Urban Broadcast Collective

Lieven Ameel of the University of Tampere (Finland) on the literary unease of urban life by This Must be The Place This episode of This Must Be the Place features an interview by David (a self-confessed Finnophile) with Lieven Ameel at the University of Tampere in Finland, when David was a visiting scholar. They discuss Lieven’s book about literary representations of urban life in Helsinki in Early 20th Century Finnish Literature ("Helsinki in Early Twentieth-Century Literature: Urban Experiences in Finnish Prose Fiction 1890-1940" blogs.helsinki.fi/urbannarratives/publications/). Finish literature from the early 20th century tends to have been threaded through with unease about urban life – lots of farm girls getting exploited etc., perhaps because “it’s so easy to use a city is a metaphor or allegory of the human capacity for good and evil”. Apparently there was a rich body of urban literature from Finland, but this has largely been forgotten and not translated – even works by authors whose rural-based wor

Energy Futures by Urban Squeeze What does the future look like in terms of energy generation? How can we produce cheaper and cleaner energy to power our cities? Should you put solar panels on your roof? Tony Matthews and Jason Byrne discuss these and other questions, as well as the challenges of connecting renewable energy to the grid and new innovations in the sector. @drtonymatthews @CityByrne

Round-up of the Urban History Planning History (UHPH) conference, “Remaking Cities” by This Must be The Place In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth and David do a round-up review of the 14th Urban History Planning History (UHPH) conference, themed “Remaking Cities” and hosted by RMIT University in January-February 2018. The UHPH is a biennial (every 2 years! For anyone else who wonders about that word) conference, and Elizabeth and David contributed in various respects to the planning and organizing of this, the 14th installment of the UHPH. In this discussion they cover (with varying levels of impartiality) several of the excellent plenaries including Chris Gibson on the geographies of making and manufacturing; and Cathie Oats on the future of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digital archive service. They also comment on a few different sessions of interest including (in no particular order) quarrying and clay pits (the discussion is itself recorded at Fleming Park Brunswick, itself

Planning La La Land: A Scholarly View by Suburbanista Podcast   Los Angeles is generally seen as the prototypical car-dependent, sprawling city. Six to eight lane freeways criss-cross the Los Angeles metropolitan region. What many people don’t realise is that Los Angeles has been leading the way in the USA in terms of public transport investment, especially rail-based transit, over the last decade or so. In this, the inaugural episode of the Suburbanista Podcast (@SuburbanistaPod), Paul Maginn, aka @Planographer, discusses some of the major planning and transport issues and challenges within Los Angeles with Prof Marlon Boarnet (@Marlon_Boarnet), Chair of the Dept. of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School.  In this episode Paul asks Prof Boarnet what planning lessons, if any, can Los Angeles offer other global cities.

Natural Disasters by Radio Reversal Natalie and Jo talk about “natural” disasters, and how disasters are constructed and experienced along a variety of intersecting political, economic, social, and spatial lines. They explore environmental justice, what goes into turning an event into a disaster, how disasters intersect with collective trauma and collective identities, and processes and practices of resilience and recovery – with the help of lots of examples and gratuitous scare quotes. @RadioReversal @DrNatOsborne @joanna_horton

Land and Cities by City Road What is the secret life of land title registration? The Torrens system of land title registration, developed in South Australia in 1858, is fast becoming the most popular system of land conveyancing and administration around the world. Sarah Keenan discusses the Torrens system of title registration that was invented for South Australia to assist the project of colonial settlement and land speculation. It was designed to increase efficiency of conveyancing, but title registration fundamentally changes the nature of title to land. The defining principles of Torrens title registration are ‘the mirror, the curtain, and indemnity’. These principles work together to hide the land’s unregistered history, making that history disappear from legal view. However the people who have those histories still exist. The Torrens system of title registration, or versions of it, are today favoured by the World Trade Organisation and World Bank, and are increasingly being adopted around the world i

Sustainable Housing by Urban Squeeze What are the features of sustainable houses? Is sustainable housing rewarded enough and should it be incentivised? Should you take your house off-grid? Will you be healthier and happier in a sustainable building? Tony Matthews and Jason Byrne discuss these and other questions, as well as some new technologies for sustainable house design. @drtonymatthews @CityByrne

Ernest Fooks, Newlands Estate, & Melbourne modern design heritage by This Must be The Place From Viennese Avant Garde to Newlands Pizza Plus: an episode of This Must Be the Place that’s about two things: a place, and a person who was influential in making that place. The place is the Newlands Estate, an area developed by the Housing Commission in the 1940s and 1950s, in Melbourne’s north. The person is Ernest Fooks – to whom Newlands owes part of its design. Fooks was an avant garde European émigré architect and planner, and Newlands was one of his first projects after emigrating to Melbourne from the war in Austria. The Newlands estate – known for its parks, topography, mix of housing types, ubiquitous red brick, and community facilities – was the beginning of an influential 40 year career in Australia for Fooks, whose work went on to include numerous luxury modernist homes for the Jewish community, and Jewish institutional buildings. In this episode David interviews architect Catherine Townsend, a Fooks ex

Welcome to the Urban Broadcast Collective. We are a curated network of podcast and radio shows on everything urban. Our goal is simple, to bring together all the amazing urban focused podcasts on one site. In this episode you’ll hear from some of our podcasters and radio makers. We’ll also tell you how to get involved in the Urban Broadcast Collective. For more information, please contact one of our podcast producers: Natalie Osborne from Griffith University; Elizabeth Taylor from RMIT; Tony Matthews from Griffith University; Paul Maginn from the University of Western Australia; Jason Byrne from the University of Tasmania; or Dallas Rogers from the University of Sydney. You can also find us on Twitter at @urbanpodcasts and ApplePodcasts. So sit back and enjoy some fascinating discussions about cities and urbanism.