Urban Radar

In this three-part feature, we take a look at different ways of writing the city and how cities are brought into view through journalism and fiction. Recorded live at the Off the Shelf festival in Sheffield in 2026, we talk with three writers - Gabriella Bennett, Saima Mir and Sufiyaan Salam about home, belonging, identity and wider questions of representational justice. Across the talks, key themes include how different forms of writing approximate the 'truth', how journalism and fiction give us space and time to understand cities beyond academia and what the connections are between writing the city and the right to the city.

In Part One, Beth and Tom interview journalist and author Gabriella Bennett about her new book How to Build a City: Journeys into the Urban Future, part long-form journalism, part travel-log exploring how cities are confronting the big issues of our time. Bennett takes us from growing-up in Glenrothes, to Ukraine, the North Pole, and even Mars. The conversation reconsiders ‘home’ as something which is constantly evolving, which is not fixed but can be designed ‘in’ and ‘out’ through architecture and planning, and is shaped by war, climate crisis, and societal injustices.

Listen to Parts Two and Three here:

Saima Mir, "Deliverance"

Sufiyaan Salam, "Wimmy Road Boyz"

Guest:

Gabriella Bennett is a Scottish based journalist who specialises in housing and architecture. She writes two weekly columns for The Times and The Sunday Times and her work has appeared in numerous national papers. Her first book, The Art of Coorie, was a Waterstones Bestseller.

Find our more/references:

David Harding, a town artist

Discussing Edi Rama and Albanian 'starchitects' on Urban Radar Episode 35

Discussing Tanzil Shafique's City of Desire on Urban Radar Episode 24

Discussing Kiruna's church move on Urban Radar Episode 11

Discussing rebuilding efforts in Ukraine whilst war is ongoing on Urban Radar Episode 9

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this three-part feature, we take a look at different ways of writing the city and how cities are brought into view through journalism and fiction. Recorded live at the Off the Shelf festival in Sheffield in 2026, we talk with three writers - Gabriella Bennett, Saima Mir and Sufiyaan Salam about home, belonging, identity and wider questions of representational justice. Across the talks, key themes include how different forms of writing approximate the 'truth', how journalism and fiction give us space and time to understand cities beyond academia and what the connections are between writing the city and the right to the city.

The introduction and wrap up are included in Part 1.

In Part Two Beth interviews Saima Mir about her book Deliverance which is the third in the Khan trilogy. More than a crime novel, Mir brings the city into view as a silent protagonist shaping urban destinies, from global empires and industrial decline to shadow economies and sweet shops. The conversation turns to the ‘truth’ that can be found in fictional accounts of the city, helping us to unpick how we navigate intersecting urban lenses of femininity, race, motherhood, and being a northerner.

Listen to Parts One and Three here:

Gabriella Bennett, "How to Build A City"

Sufiyaan Salam, "Wimmy Road Boyz"

Guest:

Saima Mir is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. She has written for The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, and worked for the BBC. Her work appeared in the anthology, It’s Not About the Burqa in 2019 and received over 250,000 hits online in two days. She is the author of the Times Bestseller, The Khan, and its sequels Vengeance and Deliverance. Saima grew up in Bradford and now lives in London. Mir is also the editor of The Book of Bradford whose stories demonstrate the resilience of Yorkshire’s third largest city, the former ‘wool capital of the world’ which has overcome challenges and evolved into a proudly modern city, famed for its rich diversity and vibrant cultural landscape.

Find our more/references:

From Oldham to Bradford: the violence of the violated, Institute for Race Relations - on the Race Riots 2001

Discussing Tanzil Shafique's City of Desire on Urban Radar Episode 24

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this three-part feature, we take a look at different ways of writing the city and how cities are brought into view through journalism and fiction. Recorded live at the Off the Shelf festival in Sheffield in 2026, we talk with three writers - Gabriella Bennett, Saima Mir and Sufiyaan Salam about home, belonging, identity and wider questions of representational justice. Across the talks, key themes include how different forms of writing approximate the 'truth', how journalism and fiction give us space and time to understand cities beyond academia and what the connections are between writing the city and the right to the city.

The introduction and wrap up are included in Part 1.

In Part Three Beth interviews Sufiyaan Salam about his book Wimmy Road Boyz. Focusing on one night and one road - a.k.a the Curry Mile - Salam’s novel brings Manchester into view through “heavy pasts and heavier futures”. The conversation moves through parodying Oasis’ Wonderwall, killing Shakespeare, British ‘nights out’, and Reclaim the Night marches, to explore themes of urban anonymity, masculine friendship, rage, and Mancunian bravado.

Listen to Parts One and Two here:

Gabriella Bennett, "How to Build A City"

Saima Mir, "Deliverance"

Guest:

Sufiyaan Salam is a writer and former animator from Blackburn. He co-wrote the short film MAGID / ZAFAR, which won the BIFA award in 2025 and was shortlisted for a BAFTA for Best Short Film. Wimmy Road Boyz is his first novel.

Find our more/references:

‘The Curry Mile’ (Wilmslow Road, Manchester) - Rusholme Archive

Urban Institute report - Manchester, The Centripetal City: The Lessons of Property-Led Regeneration For Core Cities and Their Proximal Towns.

Reclaim the Night - Manchester Evening News 2019

‘Understanding the Racist Riots of 2024 and what should be done’ - Race Equality Foundation.

Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association

Discussing Tanzil Shafique's City of Desire on Urban Radar Episode 24

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this month's episode, Beth and Tom mark World Menopause Day (18 October) through an exploratory conversation with Dr Maria Tomlinson (School of Information, Journalism and Communication, University of Sheffield) about menstrual dignity, justice and the city. World Menopause Day is an international awareness day set up since 2009 by theInternational Menopause Society, in partnership with the World Health Organisation, to break taboos, combat stigma and educate the public about the menopause.

Together they discuss how employers, city councils, schools and community organisations can be involved in creating indoor and outdoor environments for people to bleed with dignity, the challenges of increasing heat, and why urban studies needs to take menstrual justice more seriously.

Also on the radar:

• The long impacts of Rowntree's seminal poverty report in York in 1901
• What Japanese tax, superheros and toilets have in common
• Edi Rama's architectural dreams for Albania
• What Sagal Abdi-Wali's election as the first Somali MP tells us about race, religion and gender in Camden, during the Holborn and St Pancras by-election
• Why we should all be scared of El Nino
• Blocked streets, barricades in the banlieue: France is on strike (again)

Guest:

Dr. Maria Tomlinson is a lecturer in public communication and gender at the University of Sheffield. Her research examines the impact of health communication on social inequalities. For the last ten years, her research has focussed on menstrual health, menopause, and endometriosis. Findings from her latest book, The Menstrual Movement in the Media: Reducing Stigma and Tackling Social Inequalities (2025), have been used by charities, schools, and government bodies to improve menstrual education and reduce menstrual inequities and have been published in the Independent.

Find out more:

Irise International - Global Menstrual Justice

BS 30416:2023 Menstruation, Menstrual Health, Menopause | BSI UK

ISO 45010:2026 - Occupational health and safety management — Menstruation and menopause in the workplace — Guidance

Heatwaves and Women: Why Rising Heat in the UK is a Feminist Issue

PINE: a geopoetic work about menopause and wildfires (Sarah de Leeuw)

Welcome - Menopause Geographies - Cardiff University (Kate Boyer, Kirstie O'Neill, Nina Ross)

Fòs Feminista

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by Catherine Durose from the University of Liverpool and co-lead of the Co-production Futures Inquiry, and Beth Chitekwe-Biti, Executive Director of Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Secretariat and Community Knowledge Lead for the African Cities Research Consortium.

Universities are increasingly expected to produce cutting edge research, be relevant and impactful and deliver value to students, governments and industry. They are seen as active players in local, national and international development work with communities. They are also increasingly criticised or even attacked, with scrutiny over their roles across the political spectrum.

In the meantime, many urban researchers have always worked collaboratively, in deep and trusted partnerships with community organisations and residents to improve everyday living or develop advocacy or reform coalitions for urban change. There is plenty of evidence about how universities and academics can work productively together to address urban injustices.

Specifically in this episode, we discuss co-production - what it means, why it matters for urban researchers, practitioners and residents and what conditions we need within universities to do it well.

Guests:

Professor Catherine Durose is Professor of Public Policy and Co-Director of the University of Liverpool's Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place. She has written extensively on the politics and possibilities of co-production, including for Nature. She is Co-Lead, with Beth Perry, Liz Richardson and Bryony Vince-Myers, of the Research England-funded Co-Production Futures Inquiry, a collective intelligence gathering exercise to mobilise change to address institutional barriers to co-produced and participatory research. The Inquiry is open to evidence until December 2026. Submit here.

Dr Beth Chitekwe-Biti is Executive Director of the Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Secretariat. SDI is a network of federations of the urban poor across Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is Director of Community Knowledge at the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC). Beth holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, where her research examined the impact of social movements on urbanisation and urban land policy. Herpublished work focuses on how organised communities of the urban poor co-produce urban change with the state.

Read more!

Outputs from the Co-Production Futures Inquiry

• Getting our own house in order
• Evidence from across the UK higher education sector
• Doubling Down Not Ducking Out: Why Co-Production of Research Matters Now

Visit the SDI Knowledge Hub

Read outputs from the African Cities Research Consortium

Underpinning research

Co-production as praxis: critique and engagement from within the university

Is co-production a ‘good’ concept? Three responses

Leadership and the hidden politics of co-produced research: a Q-methodology study

Jam and Justice: Co-producing Urban Governance

Realising Just Cities

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this month's episode, Beth and Tom reflect on UN World Clean-up Day, inviting Deji Akinpelu (Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development (CHSD) University of Lagos), and Purva Dewoolkar (School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester) to share their work rethinking waste management and sanitation in Lagos and Mumbai.

'Cleaning up the city' is easier said than done - and can also be dangerous, depending on the nature of the waste. Waste management is central to the livelihoods of millions of people in cities around the world, as well as to food chains and questions of nutrition. Together they discuss how to manage different kinds of waste in an integrated way, the roles of different individuals and groups, including residents, waste pickers and local governments, and how waste connects to wider climate resilience actions and plans.

Also on the radar:

• Why do capital cities get moved, and will Uganda be moving its capital?
• What do new UK sanctions on Israeli settlements mean for the two-state and ‘shared homeland’ solutions? And what is the potential role of cities?
• What is the history of cities seceding from nation-states?
• What are the positive and negative effects on the city of massive urban running events?
• What are the implications of AI 'superintelligence' for cities and towns, according to different generations?
• What’s in a name? With Trump renaming more geographies, does Tom know the former names of cities in Beth’s quiz?

Guests:

Deji Akinpelu is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and advocate for inclusive urban development whose practice documents architecture, heritage and everyday urbanism across Lagos and West Africa. He founded the Rethinking Cities Initiative (RCI) in 2017, following the forced eviction of the waterfront community at Otodo Gbame, and has since built a body of work that treats the recording of the city, its buildings, its cultural traditions and its threatened settlements, as an act of advocacy for their survival.Challenges and opportunities for inclusive water delivery in Lagos

• Challenges and opportunities for inclusive water delivery in Lagos
• Displaced: A City’s Scars

Purva Dewoolkar is Bicentenary Research Fellow in the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester. Dewoolkar’s research integrates human geography, urban studies, critical development studies, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), collaborating with Mumbai's campaign for Universal Access to Water and Manchester's cultural institutions to develop care-centred, community-led approaches for documenting and understanding urban infrastructural struggles in the Global South, centring the lived experiences and vocabularies of resistance.

• On shaky grounds: situating safe sanitation in Mumbai’s sub-surface legacies of waster
• Habitation counter-stories: thinking from the autoconstructed basti-Cheeta Camp, Mumbai
• Sewers and sewage treatment in Mumbai: Temporality, difference, competing universals and infrastructural entanglements.

Links

Sponsor Beth to raise money for War Child UK

Off the Shelf – Festival of Words, Sheffield 2026

Doubling Down Not Ducking Out: Why Co-production of Research Matters Now

References:

Jaim Yacobi and Omar Dajani - 'Shared Homeland Paradigm' ESRC project

Jane Jacobs - Cities and the Wealth of Nations

Charles Tilly - Cities and States in World History

Edensor & Larsen - Rhythmanalysing marathon running

How to be an Anti-Capitalist City

David Robinson - The Intelligence Trap

Cugurullo et al - The Rise of AI Urbanism in Post-Smart Cities

The Conversation - ‘Gen Z is pushing back against AI’

Prerona Das - Smart Cities Beyond Methodological Cityism

Prince Guma - The Temporal Incompleteness of Infrastructure and the Urban

Gabriella Bennett - How to Build a City

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this month's episode, Beth and Tom mark World Indigenous Peoples' Day and the International Day of Youth with Dr Philipp Horn, School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield. Drawing on Philipp's work with Indigenous youth from the Bolivian cities of El Alto, Santa Cruz, Sucre and Rurrenabaque, they challenge stereotypes of indigenous lives, highlighting fluid geographies and mobilities between urban and rural areas.

Together they discuss Indigenous claims to the city, how young Indigenous people navigate urban life and what indigenous epistemology and practice can offer urban studies.

Also on the radar

• How strategic and local authorities are responding to the new guidance on what 'sex' means in the Equalities Act 2010
• Why border cities are geopolitical flashpoints: a look at Ceuta in context
• What feral cats in Seoul and dogs in Istanbul tell us about more-than-human urban development
• How marine heatwaves impact coastal cities and communities
• How population surges and shrinkages shape urban politics around the world
• Whether urban glitches, like a solar eclipse, disrupt the 24-hour city

Guest:

Philipp Horn is Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Planning at the University of Sheffield, UK. His research focuses on Indigenous urbanism, youth rights, urban informality, and participatory planning in the global South, with a regional focus on Latin America. He has published numerous journal articles, books, book chapters and working papers, with recent work focusing on multilocal Indigenous lives, urban informality, and multi-modal collaborative research. Find out more about his work on these project websites:

• Indigenous Development Alternatives, funded by the ESRC
• Contested Territories, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 873082)

From the back catalogue:

Trans Rights and the City

Seeing the City

River/City

References:

Lessons from Ceuta, Myriam Cherti

Beyond the Border, Alice Buoli

Open Call: Surfaces of War, Popular Intelligence in the Mediterranean

Yongsan Cats

Between Care and Violence: The Dogs of Istanbul

Ottoman History Podcast - Between Care and Violence: The Dogs of Istanbul | Mine Yıldırım | Free Listening on Podbean App

Call for Community Consultation: Journal of Southern Theorising

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In July's radar, we report back from one of the major urban studies conferences - RC21 - which is held every two years in different cities across the world. Bringing together 1200 scholars at the University of Vienna, the 2026 conference provided spaces for provocation and discussion about the methods, approaches and theories we need to identify and address urban inequalities in these contemporary times.

The central part of the episode is a discussion with the editors of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) - Mona Fawaz, Liza Weinstein and Nik Theodore - about their 50th anniversary plans. We are excited to announce that these include a proposed collab with Urban Radar to produce a mini-series of special episodes connecting long-standing urban questions raised by scholars over the past five decades to contemporary analysis from emerging researchers.

We also share a series of vox-pops from the conference, with Dolf te Lintelo, Catalina Ortiz, Gabriel Silvestre, Nitin Bathla, Simone Tulumello, Lindsay Sawyer and Vanesa Castan Broto.

Before that, on our radar we discuss:

• Whether the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz might herald the development of new 'chokepoint' cities able to control strategic waterways
• What Count Binface could learn from previous comedy candidates standing for election
• The implications of Berlin's bunker shortage for cultural and arts venues
• The Soho bar brawl and which city has the latest bedtime
• Why young people are busy doing nothing in Bangkok
• Why environmentalists are disputing the closure of a colonial-era polo club in Delhi

Read More:

Founding IJURR editorial, 1977

Reflections on Critical Urban Studies in Perilous Times

RC21 Conference Website

From Our Archive:

RIVER/CITY: A conversation with Olivia Casagrande and Roberto Monte-Mor

SEEING THE CITY: A conversation with Junia Mortimer and Felipe Magalhaes

URBAN LABS IN TIMES OF CRISIS AND POST-TRUTH: A conversation with Mona Fawaz and Nausheen Anwar

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

In this month's feature Tom and Beth are joined by Professor Nicola Banks from the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester to discuss One World Together, an innovative model of charitable giving that makes sure the bulk of the funding ends up where it is needed most.

Often less than 10% of what we give to charity gets to where it's needed, and communities are not always the ones deciding what it gets spent on - even though they are the best placed to identify and address local challenges. What if there is a different way?

We discuss:

• Why are traditional approaches to charity unsuited to addressing urban poverty around the world?
• How does the reduction of international aid impact the existing structural and institutional inequalities which underpin dominant development and donor models of charitable giving?
• How do innovations like One World Together help us rethink charitable approaches to addressing urban poverty?

Guest:

Nicola Banks is a Professor of Global Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. Her research situates development as a long-term process of transformation and social justice. She has undertaken decades of research on urban poverty, youth and the role of NGOs in global development, including work on employment and livelihoods among the urban poor in Dhaka, Bangladesh and an ESRC Future Research Leaders award to look at youth experiences of urban poverty in Tanzania. She is Director of Social Responsibility for the School for Environment, Education and Development (SEED) and in 2022 launched One World Together, a global movement for trust-based giving which has been recognised for outstanding social and environmental impact through the University of Manchester’s Making a Difference Award.

Donate:

Home - One World Together

Read more:

Power and its discontents: The long road to systemic change in the aid sector - ScienceDirect

NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort? - ScienceDirect

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 extended period of waiting, and why valuing everyday lived experience as evidence is a radical act. And, perhaps, even a way to finally bring austerity as a lived condition to an end.

Go to 32:54 for this discussion.

Also on our radar:

• Why the UK is introducing Dutch-style youth hubs
• How the boundaries between humans and animals are changing in the city
• Whether local authorities are ready for a hybrid war with Russia
• How human factors, from corruption to poverty and planning regulations, might have worsened damage from the earthquake in Venezuela
• "Goonism" and the underground economy of political street violence in Kenyan cities
• Banning flags in Oxfordshire

Guest:

Sarah Marie Hall joined University of Manchester in October 2012 as a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy and became a Professor in 2022. She is a member of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives and Manchester Urban Institute, where she previously co-chaired the Urban Justice, Gender and Social Difference Feminist Collective. In February 2021 she won a £1.5m UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship on the theme of Austerity and Altered Lifecourses, a 5- year project across the UK, Spain and Italy which has recently been extended for three further years. Click here to visit the Future Lives and Austerity Digital Exhibition.

From our archives:

Episode 15 on Brexit and rats

Episode 11 on flag wars

Read more:

Much loved collection for Butterfly Conservation, in memory of Malcolm Tait

Archipelagic Technonatures (Simon Marvin)

Watch Salisbury Poisonings: The Untold Story | Stream free on Channel 4

Africa's shadow enforcers - The Continent

On Staying (Will Mason)

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 are shaped by the cities they meet.

In this month’s feature Tom and Beth are joined by Dr Olivia Casagrande and Professor Roberto Monte-Mór to ask:

• What can urbanists learn from studying the Mapocho and Amazon rivers?
• How does thinking with rivers challenge our categories of urbanization, racialization and indigeneity?
• How do creative and visual methods enable us to see or dream with the river differently?

Together they take a fascinating tour, diving into concepts of ‘extended naturalization’ and ‘fluvial epistemic alternatives’; following what river/city intersections mean for metropolitan green-blue planning; unpacking the implications of giving legal rights to rivers and the meanings of indigenous narratives; and how storytelling with and through rivers helps us dream of alternative ways of being and doing.

Guests

Olivia Casagrande is a social anthropologist engaged in interdisciplinary and collaborative research on inequalities, political and racial violence, the (post)colonial city and alternative urban epistemologies. She is a Lecturer at the School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield. She has recently completed an ESRC project with the Epew Collective in Santiago, Chile, which led to multiple creative outputs developed along the Mapocho River, available on Fillke Pewma. Recent works concern questions of authorship and engagements in collaborative research with indigenous groups.

Roberto Monte-Mór is a Professor at the Centre for Development and Regional Planning and Graduate Centre for Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. His teaching and research focus on economics and urbanism, particularly urbanization, and planning theories, metropolitan and regional planning, urban and regional economics, solidarity economies, spatial organization, and development alternatives in the Amazon. His photography is the basis of a new work with Junia Mortimer on Urban-Nature Archives, which is also discussed in this paper.

From our archives:

Seeing the City: A discussion with Junia Mortimer and Felipe Magalhaes (Episode 20)

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 (probably) a leadership contest to replace Keir Starmer as UK PM.

With Lotte we discuss whether we can predict the results of the election, the potential outcomes of a win for Burnham for the Greater Manchester mayoralty and why hyperlocal factors suggest it is all still to play for.

Go to 27:56 for this discussion.

Also on our radar:

• Whether the UK needs to introduce maximum indoor temperatures for workplaces as urban heat rises
• Rising concern about Ebola in African cities in the shadow of global aid cuts
• Activism and urban organising for domestic workers
• How urbanization is driving the global sand crisis
• The many faces and contradictions of datacentre resistance
• Housing and the World Urban Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan

Guest:

Dr Lotte Hargrave is a Lecturer in Quantitative Political Science at the University of Manchester and a contracted psephologist for the BBC Elections Programme. Her research focuses on political behaviour, public opinion, gender and stereotyping in politics, and electoral politics. Before joining Manchester, she was Head of Data Science at the polling company Deltapoll. Website: Dr Lotte Hargrave

From our archives:

Interview with Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram (Episode 6)

The Manchester Model - with Adam Leaver and Rich Goulding (Episode 2)

Read more:

sand — RareEarth_KateDawson

AI Data Centers Are The New Plantations Unless We Build Them Differently - Honolulu Civil Beat

Building Climate Resilient Housing - World Cities Report

Late deciders, higher turnout - The Conversation

Political favourability ratings, May 2026

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 person with two of the research programme’s ‘City Manager’s - Jack Makau (City Manager for Nairobi) and Temilade Sesan (City Manager for Lagos). The discussion is first introduced by Beth and Tom who set the scene and provide some background, and following the main conversation they also offer concluding reflections.

In this episode, we explore:

• How can community-led data collection and analysis help to shift the levers of urban power?
• What role can action research play in changing the attitudes of governments towards the urban poor?
• How can we move from individual to collective solutions through community action and transnational learning?

Along the way, we consider how co-produced urban research with communities changes the kinds of questions we ask as researchers; the challenges of bringing government to the table to take community priorities seriously; and the role of civil society organizations and universities as intermediaries in this process.

Those interested in the issues and processes discussed here can delve further into the history through our discussion with Diana Mitlin inEpisode 12 on 'Urban Informality and Translocal Learning'.

Jack Makau is Associate director of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Kenya, and ACRC City Manager for Nairobi. In the course of his decades of work with SDI, he has worked to support communities collect data in over 400 informal settlements in cities across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ghana, and Bukina Faso.

DR. Temilade Sesan is a Lecturer and Researcher at the Centre for Petroleum, Energy Economics and Law (CPEEL), University of Ibadan, Nigeria - and the ACRC City Manager for Lagos. Her research examines the socioeconomic dimensions of the food-energy-waste nexus in Africa, especially as they intersect with issues of the environment, gender, health and urban planning.

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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. Meanwhile federal programmes of support from housing to environmental protection are being slashed in part to finance massive increases in defence spending. The asymmetry between authoritarian and progressive forces is increasing. In this context, what powers and levers remain for grassroots groups and public bodies to push back?

Go straight to 33:13 for this conversation.

First, on the radar, they discuss:

• Whether implementing Palantir's federal data platform in Sheffield could exacerbate health inequalities
• What the Hillsborough Law has in common with ritualistic dunking in Trento, Italy
• Food security in the context of the closure of the straits of Hormuz
• Whether 'adopting' cities marks a new approach to post-war aid & reconstruction in Mykolaiv, Ukraine
• Pope versus Trump: appeals to authority and the role of religion in African cities
• Real estate in and around New York - what the media does and doesn't cover

Guests:

Ryan Bellinson is a former PhD student of the University of Sheffield and is now Community Innovation Strategist at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He also co-leads the new Governing Together programme, working with Dark Matter Labs, and is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Cities, Climate and Innovation at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.

Read more:

Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Healthy People

Nation of Neighbours

Religious Urbanisation

Public Banking Project

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 authors. With Tanya Zack we discuss her book The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a Port City, a narrative of how migrant Ethiopians have shaped this trading post in the inner city. With Tanzil Shafique we explore his book City of Desire: An Urban Biography of the Largest Slum in Bangladesh which challenges what and how we know the different desires of settlement-dwellers.

Together we consider:

• how global-local dynamics shape and are shaped by different urban places around the world
• how formal and informal spaces in cities are managed, policed and regulated
• the epistemic politics and positions of doing urban research

Guests

Tanya Zack is a South African urban planner and writer whose work has focused on urban regeneration, contemporary migration, informal work, urban policy and affordable housing. Her writing in Wake Up This Is Joburg (Duke University Press, 2022) has been lauded for being amongst the freshest and most original material on an African city. It was included in the longlist of the 2024 Sunday Times/Exclusive Books Literary Awards. The products of her professional practice in Johannesburg's inner city, including an inner-city transformation policy, and a study of cross border shopping, are recognised as ground-
breaking interventions.

Tanzil is Senior Lecturer of Urban Design at the Sheffield School of Architecture and Associate of the Urban Institute. Tanzil’s research looks at southern urbanism, pluriversal architectural practice and informal planning, mainly focusing on the ongoing adaptation and transformation due to climate change led by the local citizens. He is currently leading a dweller-led urban wetland restoration stewardship project in Dhaka and co-convenes the Platform for Just Housing (Najjyo Abashon Moncho or NAM), which works towards housing and climate justice with local activists and citizens.

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

This month, Tom and Beth are joined by Hannah Sender, 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 relationship, as much as a personal asset: what ought housing to be used for, when urbicide becomes a core goal of warfare?

Also on our radar:

• Infrastructural causes of flooding in Nairobi
• What Cubans in Miami reveal about how diaspora shape urban politics
• Banksy's loss of anonymity in an era of surveillance capitalism
• Data centre politics in the French local elections
• Scam centres in Cambodia
• Habermas, an unrecognised urbanist?

Guests:

Hannah Sender is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. Her current research examines land and housing relations in Lebanon.

Mariam Bazzi is a researcher at the Beirut Urban Lab, working on cultural heritage destruction and reconstruction in Palestine and Lebanon. Previous work included tracking the urbicide in Gaza.

And More:

Compound capitalism - Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, Mark Bo

Capitalism and conflict at the margins - Xu Peng, Jonathan Goodhand, Patrick Meehan, Naomi Yonder

Habermas and the City - Tommaso Vitale

The Sheffield Declaration (see also episode 4)

Planning and crisis - Mona Fawaz (see also episode 10)

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 experimentation, innovation and alternative provision emerge during crisis, and what does this mean for the role of state and non-state services in addressing the needs of vulnerable populations?
• What does crisis policy-making look like and how is it changing the way we are thinking about evidence and expertise?

Guests:

Cristina Temenos is a Reader in Human Geography, an urban, political geographer, her current project explores how cities are managing intersecting health, economic and social crises to negotiate more just urban futures. Her research is focused on health inequalities and the politics of access to care in cities globally. Working in the field of policy mobilities, she has developed this work in relation to drug use and treatment, public health, housing, economic austerity, environmental sustainability, transport, and climate change. She has recently published in journals such as Progress in Human Geography,IJURR and Dialogues in Urban Research.

Read More:
Crisis policy-making and revanchist public health politics
The modalities and politics of crisis urbanism
Urban crisis as infrastructure, not event: A view from Beirut
Crisis and the urban imagination
Austerity co-production

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 of robots across multiple domains.

Go straight to 37:33 for this discussion.

First in our radar, we cover:

• Leaflet wars in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Greater Manchester
• How space and stigma play out in the Epstein and UK grooming scandals
• What the UK Royal Family have to do with cities
• Urban foundations & fallouts from the death of Mexican drug lord, El Mencho
• The promise of Spain's approach to regularising undocumented migrants
• How to better assess the vulnerabilities of regions and cities to the green transition

Guests:

Aidan While researches environmental and climate policy, urban technology and future cities, and the politics of planning in the UK and internationally. This podcast draws on his ESRC project on Robotics as Urban Automation. He has written on sidewalk delivery robots, ecologies of automation, and regulating urban robotics.

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 directly is not possible, what other approaches can help us analyse the intense volatility of cities impacted by urbanisation and industrialisation processes?
• What do these methods mean for urbanists interested in urban change? What endures, what transforms and how do we validate what counts as knowledge?

Guests:

Junia Mortimer is an Assistant Prof at the Department of Urban Planning at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. She is currently an Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. She has curated exhibitions including Urbanos Arquivos (2023) in Salvador, which won first prize in the 2024 Arquisur Competition and she coordinates the Laboratory of Experiments on Image and Architecture.

Felipe Magalhães is an Assistant Prof at the Department of Geography, UFMG, Brazil and Visiting Fellow at University of Manchester. He has been working on popular and solidarity economies, deindustrialization and extractivism in the Brazilian context. He has recently published in the journals Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, IJURR and Antipode.

Key archives/figures mentioned:

Zumvi Afro-Photographic Archive: Lázaro Roberto.

Roberto Monte Mor

Edneia Aparecida de Souza

Ariella Azoulay

Francisco de Oliveira

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

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 Institute, for an in-depth conversation on the Venezuala crisis and its urban dimensions. With Erika we delve into Venezuela's recent history and how Hugo Chavez's distinctly urban populist project of redistribution morphed over two decades into extreme authoritarianism, mass population exodus and dysfunctional, disempowered city governments under Maduro.

We then consider whether and how the dramatic US intervention and removal of Maduro might serve as a window of opportunity for opposition forces in the cities to reverse the tide of authoritarian, centralizing governance.

Before, this, on our radar (from 05:40) we ponder:

- The view from Greenland's capital, Nuuk, on potential US invasion and what this tells us about how urban areas are being geopolitically re-mapped

- the approval of plans for a Chinese 'mega-embassy' in London and its local and geopolitical significance

- Overlooked cities and towns in the US affected by Trumpian funding cuts and other 'erasures'

- Reforms to neighbourhood governance in the UK, and the importance of the neighbourhood scale for addressing wider division and challenges to democracy

- Dis/misinformation and crime stats in London, and the growing recognition of the need for urban anti-disinfo strategies

- Iran's protest and the politics of physically relocating capital cities

Guest:

Erika Garcia Fermin completed her PhD at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, in 2024. Grounded in questions of urban governance and socio-spatial justice, her work focuses on the politics of value extraction in urban development, especially around urban land, and in how these processes relate to the ways urban spaces are planned, governed, and valued.

Read More:

https://thetruesize.com/

Disinformation in the City: Response Playbook - https://www.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/5060724/Disinformation-in-the-City-Reponse-Playbook_compressed-1.pdf

Controlling the Capital: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/controlling-the-capital-9780192868329?cc=gb&lang=en&;

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.