Urban Political Podcast

This podcast series explores the "life of property" in urban theory and practice. In conversations with scholars who have led the way in property debates, it aims is to advance conceptual and theoretical groundwork on this notion that fundamentally shapes everyday urban lives and political discussion about the city. Within the social sciences and critical urban research property has lived a mostly implicit and underexamined life for several decades. Over the last years, it has become more central to conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work. Taking up this (renewed) interest in the concept, the series employs property as an entry point into critical urban debates about appropriation, dispossession and expropriation. The series seeks to situate the notion of property within urban research and to scrutinize power dynamics around property and their impacts on urban trajectories. Moreover we aim to provincialize Eurocentric understandings of property by bringing post-colonial, Indigenous, post-socialist (along

Community land trusts are proliferating across the globe, promoted as a potential solution to the ever-worsening affordable housing crisis. CLTs provide a mechanism for decommodification, collective ownership, and community control; however, those ideals are hard to operationalize, and many CLTs function more as traditional affordable housing providers than as urban commons. This episode discusses the causes of this tension as well as regional differences and issues of funding and scale framed around the question: are CLTs transformative? The moderator of this podcast is Mathilde Lind Gustavussen. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on housing, displacement, and tenant activism in Los Angeles. The panel of guests consists of: Nele Aernouts is assistant professor of urban design and planning at the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests lie in the planning, spatial design and governance of social and coll

How do “peripheries” form? And how does urbanization generate processes of peripheralization? Today, urban research is increasingly confronted with processes of extended urbanization that unfold far beyond cities and agglomerations: novel patterns of urbanization are crystallizing in agricultural areas and in remote landscapes, challenging inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded and dense settlement type. While certain territories of extended urbanisation experience growth, others are affected by peripheralisation, experiencing deep socio-economic and ecological restructuring, marginalisation and inequality, and the re-articulation of power and privilege. These observations advocate for a radical reconceptualization of the experience of periphery at various spatial scales. In this podcast, we discuss peripheralization not as a static spatial condition, but as a dynamic process that is shaped by uneven urbanization and complex multi-scalar relations, strongly put forward through moments of “crisis”.

Listen to this gripping account from the current „Woman Life Freedom“ movement in Iran and its impact on cities and its inhabitants. The movement was sparked by the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini in the custody of the Islamic regime’s „morality police“ in September 2022. After several weeks of uprising, the media coverage in Western countries has become more silent due in part to the extremely repressive acts of the government in which several people have been killed and many imprisoned. The regime has also made a deliberate attempt to control communication chanels including the control or shut-down of the internet, making it more difficult for news about events to leave the country. The movement, however, is still very alive as you will hear in this episode. In this audio recording, produced by activists and urban scholars in Tehran, they bravely share their absorbing experiences and analyses of the ongoing uprising. They delve into the symbolic character of the hijab, provide historical and geographical cont

Having just celebrated the 10th anniversary of the important German-language journal for critical urban research, Ross speaks with sub\urban editorial members Gala Nettelbladt and Nina Gribat about why it is important to publish urban research in German, the challenge of organizing a horizontal editorial collective, of realizing an open access publication strategy, and of relating to political struggles of the current moment - among many other topics. First part of a series of episodes on forums of discussion and publication outlets in different geographical contexts.

The book provides an overview of ecologically conscious contemporary art that responds to today’s environmental crisis, from species extinction to climate change. Art and Climate Change collects a wide range of artistic responses to our current ecological emergency. When the future of life on Earth is threatened, creative production for its own sake is not enough. Through contemporary artworks, artists are calling for an active, collective engagement with the planet in order to illuminate some of the structures that threaten biological survival. Exploring the meeting point of decolonial reparation and ecological restoration, artists are remaking history by drawing on the latest ecological theories, scientific achievements, and indigenous worldviews to engage with the climate crisis. Across five chapters, authors Maja and Reuben Fowkes examine these artworks that respond to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on the planet’s climate, from scenes of nature decimated by ongoing extinction events and land

Urbanization has become central in recent political discourses, as well as a contested concept in experts' spheres. This podcast of the Urban Political delves into the phenomenon of urbanization and traces back how the idea of "expanding cities" is causing disagreement in urban studies and leading researchers to raise questions that have haunted the discipline since the times of Georg Simmel. In this episode, Nicolas Goez, one of our new members of the editorial board at Urban Political, talks with Johanna Hoerning and Hillary Angelo about current discussions around urbanization, against the background of the so-called urban age. Join us in this discussion and tune in! #Urbanization #UrbanTheory #Anthroposcene #UrbanStudies #PlanetaryUrbanization

The RC21 Conference 2022, “Ordinary cities in exceptional times,” was held in Athens from August, 24 to 26. A large group of participants from all over the world gathered for was the first in-person conference of the RC21 network since the start of the pandemic. However, the pandemic continued to dominate the conference with a number of participants being unable to travel to Athens due to the uncertain visa regimes. On the opening day of the conference, the participants gathered in the historical building of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in the Exarchia neighbourhood in downtown Athens. At the reception in the grand courtyard of NTUA, the participants came face-to-face with a group of protestors that raised banners against the state-projects promoting the gentrification and pacification of the anarchist neighbourhood of Exarchia. The remaining two days of the conference were organised on the premises of the Harokopio University in the Kallithea neighbourhood of Athens. The University host

The 30th annual INURA Conference entitled "Small State Big Transitions” was held in Luxembourg from June 25 to 28. Over 60 participants gathered at the conference to learn about the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and to celebrate the 30 years INURA. This year’s conference was organised by the Urban Studies Group at the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Luxembourg. With a population of just over 600,000, Luxembourg is a small, multilingual, sovereign state. But these diminutive attributes belie a cosmopolitan space where daily life frequently involves using three languages, and encountering perhaps four, five or six. Exhilarating and bewildering, it speaks to the ’small-but-global’ urbanisation the country has experienced in recent decades. The conference opened with city tours that explored the range of challenges and contradictions that constitute this complex urban space which elides various categories: a small state, city-state, multilingual sovereign nation, European capital,

This episode looks at urban landscapes of care and control that emerged during the pandemic in Santiago de Chile (Chile), Bogotá (Colombia) and Berlin (Germany). It is a comparative conversation on the urban impasse of state interventions and everyday logics under COVID19 in each of these cities and discusses the following questions: 1. How, if at all, has the pandemic affected state interventions in health in these cities? What new discourses and routines have been announced? 2. How, if at all, has the pandemic worked as a set of interventions in the social infrastructure of these cities? What, now almost 2 years down the road, has changed in the social realities of institutional agents and ordinary citizens that we observe? 3. What lessons can be learnt from the care and control contradictions in cities of today?

In this episode moderated by Nitin Bathla, the author Colin McFarlane discusses his recent book Fragments of the City with the critics Theresa Enright, Tatiana Thieme, and Kevin Ward. In analyzing the main arguments of the book, Theresa discusses the role of aesthetics in imagining, sensing, and learning the urban fragments, and the ambivalence of density in how it enables and disables certain kinds of politics. She questions Colin about the distinctiveness of art as a means to engage and politicize fragments, and how can we think about the relationships between fragment urbanism, density and the urban political across varied contexts. Tatiana analyses how the book journeys across a range of temporal scales of knowing fragments from its etymology to autobiographical experiences of underserved neighborhoods and of toilet and sanitation politics. She questions Colin about methodological dilemmas of walking across different fragments and his relationality to different field sites, the worlds of work, and diverge

Social mix has become a central planning discourse worldwide to address urban inequalities and segregation as key urban problems of the 21st century. Far from being benevolent, the discourse of social mix and its related implementations are subjected to a fundamental critique highlighting racist underpinnings and consequences in targeted neighborhoods. The conversation draws on insights from Canada, Chile, Germany, and the US. Kudos for this important discussion to guest editor Julie Chamberlain!

In this first episode of the Urban Concept series, Louis Volont (MIT, Boston) and Thijs Lijster (University of Groningen) discuss with Talja Blokland (Humboldt University, Berlin) the concepts of community and commons and consider implications for urban research and action. The series introduces key urban concepts and reflects on their relevance in the fields of theory, research and politics.

Listen to urban researchers sharing their insights on the situation in Ukrainian cities at war, from Kyiv, Kharkiv to Mariupol. Our guests discuss Putin's identity politics and the way his propaganda hits a wall in the context of the shelling of Ukrainian cities. Countering the images of an opposition of "Ukrainian vs Russian" inhabitants as a backdrop to the war, the discussants offer a different perspective on how ethnicity and language have played out prior to the war. At the same time, they take on predominant Western European understandings of politics and economics of Ukraine and draw a picture of a complex society that becomes more united in the context of a common enemy.

What do graffiti and street art do? This is the key question of the intriguing podcast conversation among Emma Arnold, Jeff Ross, and John Lennon. While we learn about the unruly and disruptive features of graffiti in urban space, our guests also trouble its effects by asking questions about its relation to gentrification, racialized capitalism and right-wing media strategy. Highlighting geographical variation, the conversation covers the political regulation of graffiti and street art in the US, Scandinavia, Cairo, and Beirut.

On the 26th of September over million Berliners voted to expropriate and return to public ownership over 200,000 homes in the city. Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen targeted a number of large real estate companies in Berlin that had control of what had previously been social housing stock. The referendum is not legally binding, requiring the support of the governing parties in the Berlin parliament, who are now tasked with legislating on the issue. The composition of the governing coalition has yet to be determined, although it is clear that the Social Democrats will lead, having emerged as the largest party in the elections on the same as the referendum. This podcast examines the background to this historic victory and considers the implications for housing politics in Berlin and beyond. We remind ourselves what the campaign was about, we look at what happened, what might happen next and the likely challenges in store. We also consider the wider implications of the Berlin case. We are very happy to wel

In this episode we give you exclusive insights into the RC21 conference 2021 Antwerp. Our guests share their experiences from sessions, keynotes, and discussions on this year's main theme of 'Sensing and Shaping the City'.

After discussing expropriation efforts in Berlin recently, this episode will widen the discussion of housing commons to perspectives, differences, and potentials in Europe and the US.

‘How can academic research be of service to envisioning alternative planning agendas that reflect the realities of the so-called Global South?’ is the central question that our guest host Inhji Jon stresses in this episode.

Green cities and green infrastructure have become common planning practices. But why is nature good and how does green matter? Do all people have equal access to nature, or are some left out of contemporary climate planning?