Today's episode is a conversation with Jonny McKenna and Dhruv Sookhoo of Metropolitan Workshop, a leading practice of architects and urban designers based in London and Dublin. Jonny McKenna is Director of their Dublin office, an architect and urban designer and has played a lead role in masterplanning and residential projects since joining Metropolitan Workshop in 2006.

Dhruv Sookhoo is Head of Research and Practice Innovation at Metropolitan Workshop. He is both a chartered Architect and town planner, and a social researcher.

The focus of our conversation today is suburbia. As urbanists we can sometimes be dismissive or snobbish about the suburbs, and often they are portrayed as being unsustainable and soulless places. However, the fact is that they still remain the residential typology of choice for many people in cities. If we want to reconsider the suburbs for modern life and the era of climate change, we need to think about them quite honestly and openly.

Metropolitan Workshop have been designing suburban development and challenging the status quo for years, and they have just finished a long research project on the topic called A New Kind of Suburbia, that brings together their thinking approach with a broad range of perspectives. In this episode, Jonny and Dhruv reflect on what are some aspects of the suburbs we would want to replicate in future and what aspects need to be reconsidered. They then provide some ideas on how we could reimagine the suburbs as mixed, sustainable communities with a great quality of life, particularly in the post-covid world.

Towards the end of the podcast, they offer some advice for other practitioners who want to engage in practice-based research and how this can benefit their work.

Metropolitan Workshop:
https://metwork.co.uk/
Reshaped Podcast: https://metwork.co.uk/prospects/reshaped/
A New Kind of Suburbia: https://metwork.co.uk/research/a-new-kind-of-suburbia/
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/metropolitan-workshop/
https://www.instagram.com/met_work/
https://twitter.com/Met_Work

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The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

Today's episode is a conversation with Virginia Cinquemani.

Virginia is the founder and director of Green Gorilla Consultants, a unique training and coaching company focusing exclusively on empowering sustainability professionals to become the most confident and assertive version of themselves, and to successfully accomplish their sustainability projects even when their stakeholders think sustainability is a waste of time and money!

Virginia is a qualified architect, project manager and BREEAM AP, with a life long passion for sustainability.

She is the author of SustainABLE: How to Find Success as a Sustainability Professional in a Rapidly Changing World, a practical guide for those that have a passion for sustainability but cannot make an impact.

In this episode Virginia shares advice for anyone who is trying to integrate sustainability into their work and projects but is coming up against barriers. So whether you are just starting out on your sustainability journey or you're an experienced professional, this episode is relevant for you.

Virginia explains how we can better communicate about sustainability, and how we can sell sustainable solutions to clients by appealing to their needs and concerns. This episode is all about the soft skills that we a professionals need every day beyond technical knowledge.

She also gives advice for urbanists who don't necessarily have a sustainability background but who want to bring sustainability into their work. The key message is: just get started, no matter how small or imperfect your first steps are, just get started because we need everyone working towards this.

Learn more about Virginia and Green Gorilla Consultants:
https://www.thegreengorilla.co.uk/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginiacinquemani/

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Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

 Liza is a business consultant, social innovator and advocate for regenerative economy. She's a member of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership network and has extensive experience working in several industries and countries as project manager and consultant. Today she runs her own business called 4D Sustainability helping small and medium businesses on their sustainability journey. She and her co-founder developed a simplified methodology that enables small companies to adopt sustainability measures, as she believes that without small and medium enterprises on board the transition to net zero and better future will not be possible. 

We talk about:

• The huge role that small and medium businesses can play in achieving sustainability
• Why sustainability must address social issues
• Regenerative economy
• The UN Sustainable Development Goals, and how Liza uses these to help businesses take action
• Carbon pricing and putting a price a environmental degradation

Learn more about Liza and 4D Sustainability:
https://sustainability-canvas.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/4d-sustainability-canvas/

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

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Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

James grows urban forests around the UK with his company Wild Urban Spaces and with rewilding organisation SUGi. He is an expert in the use of the Miyawaki Method of afforestation, which is a Japanese approach to rapidly creating healthy, native forest ecosystems, and can be applied to small sites in urban contexts. 

In this episode we discuss:

• The Miyawaki Method
• The Forest of Thanks, a Miyawaki forest recently planted in London to express gratitude to NHS workers during the pandemic
• How trees make it rain and also alleviate flooding
• The mystery of Biodynamics in soil
• Trees as tsunami defense 
• And lots more!

Contact James:
https://wildurbanspaces.com/
https://www.sugiproject.com/

Follow the Green Urbanist:
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/green-urbanist-podcast

Contact the Green Urbanist:
[email protected]

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

Subscribe to the Green Urbanist Newsletter

Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

In today's episode we are asking, are tall buildings sustainable? It is often argued that because of their density, tall buildings are essential for sustainable cities to support public transport, walking, cycling and thriving communities. However, once you start looking into it, it is far more complicated than that.

In this episode, tall buildings are analysed based on their environmental, social and economic sustainability with some surprising results.

Follow the Green Urbanist:
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Contact the Green Urbanist:
[email protected]


Sources:
https://nla.london/insights/londons-tall-buildings-survey-2020

Headspace: The Psychology of City Living

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322312012_The_Sustainability_of_Tall_Building_Developments_A_Conceptual_Framework

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/11/skyscrapers-wasteful-damaging-outmoded-time-to-stop-tall-buildings

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2017/jun/high-rise-buildings-much-more-energy-intensive-low-rise

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613218.2018.1479927

https://www.worldgbc.org/news-media/WorldGBC-embodied-carbon-report-published

https://www.transparency.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/publications/TIUK_Faulty_Towers_August_24.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/25/london-empty-towers-very-british-corruption-tainted-wealth

https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/residents_experience_of_high-density_housing_in_london_lse_-_final_report_july_2018.pdf

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

Subscribe to the Green Urbanist Newsletter

Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

This episode pulls heavily from two excellent books, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells and The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac.

I look at the cognitive biases that prevent us from thinking logically and honestly about climate change, and therefore limit our actions, as presented in The Uninhabitable Earth.

Following this I discuss the three "mindsets" put forward in The Future We Choose, that can help us to reframe the problem in our minds and take meaningful action.

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Contact the Green Urbanist:
[email protected]

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

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Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

Welcome to the Green Urbanist, the podcast for urbanists fighting climate change. I'm Ross.

The premise of this episode is that the way we currently produce most of our meat, using factory farms and feedlots, is a disaster from an environmental point of view and contributes a small but significant amount to global greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a potential solution to this problem beyond simply eating less meat, which involves managing livestock in such a way that it contributes to ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration in soil. That's why the title of this episode is Why Cows aren't Necessarily Evil.


Follow the Green Urbanist:
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Contact the Green Urbanist:
[email protected]

Sources for this episode:
Stanley et al (2018) Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X17310338)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI&ab_channel=TED

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120327124243.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,to%20a%20new%20genetic%20study.

FAO - Tackling Climate Change through Livestock (http://www.fao.org/3/i3437e/i3437e00.htm)

https://www.globalmethane.org/documents/analysis_fs_en.pdf

https://www.carbonbrief.org/methane-emissions-from-fossil-fuels-severely-underestimated

Rodgers and Wolf (2020) Sacred Cow: The Case for Better Meat (Book)

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Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

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The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

Today's episode is a collaboration with the Human City podcast. The Human City is a podcast hosted by Stig Terrebonne that focuses on making cities, well, more human. Making people healthier, happier and facilitating community through urbanism.

In this episode Stig has joined me to share his top lessons learned from interviewing some of the leading urbanists in the USA. We cover some really interesting topics including why urbanism needs branding, how communities are formed on interaction and why the solutions for towns or villages are the not the same as those for big cities.

This episode is a collaboration because I am also appearing on Stigs podcast, the Human City, to talk about my lessons learned from hosting the Green Urbanist. That episode is out right now so please head over to the Human City podcast, if not to listen to me, to listen to all the other amazing guests he has had.

Human City Podcast is available on the website below or on all the podcast apps.

Human City Podcast:
https://humancity.simplecast.com/
https://twitter.com/humancitypod
https://www.instagram.com/human.city/

Follow the Green Urbanist:
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Contact the Green Urbanist:
[email protected]

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

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Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

Salem is a Sustainability Engineer who has worked on projects in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. Originally from Amman Jordan, he moved to England to study civil and environmental engineering, and has spent the last 6 years working on exciting international projects.

Salem is a good friend of mine, we used to work together and he was probably one of the first people I met when I first moved to London. With this episode, I really wanted to bring out important insights and lessons he has learned about sustainability in general and more specifically about sustainability in the Middle Eastern context. Being from the Jordan himself and having worked on projects in several Middle Eastern countries, he has some important messages about this often misunderstood region.

We talk about why the Middle East is not just one place, it is very diverse and complex. We talk about how the region is adapting to the impact of climate change and how modern innovative solutions are not always the way forward.

We also discuss the concept of resilience and how cities around the world can bounce forward to a new equilibrium, a new normal, after Covid-19.

Contact Salem:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/salem-qunsol-ceng-mcibse-252235a8/

Follow the podcast:
https://twitter.com/GreenUrbanPod
https://www.instagram.com/greenurbanistpod

Contact the podcast:
[email protected]

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

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Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.

This is a mini-episode covering one very interesting topic: Increased atmospheric carbon is making food grow with less nutrients. I cover the research and some of the implications for global health.

This is a fascinating story I wanted to share but couldn't fit it into a larger episode. So here it is in a short podcast bite.

Let me know what you think of this shorter format on social media:
https://twitter.com/GreenUrbanPod
https://www.instagram.com/greenurbanistpod


Sources:
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511/

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Register: Nature-led Urban Design - Study Tour and Masterclass (25 September)

Subscribe to the Green Urbanist Newsletter

Consulting and training: https://greenurbanist.org/

Get in touch: https://greenurbanistpod.com/contact

The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.