London office while we discuss their philo…
#64: Civic Square - Reimagining the Neighbourhood for the 21st Century (with Immy Kaur, Kavita Purohit and Charlie Edmonds)
Civic Square is a Public Square, a Neighbourhood Economics Lab and a Creative + Participatory Ecosystem. They have been doing amazing work around systems change at the neighbourhood level in Ladywood…
#63: Israa Mahmoud - Co-designing Nature-based Solutions in Cities
Read the companion blog post to his episode on Substack.
Israa Mahmoud is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Her research interests include nature-bas…
#62: Helen Pineo - Healthy Urbanism from Planetary to Building Scales
Read the companion blog post to this episode on Substack.
Dr Helen Pineo MRTPI is an urban planner and Associate Professor in Healthy and Sustainable Cities in the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Envir…
#61: Fact Checking the Norman Foster Dezeen Interview
In this episode I fact check the article "There are a lot of dangerous myths" about sustainability says Norman Foster, which appeared on dezeen.com on 17th January 2023.
The architect made some con…
#60: Rob Hopkins - Why Climate Action Needs Imagination
See links and images on the companion blog post.
Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and author of several books including ‘The Transition Handbook‘ and …
#59: Why cities need Transformational Adaptation and what it could mean for urban ecosystems
Climate change is causing local weather patterns and ecosystems to shift and transform. In order to thrive in this new climate era, we will need to transform our cities and urban ecosystems. This is …
#58: Creating a Culture of Sustainable Design with Glenn Howells Architects
Companion blog post on Substack
I speak to Will Poole (Partner) Jack Pritchard (Associate Urban Designer) and Sophia Ceneda (Architect and Sustainability Lead) at Glenn Howells Architects. Glenn Howe…
#57: Laura Baron (Purcell) - Sustainability in Historic Buildings
Companion blog post on Substack
Laura is Head of Sustainability at Purcell, a practice of architects, heritage consultants and masterplanners working on historic structures. In this episode, we discu…
#56: Joao Cortesao - Climate-Responsive Urban Design, Adaptation and Research Through Design
Joao is a Portuguese architect and researcher, and an Assistant Professor at Wageningen University, Netherlands. His research focuses on climate-responsive urban design and climate adaptation using a…
#55: Tim Stonor and Anna Rose (Space Syntax) - Science-based Human-centric Urbanism
Tim Stonor is an architect and urban planner who has devoted his career to the analysis and design of human behaviour patterns – the ways in which people move, interact and transact in buildings and …
#54: Dr Dorina Pojani - Eco-Feminist Urbanism
Dr Dorina Pojani is a Senior Lecturer at University of Queensland, Australia. An urban planner and urban designer by training, she has experience in both practice and academics. We discuss her new bo…
#53: Vanessa Champion - Biophilic Design for Climate Action
Originally an academic at UCL, Ness has a PhD in Greek and Latin, and also worked in the British Museum, honing her interest in research in how societies flourish and how the visual environment infor…
#52: Divya Hariramani - Community Orchards, Urban Fruit Trees and Social Sustainability
My guest and tour guide today in Divya Hariramani Herrero. She is a sustainability consultant and Associate Director at Longevity Partners, a London National Park City Ranger and runs an instagram pa…
#51: Regenerative Highrise with Tomas Stokke (Haptic Architects) and Shonn Mills (Ramboll)
In today’s episode we’re talking about the contentious issue of tall buildings. Some people love them, some people hate them. My guests today have come up with a concept for high rise that could be m…
#50: The Critical Decade of Climate Action, with Giulia Mori
To celebrate the 50th episode and second birthday of the Green Urbanist Podcast, I sit down with Giulia Mori to discuss the question: What has to happen in this critical decade to ensure successful c…
#49: "We're not doing doom and gloom!" - Live from Footprint+ Sustainability Conference
Reporting live from Footprint+ 2022, a new sustainability conference in Brighton, UK. Featuring interviews with:
- Joe Jack Williams, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
- Barny Evans, Turley
- Amin Taha, Groupwor…