A mini-series by Urban Political Podcast in collaboration with the Second Cold War Observatory and Urban Geography Journal Additional Links Schindler, Seth, et al. "The second cold war: US-China competition for centrality in infrastructure, digital, production, and finance networks." Geopolitics 29.4 (2024): 1083-1120. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2023.2253432 Schindler, Seth, and Steve Rolf. "Geostrategic globalization: US–China rivalry, corporate strategy, and the new global economy." Glob...
Apr 27, 2026•35 min•Ep. 106
While the first episode on the transformations of the local state focussed on current authoritarian takeover in different European contexts, this episode will zoom into the progressive possibilities of local state transformations. The episode discusses institutional changes within the local state, the role of other political actors and geographical scales as well as the limitations of localist solutions. The episode is moderated by Matthias Naumann and Gala Nettelbladt, with contributions from A...
Mar 12, 2026•55 min•Ep. 105
Across Europe, local states are in a dire predicament, experiencing the consequences of austerity cuts, shortage of staff as well as a lack of trust in (local) government. Overlapping crises such as climate change, military conflicts and displacement, precarious provisions of public services, the production of so-called left-behind spaces and the rise of the far right pose severe challenges to its institutions – on various scales and across a wide range of sectors. This situation has sparked see...
Feb 16, 2026•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 104
Authoritarian Urbanism Series Are we seeing the emergence of a new conjuncture for urbanism? The final part of our mini series asks whether authoritarian neoliberalism has created the conditions for a more illiberal and distinct type of urban governance . Authoritarianism is not new to neoliberalism – the Pinochet regime, Thatcherism in the UK – these were evidently authoritarian and neoliberal, and given crises and stagnation it is no surprise to see these tendencies re-animated. But is somethi...
Feb 02, 2026•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 103
Authoritarian Urbanism Series Today it seems fairly obvious to say that urban government has become more authoritarian – there is vastly increased levels of surveillance, violent and militarised policing of dissent and the targeting of migrant, queer and ethnic minority communities. Building on the previous episode on ‘authoritarian populism’, the panel discussion focuses on the ‘authoritarian practices’ of urban governments. We discuss issues of scale i.e. the relationship between central and m...
Jan 19, 2026•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 102
Authoritarian Urbanism Series Across the world, a rightward populist turn is reshaping politics, everyday life, and the spaces we inhabit. This series examines the rise of authoritarian urbanism born from the convergence of state power, militarised violence, infrastructure-led development, and racialised and religious nationalism. As neoliberalism faces a crisis of legitimacy, these forces work to consolidate control and drive new waves of urbanisation that deepen social polarisation. Alongside ...
Dec 12, 2025•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 101
6 Years of the Urban Political Podcast 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 th...
Nov 28, 2025•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 100
For a Liberatory Politics of Home 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 o...
Nov 06, 2025•51 min•Ep. 99
Where is Urban Politics? 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 r...
Oct 20, 2025•52 min•Ep. 98
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 ...
Oct 03, 2025•52 min•Ep. 97
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 way...
Sep 17, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 96
Urban Polycrisis Series 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...
Aug 19, 2025•32 min•Ep. 95
Urban Polycrisis Series 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 in...
Jul 20, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 94
Polycrisis Series 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 hou...
Jul 09, 2025•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 93
Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen This episode is a talk by Joanna Kusiak at the Think&Drink Colloquium of Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies at Humboldt University Berlin. It gives insights into her new book Radically Legal: Berlin Constitutes the Future (2024). Right in the middle of the German constitution, a group of ordinary citizens discovers a forgotten clause that allows them to take 240,000 homes back from multi-billion corporations. In this work of creative non-fiction, schola...
Jun 23, 2025•45 min•Ep. 92
Middle-Class Construction in Dar es Salaam African cities are under construction. Beyond the urban redevelopment schemes and large-scale infrastructure projects reconfiguring central city skylines, urban residents are putting their resources into finding land and building homes on city edges. The Suburban Frontier examines how self-built housing on the urban periphery has become central to middle-class formation and urban transformation in contemporary Tanzania. Drawing on original research in t...
Jun 09, 2025•59 min•Ep. 91
The movement-party Barcelona en Comú In this episode, we reflect on the rise, evolution, and legacy of Barcelona en Comú, the emblematic movement-party that governed the city of Barcelona from 2015 to 2023. Joined by long-time activist and former political advisor Elia Gran, as well as researchers Silke van Dyk and Luzie Gerstenhöfer (University of Jena), the conversation explores the key ambitions, successes, and tensions of this bold experiment in municipalist governance. The episode draws fro...
May 25, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 90
Navigating Boundaries in the City Kulkul presents her ethnographic work with Turkish Muslim women in Berlin as evidence that community is not an entity but is produced by instrumentalizing specific forms of identification and boundary-making. In examining the role of community in the case of her participants, Kulkul finds that religion and culture are important not for the values they perpetuate, but for their role in forming and sustaining the community. She looks at the importance of boundarie...
May 12, 2025•32 min•Ep. 89
The Urban Lives of Property Series In this episode of The Urban Lives of Property, Markus Kip and Hanna Hilbrandt speak with Heather Dorries, about the intersections of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in urban property regimes. Drawing on Dorries’ recent publications and her wider expertise on property, Indigeneity, and urbanism the episode centers the ways in which planning practices contribute to Indigenous dispossession while also serving as a site of resistance and assertions of so...
Apr 28, 2025•45 min•Ep. 88
With Examples from the UK, Lebanon and Germany This talk focuses on the role of public services in delineating the boundaries of belonging and possibilities of participation in cities. Drawing on the notion of 'infrastructural citizenship', it asks how non-citizens navigate access to urban circulations and how rights and responsibilities are negotiated at these interfaces. Based on ethnographic, participatory and design research conducted with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, Leb...
Apr 15, 2025•38 min•Ep. 87
Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa Concrete City: Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa delivers a theoretically informed, ethnographic exploration of the African urban world through the life of concrete. Emblematic of frenetic urban and capitalistic development, this material is pervasive, shaping contemporary urban landscapes and societies and their links to the global world. It stands and circulates at the heart of major financial investments, political forces and environ...
Mar 31, 2025•52 min•Ep. 86
Examples from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan This episode is part of our Think&Drink Series in collaboration with the Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies working with the Humboldt University Berlin. Today’s speaker is Andrei Semenov, an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Authoritarian urbanism has recently become a buzzword applied to different settings and situations. Andrei attempts to ...
Mar 12, 2025•31 min•Ep. 85
Urban Political x Groningen University: Where Is Urban Politics? This is the first seminar in the series 'Where is Urban Politics?' a hybrid seminar series hosted by the University of Groningen, in the academic year 2024-2025. For more information on recent and forthcoming events: https://sites.google.com/rug.nl/where-is-urban-politics-series This talk by Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch provides a novel way of thinking about the relationship between democracy and the urban based on two main arg...
Feb 12, 2025•41 min•Ep. 84
Productive misunderstandings in cooperative urban development This is a new episode from our Think&Drink series in collaboration with the Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies and the Humboldt University Berlin. Co-operative urban development is the buzzword of the moment. It stands for the pursuit of a fairer city that is orientated towards the common good. In new partnerships - public-civic partnerships - actors from politics and administration work together with actors from civil society....
Jan 27, 2025•45 min•Ep. 83
Temporality and the Making of Global Urban Worlds Whether waiting for the train or planning the future city, infrastructure orders—and depends on—multiple urban temporalities. This agenda-setting volume disrupts conventional notions of time through a robust examination of the relations between temporality, infrastructure, and urban society. Conceptually rich and empirically detailed, its interdisciplinary dialogue encompasses infrastructural systems including transportation, energy, and water to...
Dec 22, 2024•59 min•Ep. 82
Valuing indeterminacy: Terrain vague, temporary use and the production of urban expertise in Barcelona and Berlin. This is the first episode of a new series from Urban Political. In collaboration with the Georg Simmel Center for Urban Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, this series will feature speakers from the center’s Think & Drink Colloquium. The colloquium invites international speakers from across urban studies to present their work and offers an informal setting for exchange betwee...
Dec 04, 2024•28 min•Ep. 81
In this episode, we explore the role of land policies and spatial planning in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Our two guests, Oren Yiftachel and Orwa Switat, discuss the historical context of the conflict, focusing on how settler colonialism and land regimes have shaped hierarchical types of citizenship and exacerbated tensions. The conversation looks at the impact of the recent war in Gaza on planning and development policies, especially in relation to Bedouin communities in the Naqab/Negev and ...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 80
Gay Neighborhoods and the Rise of the Vicarious Citizen In this episode, we are discussing Theodore Greene ’s latest book, Not in my Gayborhood! Gay neighborhoods and the rise of the vicarious citizen , published by Columbia University Press in July 2024. This book is a lively and generous study of gay neighborhoods in Washington DC, highlighting the evolving dynamics of LGBTQ spaces in urban settings. Drawing on empirical fieldwork as well as Ghaziani’s concept of “cultural archipelagos”, Not i...
Aug 29, 2024•34 min•Ep. 79
Author: Colin McFarlane, Critics: Vanesa Castan Broto and Julia Wesely Our Guests: Vanesa Castan Broto is a Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield where she takes a feminist perspective on questions of sustainable urban innovation, just transitions, urban resilience and infrastructure systems. Twitter - @VaneBailo Colin McFarlane is Professor of Urban Geography at Durham University. His work focusses on the experience and politics of urban life. This includ...
Jul 17, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 78
In this episode we talk about garages, trams and trolleybuses! Our guests for this episode, Tauri Tuvikene and Wladimir Sgibnev, help us think about post-socialist mobility in terms of continuities and ruptures. Using examples from Estonia, East Germany, and the former Soviet Union, they question the future of mobility, highlight the importance of studying mundane infrastructural issues as social subjects, and explain how we could also make policies and knowledge travel westward. Tauri Tuvikene ...
Jun 19, 2024•49 min•Ep. 77
