Épisodes

  • 100 – Looking Back, Looking Forward

    100 – Looking Back, Looking Forward
    Nov 28 2025
    This episode is our 100th! We are delighted that we have reached this landmark and thank all our listeners and contributors since we started the Urban Political in 2019. To mark the occasion of this 100th podcast we have produced a special issue containing two parts, in which we look backwards and forwards on all things Urban and Political. In the first part, Markus Kip and Ross Beveridge talk to Mathilde Gustavussen about the origins of the podcast, why they set up the podcast, how things have changed since the beginning and what their favourite episodes are. In the second part of the episode, Ross, Markus and Nitin Bathla talk to four of our most regular and brilliant guests: Roger Keil, Colin McFarlane, Julie-Anne Boudreau, Colin MacFarlane and Urban Political collective member Hanna Hilbrandt. We ask them to look back 6 years - to 2019 - and consider what has changed in the urban political landscape, what urban research and practice needs to do to grasp the contemporary moment. Finally, the third question is asking what they think, in reality, might change in the coming years. Thanks for your support as a listener!
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    1 h et 35 min
  • 99 - The Impossible Possibility of 'Home'

    99 - The Impossible Possibility of 'Home'
    Nov 6 2025
    What does it mean to be at 'home', when 'home' is the expression of structural forms of violence, at the intersection of anthropocentrism, patriarchy, heteronormativity and racial capitalism? As the COVID-19 pandemic showed, home can be read as a juncture where many of the inequalities of our time come and are held together structurally; yet, at the same time, home maintains an attractive lure to itself, as a place one is called to defend or to work toward, in order to be freed from subjections that seem to render home impossible in the first place. In this talk, the aim is to stay close to this only apparent contradiction, which Michele would like to name the “impossible possibility of home.” With this notion, he interprets the unjust and violent foundations of home not as opposite to, but as foundational to, its capacity to allude to one’s own betterment in terms of belonging, security, and care. This means to say that the lure of home as a space of belonging is emerging from the foundations of home itself, rather than being a means toward salvation from its violence. The impossible possibility of home lies in home’s capacity to sell a diagram of liberation as a line of flight, a breakthrough from its unjust underpinnings, while in immanent, lived, and felt terms, that diagram is a very powerful function of those. The speaker in this episode is Michele Lancione, an Urban Scholar, who is not only thinking about cities, but also actively reshaping how we understand them.
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    51 min
  • 98 - (Re)Politicising Housing

    98 - (Re)Politicising Housing
    Oct 20 2025
    This is our second episode in collaboration with the ‘Where is Urban Politics?’ hybrid seminar series hosted by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands between 2024-2026. This episode ponders urgent issues on (re)politicizing housing across Europe. The first speaker is Josh Ryan-Collins, who talks about the financialisation of housing, drivers, outcomes and options for reform from a United Kingdom perspective. Following his talk, Dirk Benzemer responses from his research perspective. Josh ponders on the current housing affordability and wealth inequality crisis. He argues that supply side reforms, which means increasing the amount of housing, will not be sufficient to ameliorate the housing crisis. Beyond this, he sees crucial responses needed in breaking the powerful feedback cycle between depth and wealth driven financial flows and house prices and reducing the potential for rent extraction from home ownership. Dirk Bezemer begins from the question ‘Roof or real estate?’ to go through counter arguments he has encountered in Dutch political and public debates to which he is connected for many years. We hope you enjoy the episode!
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    52 min
  • 97 - In Loving Memory of Mark Saunders

    97 - In Loving Memory of Mark Saunders
    Oct 3 2025
    We dedicate this episode to the extraordinary urban filmmaker and tireless social-justice advocate, Mark Saunders, who passed away recently at the age of 68. Mark’s powerful contributions to documentary filmmaking, particularly through Despite TV, gave voice to the marginalized and illuminated urgent political and social issues across the globe. His unwavering commitment to storytelling, empathy, and justice left an indelible mark on everyone who knew him—and his legacy will continue to inspire activists, filmmakers, and listeners alike.
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    52 min
  • 96 - Digital Cities and Democracy

    96 - Digital Cities and Democracy
    Sep 17 2025
    In this episode Ross Beveridge, co-founder of our Podcast, and guests discuss the topic of digital cities and democracy. Digitalisation is transforming cities, urbanization and urban life – but how is it changing urban politics? What issues of justice and democracy are at stake in the advance of digital technologies? What are the power implications of the unending rise of corporate digital platforms, like Amazon? How are social media platforms reconfiguring the ways we live in cities and the ways we conduct politics? And what does the future hold? Ross discusses these questions with 4 scholars who have recently published important books in this field: Myria Georgiou, who is a Professor of Media and Communications and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She is the author of the book: Being Human in Digital Cities, published by Polity Press. Rob Kitchin, who is a professor in the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute at Maynooth University. He is the author of Critical Data Studies: An A to Z Guide to Concepts and Methods, published by Polity Press. Yu-Shan Tseng, who is an Anniversary Research Fellow in Geography at the University of Southampton. She is the author of Liquid democracy: a comparative study of digital urban democracy, published by Wiley & Sons. Justus Uitermark, who is Professor of Urban Geography and the Academic Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author, with Petter Törnberg, of Seeing Like a Platform An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity, published by Routledge.
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    1 h et 16 min
  • 95 - The Urban Crisis at Night: Engaging the Polycrisis after Dark

    95 - The Urban Crisis at Night: Engaging the Polycrisis after Dark
    Aug 19 2025
    To what extent does the current polycrisis intensify in urban settings during nighttime hours? Night lives are already characterized by precarity, urban inequalities, deeply seeded health and wellbeing concerns and a life 'in the shadows'. In this Polycrisis series episode, Michele Acuto, Andreina Seijas and Alessio Kolioulis take us on a "walking roundtable", recorded on the road after dark in London. The speakers discuss how nighttime perspectives shape how we encounter the urban polycrisis. They reflect on how night studies, and practice, prompt embedded thinking on the intersections of urban health, climate, economics and conflict with the experiences of dwelling, living and working in the city after dark. Crisis talk is being challenged through night talk, while the everyday dimensions of polycrisis are being considered, as they unfold in the mundanities of the night. The talk encourages us to engage with this world of urban research and practice by mixing a scholarly discussion, an insight into the urban challenges of a global city after dark, and a consideration of current solutions to improving nightlife inclusively, while taking us out on the streets of London after midnight.
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    32 min
  • 94 - Urban Racial Politics in Cartagena, Colombia

    94 - Urban Racial Politics in Cartagena, Colombia
    Jul 20 2025
    This episode will be conducted in Spanish, in line with the podcast's aim to de-center urban knowledge production by showcasing distinctive urban perspectives, and linguistic viewpoints. We are thrilled to introduce you to the second episode of our series on Urban Polycrisis! Join us for an episode in Spanish exploring the complex urban racial politics of Cartagena, Colombia. In this conversation with historians Javier Ortiz Cassiani and Orlando Deavila Pertuz, we dive into the city’s colonial past and explore how its racialised legacies shape contemporary urban life. We discuss how conflict, violence, and displacement have shaped racial politics, from Cartagena’s role in the transatlantic slave trade to its recent remaking as a tourist hub. The episode also looks at how Afro-descendant communities resist urban segregation and dispossession, offering insights into broader issues of racism and Blackness in urban Colombia and Latin America today.
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    1 h et 3 min
  • 93 - Normative Insurgency: Responses to the Urban Polycrisis from the Global South

    93 - Normative Insurgency: Responses to the Urban Polycrisis from the Global South
    Jul 9 2025
    This new Polycrisis series will explore the complex set of protracted, interconnected, and mutually reinforcing crises that disproportionately affect urban centers and urban populations, ranging from housing, democracy, transit, infrastructure, inequality, conflict, the environment, to health. What relevance do discussions of the “urban polycrisis” have for places in the Global South? This episode of the Urban Political Podcast examines how the urban polycrisis manifests in housing production and urban infrastructure, from an alleged fraying of the social fabric to continually increasing environmental damage and deeply entrenched inequality. Catalina Ortiz (University College London(, Thireshen Govender (UrbanWorks), and Katrin Hofer (ETH Zurich) convey their experiences with the constant state of polycrisis in places like Colombia and South Africa. Where the state cannot fully supply the conditions required for people to flourish – where people are long accustomed to taking the maintenance of everyday life into their own hands “insurgently.” Hosted by Lindsay Blair Howe (TU Munich), this episode highlights how researches and practitioners are conducting their work in spite of – or even by finding opportunities in – the constant state of crisis. These observations and actions may also provide solutions that the Global North will soon require. As of mid-2025, we have passed the critical 1.5 degrees benchmark, are enduring multiple megalomaniacs at the helm of national governments, and continue to use far more resources than our planet could ever supply. We may not have the tools or imagination to respond to these challenges like places where the polycrisis is the norm.
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    1 h et 47 min