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Episode 45 – Housing Commons & Collectives: European & US Perspectives
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. Housing was and remains one of the crucial social issues of our time. From Friedrich Engels discussion of the housing question to the idea of ‘commons’ gaining more traction…
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Episode 44 – Decolonize/Decenter: Planning in the South
‘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. Since Western-centric planning approaches imposes norms on places and times where they are inappropriate, we need to explore the possibilities…
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Episode 43 – Green Cities and Contemporary Climate Planning: Politics and Practices
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? Furthermore, what impact will COVID 19 and climate crisis have on future green city planning? These and other…
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Episode 42 – Housing struggles in Berlin: Part II Grassroots Expropriation Activism
On April 15, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court overturned Berlin’s rent cap. This immediately led to a massive spontaneous protest with 15,000 people voicing their concerns and proclaiming their right to the city. Moreover, within a week after the court’s decision the number of signatures for the grassroots campaign ‘Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen’ increased tremendously…
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Episode 41 – Housing Struggles in Berlin: Part I Rent Cap
From Friedrich Engel’s series ‘Zur Wohnungsfrage‘ to the decision of Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court on the #Berlin #RentCap last week: housing was and remains one of the crucial social issues of our time. Together with Andrej Holm, we discuss the social and political consequences of the Court’s decision that the Berlin state government had no…
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Episode 40 – The urban politics of density in and beyond the pandemic
This podcast explores how the pandemic is changing density around the world and generating forms of politics. With a diverse group of scholars and practitioners from around the world, the podcast addresses the following specific questions/ themes: How should density be conceived and why is it important to understanding cities (and the pandemic)? What is…
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Episode 39 – The Urban Hinterlands of Slavery
The transatlantic slave trade had a lasting impact not only on the development of big ports like Liverpool, London, Nantes or Bordeaux, but also in cities that far less frequently associated with slavery. In this episode, four researcher-activists from Bremen and Lancaster speak about how slavery is not just a bygone period of cruel practices…
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Episode 38 – Film-Making as Urban Research
Emerging film-makers and urban researchers Nitin Bathla, Sandra Jasper, and Tino Buchholz speak about their avenues into film-production, why film amounts to a vital medium for urban research, and what it would mean to enhance its role in urban studies. This episode is also full of urban film inspirations and recommendations! Our guests: Nitin Bathla…
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Episode 37 – Urban Climate Finance at the edge of viability?
Amidst the rapidly unfolding ecological crisis, current research is witnessing ever new financial strategies that aim at making money from urban climate risks. In this episode Hanna Hilbrandt invites Emma Colven, Zac Taylor, Sarah Knuth, and Sage Ponder, to discuss the financial and socio-material limits to the viability of urban financialization in the context of climate change. When climate disasters increasingly…
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Episode 36 – Mobilization and advocacy in contexts of massive urbanisation – Part 2
Throughout the global south, many urban regions have become massive. In the familiar renditions of this notion, urban regions, mushrooming in population and spatial footprints, teeter close to chaos, environmental disaster, and ungovernability. Populations are being reshuffled, moved from one area to the other, something which an extensive landscape of built projects that never really…
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Episode 35 – Mobilization and Advocacy in Massive Urbanization Contexts – Part I
Throughout the global south, many urban regions have become massive. In the familiar renditions of this notion, urban regions, mushrooming in population and spatial footprints, teeter close to chaos, environmental disaster, and ungovernability. Populations are being reshuffled, moved from one area to the other, something which an extensive landscape of built projects that never really…
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Episode 34 – Radical Municipal Politics in Latin America since the 1990s
Gianpaolo Baiocchi offers us an historical overview of what he terms Radical Cities in Latin America and draws out some lessons from the past 30 years. Comparing these experiences to municipal politics in Europe and elsewhere, he highlights the distinctive features and charts the ups and downs of these urban movements. Massive suburbanization, metropolitan fragmentation…
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Episode 33 – COVID-19 and its impact on public life and use of public space
This episode discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the behavior of people in public spaces in Dortmund (Germany), San Francisco (USA) and Isfahan (Iran). My guests, Teresa Sprague and Ghazal Farjami, and I (Mais Jafari) explain how people in these societies perceive and react to social distancing, mask wearing, and other measures in a variety…
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Episode 32 – Murray Bookchin, Municipalism, Popular Democracy and Left Politics
In this podcast we discuss the work of Murray Bookchin, relating it to the experiences and debates around municipalism and wider left political practices and theory. With our guests (Blair, Hilary and Kate) we focus the discussion on the recent edited collection of Bookchin’s work: The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct…
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Episode 31 – Multiple Crises and Radical Urban Research (AfterCorona #13)
Starting off from her latest agenda-setting article “What does it mean to be a radical urban scholar-activist, or activist scholar today?” published earlier this year in the relaunch issue of the journal CITY – analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action. It was published before the pandemic shock and the current wave of Black Lives…
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Episode 30 – The Revolutionary Movements in Algeria and Lebanon (AfterCorona #12)
This episode delves deep into the ongoing revolutionary movements in Algeria and Lebanon. Ratiba Hadj-Moussa and Rana Sukarieh provide us with a rich and inspiring account of developments, offering social-economic background to the events of the last two years, outlining the main contours of the political struggles in the two countries and drawing comparative insights.…
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Episode 29 – Genealogies of Liveability (AfterCorona #11)
Nina Stener Jørgensen and Maroš Krivý offer us the broader picture of the contemporary urbanist discourse of liveability and Jan Gehl’s rise to prominence. In a tour de force, they walk us through Gehl’s original work within the Danish welfare state of the 1960s, his indebtedness to the contributions of his wife Ingrid, his rise…
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Episode 28 – Urban Commonwealth (AfterCorona #10)
On the basis of the book The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth, we discuss with Margaret Kohn her resuscitation of the early 20th century solidarist ideas and the links to the Lefebvrian notion of the right to the city. We challenge her on the question of scale and the role of the state in…
