Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future

In this episode of Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future , an urbanNext original podcast series, host Douglas Stuart McDaniel sits down with Dr. Assia Crawford—architect, biodesign researcher, and author of Designer’s Guide to Lab Practice and Bios In Search of Zoe —to explore what it truly means to co-design urban futures with living organisms. Trained as a conventional architect in the UK, Cra...

A Citizen One Journal Before diving into this next Citizen One episode—a short-form, audio-only reflection I’m calling a Citizen One Journal —I wanted to share a thoughtful signal boost we received this week, and one I didn’t expect. You can read or listen to the essay, The Reasonable City: What Happens When a City Knows More Than Her Citizens? , just below. Fernando Fernández-Monge, senior associ...

In this episode of Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future , an urbanNext original podcast series, host Douglas Stuart McDaniel sits down with Michael W. Bischoff, Design Partner at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, to discuss the evolving civic responsibility of architecture. As a steward of a legacy shaped by giants like I.M. Pei and Harry Cobb, Bischoff brings a generational perspective to the questio...

Summary In this first of a two-part episode of Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future, an urbanNext original podcast series, host Douglas Stuart McDaniel engages with Ramon Gras, co-founder of Aretian Urban Analytics and Design, to explore the future of urbanism through city science. They discuss the intersection of data science, AI, and urban planning, focusing on the concepts of urban fractalit...

In this episode of Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future, an urbanNext original podcast series, host Doug McDaniel sits down with Misha Nikulin, a digital innovation veteran in global engineering, procurement and construction, or EPC. Misha’s career spans over two decades at Bechtel, executive consulting at Deloitte, and leadership in digital transformation across the energy sector. Their conver...

In this episode of Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future , an urbanNext original podcast series, host Douglas Stuart McDaniel sits down with leading thinkers at the intersection of digital urbanism, cinematic worldbuilding, and metaverse technologies to examine how the metaverse is reshaping city-making. Guests include: * Firas Safieddine, architect, urbanist, and author of Metaverse Urbanism: S...

In this episode of Citizen One , Exploring Our Urban Future, an urbanNext original podcast series, world-renowned concept artist Olivier Pron ( Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Harry Potter ) returns along with Judd Payne , president of IDEA ( www.idea.la ) and veteran film and television producer ( Cherry, Mile 22, Bernie, Southland Tales ). They sit down with host Doug McDaniel to explor...

In this Citizen One Spotlight episode, we sit down with Alex McDowell , the visionary production designer behind Fight Club , Minority Report , and Man of Steel , to explore how worldbuilding extends far beyond Hollywood. McDowell takes us through his unconventional career path—from designing music videos in 1977 London to reshaping how films visualize the future. He shares insights from Minority...

Citizen One Podcast – Episode 1 Summary Title: Worldbuilding the Street Corner of the Future: The Fight Club of Urbanism Guests: Alex McDowell & Olivier Pron Welcome to the premiere episode of Citizen One , an urbanNext original podcast series where we explore the minds shaping the cities of tomorrow. Host Douglas Stuart McDaniel is joined by Alex McDowell , pioneering production designer and worl...

Cities are humanity’s grandest experiment—where ambition, architecture, and technology collide. But what happens when we stop adapting cities to the past and start designing them for the future? Hosted by Douglas Stuart McDaniel—author, innovation veteran, and accidental urbanist—Citizen One explores the forces shaping the cities of tomorrow. Drawing from McDaniel’s experience in urban research at...