The CityChangers Podcast

We sit down with Marco te Brömmelstroet and Adrian Fratila from the Just Streets project to talk about what justice has to do with city streets, how to deal with the naysayers, and whether the Dutch …

Urban Future’s Karl Dickinson is in conversation with Adrian Hill, a social designer and lead researcher for the Cities of Making project, talking about the nature of production in the post-industria…

How did Seoul turn a backed-up expressway into a tranquil urban stream? We take a look at the landmark Cheonggyecheon River Restoration project and ask why, almost 20 year later, this peaceful pocket…

Urban Future’s Cornelia Forsthuber-Aumayr talks to Maral Koohestanian – former Young Leader and now the youngest ever Deputy Mayor for the city of Wiesbaden, Germany – about everything from why we ne…

How truly public are our public spaces? In this episode, we take a look at the rise of ‘defensive urbanism’ in our cities and ask what it would take to stop designing people out of public space and s…

You’ve been pushing your city to make some changes for years. So, what happens when they suddenly reach across the aisle and give you the reins? We take a look at the Initiative Haus der Statistik – …

In our throwaway culture, binning a broken object and buying a replacement is often the easiest, and cheapest, solution. But the take-make-waste economy has serious costs – for the environment and al…

After centuries in charge, men have made a mess of our cities! Gender bias is present in almost every element of urban planning and design, from mobility networks right down to the way we build house…

Life goes on after the sun goes on, so why should our cities stop? With more cities around the world creating night offices and appointing night mayors – we take a look at the potential (and the pitf…

‘Resilience’ has become something of a buzzword these days – not just in terms of a desirable personality trait but also something companies and even cities can aspire to. But what does it look like …

Why do we fear failure?

Sustainability is an iterative process. There are no shortcuts. But in a world focussed on success, we often hide from our mistakes.

Recognising this, Gerald Babel-Sutter set …

Elected officials make decisions that affect millions of people, but beyond voting every few years, what say do citizens really have? Maybe democracy needs a tune-up. A citizens’ assembly – a sort of…

Moving an entire city? It’s not science fiction. Faced with an existential crisis, the city of Kiruna, in Sweden, is being relocated approximately three kilometres away from where it was founded – br…

How can we ensure that a ‘smart city’ is also a fair, diverse and ethical one? We talk to Douwe Schmidt from the city of Amsterdam about the thorny issues cities face when implementing technological …

What would a city designed entirely by children look like? And what could it tell us about the cities we live in now – the good things and the bad? Academic Christina Ergler's research into pre-schoo…

Turning big ideas into reality is what CityChangers do.

But what happens when, against the odds, you finally achieve your goal? What next?

Nicholas Marchesi, of charity Orange Sky, launched the world…

With declining rates of civic engagement across cities around the world, Kiel, in Germany, is taking a unique approach to improving participation – by putting it on wheels! The Tiny Townhall is a wor…

What links pedestrian crossings in Chicago, USA, with the Sydney Opera House in Australia?

Sascha Haselmayer’s surprising story provides an unexpected answer to this unusual question, and it’s led to…

Facing their fair share of challenges on the ground (from housing shortages to climate change) cities like Rotterdam are looking skywards for solutions – to the rooftops. There’s plenty of opportunit…