The CityChangers Podcast

The CityChangers Podcast: Inspiring Liveable, Equitable, Sustainable Cities “The CityChangers Podcast” explores innovative ideas, showcases success stories (and, importantly, the failures), and delves into the strategies that contribute to positive urban transformations. Each episode features a new thought leader, expert, or visionary who shares their experiences and expertise in making cities better places to live, work, and thrive.

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Episodes

Thursday Jan 02, 2025

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 need more young people in politics to what inspires her to keep going in difficult times.
Featuring: Cornelia Forsthuber-Aumayr, Maral Koohestanian

Monday Oct 21, 2024

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 start designing them back in.  
Featuring: Cara Chellew, Rebecca Rutt, Kenneth Balfelt 

#14 Haus der Statistik

Thursday Sep 26, 2024

Thursday Sep 26, 2024

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 – the unlikely story of how a group of activists and artists found themselves co-planning a multi-million Euro development with the Berlin government. 
 
Featuring: Harry Sachs, Leona Lynen, Regula Lüscher, Urs Kumberger 

#13 Cake, Brew and Mend

Thursday Sep 12, 2024

Thursday Sep 12, 2024

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 also for the community. So, what would the alternative look like? We visit a repair café in Graz, Austria, to understand what it means to give an item a new lease of life, and why it often pays to repair rather than simply recycle.
Featuring: Heimo Hartlieb, Andreas Höfler, Steven Toast

#12 The Gendered City

Thursday Aug 22, 2024

Thursday Aug 22, 2024

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 houses. So what does it take to dislodge gendered microaggressions from the built environment? How can we reimagine municipal processes so that women are fairly represented? And what does infrastructure that benefits everyone actually look like? With a focus on Umeå in Sweden, we eek out the often-surprising answers.
Featuring: Nourhan Bassam and Linda Gustafsson

#11 Night, Gov!

Thursday Aug 08, 2024

Thursday Aug 08, 2024

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 pitfalls) involved in government after dark, and ask who should the night-time really belong to?
Featuring: Jess Reia, Mathieu Grondin
*The interview with Mathieu Grondin that features in this episode was recorded before his appointment as Ottawa’s Nightlife Commissioner.

#10 The Resilient City

Thursday May 23, 2024

Thursday May 23, 2024

‘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 in practice? We travel to Rotterdam to ask: What exactly makes a city resilient? How can you measure such a thing? And whose job is it to prepare our cities for the challenges on the horizon?
Featuring: Arnoud Molenaar, Kinga Feenstra

#9 Honest Mistakes

Thursday May 09, 2024

Thursday May 09, 2024

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 out to unite urban change-makers in an environment where they could confidently share their pitfalls, problems, and brick walls.
The idea caught on. What started out as a workshop for around 50 people quickly grew into a full-blown conference – and stories of prominent eff-ups are a real mainstay.
Featuring: Gerald Babel-Sutter, Maria Vassilakou

#8 Citizens, Assemble!

Thursday Apr 11, 2024

Thursday Apr 11, 2024

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 lottery promising better representation – can bring diverse voices to the table. Copenhagen has already given it a go, and the change in perspectives it brought about have been… surprising.
Featuring: Johan Galster, James Macdonald-Nelson

#7 How to Move a City

Thursday Mar 28, 2024

Thursday Mar 28, 2024

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 – brick by brick. The whole process raises some interesting questions: how exactly do you undertake such a massive task? What do you bring with you from the old city? What do you build from scratch? And what can other cities learn from the experience – the ones that are staying put?
 
Featuring: Brenda Cooper, Johanna Lindgren Ringholt, Peter Pääjärvi, Viktoria Walldin, Krister Lindstedt

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