Over the past 20 years, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani has taken the question, “what, and who is the city for?” directly to the streets of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn and Mosswood in Oakland, asking locals to take her to the places that matter to them. A visual urbanist, co-founder of the interdisciplinary studio Buscada, and widely exhibited photographer, Bendiner-Viani holds a doctorate in environmental psychology from the Graduate Center, CUNY.

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

Discussed:

Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, NY

Mosswood, Oakland, CA

Prior urbanists of “placework”:

-         Jane Jacobs

-         David Harvey – The Right to the City

-         Henri Lefebvre – Le Droit à la Ville

-         Kevin Lynch – Image of the City

-         Christopher Alexander – A Pattern Language

-         Mindy Thompson Fullilove

Diana Lind – The Human Doom Loop

The Anti-Social Century, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

Contested City, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani

Between, and sometimes within, the boundaries of nation-states are thousands of liminal zones which are neither here nor there, and their rules are different from those of the countries in which they are physically located. Author Atossa Araxia Abrahamian calls this “The Hidden Globe,” and chronicles the in-between places where money, art, luxurygoods, and stateless prisoners spend time in limbo. At a time of rising nationalism, tariff wars, and mass deportations, these places are on the ascendant. What are they like? Why are they there? And what’s next? Join this episode ofUnfrozen to find out.

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

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Discussed:

-         The Geneva Freeport

-         Svalbard

-         Tenet

-         The Cosmopolites

-         Henley & Partners

-         Dubai International Finance Center (DIFC)

-         Mark Beer, Zone Man

-         Estonia e-residency program

-         Greenland, Guantanamo Bay, and the Panama Canalare also zones

-         Freedom Cities

-         Boten, Laos

-         Laos-China Railway

-         Golden Triangle Zone

-         The Mont Pelerin Society

-         Extrastatecraft by Keller Easterling

-         Paul Collier

-         Paul Romer and the Charter City

-         Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

-         Hudson Yards

-         Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

-         U.S. Rep Jake Auchinsloss (D – MA) infavor of charter cities

-         Citizenship by investment = passports for sale:here to stay

-         Praxis: “The startup nation we deserve today”

Amidst the unprecedented destruction wrought by the multiple fires that swept across Southern California in January 2025, there are opportunities, and causes for optimism that we can build back, better than before. Among these is the prospective role of prefabricated construction,

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

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Discussed:

Bloomberg CityLab: Los Angeles Fire Victims Turn to Prefab Homes for Quick Builds

Regulations:

Woolsey fire, 2018

Architecturally significant buildings (at least 32) lost in the fires

The inauguration of the 47th president of the United States takes place on January 20. What are the implications of Trump 2.0 on the built environment, design and cities? Inspired by the eponymous, omnibus crucible of dread in the New York Review of Architecture, we huddled with the best and brightest design critics we know, Kate Wagner (The Nation / McMansion Hell) and Zach Mortice (Bloomberg CityLab) to try to come to grips with the oncoming MAGAlopolis.

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

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Discussed:

Will They Build the Wall and its Ancillaries?

Trump Will Not Make Architecture Great Again

Make Tartaria Great Again

Journalists needed, maybe more than architects right now

The Harold Washington Library is not a relic of an advanced

Will there be a Super State Fair?

Trump administration aesthetic = BioShock Infinite

Will the FBI Edgar J. Hoover Building (C.F. Murphy, 1975) be moved or demolished?

The Trads Have It

Tommy Tuberville: California will get Federal aid if “conditions

Scott

Jason Tester: Insurrection

Post-fire price gouging in L.A.

Suspending environmental regulations in California to build the same thing over again

It’s housing affordability, stupid – look at Canada

What happened to the rent cap?

We’re a few election cycles away from “progressive” mayors

“The future is about old people, in big cities, afraid of

Hoovervilles > Trumptowns

DOGE = Department of Graft Enhancement

Dan and Greg recap Unfrozen in 2024 and look ahead to 2025.

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Show Notes:

Intro/Outro: “I Still Wear the Uniform,” by The Cooper Vane

- Our Spotify Wrapped Stats for 2024

- AndrewAndrew

- That time in 2005 when Greg wrote that podcasts would

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TOP EPISODES OF 2024:

- Top episode of 2024 was also the top episode of 2023: Show Me the

- Horror in

- Glass

- Domo Arigatou,

- On

- Innovation

- Salty Urbanism,

- Cornell Tech Urban

In 2025…maybe?:

- Jane Jacobs the Musical: A Marvelous Order

- La

- Who will build the Wall?

- Who has built the Line – and died?

- Data Towers:

-             33 Thomas Street –

-             1

Craig Hutson has worked in research and development in academia and industry and is fascinated with the history of Chicago’s lakefront. When seeking a definitive book about the history of Illinois Center and Lakeshore East, the air-rights developments above former docklands and railyards east of the Loop, he realized there wasn’t one, and he decided to write it himself.

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Intro/Outro: “Nighttime in the Switching Yard,” by Warren

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Discussed:

Illinois Central Railroad

Illinois Center

Lakeshore East

Millennium Park

Maggie Daley Park

Aqua

St. Regis Chicago

Outer Drive East (400 East Randolph)

Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower

The Park at Lakeshore East

Millennium Station

Hyatt Regency Chicago

Chicago Pedway

Boulevard East

Magellan Development Group

James Loewenberg

Blobs. Doppelgangers. Giants. Puppets. Incontinent objects.

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Intro/Outro: “Scare Me,” by Deadbolt

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Discussed:

Immanuel

Edmund

Harvard Graduate

Bigness, or

Centre

Xintiandi,

Jan Gehl

The Architectural

Built

Mullets

Army of

Twins

Doppelgangers

Ordos

-             

-             

-             

-             

H.R. Giger

Zeitz

Gordon

Jan

Frank

Francois

Parc

American

Hannover

Toshiko

Caltrans

Daniel

League

House

The Master and

Saddam Hussein’s Frank Frazetta-esque fantasy

Idi Amin’s

Great Basilica,

Anti-Oedipus,

The

Never mind the weather, don’t you feel it has been a cold

Intro/Outro: “Miss You,” by the Rolling Stones

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Discussed:

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

o  

-             

o   Museum/Casino of Freedom and Democracy, New York

o   Las Vegas A’s Stadium

-             

-             

-             

-             

-             

o  Conference of Mayors

o  Using Augmented Reality to Drive Inclusive City Development

-             

-             

-             

o  Joshua Comaroff & Ong Ker-Shing, authors of Horror in Architecture

o  Kevin Kelley, Shook Kelley, author of Irreplaceable (not Kevin Kelly)

In every office, there is someone with so much accumulated knowledge the boss wants to “clone” them. At structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti (TT), they’ve basically done that. The firm has taken the concept of a “digital twin” to a newly literal level – engineers can now quiz a synthetic clone of the firm’s in-house welding and metallurgy expert, constructed from 30

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Intro/Outro: “Mr. Roboto,” by Styx

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Discussed:

·     ZHA’s Patrik Schumacher keynote at the AIA

·     Dall-E, ChatGPT, Midjourney, OpenAI

·     HOU 3000: Serpentine Galleries’ virtual

·     TT’s Spark Intranet

·     Cornell Tech Jacobs Institute: The

·     TT made a digital twin of welding and metallurgy expert Mike DeLashmit. The real Mike gives "Mike 2.0" a “4.7 out of 5” in terms of the accuracy of its answers.

·     Converting scanned PDF drawings with annotations into vectors + tabular data

·     Google Gemini

·     A “hallucination throttle” for generative AI

·     Using AI to optimize material quantities,

Mankind’s quest for verticality has an underexplored dimension:

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Intro/Outro: "I Still Wear the Uniform," by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed: