Unfrozen

Intro/Outro: “Coming Up,” by Cornershop

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Discussed:

• Homegrown Cities: Reclaiming the Metropolis for Its Users
• Dharavi, Mumbai (including Koliwada)
• Emergent Tokyo
• Shanghai Shikumen
• Urbz: The Slum Outside
• Stewart Brand: “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built”
• James C. Scott
• Hernando de Soto and land title
• “Ad-hocracy”
• Open House: Levittown intervention by DS+R, Droog & EFGH, 2011
• MoMA Foreclosed project: Cicero, 2011

Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities | MoMA, 2014-2015

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Intro/Outro: “Afrique Victime,” by Mdou Moctar

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Discussed:

Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage

Siege of Magdala, Ethiopia, 1867-8 > Request for return of items, 1872

Benin Expedition of 1897

Egypt is in Africa!

Netherlands’ return of the Benin bronzes 

Benin Dialogue Group

US museums’ return of Benin bronzes

Flashback to Episode 57: Looty (Chidi Nwaubani) - raiding the British Museum in “digital repatriation”

Lesley Lokko //  Venice Biennale 2023 // African Futures Institute

Museum of West African Art (MoWAA), Benin City, Nigeria (ex-Edo-Benin), by Adjaye Associates

Demonstration against MoWAA, November 2025

Musee de Civilization Noir (MCN) Dakar, Senegal

Colonial Williamsburg (reconstructed village / open-air museum) model applied to Africa?

… or Xintiandi, Shanghai

Village Museum, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Jos Museum, Northern Nigeria

Julia Watson – Lo-Tek

MASS Design Group, Rwanda

Koyo Koouh – Art Biennale – Zeitz MoCAA

Pan-African Biennale of Architecture – Nairobi, Kenya, September 2026 (Omar Degan)

Intro: “Ruins,” by Pink Frost

Outro: “Disappointed,” by Morrissey

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Discussed:

- The Disappointed Tourist – site and project

- Atlantis

- Berlin Nightclub, Chicago, closed 2023

- Birmingham Central Library – J.H. Chamberlain, Birmingham, UK, b. 1882, d. 1974

- Birmingham Central Library – John Madin, Birmingham, UK, b. 1974, d. 2015

- Black Wall Street – Tulsa, d. 1921

- Cathedral of Christ the Saviour – Konstantin Thon, Moscow, b. 1883, d. 1931

- CBGB & OMFUG – New York, b. 1973, d. 2006

- Colossus of Rhodes, d. 226

- Commuter Carpet by Ellen Harvey – Francisco CTA Station, Chicago, b. 2007, d. 2025

- Great Synagogue – Warsaw, b. 1878, d. 1943

- Kim’s Video – New York, c. 2014

- Mormon Temple – Nauvoo, IL, b. 1843, d. 1848

- Other Music, New York, b. 1995, d. 2016

- Penn Station – McKim, Mead & White, New York, b. 1910, d. 1963

- Riverview – Chicago, b. 1904, d. 1967 

- Robin Hood Gardens – Alison & Peter Smithson, b. 1972, d. 2017

- Tower Records – New York, b. 1983, d. 2006

- Ukraine

- World Trade Center – New York, b. 1973, d. 2001

- The World Before Plastic, d. 1907

- The Montreal Forum, b. 1924, r. 1998

- Temple B’Nai Jehuda, Clarence Kivett and Ralph Myers, Kansas City, b. 1967, d. 2003

Utopia Machine

Bruno Carvalho is a Harvard professor and author of The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World. The book explores the evolution of urban planning, the impact of transportation on city development, and the interplay between planners and the organic growth of cities. On this episode of Unfrozen, we question the reliability of historical narratives, the role of technology in shaping urban futures, and the challenges of modern urbanism.

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Intro/Outro: “In the Future,” by Sparks

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Discussed:

Urban Plans, Cities & Experiments

• Lisbon earthquake, 1755
• Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 (NYC Grid)
• Brasília
• Arcosanti (Paolo Soleri)
• Riverside, Illinois (Olmsted & Vaux)
• New York Parkway System
• Baldwinville, Massachusetts
• NEOM (Saudi Arabia)
• Lagos (Nigeria)
• Jakarta (Indonesia)
   

Key Figures in Architecture & Planning

• Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal
• Baron Georges-Eugene Hausmann
• Ebenezer Howard
• Carlos Moreno
• Cesar Marchetti
• Lúcio Costa
• Oscar Niemeyer
• Juscelino Kubitschek
• Paolo Soleri
• Paul Romer (Economist; Charter Cities)
• Frederick Law Olmsted
• Peter Cook (Archigram)
  (en.wikipedia.org in Bing)
• Jan Gehl
• Andrés Duany (New Urbanism)
• Clarke & Rapuano (via Robert Moses)

Infrastructure, Policy & Governance

• Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956
   

Political Economy, Land & State Power

• Henry George
• Seeing Like a State (James C. Scott)
• The Modernist City (James Holston)
• The Land Trap (Mike Bird)

Intro/Outro: “Lattice,” by Tipper

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Discussed:

• American Bridge: Reinventing Building, Making History
• Gregory Dreicer
• Lattice bridge patented 1820 by Ithiel Town
• A.J. Davis
• Nationalism and national character (e.g. “American,” “British”)
• Wooden bridges and iron bridges
• Evolutionary analogies (“technology evolves”)
• Evolutionary hierarchies
• Industrialization myths
• Industrialization of construction
• Invention of the beam
• Uniform parts
• Knowledge types: “technology” and “science”
• Howe truss, patented 1840
• Warren truss, patented 1848
• Invention as networked, transnational process
• Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, Julia Watson
• Britannia Bridge, Robert Stephenson
• Railway boom and Bezos’ “good bubble”
• Railway construction labor
• Tom F. Peters’, Manhattan grid, redundancy
• Structural redundancy and Key Bridge, Baltimore
• Iron as symbol
• Covered bridges
• Techno-utopianism
• History of engineering and design
• Myth of abundance of wood in the US

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

• Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire, by Aaron Cayer
• Episode 90 – Magalopolis
• Episode 104 – Make Gaza Great Again
• Caudill Rowlett Scott, 1946-1994
• The Architects Collaborative, 1945-1995
• Halliburton
• Bechtel
• Gensler
• AECOM / DMJM
• John Portman
• URS, 1951-2014
• Brooks Act, 1972
• Bohemian Grove
• GLUCK+
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Litton Industries, 1953-2001
• The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Albert Kahn
• Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, by Claire Zimmerman
• Final report to the General Court of the Special Commission Concerning State and County Buildings (Massachusetts, 1980)
• Iron Mountain
• Cesar Pelli
• Anthony Lumsden
• Titan (rocket family)
• Jack Martin Smith
• Another Science Fiction, by Megan Prelinger

Imagine a New York City in the double python squeeze of political corruption and traffic congestion, where creative attempts to alleviate said congestion are thwarted at every turn by vested interests. This very contemporary-sounding condition was also very much in force in the late 1860s and early 1870s, when Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall ran the city, and an inventor named Alfred Beach built a short pneumatic-tube conveyance under Broadway, carrying dignitaries beneath the chaotic, horse-manured streets. This is the story of New York’s Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit, as told by Matthew Algeo.

Intro/Outro:

“Sub-Rosa Subway," by Klaatu

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Discussed:

• Alfred Ely Beach
• Oscar Munn
• The Scientific American
• “Boss” Willam Tweed
• Tammany Hall
• The Tweed Courthouse
• The Great Barbecue: Vernon L. Parrington
• Alexander T. Stewart
• West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway > IRT Ninth Avenue Line
• William Steinway Tunnel
• Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) subway
• London Pneumatic Despatch Railway
• L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, Louis Lumiere
• Second Avenue Subway
• Ghost Road, by Anthony Townsend
• Siemens dynamo
• Hyperloop
• California High-Speed Rail
• The railway accident at Staplehurst, Kent, England, 1865, that almost killed Charles Dickens
• Panic of 1873
• Stanley Yale Beach
• Water tower speakeasy, Arlo Hotel, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
• 258 Broadway

Jesse M. Keenan is the Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Tulane University. In his upcoming book North: The Future of Post-Climate America, he outlines the complexities of America’s handling of climate change and its effects on not only migration, mitigation, and real estate, but also our institutions and societal fabric. Simultaneous conclusions: There are no climate havens, but adapt we will. Join us for the fascinating Unfrozen interview.

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Intro/Outro: “System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank report on reversal of the migration to the Sun Belt

“What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century” - The Atlantic

Climate gentrification: from theory to empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida

Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac, April 2016: Will Markets Absorb Climate Change?

A Climate Minsky Moment?

Mitigation vs adaptation vs resilience

Rachel Minnery’s efforts at the AIA to include climate adaptation as part of architects’ standards and duty of care

“Climate-proof Duluth” in the New York Times

There were never any climate havens: The Guardian

The lesson of Asheville: The flooding was the beginning of its role as a “receiving zone,” not the end

“Climate havens” = media clickbait

Marketing of Buffalo as a “climate haven” by Mayor Byron R. Brown

Alan Mallach’s Unfrozen take on reviving legacy cities

“This is about growth management and urban planning 101 at the regional and local level”

For many “climate havens” rhetoric is not about recruiting new residents; climate mobility is a rhetorical arm for the existing residents for core sustainability development.

“The Midwest will ultimately grow for the exact same reason the Sun Belt grew”

Storming the Wall by Todd Miller

The Climate Credit Score

Hurricane Pass, Pinellas County, Florida

“Sodom & Gorlando”

Climate intelligence arms race, e.g., AlphaGeo

Spencer Glendon – “The money is slow and dumb”

Just in time for Halloween comes a spooky story of speculation and specters in the world of real estate. Joshua Comaroff, a professor at National University of Singapore, is the author of Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore. He tells Unfrozen that, despite being one of the most assertively modern nations in the world, mysticism and geomancy are very much part of the design and construction process in the island nation-state. Woe be to the development (and its occupants) that does not undertake elaborate rituals and pay the requisite respect (and sometimes burnt “hell money” offerings) to ghosts that may be resident on the site. We hope you enjoy this tale of spirits and the material world…

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Hell money, in sextillion-dollar denominations

Feng shui

People’s Action Party

Ghost Month (Ghost Festival)

Bomoh (Malay spirit doctor)

Winchester Mystery House

ION Orchard

Gateway, by I.M. Pei

AI Ghosts

John Calvin’s hatred of speculation

The Clayford Sisters

Thanatechnology

Depending on how you look at it, it is either a great or rough time out there for speculative fiction, as reality continues to bite at the heels of even the most dystopian visions. Jason Tester is a futurist with a knack for telling prescient stories about our imminent urban realities, in a startlingly graphic way. The visually compelling Insurrection: an American Future predicted troop deployments in San Francisco in early January 2025; by June, a real-life version of that story began unfolding in Los Angeles, then Washington, Chicago, and Portland. Tester gazes into the abyss with Unfrozen, in another episode a bit too close for comfort.

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Intro/Outro:

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Discussed:

Institute for the Future

What Is The Insurrection Act? Here’s What Happens If Trump Invokes Law

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Frogs of Portland

Ilana Lipsett

Meta Ray-Bans

Frend.AI

ImmigrationOS

San Francisco Proposition E - Police drone authorization

The beleaguered Whole Foods on Market

ICE Ramming in Chicago

Grand juries say no to sandwich crimes

DDS Waymo Jam

Barbara Walter at UC San Diego: How Civil Wars Start

Abyss gazing

UrbanistAI

One Big Beautiful Bill

One Big Beautiful Aftermath