What is The Future for Cities?

V. Kelly Turner and colleagues find that a satellite map of land surface temperature is a poor guide to theheat a person feels in Civano, Tucson. Painting a street white can cool the pixel and heat the pedestrian. The debate is on their 2022 paper in the Journal of Land Use Science. One side keeps 30 metre Landsat maps as the tool cities can actually use. The other shows how a morning snapshot, an...

V. Kelly Turner finds optimism in a simple fact: cities are mutable. If people built a hot street, they canretrofit it, and local staff writing heat plans already know their cities. She points to the City of LA andLos Angeles County, where the people on heat action plans now know heat as well as they know their streets. Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly...

V. Kelly Turner says heat is a verb. A weather-app temperature is one snapshot of an energy exchange, and a city that plans to manage heat still has to say which heat. Air temperature, a surface, and sunlight on skin are different. She wants that distinction in everyday language and in local government. Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate...

Geoffrey West, theoretical physicist and distinguished professor at the Santa Fe Institute, on urban scaling laws,cities that grow faster than exponential, and what happens when populations start to shrink. He treats the future of cities as the future of the planet. Cities drive resource use and climate change because that is where the people are. Without immigration, much of Europe and the United...

Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting.   He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once. Find out more in the  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠...

A research debate on the 2007 paper Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities, by Luís M. A. Bettencourt, José Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kühnert, and Geoffrey B. West. When a city doubles in population, wealth and invention grow by more than double. Biology does the opposite: a larger animal uses energy more efficiently and lives more slowly. The paper's growth equations...

Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting.   He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once. Find out more in the  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠...

Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting.   He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once. Find out more in the  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠...

“We’ve been optimizing what’s familiar rather than asking what’s possible.” Are you interested in the Middle East as a testing ground for urban solutions? What do you think about mistaking innovation for progress? How can we improve our from-design-to-implementation ratio? Interview with Shawn Meyers, Middle East Masterplanning Director. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, urba...

Are you interested in the Middle East as a testing ground for urban solutions? What do you think about mistaking innovation for progress? How can we improve our from-design-to-implementation ratio? Trailer for episode 468 - interview with Shawn Meyers, Middle East Masterplanning Director. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, urban progress, desert architecture, urban participati...

Are you interested in what we can learn from the Middle East regarding urban cooling? Our debate today works with the article titled A systematic review of passive cooling strategies integrating traditional wisdom and modern innovations for sustainable development in arid urban environments from 2026, by Shiva Manshour and Steffen Lehmann, published in the Discover Cities journal. This is a great...

Are you interested in the Middle East as a testing ground for urban solutions? What do you think about mistaking innovation for progress? How can we improve our from-design-to-implementation ratio? Trailer for episode 468 - interview with Shawn Meyers, Middle East Masterplanning Director. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, urban progress, desert architecture, urban participati...

Are you interested in the Middle East as a testing ground for urban solutions? What do you think about mistaking innovation for progress? How can we improve our from-design-to-implementation ratio? Trailer for episode 468 - interview with Shawn Meyers, Middle East Masterplanning Director. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, urban progress, desert architecture, urban participati...

"I’ve really been trying to make the case that last mile delivery is a public good that the government should be investing in. You can only exist in a city because of this transport system. It’s bringing you the food you need to eat. You would die without it." Are you interested in urban freight as the movement of gods across scales? What do you think about the trust needed for expert vi...

Are you interested in urban freight as the movement of gods across scales? What do you think about the trust needed for expert vision creation? How can we accommodate for more people through infrastructure efficiency? Trailer for episode 466 - interview with Dr Anne Goodchild, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington and Founding Director at Urban Freight La...

Are you interested in last-mile freight planning? Debate of the article titled The state of sustainable urban last-mile freight planning in the United States from 2024, by Thomas Maxner, Giacomo Dalla Chiara, and Anne Goodchild, published in the Journal of American Planning Association. This is a great preparation to our next interview with Anne Goodchild in episode 466 talking about urban freight...

Are you interested in urban freight as the movement of gods across scales? What do you think about the trust needed for expert vision creation? How can we accommodate for more people through infrastructure efficiency? Trailer for episode 466 - interview with Dr Anne Goodchild, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington and Founding Director at Urban Freight La...

Are you interested in urban freight as the movement of gods across scales? What do you think about the trust needed for expert vision creation? How can we accommodate for more people through infrastructure efficiency? Trailer for episode 466 - interview with Dr Anne Goodchild, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington and Founding Director at Urban Freight La...

"We do have solutions already today. We do see already what works today. We do know what is causing the problem. We do have it all." Are you interested in liveable cities designed for everyone? What do you think about having conversations about the future of cities with strangers? How can we design the future of our cities with everyone in mind? Interview with Laura Reupke, CEO of BABLE....

Are you interested in liveable cities designed for everyone? What do you think about having conversations about the future of cities with strangers? How can we design the future of our cities with everyone in mind? Trailer for episode 464 - interview with Laura Reupke, CEO of BABLE. We will talk about her vision for the future of cities, the superblock model, 15-minute cities, bottom-up initiative...

Are you interested in the superblock model’s effects of health and the environment? Our debate today works with the article titled Environmental and health effects of the Barcelona superblocks from 2025, by Katherine Perez, Laia Palencia, Maria Jose Lopez, Brenda Biaani Leon‑Gomez, Anna Puig‑Ribera, Anna Gomez‑Gutierrez, Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Gloria Carrasco‑Turigas, and Carme Borrell, published in...

Are you interested in liveable cities designed for everyone? What do you think about having conversations about the future of cities with strangers? How can we design the future of our cities with everyone in mind? Trailer for episode 464 - interview with Laura Reupke, CEO of BABLE. We will talk about her vision for the future of cities, the superblock model, 15-minute cities, bottom-up initiative...

Are you interested in liveable cities designed for everyone? What do you think about having conversations about the future of cities with strangers? How can we design the future of our cities with everyone in mind? Trailer for episode 464 - interview with Laura Reupke, CEO of BABLE. We will talk about her vision for the future of cities, the superblock model, 15-minute cities, bottom-up initiative...

"The future is here, just not evenly distributed." Are you interested in urban conscious evolution and a hopeful future? What do you think about the saying: the future is here just not evenly distributed? How can we move towards better urban futures? Special reflective episode with Ben Vass, senior research engineer and yours truly, Fanni Melles, future of cities researcher, discussing w...

Are you interested in urban conscious evolution and a hopeful future? What do you think about the saying: the future is here just not evenly distributed? How can we move towards better urban futures? Trailer for special reflective episode (462B) with Ben Vass, senior research engineer and yours truly, Fanni Melles, future of cities researcher, discussing what the last five years of the podcast and...