Urban Radar

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by Professor Sarah Marie Hall from the University of Manchester to reflect on ten years since Brexit and specifically how austerity has altered the lifecourses of young people in Barcelona, Sardinia and Greater Manchester.  Together, they discuss how Brexit layered on top of existing crises, how community podcasts helped chart economic change during this ext...

High up in the Andes mountain range, two rivers begin their journeys. Starting in the El Plomo hill, one becomes the Mapocho river travelling though Chile into Santiago, dividing the city in two.  The other makes its way from the Peruvian Andes and develops into a complex network of waters and rivers to become the Amazon basin, one of the longest rivers in the world. Rivers such as these shape and...

In this episode Beth and Tom are joined by Dr Lotte Hargrave from the University of Manchester to discuss whether psephology - the study of elections and voting behaviour - can predict the next Prime Minister of the UK.  All eyes are turned on the town of Makerfield in Greater Manchester, where Andy Burnham is making a play to win the constituency and head south - back to Westminster, and (probabl...

In this episode - recorded on location in Kampala, Uganda during an African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) workshop in late April - we delve into questions of how urban communities in informal settlements can build power through their own forms of knowledge and data collection, and how two-way exchanges between cities can strengthen this process.  For the main discussion, Tom was there in perso...

In this episode, Beth and Tom are joined by Ryan Bellinson, researcher/civil servant living in Portland, Oregon, US, to discuss how residents and community groups can mobilise their power to resist democratic backsliding. From Minneapolis to Portland federal immigration enforcement agents have been deploying hostile tactics to identify and seek to deport migrants, even those of legal status. Meanw...

Come with us to Johannesburg and Dhaka in this month's feature. Visit the markets and stalls of Jeppe, in inner city Johannesburg, a dynamic ecosystem of informal traders, sometimes called Africa’s shopping Mecca. Head with us to Korail, an informal settlement of 300,000 dwellers, sometimes called Bangladesh’s largest slum. In this double book talk, we are joined by two critically-acclaimed a...

This month, Tom and Beth are joined by Hannah Sende r, University of Sheffield, and Mariam Bazzi , Beirut Urban Lab to discuss how propertied families in small towns in Lebanon have responded to violence and displacement over the past years (Go to 35:04 for guests).  When left with no savings, and little help to repair and reconstruct after military interventions, property becomes a moral relation...

In this episode Beth and Tom are joined by Cristina Temenos from the University of Manchester to discuss a wide range of issues from trust in medicine, responses to COVID-19 and experimentation and evidence in localised healthcare settings. Together, they ask: Faced with crisis after crisis, how do municipalities deliver public health care in Athens, Santiago and Greater Manchester? What forms of...

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by Professor Aidan While from the University of Sheffield to explore how robotic urban infrastructures are already reshaping everyday lives, homes and mobilities.  From self-driving taxis to autonomous delivery drones the size of a lorry, we take a closer look at how experimentation in US cities, across Africa and now in the UK foreshadows the stealthy rise...

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by visiting researchers to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, Junia Mortimer and Felipe Magalhães.  They discuss: How can we see and understand the city in this geopolitical age of conflict and global uncertainty? How can photographs and visual archives make visible the complexities of cities, particularly those in the Global South? When seeing di...

In this first episode of Series 2 of Urban Radar, Beth and Tom start to tackle some of the many ways in which the current moment of geopolitical turmoil is filtering down into in cities and towns across the world.  We make the most of our new Sheffield-Manchester partnership by bringing on Dr. Erika Garcia Fermin (29:45 minutes onwards) from the University of Manchester's Global Development I...

Urban Radar is a podcast series which reflects on current events and emerging trends through the lens of cities and urban life.   Launched in 2025, Urban Radar hit the UK social science podcast charts, and was amongst the top 5% of new podcast entrants (according to one major streaming platform!).  It reached listeners in every continent, over 80 countries and 670 cities. Series 1 included 18 epis...

This month, we (Beth and Tom) are podding alone, using the final episode of the year to reflect on some of the big themes we’ve discussed in 2025 as well as on the process of making Urban Radar.  We start with our monthly radar for December, dipping into three current stories each as usual.  Following this we offer some quick-fire thoughts on a number of issues and themes that have resurfaced repe...

In this episode we are joined by Professor Julia Moses to consider the working lives and rights of children, and then Dr Dani Madrid-Morales to discuss disinformation and how it plays out across urban and rural areas. Reflecting on World Children's Day on 20 November, we explore children's rights and how these relate to questions of labour, as well as how attitudes to child labour have v...

In this feature, Tom and Beth discuss the Global Infrastructure Race with colleagues from the Urban Institute (UI) , recorded live as part of the UI’s 10 year anniversary celebrations. Drawing on insights emerging from the GlobalCORRIDOR and Pluralize projects, Jon Silver, Zhengli Huang and Linda Westman share their interpretation of the Global Infrastructure Race, its urban impacts and how we can...

Released to coincide with World Cities Day on 31 October, this episode sees Beth and Tom first joined by Prof. Matthew Flinders (26:09) to discuss what the rise in fortunes of the Green Party, UK, under Zack Polanski, means for progressive politics in the UK, and for a city like Sheffield. Then, with Said Zaaneen (51:46), they dive into what the history of refugee camps in the Gaza strip tells us...

In this month’s feature Tom and Beth are joined by two leading scholars of the urban condition - Ash Amin and AbdouMaliq Simone - to reflect on questions of inclusion and belonging in the search for the 'good city'. Building on their collaborative work for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Humanity's Urban Future programme, our guests consider:  Are ideas of the go...

This month we are joined by Dr Sam Burgum & Professor Simon Rushton to dive into what the new UK Minister for Homelessness should have on their agenda (27:50) and how we can understand the wider socio-economic issues shaping the recent Gen Z uprising in Nepal (50:08).  Cutting across our discussions are questions of conflict over and in urban territory, federalism and decentralisation and how...

In this month's episode Tom and Beth discuss the value of translocal learning to address poverty and inequality for women in low income communities in India, Southern Africa, Kenya and the UK.  Joined by guests Melanie Lombard and Diana Mitlin, they ask: What can we learn from informal processes and practices in South Asian and African cities to address social injustice and poverty here in th...

This month we are joined by Drs Christina Tatham & Cathy Wilcock for a post-summer bumper episode.  First in England, many children are starting school for the first time, including those with English as a second language, against a backdrop of stubborn spatial inequalities in educational outcomes later in life (31:26).  Then, in the face of civil war and conflict in Sudan, we dive into how ur...

In this month’s feature, Beth and Tom are joined by Professors Nausheen Anwar and Mona Fawaz , Directors of the Karachi Urban Lab and Beirut Urban Lab respectively. This feature is a live recording of an in-person event on Urban Research Labs in Times of Conflict and Post-Truth, recorded in July as part of the Sheffield Urbanism Summer Programme.  This was an ‘in conversation’ event during which T...

In this episode we are joined by Dr Katie Pruszynski and Professor Rowland Atkinson to explore how political and wealth elites are reshaping cities from New York to London and beyond. We dive into Zohran Mamdani's journey to becoming the Democratic Party's nominee for Mayor of New York City (25:10) and the pros and cons of increasing tax on the super-rich (47:26), through an urban politi...

In this month's special feature, Tom and Beth are joined by Simon Marvin and Allan McCay to discuss how advances in neurotechnology - specifically Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) - are changing the way we think about urban infrastructures and human-technology relations in the city.  We discuss:   How can we understand the complex and continuously changing relationship between cities and tech...

In this month’s episode, we are joined by Jenny Preece to dive into the issue of building safety in the context of the recent anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire (22:33). Next, we consider trans rights in the context of Pride month and the impact of the UK’s recent Supreme Court ruling (38:40). Also on our radar:  Bunkers and new forms of subterranean exclusion Urban festivals  Touristification...

In this first stand-alone feature, Tom and Beth introduce an uncut conversation with Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram - the Mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region in the North of England, recorded at Sheffield's Festival of Debate . The conversation was chaired by Beth at the Octagon Theatre , and focussed on Andy and Steve's 10-point plan for a fairer, more equal Brit...