Urban Broadcast Collective

Cities are vulnerable to climate change because they concentrate many people and buildings into a relatively small area. Consequently, even a relatively contained weather event can affect a large number of people. Cities are also very dependent on their “lifelines” – transportation systems to move people and goods, communications systems, water and energy distribution, sewers and waste removal sys...

In this episode of This Must Be the Place Elizabeth and David present a double whammy re: screen representation. David talks to Nigel Giles, author of the new book on the groundbreaking 70s TV show Number 96, set in a mixed use block of flats in bohemian Paddington, Sydney. (“Number 96, Australian TV's Most Notorious Address” by Nigel Giles‎, Melbourne Books). Then, in what promises to be a compel...

Hayley Saul and Emma Waterton were doing ethnographic and anthropological fieldwork in the Langtang valley in Nepal when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in 2015. The earthquake killed more than 9,000 people. At the time of the quake, they were with several local guides from the village of Langtang, one of the worst affected areas in Nepal. Emma and Hayley were recording local oral histories. Their...

Australia has a long history of natural hazards. The famous Dorothy MacKellar poem about a sunburned country is replete with references to a whole bunch of them. In this episode of The Urban Squeeze, Jason Byrne asks just how vulnerable are our cities to natural hazards and what can we do about it? As well as discussing the types of natural hazards facing cities now and into the future, Jason disc...

“Basically if you thought of it, someone Japanese had thought of it before you and catered for it in some way” – three travelling planners discuss their initial impressions of Japanese cities. In this episode of This Must be the Place Elizabeth chats with two traveling companions - Helen Rowe, a transport planner, and Nicole Cook, a lecturer in urban geography – at the tail end of their short trip...

In this episode of Radio Reversal, Nat, Amelia & Hannah explore new, messy imaginaries of what it means to be human and more-than-human in the Anthropocene and beyond. We tackle human exceptionalism, monism and vibrant matter, posthumanism, transhumanism, the Capitalocene and the Chthulucene and we try our hand (tentacles?) at what it would mean to Stay with the Trouble, as Donna Haraway implores....

This is a story about how the financial industry and governments turned a housing foreclosure crisis for everyday Americans into a financial opportunity for institutional real estate investors. And like all good stories, it involves the management of the new post-GFC housing asset class with digital technologies and algorithms. Say hello to The Automated Landlord. We talk to Desiree Fields about a...

There are many negative effects from a lack of physical activity and much to gain from regular exercise. Walking is a basic form of exercise but we have only recently begun to understand how important the potential to walk is in our cities. Walkability is a concept which measures how friendly an area is to walking. In this episode of The Urban Squeeze, Tony and Jason discuss how important it is fo...

This is the first ever episode of “This Must Be the Place”: a documentary style visit to the remains of Cocoroc, inside the Western Treatment Plant. If you live in Melbourne, chances are you don’t give too much thought to where what you flush down the toilet goes to. The important part is it just goes ‘away’. But the chances are – as with 80% of Melbourne’s sewage - it travels to the Western Treat...

CarPoolXXX is a special series of podcasts and vodcasts (hosted by Paul Maginn) that explores the issue of Porn Performers as a Migrant Community. Los Angeles has been the epicentre of global porn production since the 1980s and as such thousands of people from across the US and internationally - especially Europe - have migrated to California in order to be in the porn industry. Academic studies o...

Many cities around the world pride themselves on their live music scenes. But music cities don’t generally happen by accident - they are planned for, organised, marketed and protected. In this episode of the The Urban Squeeze, Tony and Jason examine how music cities are regulated and what good and bad regulations involve. They discuss the role for planning in promoting music as a cultural driver i...

This episode of This Must be the Place is the first of our ‘walking tours’ – we are revisiting the walks of the 1980 book “Melbourne on Foot: 15 Walks Through Historic Melbourne”. This episode starts with David speaking with one of the authors of that book, Professor Graeme Davison of Monash University, about the genesis of the book in general. They are then joined by Elizabeth to discuss the Rich...

Female Chinese Australians: A Feminist Tale of Multiculturalism by SoundMinds Radio. Stella Sun is a Chinese Australian woman who was born on Thursday Island in 1931. Stella travelled to mainland Australia when she was 17 years old. Dr Alanna Kamp has been interviewing women like Stella about their experiences of belonging and exclusion as female Chinese Australians during the White Australia Poli...

In this episode of the The Urban Squeeze, Tony and Jason talk about the rise of sport and leisure in the city and the role of sport in city-building, with particular attention on large-scale sporting events, including the 2018 Commonwealth Games, being held in Gold Coast City, Australia. They ask what role can planners play in fostering sport and leisure activities in the city? How does sport cont...

This must be the place on everything I needed to know about life I learned from an old British comic strip. Actually it’s an interview by David Nichols in Helsinki at the International Conference on Urban History with Lucie Glasheen, a PhD student at the School of Geography, Queen Mary University at London. Lucie’s research looks at the representation of children in urban environments in British c...

In this episode of Radio Reversal, Anna (@annajcarlson), Jo (@joanna_horton) & Nat (@DrNatOsborne) talk about privacy, particularly philosophies, politics, and technologies of privacy. They explore questions of digital and spatial forms of privacy and ‘publicness’ & of surveillance and facial recognition & how these intersect with race, gender, colonialism & labour, the Internet of Things, Smart C...

There are more than 24 million pets in Australian homes. But our cities are not the easiest places to own a pet. You can’t take your dog on the train in Australia, and if you’re a renter owning a pet, well that can make things really difficult when you try to secure a home. In this episode of City Rd Podcast we talk with Drs Emma Power from the University of Western Sydney and Jen Kent from Sydney...

‘Smart cities’ represent the integrated, digital future of cities. Also called the “wired”, “networked” or “ubiquitous” city, the “smart city” is the latest in a long line of catch-phrases, referring to the development of technology-based urban systems for driving efficient city management and economic growth. These can be anything from city-wide public wifi systems to the provision of smart water...

This Must Be the Place (for now): In this episode of This Must Be the Place Elizabeth speaks with Robin Chang, a Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of European Planning Cultures at TU Dortmund in Germany. Robin’s research looks at temporary urbanism: uses that contravene formal zoning, which last for a time frame that is not intentionally permanent, and which are spontaneously initi...

SoundMinds Radio What the Antarctic teaches us about the science of space exploration By SoundMinds Radio It’s 2026 and you are on board the Ares. The largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built. You are on the first colonial voyage to Mars and your crew will be the first hundred Martian colonisers. This is how Kim Stanley Robinson opens his award-winning science fiction Mars trilogy – a set of t...

The Urban Squeeze What are child friendly cities? Are we forgetting the needs of children when we plan cities? How can we make cities more pleasant for their youngest residents? What are the design features of child friendly cities? Tony Matthews discusses these and other questions, as well as the value of involving children in decisions about the cities they live in. Twitter: @drtonymatthews @Cit...

This Must Be The Place In this episode of “This Must Be The Place” David and Elizabeth visit the small Goldfields town of Clunes for the annual Clunes Booktown Festival. As you may pick up from the introduction, Elizabeth was slightly confused about the distinction between “Booktown” and “Booktown Festival”. Whereas (she realised later) “Clunes is a Booktown all year round”, the weekend Festival i...

The Urban Squeeze What sorts of actions do planners take in response to immigration trends and immigration policy? Can cities be more proactive in influencing immigration? What have past trends in immigration told us about how we need to respond to urban growth pressures today? Jason Byrne discusses these and other questions, as well as how current patterns of immigration might shape the future of...

This Must Be The Place In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth reports from the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany. The area’s recent history is famously characterised by industry – coal, steel, cars – and its present by post-industrial restructuring and by new forms of tourism. The introduction to the podcast includes some soundscapes from the Ruhr Museum, housed in the Zollverein, a former...

SubUrbanista Podcast Episode 2 of The Suburbanista Podcasts focuses on politics and sex! Not the sexual proclivities of democratically elected representatives, but rather the political proclivities of Fiona Patten MLC, leader of the Reason Australia Party, formerly known as the Australian Sex Party. I explore with Fiona why and how she decided to run for state politics; and how the Australian Sex...