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
After the quake
Quake cities: San Francisco, Tokyo and Port-au-Prince – the Urbanist looks at how cities prepare for, recover from and remember earthquakes.
Cooling down cities
Keeping cool in the city: from London’s leafy rooftops to Madrid’s riverbanks-turned-urban beaches, to Cairo’s ancient architecture that beats present day air-con.
New Cities Summit with Jean-Louis Missika and Anil menon
Paris’s New Cities Summit, where we meet deputy mayor of the city Jean-Louis Missika and talk with Anil Menon, head of Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities project.
Los Angeles and Toronto’s struggle with public transport
Why Los Angeles opted to buy Japanese trains to expand public transport and how Toronto is a city struggling to keep its transport edge.
Sprawling suburbia
The suburban sprawl: we talk with the mayor of Surrey, Vancouver, look at London’s Hampstead and learn how to control suburbs from Professor Stuart White.
Signs of the times
Signs of the times: a survey of how everything from billboards on skyscrapers to the dazzling advertising displays in Times Square help colour our cities.
Branding a city
City branding: Simon Anholt and Jeremy Hildreth discuss branding London, Jerusalem’s optimism in rebranding and how a museum embodies Bilbao.
Urban monuments
Statues and monuments: architect Peter Eisenman discusses Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial and we find out why France rejected a statue of Carla Bruni.
Temporary cities
The temporary city: author Peter Bishop joins us to look at transient urban trends in Manhattan and Tokyo.
Urban fantasy
Fantasy cities: Peter Murray tells us his vision for 2050, we hear about Beirut’s future plans and visit a comic artist in Paris.