superwien podcast

The conversation with Ethan Kent explores placemaking as a tool for urban regeneration initiated by the public sector, arguing that successful development should start with people, local life and public space rather than buildings or investment. Ethan introduces “place-led development”, where community needs, everyday activities and local culture shape the direction of investment and design. We also discuss how placemaking can move from individual grassroots projects to systemic, city-wide change. Ethan stresses the importance of collaboration across planning, design, transport, government, communities and the private sector, with the “Power of Ten” providing a framework for scaling from individual places to entire districts and cities.

New York City-based Ethan Kent is a world-renowned leader, activist, and pioneer in the field of placemaking and urban transformation. As the co-founder and Executive Director of PlacemakingX, he works globally with communities, cities, and practitioners to transform public spaces into socially inclusive, vibrant, and resilient places. Drawing on more than two decades of international experience, Ethan has worked across more than 50 countries, helping build local and global networks that advance placemaking through learning, advocacy, and action. His work increasingly focuses on place-led development, connecting community-led placemaking with urban regeneration, governance, and investment.

Why placemaking for public entities?

With Adriana Sasāo from PROURB at the National University of Rio de Janeiro superwien worked on the sustainable urban corridors project with IDB and C40 and implemented a great placemaking project in the Oswaldo Cruz neighbourhood. Watch our videos about the diagnostic and implemention. Our goal was to create a policy how to use placemaking in the process of developing those corridors in Rio.

Learn more about Ethan's work: PlacemakingX

#urbanism #placeleddevelopment #publicspace #bettercities

In this episode, Elina Kränzle and Julia Hobiger discuss what an inclusive city means across different generations, focusing on how children, teenagers, adults and older people experience and use public space differently. Drawing on their work in the Trustmaking and Fairness projects, they highlight the importance of taking young people seriously in urban development, creating spaces for genuine dialogue, and using playful, arts-based and co-creative methods to bring planners and citizens together at eye level. Their experiences show that people often have strong ideas about their environment, but meaningful participation requires sincere engagement and spaces where different groups feel welcome.

The conversation also explores accessibility, consumption-free spaces and the often overlooked question of who is absent from public space. Along the Danube Canal, for example, barriers to access and increasing commercialization can exclude children, teenagers and older people. Both guests argue that inclusive planning should actively identify vulnerable and underrepresented groups, while recognizing that not every public space can satisfy every need. Ultimately, an inclusive city is one that reduces barriers, enables people to meet and understand those who are different from themselves, and gives everyone opportunities to appropriate and shape public space.

About our guests: 

Elina Kränzle is a researcher at TU Wien's Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space and the Social Design Studio at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, working on urban development in contexts of social and political transformation. 

Julia Hobiger is a psychologist at the STADTpsychologie, a Vienna-based team working with urban development and consulting, applying psychological research to public space and participatory processes.  

⁠Henni+Milli ⁠is a temporary, consumer-free public "placemaking" project and community testing ground located along the Donaukanal in Vienna, specifically named after the Henriette-Fahrbach-Promenade and Emilie-Turecek-Promenade near the Franzensbrücke. This project was implemented in the framework of the FFG funded DUT InclusiveCity Project and implemented with the funding of the MA45/City of Vienna.

This podcast was produced in a cooperation with ⁠⁠Placemaking Austria⁠ ⁠and ⁠⁠superwien⁠⁠.

Hosts: Vivian Monteiro Malta & Roland Krebs

This episode of the podcast dives into nightlife as a form of public space, weighing the risks — noise complaints, safety concerns, exclusionary access — against its social, cultural, and economic value, especially for marginalized groups such as women and the queer community. On the policy side, the discussion traces how a city moves from treating nightlife as something to contain toward funding and protecting it: cross-city exchange (drawing on Berlin's decades-old Club Commission model) combined with hard economic data proved decisive in shifting political will. From there, the conversation covers concrete mechanisms for safer nightlife: focus groups bringing together club workers, promoters, and partygoers; a citywide safety survey prompted by drink-spiking incidents; anti-discrimination training; and a pilot safety app in the Wiener Gürtel district that lets people summon help via a location system, now expanding into public-space events. A related pilot on the Danube Island shows the city funding grassroots collectives to run parties under a bridge with flexible curfews — an ongoing experiment in balancing creative freedom against neighbors' noise concerns and the financial precarity of largely non-profit party organizers.

On the embodied and cultural side, the conversation frames dancing as a feminist, political act — a way of taking up visible space, releasing tension, and building empowerment, particularly through women- and queer-centered events that foreground underrepresented female-produced house and electronic music. These temporary, community-run dance spaces are discussed as needing both structure — physical boundaries, an awareness team, clear consent policies, no-photo rules — and enough openness to remain creative and inclusive, positioned deliberately as visible-but-bounded alternatives to closed, consumption-driven club spaces. A recurring theme ties the two threads together: institutional policy and grassroots nightlife practice depend on each other, with policy providing platforms, funding, and mediation with politicians, and practitioners supplying lived knowledge of what actually makes a space feel safe and welcoming. This episode closes by widening the definition of an "inclusive city after dark" beyond clubs and events to the full infrastructure of night life — night-shift workers, public transport, childcare, and other services that support people living and working through the night — and notes that generational and gender diversity within city administration has been a meaningful factor in getting these pilot projects approved.

About our guests: 

Martina Brunner founded the Night Mayor Vienna initiative to raise awareness of the social, cultural, and economic relevance of nightlife and club culture. She is Executive Director of Vienna Club Commission which mediates between venues, city administration, and residents for safer nightlife. 

DJ Uschi's practice sits at the intersection of music, feminism, and public space. With her mobile disco sound system, she tours using dancing and DJing as a way to reclaim the city after dark and create space without consumerism that feels open, particularly for women and queer communities.  

⁠Henni+Milli ⁠is a temporary, consumer-free public "placemaking" project and community testing ground located along the Donaukanal in Vienna, specifically named after the Henriette-Fahrbach-Promenade and Emilie-Turecek-Promenade near the Franzensbrücke. This project was implemented in the framework of the FFG funded DUT InclusiveCity Project and implemented with the funding of the MA45/City of Vienna.

This podcast was produced in a cooperation with ⁠Placemaking Austria ⁠and ⁠superwien⁠.

Hosts: Vivian Monteiro Malta & Roland Krebs

What happens when placemaking, the practice of creating more inclusive, community-oriented public spaces, becomes mainstream? In this episode, Milagros Hurtig and Levente Polyak explore the idea of critical placemaking and the tensions between community-led urban development, commercialization and gentrification. We discuss how public-space improvements can unintentionally accelerate processes of exclusion, and why placemakers need to pay close attention to power, who gets to shape a place, and who remains invisible. Drawing on experiences from Vienna, Budapest and other European cities, the conversation looks at the importance of non-commercial spaces, social infrastructure and creating opportunities for different groups to coexist in public space.

The discussion also asks what role placemakers can play as mediators between communities, municipalities and economic actors. Rather than offering a fixed recipe, critical placemaking is presented as a long-term, relational practice, understanding local dynamics, strengthening community capacity and using planning tools to maintain diversity and prevent public space from becoming dominated by consumption. Examples from the Inclusive City project, including work along Vienna’s Danube Canal and in Budapest, show how temporary interventions, open calls, cultural activities and strategic “micro-masterplanning” can help create a more diverse and accessible public realm. Ultimately, the guests argue that placemaking can contribute to redistributing power, but only when it is understood not as a product or intervention, but as a different way of making the city.

About our guests: 

Levente Polyak is an urban planner, researcher, policy adviser, and co-founder and Managing Director of Eutropian Research & Action, an organisation specialising in urban regeneration, civic economy, and community-driven alternatives to market-led development. He is editor of Cooperative City magazine, which documents good practices and innovative governance models across Europe, and has advised municipalities from New York to Budapest on urban regeneration, community participation, and the dynamics of rapid commercialisation in European cities.

Milagros Hurtig is a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Department of Design, researching critical placemaking for inclusion in city-making, with a focus on citizen participation, gender-sensitive planning, and power dynamics in participatory processes. She has worked on placemaking, community art, and urban design projects across Argentina, Spain, and Europe, co-founded the collective urban.femina, and guided the Inclusive Placemaking Inspirational Cookbook, a toolkit for designing more inclusive public spaces through care, trust, and solidarity.

⁠Henni+Milli ⁠is a temporary, consumer-free public "placemaking" project and community testing ground located along the Donaukanal in Vienna, specifically named after the Henriette-Fahrbach-Promenade and Emilie-Turecek-Promenade near the Franzensbrücke. This project was implemented in the framework of the FFG funded DUT InclusiveCity Project and implemented with the funding of the MA45/City of Vienna.

This podcast was produced in a cooperation with ⁠Placemaking Austria ⁠and ⁠superwien⁠.

Hosts: Vivian Monteiro Malta & Roland Krebs

What does it take to make urban mobility truly inclusive? In the third episode. of the InclusiveCity Podcast we explore how mobility planning can move beyond the traditional model of the “average commuter” travelling from A to B. Together with mobility expert Gerald Franz from the City of Vienna’s Climate and Innovation Agency (UIV) and architect, researcher and Wonderland Platform director Bahanur Nasya , we discuss how everyday realities - care work, children, older people, shift workers, people with disabilities and those without access to a car - challenge conventional approaches to transport planning.

The conversation looks at how local knowledge, participation, temporary interventions and international research projects can influence larger mobility systems. Using Vienna’s Supergrätzl as an example, the guests reflect on the potential—and limits—of bottom-up initiatives, the role of public space as a place for social interaction, and how mobility policies can be tested and adapted. The discussion ultimately asks what an inclusive city could look like: not simply one that listens to citizens, but one that creates the conditions for people to live more sustainably, independently and collectively—regardless of age, gender, income or mobility needs.

About our guests: 

Gerald Franz is Mobility Leader at Urban Innovation Vienna, the City of Vienna's climate and innovation agency. He leads a team of mobility experts and has driven many e-mobility, shared transport, and mobility policy projects. 

Bahanur Nasya is an architect, researcher, and film producer based in Vienna and Head of Organisations at Wonderland Platform for European Architecture. She leads the Fair Mobility DUT project, addressing mobility inequalities for minorities in both urban and rural settings. 

Henni+Milli is a temporary, consumer-free public "placemaking" project and community testing ground located along the Donaukanal in Vienna, specifically named after the Henriette-Fahrbach-Promenade and Emilie-Turecek-Promenade near the Franzensbrücke. This project was implemented in the framework of the FFG funded DUT InclusiveCity Project and implemented with the funding of the MA45/City of Vienna.

This podcast was produced in a cooperation with Placemaking Austria and superwien.

Hosts: Vivian Monteiro Malta & Roland Krebs

In the second episode of the InclusiveCity podcast, Vivian Monteiro and Roland Krebs talk with Eugene Quinn, Vienna-based urbanist, DJ, storyteller and co-founder of Whoosh. Their conversation explores the overlooked power of walking as a way of experiencing, understanding and connecting with the city. For Eugene, walking is more than a mode of transport: it is “free medicine”, a form of slow urban exploration that supports mental health, creativity, social interaction and a sense of belonging. Drawing on his unconventional walking tours across Vienna, he introduces the idea of “Street Capital”, a way of thinking about how lively, social, playful and welcoming a street feels, and asks what makes some streets exciting places to be while others feel empty and disconnected.

The conversation also looks at Vienna through the lens of inclusivity, public space and everyday urban life. Eugene discusses tourism for locals, the social differences between neighbourhoods, the role of children and schools, gender and walking, and the importance of encountering people who are different from ourselves. From the Danube Canal and Vienna’s open courtyards to street art, ugly architecture and the city’s changing public spaces, the episode invites us to see Vienna differently, not simply as a destination, but as a city to explore, question and participate in. Ultimately, it asks what an inclusive city might look like: a place where everyone is welcome, where curiosity and encounter are part of everyday life, and where walking can become a simple but powerful tool for building connection.

About our guest:

Eugene Quinn is a London-born, Vienna-based urbanist, DJ, and storyteller, and co-founder of Whoosh, a creative city-exploration project behind Vienna Walking Week with more than 150 unconventional walking tours from street art and social housing art to "Ugly Vienna" and smell-based tours of the city. Eugene also teaches spatial planning at TU Wien and developed the concept of "street capital." Whoosh's "tourism for locals" approach is a self-described response to the climate crisis, encouraging Viennese residents to rediscover their own city rather than travel elsewhere. 

Henni+Milli is a temporary, consumer-free public "placemaking" project and community testing ground located along the Donaukanal in Vienna, specifically named after the Henriette-Fahrbach-Promenade and Emilie-Turecek-Promenade near the Franzensbrücke. This project was implemented in the framework of the FFG funded DUT InclusiveCity Project and implemented with the funding of the MA45/City of Vienna.

This podcast was produced in a cooperation with Placemaking Austria and superwien.

Hosts: Vivian Monteiro Malta & Roland Krebs

In the first episode of the InclusiveCity Podcast we are talking to Sithara Pathirana and Marian Rudhart about green and blue public spaces as the backbone of an inclusive city and how artistic interventions shape the everyday lives in Vienna. The conversation centers on who actually gets to shape and feel welcome in shared urban space, blending Sithara’s arts/culture angle — the 2026 Klima Biennale edition “Unspeakable Worlds” had a focus week on the Danube Canal — with Marian’s grassroots push for public swimming access.

Please sign the Sithara'S petition of the Rights for the Danube as a Co-Citizen! (in german)

About our guests:

Sithara Pathirana is the festival director of the Klima Biennale Wien. The 2026 edition, "Unspeakable Worlds," put art in public space at the centre, with a specific focus week on the Danube Canal.

Marian Rudhart is from Schwimmverein Donaukanal, an association and grassroots initiative advocating to make Vienna's Donaukanal a place where people can safely swim and enjoy the water as part of everyday city life, for our conversation about green and blue spaces.

Henni+milli is a temporary, consumer-free public "placemaking" project and community testing ground located along the Donaukanal in Vienna, specifically named after the Henriette-Fahrbach-Promenade and Emilie-Turecek-Promenade near the Franzensbrücke. This project was implemented in the framework of the FFG funded DUT InclusiveCity Project and implemented with the funding of the MA45/City of Vienna.

This podcast was produced in a cooperation with Placemaking Austria and superwien.

Hosts: Vivian Monteiro Malta & Roland Krebs

In this episode, host Milagros Hurtig sits down with Eva Kail, a pioneering urban planner and feminist thinker whose work has reshaped how cities can better serve everyone. Together, they explore Eva's first steps in gender planning, the fundamental role of gender in urban design, how Vienna pioneered gender-sensitive urban planning, the Oberes Hausfeld urban development and about tools and advice for inclusive urban planning.

Through a candid and insightful conversation, Eva and Milagros unpack what it means to design cities with empathy, from gender-sensitive planning to the politics of public space. This episode of superwien podcast invites listeners to look more closely at the streets they walk every day and imagine how thoughtful design can create safer, more equitable, and more joyful urban futures.

Learn more about Eva's work: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/realestate/vienna-aspern-seestadt-gender.html

Learn more about superwien's Oberes Hausfeld design: https://www.wien.gv.at/pdf/ma21/planen-im-dialog-oberes-hausfeld.pdf

#urbanism #gender #feministplanning #architecture #inclusion #inclusivity

In this episode, we take a deep dive into regional planning and the role of cycling in strengthening urban–rural linkages. Today we are joined by Shelley Bontje from the Dutch Cycling Embassy, who was also the keynote speaker at the econnecting final conference in Faenza.

Together, we explore how cycling can move beyond municipal borders to become a powerful driver of regional connectivity. Drawing on Dutch experience and European practice, Shelley shares insights on cross-municipal cooperation, 30-minute territories, and the integration of cycling with public transport and regional hubs. From city-to-city bike networks to revitalising smaller towns and villages, this conversation highlights how cycling can help shape more connected, resilient, and inclusive regions.

Learn more about the Dutch Cycling Embassy: https://dutchcycling.nl

Learn more about econnecting:  https://urbact.eu/networks/econnecting

#urbanism #mobility #URBACT #SmartCity #Cycling #SustainableMobility

In this episode, we sit down with Nadia Carboni, Head of Economic Development and Smart City of the Unione della Romagna Faentina in Italy. Nadia shares the story behind one of the region’s most celebrated initiatives: Bike to Work—a program that has successfully encouraged large numbers of residents to choose the bicycle over the car for their daily commute.

We explore why Bike to Work became such a powerful mobiliser, how it shifted mobility habits, and what it teaches us about designing policies that actually work for people. Nadia also reflects on the econnecting journey, emphasising the crucial role of testing actions, experimenting in real contexts, and learning directly from communities.

If you're curious about smart-city strategies, behaviour change, and practical approaches to sustainable mobility, this episode offers inspiring insights from one of Italy’s standout examples.

Learn more about the Bike-to-Work program: https://urbact.eu/good-practices/bike-work

Learn more about econnecting: https://urbact.eu/networks/econnecting

#urbanism #mobility #URBACT #SmartCity #Cycling #SustainableMobility