City Centric Podcast

This interview is with Kate Langford, The Impact on Urban Health’s Programme Director for health effects of air pollution. A ten-year programme focusing on mitigating the disproportionate effect that exposure to poor air quality has on the health and wellbeing of those most susceptible to it. The Impact on Urban Health is a specialist division part of Guy's and St Thomas' Charity. For over 500 yea...

Part 3 of our conversations with the CASH community is with journalist Jo Griffin who has been reporting what's been taking place for the Guardian. Jo is a journalist/writer with more than 20 years' experience in national newspapers in the UK, including nine years on staff at the Guardian. Her articles have been published by the Guardian, Observer, BBC, Al Jazeera, Evening Standard, Big Issue, Mid...

Meet Sufiyan Abdul-Qayum, one of the UK's youngest clean air campaigners at 19 years old, who's been campaigning since he was 16. Sufiyan is part of CASH, Clean Air for Southall & Hayes, who are a community group from west London fighting against toxic chemicals being leaked into the air they breathe. This conversation focuses on Sufiyan's experience and interaction with urban development; + Inter...

This episode is the first of a three part series in which we interview 3 integral members of the Clean Air for Southall & Hayes (CASH) campaign group based in west London, close to Heathrow Airport. The group started in 2017 when neighbours began noticing a putrid, gasoline like smell in the air and people reported breathing problems. They also noticed that this coincided with construction works b...

The Centric Lab team come together to discuss the difference between data and the lived experience, namely around health. As authorities clamour for more data as the route to success it feels that decisions become determined by what data is collected rather than what is actually happening. Decisions are being made by data rather than a framework to solve the problem using data. It's very easy to m...

This episode features the team discussing our Urban Health Index, a visualisation tool for showing how areas compare for their levels of biological inequality. The conversation is led by Araceli Camargo who was the inventor of the tool alongside Elahi Hossain, our long standing researcher and author of the term biological inequality, and Dan Akinola-Odusola who led the development of the digital t...

In this episode we talk with a Carl Brooks who’s a UK director of sustainability at the global real estate services firm CBRE. Our conversation focuses on the impact of Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance, and what this is meaning to how large commercial real estate assets and portfolios are managed given the impending climate crises and rising concerns on health. There’s a long way to...

This episode centres on a conversation with Kushal Sood, a human rights solicitor working with marginalised groups, particularly those deprived of their liberty. We recently supported a successful case of his in rights to grant a dying man compassionate release from prison, which we’ll cover in this show. Somehow in society we’ve accepted the dehumanisation of ourselves. This is seen evidently in...

In this episode the Centric team come together to discuss the background, results and learnings from our recent study: COVID-19 & Biological Inequality; a London data study. For more information on the study please follow this link https://www.thecentriclab.com/covid-19-poverty-a-london-data-study The Centric team on this episode are: Araceli Camargo, Sarah Aliko, Daniel Akinola-Odusola, and Josh...

COVID-19 & Biological Inequality; a London Data Study ABSTRACT It is now well understood that poorly designed and planned environments heighten the risk of health issues due to systemic deprivations and stressors. Our recent paper investigates how COVID-19 is interacting with these environments and their communities, specifically Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities in the London. A...

In this episode we're joined by Tom Lindsay, Senior Strategy Delivery Manager at 100 Resilient Cities, a civic and social organisation powered by the Rockefeller Foundation helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that a growing part of the 21st Century. Tom joined us on Wednesday 15th May to share his views on the impact research is hav...

In this episode we're joined by Dr. Daniel Slade, Research Officer at Royal Town Planning Institute. Dr. Slade leads the Institute's work on climate change, resilience, and climate justice. Daniel joined us on Wednesday 15th May to share his views on what improvements are needed from local planning to ensure that cities can adapt in time to protect day to day life. You can find info on Daniel here...

On 15th May Centric Lab are partnering with [S]City, Connected Places Catapult, and University College London for a 1/2 day conference on climate change and its impact on daily life in cities. | Cities for Future Humans | There is no greater challenge to our habitats than climate change. This man-made phenomena is creating social, biological, geo-political and economic challenges, which at the mom...

Episode 16 is with Sam Markey, who as the Future Cities Catapult's Head of Executive Office commissioned the ‘Neuroscience for Cities’ playbook, and it’s lead author our very own Araceli Camargo who is head of R&D for Centric. The purpose of this session was to invite them on to explain in their own words why such a venture was taken and where it’s direction lies. A first of its kind, the ‘Neurosc...

Episode 15 is with Robin Mazumder who's in London for the summer working with our scientific partners at UCL. We decided to record this podcast within a few hours so it's a little rough and ready but thanks to modern technology most things are possible! In it we discuss cycling and cities and what it represents to quality of life and its impacts on elements such as mental health and equity within...

This track welcomes Alex Fefegha from Comuzi Lab and our very own Araceli Camargo from Centric as we discuss AI, racial bias and discussing some of Alex's projects concerned with ensuring that decision making form an urban and social perspective is inclusive and not one-directional. Alex is founder + head creative technologist @comuzi_lab. which is an experimental R&D agency working at the interse...

On this show I'm delighted to finally be sitting down with Robin Mazumder who's in London for the summer working with our scientific partners at UCL. This is the first of a few podcasts we're doing together as we embrace and embody the city as we discuss how neuroscience and technology is going to have impacts across all elements of city design. He has a huge passion for reducing opressiveness in...

On this show I’m delighted to welcome Kwende Kefentse who I met through a very random and chance encounter. We recently met at a roundtable discussion organised by two creators of an illustrated book called Out of Nothing with the lead being Daniel Locke. The evening was focused around how Daniels love of hip-hop and space exploration led his creativity in the way he looked at this book. After sit...

On this show I’m delighted to have Stefan Webb from the Future Cities Catapult. Stefan has a broad career in the world of urban planning and now has a particular remit in co-running the PlanTech strategy for Future Cities Catapult. FCC as I like to call them have a remit from the UK government to help identify the new business opportunities for cities of the future and how through early investment...

In episode 10 I’m delighted to have Dinah Bornat on the pod to discuss her work as an architect with a specialism in designing for children, which has led her to be working on the Mayor of London’s Design Advocate board. Children have increasingly complex lives in cities. The youthful yearn for exploration and expression is being met with cities that are hectic dangerous, every changing and not de...

Episode 9 of the podcast was recorded in February 2018. In this episode I welcome Nick Russell to talk about his experiences in the intersection of technology and real estate and what he’s up to now with his venture PropCoin. Nick and I go back around 5 years when we were, in theory, competition to each other. He was the co-founder of one tech startup, and I an early team member at mine. I must po...

Episode 8 was originally recorded in November 2017 and follows a slightly different format. In the quest to learn a little more about the state of artificial intelligence I’ve teamed up with Ben Byford, a technologist that runs the Machine Ethics podcast series. In this episode we interview each other. Amongst many things Ben’s career has focused on applying his theories to games designing, educat...

This episode was originally recorded in October 2017. In it I had the pleasure to speak with Patricia Brown, director of Central. Patricia’s day job is as Director of Central, a niche consultancy largely centred on the dynamics of cities and the process of achieving change. Central advises business and civic leaders on partnerships, developments and projects to create thriving places, economies an...

Hello and welcome to the Centric Cities podcast from the Centric Lab. Some of this material will be familiar with listeners to the Conscious Cities podcast where it was previously hosted. However, we decided to bring things in house to further our intended direction. Centric are all about enhancing user experience in the built environment, one of our main things is mapping out ecosystems and looki...

Episode 5 was originally recorded in June 2017. In this episode we're speaking with Ashley Perry, a Canadian calling London home. This show was first recorded when Ashley was at international property services firm JLL, or Jones Lang LaSalle, where he was specialising in providing services to large housing developers on how to deliver build-to-rent developments, something he’ll pick up on in the s...