The Future City

How do we know if the air in our cities is clean enough to breathe? On this episode of The Future City Podcast, we speak with Reecha Upadhyay, an international clean air activist based in one of the most air-polluted cities on earth, Delhi, India.

Reecha is a campaigns and program leader at the Clean Air Fund, which is dedicated to building and strengthening the global clean air movement. Reecha's work is about backing a range of interventions such as air quality monitoring and supporting ambitious policymakers and campaigners to keep air quality high in all cities, but with a focus on India, Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom.

What does the future of flight mean for our cities? Drones already deliver items to consumers at home, and as we are the midst of the third aviation revolution. Where might this technology take us?

On today's episode we speak with Dr. Newton Campbell Jr., a NASA computer scientist and cyber security expert that is working on self-driving aircraft. Dr. Campbell Jr. currently serves as an Artificial Intelligence expert with the NASA Langley Research Center and leads the development of several programs in urban air mobility, geomagnetism, virtual reality, and high-performance computing for Earth Sciences. Self-aware aircraft will be game changers in urban-air mobility.

On this week's episode of The Future City Podcast we speak with Dr. Julian Waters-Lynch about how remote working in response to the COVID19 pandemic is changing us and our cities. Dr. Waters-Lynch is a lecturer at RMIT University. He is an expert in the future of work in this "new normal." Julian shares with us how work-life balance is evolving and that a migration of workers from major cities to second tier cities and regional areas may not be such a bad thing.

Dr. Julian Waters-Lynch is a lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Organizational Design at the School of Management at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on the impact of emerging trends on the future of work and ways of organising.

How are we celebrating, catalyzing and amplifying black joy? This, in itself, is a radical act. On this week's episode of The Future City podcast we speak with Kyra Assibey-Bonsu, a Brooklyn based urbanist and storyteller who is on the board of Black Space Urbanist Collective - an organization which demands a present and future where Black people, Black spaces and Black culture matter. Kyra shares about how focusing on a manifesto and staying curious about food are key for marginalized groups to thrive in our cities.

What does it mean to have a city which is truly self-sufficient where the only thing coming in and out is people? On this episode of The Future City podcast, we speak with Ross Harding, a designer, engineer and finance guy with a special power - designing self-sufficient cities. Ross shares his financial and technically-sound design for a self-sufficient capital city, which was endorsed by the local mayor.

How can we increase people's connection to nature, and make our cities greener, healthier and more sustainable? In today's episode we speak with the Honorable David Speirs MP. He is the Minister for Environment and Water and serves as a Member of Parliament in South Australia, Australia's 4th Largest state.

As you'll hear, Dave is a passionate advocate for the environment and we discuss practical ways to change our cities for the better. As one of Australia's youngest Government Ministers, he has led multiple reforms focused on the environment, including the ban on single use plastics, an Australian first, and enabling people to more easily experience the environment in their neighbourhood.

In this episode we speak with Lucinda Hartley, an urban designer, entrepreneur and co-founder of Neighbourlytics, a social analytics platform for neighbourhoods that measures the quality of life and wellbeing in cities using big data. Named as one of Melbourne's Top 100 most influential people, Lucinda is redefining how we measure what makes cities successful and we explore how we can evolve our neighbourhoods towards social prosperity.

Daniel Raven-Ellison is a Guerrilla Geographer, National Geographic Emerging Explorer and is leading the campaign to make London the world's first National Park City. A former secondary school Head of Geography, Daniel's work focuses on exploring and thinking about places in creative ways, including our urban environments.

Daniel shares brilliant insights from his adventures having explored some of the world's largest cities to understand critical themes including violence, depression and green space. He walked the height of Mount Everest over 10 days by only using London's buildings and also completed an expedition with National Geographic and Cisco to explore the internet of everything, where he walked 1,686km across national parks and cities wearing an EEG that tracked his emotions.

What makes a city livable? Transport? Splendid Coffee? Hip people? On this episode of the Future City Podcast we speak with Clare Shine about how access to the natural world inside our cities is what makes them desirable, equitable and even commercially successful. Clare speaks about the importance of trees, how London is becoming a National Park City and the unexpected benefits of a "new normal."

What's the difference between a good night and a wicked night? Incredible food and amazing cocktails. On this episode of The Future City Podcast, we speak with Ryan Chetiyawardana about how to design magical culinary experiences, where the future of restaurants is heading and why being weird is the key to being cool.