The Super Urban Podcast

In this episode, we think of cities as the setting or backdrop to drama and events—ideas connected to Bertolt Brecht's development of Epic Theatre in the 1920s, Henri Lefebvre'sfocus on everyday urban life, and the explicitly theatrical architecture of Edmond and Corrigan. Designers of cities have been consciously creating the elements of theatrical urban life throughout history, and Conrad Hamann explores how quickly cinema took on the task of depicting the city, treating it as a main character—from Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) to countless films that followed.

Conrad also speaks to the theatrical elements that have persisted in city design: the composedstreet, the city logo or icon, campus groupings, and triumphal arches—each functioning as a venue for the instant theatre of life. 21st-century cities are now seen through Google Earth by more people than any other means, and evenseeing cities from the air for the first time transformed the scale of urban drama. Yet the small theatrical moment of an encounter on a street corner persists.

What does a theatrical reading of cities mean for us today? This episode invites us to consider thecity not just as infrastructure or economy, but as stage—a place where architecture, movement, and everyday encounter combine to produce the ongoing performance of urban life.

Check out the references from this episode.

The fourth episode Cities as Arenas for Social Change will explore the connection between urban design, social transformation, and political ideologies, drawing from historical examples to understand how cities have been reshaped to reflect and influence the societies that inhabit them. Cities and built environments aren’t just backdrops for daily life; they’re battlegrounds for ideas, power, and progress. For social transformation, from utopian experiments to authoritarian spectacles, from radical housing models to grand infrastructure projects meant to shape human behaviour. From the grand utopian visions of Garden Cities to the authoritarian spectacle of Nazi Berlin, urban planning has long been a tool for social transformation.

We’ll explore radical plans like Le Corbusier’s "machines for living," Soviet Moscow’s collectivist cityscapes, and the sprawling baroque metro stations of Stalinist Russia—all designed to shape how people live, move, and think. But these lessons don't just belong to the past. As cities today continue to evolve under pressures like climate change, inequality, and technological advancement, the question of how urban spaces can foster social change is more relevant than ever.

In this episode, we'll connect these historical precedents to the contemporary conditions in cities, examining how today’s urban planners and architects are grappling with similar questions: How can cities be designed to create more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive societies? Stay tuned as we unpack how the legacy of these past urban visions still echoes in today’s cities—and how they can help us navigate the challenges of the future. 

Cities are theatres. In this third episode we think of cities as the setting or backdrop to drama and events – ideas connected to Berthold Brecht’s development of Epic Theatre in the 1920’s or of Henri Lefebvre’s focus on everyday urban life . Designers of cities have been consciously creating the elements of theatrical urban life through history. Edmond and Corrigan explicitly worked with this theatrical reading of architecture and urbanism, and understood the relationship between architecture and stage design. 

Conrad Hamann has talked about how quickly cinema took on the task of depicting cities and treated a city as a main character. We can think of Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov in 1929 and countless other films following. Conrad has talked too about the theatrical elements which have persisted in city design – the composed street; the city logo or icon; campus groupings, and triumphal arches. Each of these as venues for the Instant Theatre of life. 

21st century cities are probably seen in google earth by more people that any other place, and even seeing cities from the air for the first time transformed the scale of urban drama. Yet the little theatrical moment of the encounter on a street corner persists. What does a theatrical reading of cities mean for us today? 

In this episode, we speak again with Conrad Hamann as we dissect another fundamental layer of urban development: the city as industry. If cities were once defined by ideological and religious order, industrial modernity reconfigured them into factories of progress and production—landscapes of extraction and acceleration. Industry was not merely an economic function; it was a defining urban idea, and a remapping of power. Smoke billowing from factories was once a sign of economic vitality and civic virtue, but with industry also came stratification, pollution, and the entanglement between economic advancement and environmental degradation.

This episode traverses the industrial city's evolution—from railways as the connective tissue of empires, to the automobile fracturing urban coherence and ushering in sprawl,highways, and logistical spines that redefined mobility and access. Conrad discusses Australian industrial cities like Melbourne, Sydney, and Geelong, and explores how former industrial zones such as Docklands, Pyrmont, and Fisherman's Bend have adapted over time.

Now, in an era of digital economies and dematerialised labour, the question becomes: are cities still industrial, or have they become pure software—factories of data, energy, and capital? Have we simply substituted one form of extraction for another, replacing coal with data and production lines with algorithmic efficiencies? If industry no longer requires proximity, what holds the city together?

Check out the references from this episode.

In this episode, we speak to Conrad Hamannas we discuss contemporary perspectives on the emulated city, questioning its role as a symbol of order and an instrument of control.

Conrad Hamann explores the impulse to emulate cities as a means of establishing order, authority, stability, and clarity. The enduring presence of Rome and Athens in urban design serves as a prime example, but we also see this in 19th-century Melbourne’s fascination with Venice. These forms of emulation are often colonial, where rapidly growing settlements borrow familiar urban forms to create an instant sense of structure and legitimacy—mirroring the mother country.

This pattern extends beyond architectureinto cinema, from the archetypal Wild West town to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, where urban forms reinforce control, hierarchy, and power. The desire for order is closely tied to protection, conquest, and the assertion of ownership overland. This may also explain the obsession with creating city icons—perhaps nowhere more apparent than in Melbourne—where a single building is expected to embody the identity of an entire city.

Check out the references from this episode.

Welcome to SUP – The Super Urban Podcast – a discussion on cities from RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, in Narrm, Melbourne, Australia. Hosted by Ian Nazareth, Graham Crist and Christine Phillips.

This podcast is made possible by the generous support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation and the RMIT University School of Architecture and Urban Design.

Our first series, Urban Emulation, builds on a remarkable six-part urban history series delivered at RMIT University by Conrad Hamann, a legendary historian of Australian architecture and urbanism. Conrad is the author of Cities of Hope, a monograph on the work of Edmond and Corrigan in Melbourne.

These episodes explore how cities are shaped over time through emulation —the act of copying and transplanting places elsewhere. We argue that urban processes inherently absorb emulation into their very code—whether through deliberate replication, subconscious borrowing, or systemic reproduction of spatial, economic, and cultural patterns.

Each episode focuses on a key theme illustrating how these ideas have historically influenced urban spaces and continue to shape contemporary cities:

- Cities as Order

- Cities as Industry

- Cities as Theatres

- Cities as Arenas of Social Change

- Cities as Fragmented and Divided

- Endless and Multiple Cities

Join us as we unpack these ideas and explore the ways cities evolve through imitation, adaptation, and transformation.

The podcast is part of the ⁠⁠⁠Super Urban Lab⁠⁠⁠ at RMIT’s School of Architecture & Urban Design. We acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups on whose unceded Country we are recording this podcast.

Welcome to SUP – The Super Urban Podcast – a discussion on cities from RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, in Narrm, Melbourne, Australia. Hosted by Ian Nazareth, Graham Crist and Christine Phillips.

We would firstly like to acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups on whose unceded Country we are recording this podcast and extend that acknowledgment to all First Peoples ofAustralia who have been caring for the many layers of Country for over 60,000 years.  This podcast is focused on cities, and while it is difficult to read the layers of Country within these built-up environments, we acknowledge that Urban Country requires the most attention in foregrounding the dynamic living cultures of Australia’s First Peoples.  

The Super Urban Podcast is a conversation about cities and how they’re designed; how we imagine them and how we could re-imagine them. Cities are the most complex things ever constructed and they are also our everyday, barely noticed environment. We’re here for a talk about cities from as many perspectives as possible. Each episode will focus on a specific theme, blending diverse viewpoints and engaging with broader contexts like history, economics, politics, and current social issues. Perspectives of Australia's First Peoples, responsible practice, post-carbon futures, circularity, urban infrastructure and affordability are all up for discussion.We’ll discuss what makes cities work, but we’re also interested in what makes us dream about cites, why we love them and how they exist in our imagination. 

This podcast is made possible by the generous support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation and the RMIT University School of Architecture & Urban Design.

The podcast is part of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Super Urban Lab⁠⁠⁠⁠ at RMIT’s School of Architecture & Urban Design.