The Masterplan
The Masterplan is a podcast focused on the analysis, planning, and design of cities. Created and hosted by Alex Mademo, an urbanist and researcher, it explores the complexities of urban environments. Episodes likely cover topics such as urban design, transportation, land use, and the social dynamics of city life. The show offers insights into how cities function and how they can be shaped for the future.
Episodes
#28 - Anastasia Sukhoroslova: All Things Urban, Networking and Career Paths
Anastasia Sukhoroslova is the Founder and CEO of All Things Urban, a platform connecting urban professionals across the world and one of the largest communities for urbanists, architects and planners. She is also the Co-Founder of The GeoSpatial Hub, which brings GIS and geospatial data closer to urban experts. We discuss the importance of networking in urban careers, the skills shaping tomorrow’s
#27 - Honorata Grzesikowska: Masterplanning, Spatial Equity, Self-sufficiency
Honorata Grzesikowska is an urban designer and researcher whose work dives deep into urban design and spatial equity. She’s the creator of a vast library of masterplans on Urbanitarian. She is a frequent voice on LinkedIn, where she shares insightful tips on how to be a better urban designer and what urban design truly means in practice. Alongside her design practice and collaborative projects, we
#26-Yohan Wadia & Parshav Sheth: Labs of Urban Innovation
Yohan Wadia and Parshav Sheth are India based urban planners and co-founders of @LABS, a platform that engages in education, consultancy and innovation on urban issues. Find out more:https://www.labsonline.in
#25 - Ramon Gras: City Science, Urban Design & Digital Twins
Ramon is the CEO and Founder at Aretian Urban Analytics and Design and an Urban Design Researcher at Harvard University. He co-authored the book City Science: Performance Follows Form. Find out more:https://www.aretian.com/
#24 - Angelos Chronis: AI, Architecture and Environmental Simulations
Angelos Chronis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Infrared City, Co-Director of the Master in AI for Architecture and Business Innovation at IAAC, and Senior Research Engineer at AIT. More info at:https://infrared.city/https://iaac.net/https://www.ait.ac.at/
#23 - Ocean Jangda and Firas Saffiedine: Real Estate Development for the 21st Century
A conversation with Ocean Jangda and Firas Saffiedine. Ocean Jangda is a real-estate manager and urban technologist. His recent thesis at the MIT Center for Real Estate, titled Urban Technology: Rethinking Real Estate Development for the 21st Century, challenges how we build cities and argues for a development model that is deeply connected to biology, technology, and the biosphere. Firas Saffiedi
#22 - Ocean Jangda: Technology as a lens for Urban Science
Ocean Jangda is a real estate expert, currently studying at the MIT, with a passion for technology and urban development.
Find more about Ocean here: https://oceanjangda.org
#21 - Mario Gonzalez Nevarez: Climate Injustice in Puerto Rico
Mario Gonzalez Nevarez is an urbanist based in Puerto Rico with a background in political science, architecture and climate adaptation.
Find more about Mario here: www.linkedin.com/in/mjgn/
#20 - Jordi Vivaldi: Architectural Philosophy and the Materiality of Reason
Jordi Vivaldi is an architect and philosopher based in Vienna.
PhD Architect (IOUD, Austria) and PhD Philosopher cand. (EGS, Switzerland), his areas of research include various forms of Speculative Realism and New Materialism, as well as 21st century’s theory of experimental architecture, art and technology. His current field of philosophical investigation puts in relation the notion of ‘reason’
#19 - From the Top #3 with Leyla Saadi from Urban Collabs
The following is a conversion with my friend and colleague Leyla Saadi from Urban Collabs. It's Leyla's 3rd time on the show in our recurrent series we like to call "From the Top". Join us while we catch up, figure out who actually invented the airplane, how one can be in Mali and the Senegal at the same time, talk about Leyla's latest projects and try to unpack Advanced Urba
#18 - Firas Saffiedine: Spatial Internet, Metaverse, Architecture, NEOM & Ground Zero Urbanism
Firas Saffiedine is a spatial design practitioner whose work spans urbanism, design, architecture, neurotechnology, and art. He is the founder of his own practice called Spatial Forces, the director of the platform Urbanitarian the Chief Metaverse Architect at Gamiumcorp and the Director of the NeurotechX Hackathon. His upcoming book called Spatialization Takes command: Notes on the Future of Urba
#17 - From the Top #2 with Leyla Saadi from Urban Collabs
This is a special edition to the podcast. I recorded these episodes in the summer of 2023 with my good friend and colleague Leyla Saadi from Urban Collabs. Urban Collabs is a consultancy, Leyla is an urbanist and urban designer. They do really cool work, so definitely check them out. Back in the summer of 2023 we thought of doing something different, we thought of sitting down in the living room,
#16 - From the Top #1 with Leyla Saadi from Urban Collabs
This is a special edition to the podcast. I recorded these episodes in the summer of 2023 with my good friend and colleague Leyla Saadi from Urban Collabs. Urban Collabs is a consultancy, Leyla is an urbanist and urban designer. They do really cool work, so definitely check them out. Back in the summer of 2023 we thought of doing something different, we thought of sitting down in the living room,
#15 - The Urban Drought
According to some estimates, in the first two decades of the 21st century, 79 global big cities have suffered extensively from a drought disaster. Meanwhile, climate change has magnified urban droughts in both frequency and severity, putting tremendous pressure on our cities’ water supply.
This year Spain was in the headlines due to the record breaking heat waves, the lack of rainfall, the trucke
#14 - The New against the Old
If you have lived in the same city for the last 15 to 20 years you have most likely seen parts of it change. Many times, foreign investors move into the city and big global retail brands start altering the fabric of a city’s cultural identity. We’ve all had this moment where we’ve walked around different neighborhoods of different cities and we’ve witnessed the exact same stores selling the exact
#13 - Competing Metropolises
Not sure if you are aware but we are currently living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Yes fourth. There were 3 others. This one is the one that is all about automating traditional manufacturing and industrial processes through what we call smart technologies, machine-to-machine communication, and the internet of things. This new way of manufacturing is rapidly expanding to all corners of the
#12 - Text me when you get home
It’s 2:00 am, you’re walking back home from a night of dining and drinking with your friends at the local bar. The streets are awfully quiet, a street light is flickering and all of a sudden a car alarm goes off in the distance. The hair on the back of your neck stand straight, your heart starts beating faster and you find yourself walking a bit faster as you feel more and more uncomfortable. You
#11 - Vulnerable Communications
The way we unravel the complexity of our work- whether it is in front of one person or of 1000 - is crucial to the development of the audiences’ understanding of the thing that we are trying to communicate. The ability to turn years of research into a succinct narrative that can be communicated in the form of a story is nothing short of a craft and a skill that many scientists lack. The few scient
#10 - Climate Migration
On August 8th 2023, the World Meteorological Organisation reported that the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which was implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission, confirmed that July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded.
Samantha Burgess, the Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that we just witnes
#9 - AI Governance
During the last decade there have been so many innovations in the world of technology. Self-driving cars, smartphones, space exploration, bio printing, internet of things. The list goes on and on. We are definitely undergoing a technological revolution. Among those was the recent deployment of a series of AI-powered chatbots that have opened new frontiers for the generation of images, videos, 2D,
#8 - Happy Cities
Are you happy? I know, I know it’s a tough question. It’s too subjective and too abstract. I mean what does it even mean? We say it depends on the person and it comes and goes based on so many different factors. However, we all deserve and are invested in the pursuit of happiness. This we can at least agree to, right?
Don’t worry I’m not going to turn this show into a therapy session. At the end
#7 - Wildlife in the City
During the worldwide shutdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many reports emerged of urban wildlife sightings. Sea lions were seen on a sidewalk of Mar del Plata harbor, south of Buenos Aires, a herd of buffalo was seen walking along an empty highway in New Delhi, a cougar was spotted in Santiago jumping onto a wall and finding shelter in an empty apartment and dolphins starting coming more
#6 - Permaculture
In all honesty, I have no idea where the things I eat really come from. Like most of us, I grew up in the city and everything I ate always came from the supermarket. Even today I remain somewhat unaware of the links between the sourcing, production and distribution of food, and the ways in which I consume it. In many ways, I think we are all strangers to the journey our food takes before arriving
#5 - How to Hack a City
Have you ever been present for that magic moment when all the street lights in your city turn on at the same time? When I was a young kid I used to picture a person - a night light conductor - sitting in a room looking at their wristwatch and when the time struck 7 they would flip a big switch turning on all of the city lights. Now I’m older and I know that neither this person nor this big night l
#4 - The New Social
Imagine if Instagram and social media closed every day at 6pm like a shop. We would all be forced to meet up and speak to each other in real life, to be present with our families, to work out, to go outside, to read, to make art, music... what a drag, right?
It’s been 3 years since Steven Bartlett a British entrepreneur and co-founder of SocialChain posted this tweet and since then it’s been const
#3 - For the Love of Data
I’ll never forget the day I downloaded my first Twitter dataset. I was a student working on a submission, it was late at night and I was trying to find a way to make a map of what the citizens of Barcelona were saying on Twitter about their city. I was working hard on making my algorithm work until I got that damn line of code just right, clicked on “Run” and boom: my spreadsheet started to be fil
#2 - Smart (City) Contexts
In 2015 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a national “Smart Cities Mission”, an urban renewal program with the goal to develop smart cities across the sub-continent, making them citizen friendly and sustainable. The mission initially included 100 cities, with the deadline for completion of the projects set between 2019 and 2023. As of August 2022, which is when I’m recording this episo
#1 - The City as a Natural Phenomenon
As a kid, one of my favorite books was Heaven & earth: Unseen by the naked eye by Katherine Roucoux. It showed - chapter by chapter - intricate landscapes of increasing scale and distance, captured by microscopes, x-rays, satellites and telescopes. Each photograph was accompanied by an extended caption that explained it in detail, offering a dose of scientific information connecting it to the
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