Episodes
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Hyper-commodified Housing: The next frontier in living?
Hyper-commodified housing is a strategy for capital to enter financial markets in the form of new types of renting – corporatised co-living, the rise of new digital intermediaries, student housing brands or even build-to-rent projects. We sit down with Dr Constance Uyttebrouck from Luxembourg‘s...
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Hot summer: Water trading, governance, and futures in Australia
Australia has one of the world's most advanced systems of water trading in the world. But how did we get here? Dr Madelaine Moore from UNSW's Environment and Society Group is an expert in water policy and governance and has published extensively on water trading markets and financial investors in...
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Live event: Could migration solve Australia's housing crisis?
This episode is hot off the mixing desk - and a hot topic at the moment in Australian politics. In this year’s particularly engaging housing debate from the recent Festival of Translocal Urbanism, a panel of experts energetically consider, challenge, and debate the proposition that migration…
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Reclaiming our roads
Reclaiming our roads - what sort of images does that conjure up? It’s a fascinating and pretty radical idea. Perhaps it’s something we could be taking a little more seriously in the wake of soaring oil prices. A recent study from the US estimates that roadways account for 25-35% of urbanised land...
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Airbnb's growing impact in the Global South: Inside Airbnb's Murray Cox joins City Road
Australian Murray Cox is best known for creating Inside Airbnb, a data-driven advocacy project about Airbnb's impact on residential communities. On a recent trip to the University of Sydney - his alma mater - Murray talks to City Road host Bill Code about activism and tech, and his recent work...
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People Power in Cities
In this episode of City Reads, host Jacqueline Tyrrell chats with Amanda Tattersall and Kurt Iveson about their recently published book 'People Power in Cities', which identifies and examines five 'people power' strategies considered through the lens of individual case studies from around the…
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Why the housing crisis could be slowing the energy transition
A group of Australian researchers have recently put out a paper detailing how soaring housing costs are taking a toll on solar uptake and effectively slowing our push to net zero. There are also growing concerns that the huge uptake in household batteries - incentivised by government - is…
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Live event: Regenerating Country with First Nations practitioners
What is the regenerative capacity of Country and how can First Nations knowledge be applied to achieve meaningful design outcomes and recover degraded landscapes? In this engaging live recording, we hear from experts Jess Herder, Principal, Thirriwirri, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Sydney School of...
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Marramarra: Indigenous Artists making History Visible
How are ancient Indigenous stories and knowledge told through art? What is a Dhomala and what does it represent in Indigenous histories? How are Indigenous artists creating their own forms of monuments in settler colonial societies? This first City Reads episode, which is part of the City Road...
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Tackling distrust in the renewable energy rollout
A renewable energy transition is top of the list when it comes to Australia's race to net zero carbon emissions. But take the temperature around Australia, and not everyone is on board. Bill Code speaks with Associate Professor Bec Colvin about the importance of taking different concerns…
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Live event: Is housing 'abundance' really the solution?
Governments of different stripes tend to believe that the way to deal with the housing crisis is to build more houses. If there were an 'abundance' of houses, we'd be able to easily tackle the lack of *access* to secure housing. But is abundance – as popular as that term has become in the last…
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Live event: Regenerating civics: Urban AI, social media and post-truth
How do we regenerate civics , in an era of AI, Social Media and Post Truth? Is civil participation going through as big an upheaval as other areas of life? And what do the Brisbane Olympics have to do with a renowned board game? Originally hailed for democratising access to information, the rise…
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Data Centres: Planning for growth amidst the AI boom
The rapid growth of data centres in Australia and the role of AI in contributing to their proliferation is a hot topic in both planning and 'mainstream' debate. The Australian Energy Market Operator reports energy use by data centres in FY 2025 was around 2% of National Energy Market use…
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E-bikes and e-scooters – a growing menace or city congestion saviour?
Is the growing trend in e-bike and e-scooter use the key to reducing congestion on our roads - or a menace for unsuspecting pedestrians, drivers, and riders themselves? Reports of accidents are filling the airwaves as experts question how governments can best manage the rapid growth in sales of...
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The future of Australia's public housing
Australia is in the midst of a housing crisis. But amidst the political and media debate about the fixes to our housing woes, public housing has slipped from view. There's concern that funding commitments are a far cry from the broad based approach to public rental housing which has supported so...
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Putting the 'public' in public transport
What is ‘public’ about our urban and regional transport systems - and how public should they be? Are our leaders actually serving public interests and values around public transport? Should a stick in the ground really count as a bus stop? And what the heck is a 'beg button'? In this episode of...
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114. Can the Private Market Solve Australia’s Housing Crisis?
With housing *the* hot topic this election, a panel of experts at the recent Festival of Urbanism battled to convince a live audience that the private market could (or could not) solve Australia's housing crisis. This debate features: - The Hon Doug Cameron, Former Senator - Sharath Mahendran,...
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113. The Golden Thread in Public and Democratic Life
Welcome back to City Road. In this episode, we reflect on 2024's Festival of 'Public' Urbanism and its panel discussion on how the public life of great cities takes place in our cultural buildings and civic spaces – from libraries to museums, town halls, streets, parks and playgrounds. This…
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112. The State of Australasian Cities Conference
This final episode of the Infrastructure Governance Incubator series focuses on a plenary discussion centred around the findings of the ‘Infrastructure Governance Incubator’ - a multidisciplinary collaborative research project across three universities – which took place at the State of...
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111. The Politics of Infrastructure Governance
Infrastructure planning is intrinsically political – but are there significant differences between how we expect infrastructure planning to occur and the reality of how it plays out? Are our current approaches to the relationship between planning and power working? In this fifth episode, we build...
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110. From Social Housing to the Missing Middle
The evidence shows that increasing new housing production alone won’t solve the affordability crisis. At this special event, the NSW Minister for Housing and Homelessness, the Hon. Rose Jackson MLC and a panel of experts from industry, academia, and community sectors, will outline strategies for...
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109. Contested Climate
Water security is one of the most contested issues facing urban and regional communities across Australia. For growing inland cities like Canberra, conventional assumptions and approaches to water supply, catchment management, and urban planning must be reimagined in the context of climate…
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108. Saving Sydney
We know we must end sprawl and densify our cities, but are tall towers the answer? Can the skyscraper solve our affordable housing problem? Does high density necessarily mean high-rise, and do such developments stack up environmentally – or do they exacerbate issues such as urban heat? What are…
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107. Contested Country
How are Australia’s Indigenous and settler histories recognised and confronted in cultural heritage conservation and urban planning practice, alongside wider struggles for native title, land rights, and spatial justice? Join this conversation with a panel of experts across Indigenous history,...
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106. Contested Housing
In recent years a new movement known as ‘YIMBY’ (‘Yes In My Backyard’) has emerged. ‘YIMBIES’ argue that planning and regulatory barriers serving local ‘NIMBY’ (‘Not In My Backyard’ property owners) block new and higher density housing, causing affordability pressures across the market. By...
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105. The Creative Bureaucrat
Episode 3: Innovating urban governance: the Creative Bureaucrat Does creativity have a place in City Hall? The idea that bureaucracy should or can be creative certainly runs counter to common ideas we have of city government. But recently, that has begun to change. Innovation in city governance…
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104. Contested Streets
With rising recognition of the health and environmental benefits of active transport, there are increasing struggles between users of footpaths, roads and curbs. Not only are streets important transportation routes, as demonstrated over the Pandemic period, they have also become recognised as...
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103. Contested Environments
Australia’s legal frameworks for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection are intended to preserve and enhance the nation’s natural and cultural heritage while enabling appropriate forms of urban development and infrastructure. Yet Commonwealth Environmental Protection &…
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102. Public Accountability
Meaningful public accountability in infrastructure governance This episode considers the challenges of, and possibilities for, meaningful accountability in infrastructure governance. Public accountability is often publicly demanded or politically signalled, but much more rarely unpacked or...
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101. Urban Governance & Design Thinking
Episode 2: Innovating urban governance: Design Thinking What is design thinking and how might it be useful for city governments? In this second episode of ‘Innovating Cities’, Robyn Dowling and Sophia Maalsen discuss how design thinking is being conceptualised and operationalised in city…
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100. Contested Platforms
There is ongoing concern about the localised impacts of globally owned platforms on the ways in which we use our homes and cities. From the housing market and neighbourhood impacts of Airbnb style platforms through to the less visible implications of automated urban systems, this session asks how...
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99. Wicked Assumptions
From preserving heritage to defining flood planning levels or calculating open space requirements, planning processes, and decisions are inherently bound by assumptions and practices from the past. In this inaugural lecture, Dr Robert Stokes, former minister for Planning, Public Spaces, and…
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98. Innovation Units
Episode 1: Innovating urban governance: the work of Innovation Units In this first episode in the Innovating Cities Series, Pauline McGuirk and Tom Baker discuss what innovating city governance means and explore one key example of urban governance innovation in practice: innovation units. Drawing...
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97. Contested Futures
New Orleans and Australia's Northern Rivers are miles apart but share similarities when it comes to natural disasters. This session shines a light on the difficult questions confronting communities as they seek to rebuild more resilient settlements in the wake of devastating natural disasters....
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96. Collaborative Governance
From fragmentation to integration: Building collaborative governance Different types of infrastructure need to work together to build and support great places and communities. Most of us can recognise the kinds of siloed and fragmented planning we see around us, but what do we mean when we make...
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95. Bennelong and Phillip
We're talking with Professor Kate Fullagar about her new book on Bennelong and Phillip. Grab the book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Bennelong-and-Phillip/Kate-Fullagar/9781761108174 This book provides the first joint biography of Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip, two…
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94. Climate Finance
Jamie Peck talks with Gareth Bryant and Sophie Webber about their new book Climate Finance: Taking a Position on Climate Futures. Responding to climate change is commonly understood as a financial challenge: What are the expected costs of the impacts of climate change? How much money is needed to...
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93. The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance
Dallas Rogers talks with Stephen Gapps about his new book, Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance — The Bathurst War, 1822–1824 ‘In May 1824, what can only be described as a period of all-out, total gudyarra (‘war’ in the Wiradyuri language) had begun west of the Blue Mountains.…
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92. Class War
Adam David Morton, Professor of Political Economy in the Discipline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, talks with Mark Steven about his new book, Class War: A Literary History. This book is a thrilling and vivid work of history, Class War weaves together literature and politics to...
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91. Radical History of Urban Planning
Joe Penny, Lecturer in Global Urbanism at the UCL Urban Laboratory in London, talks with Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago about his alternative history of capitalist urbanization through the lens of the commons. Against the Commons underscores how urbanization shapes the social fabric of places and...
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90. Animals, Capital and Cities
Dallas talks with A/Prof Dinesh Wadiwel about his new book on the industrial production of animals for food, and where cities fit into this process. This book provides the first systematic application of Marx’s value theory to animal labour within the context of capitalist food systems. Dinesh...
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89. Infrastructure on Unceded Land
How is infrastructure entangled with the legacies and ongoing processes of settler-coloniality? How might we give more meaningful attention to planning for Country and with Indigenous sovereignties?Cities in so-called Australia are built on unceded First Nations land. We talk about what this…
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88. Keeping Social Housing
Interview with Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal, 2021 Pritzker Prize Laureates and the Rothwell Program Co-Chairs at the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Architecture is about freedom, generosity, pleasure. Large spaces generate an essential feeling of escape...
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87. The Future of Work
Some claim the pandemic has ushered in a "post work" era when the concepts of work, workplace, and commute are being remade. Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, co-creation and multi-locational work sites are creating new spaces for work and encouraging the merging of work and non-work...
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86. Indonesia's New Capital
In January 2022, the Indonesian government approved plans to build Nusantara- a new green and smart capital city on the island of Borneo. Join an interdisciplinary panel of experts, including the architect for the new capital, as they discuss the planning, design, and political agendas behind the...
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85. Systematic Literature Review
Systematic Literature Review This mini-episode takes a deep dive into the Systematic Literature Review. - What is is? - Where did it come from? - And can this methodology from science work in a social science research environment? This mini-episode is a part of a series of conversations about...
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84. Infrastructure Governance
Join us for a series of conversations about transforming infrastructure governance. Our shared futures and community well-being are shaped by urban infrastructure such as for transport, green space, water, social, and digital services. While many public discussions revolve around which...
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83. The Surrounds
In this special Urban Studies Journal book review episode we’re talking with Professor Adam Morton from the discipline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Professor Alison Young from Social and Political Sciences and the Deputy-Director of the Centre for Cities at the University of...
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82. Transport Futures
From horse-drawn carriages to automobiles and mass transit, new transport technologies have historically transformed and disrupted cities. Today, autonomous vehicles and other forms of smart transport technology are predicted to remake transport networks and contribute to a new round of urban...
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81. Infrastructure Innovation
Despite existing technological capabilities, deeply entrenched barriers to sustainable and equitable transitions often fall to questions of urban governance. Festival of Urbanism Panel Chair: Associate Professor Tooran Alizadeh Haruka Miki-Imoto, Operations Officer for the World Bank in Japan...