The neoliberal prioritization of profit in the development of cities is drastically impacting the appearance and function of cities worldwide. Social and government housing providers are told to follow the lead of private housing providers, taking away the government's ability to innovate and push the envelope in the housing space. At the same time, in some countries, private developers rely on commercial and retail space in apartment buildings being rented out to stable, high-earning tenants like banks and corporations, limiting cities' potential for growth and space optimization.

For decades, more than 50% of architects worked for the public sector, but today that's down to just 0.2%. Where did all the architects go? How can we balance the urgent need for more housing with the need for more intentionally designed, community-oriented spaces? How can architects help us create the future we want to see?

Fredrik & Leilani sit down with architect, strategic and philosophical designer at Dark Matter Labs, and author of REopening of a city, Jenny Grettve, and Finn Williams, city architect of Malmö and co-founder of Public Practice to discuss the role of architects in designing cities that improve our quality of life.

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All across the world we’re witnessing a crisis of democracy and a sense of increased polarization. How can we engage in conversations that call others in rather than out? How can we seek to win over those who currently refuse to agree with us? And how do we create visions for the future that make our movements irresistible?

Leilani and Fredrik talk to American journalist and writer Anand Giridharadas about the art of persuasion and the need to engage in conversations that pull people in rather than push them sideways. In this episode we ask, how do we start talking to others at their level of humanity? How do we bring emotional intelligence into our pro-democracy movements?

In his book The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy, Anand Giridharadas advocates for a politics of love that is both strategic and irresistible, and tells the stories of those who are continuously changing people’s hearts and minds in favor of democracy and justice.

Anand argues that our movements become stronger when we not only resist the darkness but actively describe the light. “We can't be demoralized”, he says. “We have to stand up and insist on the kind of world we want and then invitingly pull people into those visions, so that they become shared visions and shared dreams.”

Anand Giridharadas' website: http://www.anand.ly/

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Did you know that approximately 22 million Americans live in mobile homes? 

Mobile homes have long been one of the most affordable types of dwelling but, because the homes are usually situated on rented land, mobile homeowners suffer from a unique type of housing precarity. Mobile homeowners are often low-income, with less access to infrastructure because trailer parks are situated outside of urban areas. 

Cue the vultures: While private equity and other real estate investors have long been in the mobile home market, there has been a dramatic uptick in the use of predatory practices designed to extract profit.  As more financial actors move into this space, these already-at-risk people are being priced out of one of the few types of affordable housing left in the country.

Fredrik and Leilani sit down with Paul Bradley, President of Residence Owned Communities to discuss the ways mobile homeownership has changed in the last few decades and why, and how his organization has helped over 17,000 owners of manufactured homes in 17 states come together to buy their parks and escape the vultures.

• More information about the film A Decent Home can be found here.
• Learn more about Residence Owned Communities here.
• Listeners who are interested can join the I’M HOME (Innovations in Manufactured Homes) Network at the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy.  It’s a network of U.S. organizations and people interested in innovating in the mobile home sector.  Info and sign-up are here.

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For years, the Athens neighborhood of Exarcheia Square has been under attack by right-wing politicians. The area, along with nearby Strefi Hill, is a long-standing bastion of political resistance full of cafés, squats, and social centers, and the last remaining free public space in the neighborhood.

Now, the City has begun construction on a metro station without the proper permissions and against the will of the residents – who have taken to the streets in protest. As the people fight to preserve this cultural landmark and the way of life it represents, Fredrik and Leilani sit down with Eva Betavatzi (European Action Coalition), Nikolaos (No Metro in Exarcheia Assembly), and Christina (Defense of Strefi Hill Assembly) to discuss how gentrification is used as a political tool, and the power of a community that pushes back.

Sign the petition to save Exarchia Square

You can learn more about our guests and support their cause using the links below:

• European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City : Twitter, Facebook 
• Open assembly for the Defense of Strefi Hill : Twitter, Blog (in Greek)
• Open assembly "No Metro in Exarcheia Square" : Twitter, Facebook (in Greek)

Learn more about the Strefi Hill area of Athens (in English): 

• Athens, Greece: Interview on the battle for Strefi Hill - Corporate Watch

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In cities of all sizes across North America, legislation and policy are enacting violence on poor people. From housing policies that will see tens of thousands more people become homeless due to unaffordability to an ordinance in Los Angeles that makes it nearly impossible for the unhoused to find a place to rest, criminalization of homeless people is being dressed up as solutions

Fredrik and Leilani are joined by Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography at UCLA, Ananya Roy, and Dan Oudshoorn of #TheForgotten519 to unpack the root causes of the extreme cruelty being levvied against the most vulnerable, and discuss how legislation is making it easier to cage and control  people already suffering under the most dire circumstances. Why, when there's more money available to address housing and homelessness than ever before, does the death toll continue to climb and mass evictions loom on the horizon?

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The seasons are changing and the Filmmaker and the Advocate are back for season 5 of Pushback Talks! In 2020, amidst substantial social unrest, the people of Chile demanded a new constitution - the first since the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s. Now, two years later, division over the content of the new text led to it being rejected by 62% of voters.

Magdalena Sepulveda, Chilean human rights lawyer and the former UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty (2008-2014), talks about the writing of Chile's constitution by the common people, the impact of misinformation and business interests on the outcome of the vote, and the lessons learned from the rejection of the new constitution.

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

This week we revisit our conversation with Member of European Parliament and the woman behind ‘My Home is an Asset Class,’ Kim Van Sparrentak.

 The EU Commission cannot make laws on housing, so Kim decided to commission a report on all the aspects where the European Union does have an influence on the housing market. While researching for the report, she came across Push the film and realized that – not only was there a housing crisis throughout many countries in Europe – it was happening all over the world and being fueled by the same factors.

And so ‘My Home is an Asset Class’ was born. For the first time, it’s down on paper just how big the business of financialization in Europe truly is – and it’s still growing. Fredrik, Leilani, and Kim talk about meeting with Blackstone, staying motivated in the fight against corruption, and the importance of addressing the issue at every level of government. What kind of world can we create if we put people before profit?

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

Class is in session – The Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with New York Times correspondent and author of powerful book Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, Peter S. Goodman, to learn about the handful of billionaires that are dramatically re-structuring the world as we know it. 

In the two years since the pandemic began, the ten richest people on the planet have more than doubled their wealth, even while homelessness and housing inadequacy have increased at a rapid rate. And this isn’t just about housing, these people impact systems all over the world – health care, public health, sovereign debt, the list goes on. These billionaires hide behind a cosmic lie – that by giving them tax breaks and advantages everyone will reap the benefits – while creating the problems they are claiming to solve.

Goodman’s must-read new book, Davos Man, unpacks that cosmic lie by exploring who these people are and how they have manipulated laws and policies to uphold and perpetuate a system that proves, year after year, to primarily benefit the ultra-wealthy.

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

On 3 October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) published the Pandora Papers, a roster of almost 12 million confidential files that had been leaked to the organization detailing the offshore financial dealings of hundreds of politicians, public officials, and celebrities. This type of controversial uncovering of finances is nothing new; similar leaks to the ICIJ happened in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2020. Despite this, outrage over the reveal that many politicians and public officials have secret offshore dealings worth billions has been surprisingly low. 

The Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with Dr. Anna Minton, writer, journalist, academic, and author of Big Capital, to discuss the complexities of finance that keep the public from understanding the problems unfolding at a global level. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxes go missing each year – how do offshore holdings deteriorate the social contract we agree to, and contribute to a lack of available government resources that could change lives? 

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

For decades, real estate developers in China had access to cheap money, thanks to the property sector's role in creating household wealth. That is until President Xi Jinping used his "common prosperity" to establish new policies to limit the use of property as a financial tool.  The policies landed China’s second-largest property developer in a world of trouble. The world’s most indebted property developer, Evergrande found itself in debt to the tune of $310 billion with over a million flats that had already been paid for still yet to be built.

Revisit Leilani & Fredrik's conversation with Dexter Roberts, author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism and former China bureau chief and Asia News Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, and get an update on where Evergrande and the Chinese real estate market are now. 

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