January 7, 2025 • 68 mins
Hardly any cities-related university programme gained so much attention over the last 15 years as the 4CITIES Masters in Urban Studies. For good reason. Over the two years, the students study at six universities in four different cities: Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid – with many many occasional visits to other cities in between. 4CITIES is located at the intersection of academia, activism, professional practice and urban exploration.
I had the privilege of being part of the second cohort of 4CITIES from 2009 to 2011… and it was a life-changing experience for me. With the 4CITIES programme coming to an end in September 2025, it was a good moment in time to sit down with two people who have been part of making 4CITIES possible since the beginning:
Yvonne Franz, Senior Lecturer from the University of Vienna and Stefan de Corte, administrative coordinator at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels.
Whether are one of hundreds 4CITIES alumni from around the world, involved in teaching and setting up urban-related programmes at your university or just want to find out why madness plays an important role in setting up such a programme, this episode is for you.
In this episode:
· Why a Eurocentric perspective on urban studies is not enough
· How the 4CITIES Master in Urban Studies changed the system from within
· Why a comprehensive set of skill between disciplines is needed applying urban knowledge(s)
· How the 4CITIES Master in Urban Studies shaped careers of former students but also of staff and teachers
· How moving to (at least) four cities within 2 years teaches invaluable life lessons
More information:
- Follow Cities Reimagined on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citiesreimagined/
- Yvonne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franz-yvonne-8449913a/
- Send Johannes an email: johannes@anthropocene.city
Photos by Daniel Dutkowski (Yvonne) and Hadrien Durei (Stefan).
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, welcome back to the Cities Reimagined podcast.
(00:11):
I hope you had a good start into the year if you're listening right away in the early
days of January 2025.
I'm your voice of choice, Johannes Riegler, and this is Reimagining Urban Education.
Yeah, as the title suggests, today we dive into urban studies and education for making
(00:32):
cities better places.
Since I graduated from my masters in urban studies some 15 years ago, a lot has changed.
Back then, it was an emerging field where people seemed to have trouble understanding
what it was, urban studies.
Is it sociology?
Is it architecture?
Is it economics?
(00:54):
Is it all of that or none of that?
Today it is widely recognized as one key discipline in understanding cities, which combines all
of these perspectives.
If you're into urban studies or a related field in Europe, the chances are pretty high
that you've heard of the Four Cities Master Program.
As the name suggests, that two-year master program brings students across four cities,
(01:19):
and that is Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen, and Madrid, with numerous excursions to other
European cities while you're traveling from one place to another.
It is, I have to say, a really life-changing experience, and I can tell you that from my
own experiences.
I was part of the program in its early days, starting in 2009.
(01:40):
What makes this program so special is not only the pain in the neck that you need to
find housing and a proper accommodation every couple of months in a different city, but
it is that you study at six universities and you get to know so many different urban contexts
all across Europe.
Now some 15 years after I graduated from the program, Four Cities will come to an end in
(02:04):
2025, and I thought it would be the perfect moment to sit down with two people who helped
bring this program to life from the very beginning.
Yvonne Franz, who is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Department of Geography
at the University of Vienna, and Stefan de Kort, also from the Geography Department,
(02:26):
or Urban Studies Wing of the Geography Department at the Freie Universität Brussels.
So in the upcoming 60 minutes, we will talk about how urban studies has changed since
the start of Four Cities, whether a program like Four Cities with its European perspective
is still contemporary, and how the universities or the work at universities in general has
(02:50):
changed.
There are also so many stories and anecdotes, personal anecdotes of the two in this conversation,
which you absolutely do not want to miss, whether you have been a Four Cities student
yourself or not.
There is a lot to uncover that's remained hidden over the last 15 to 20 years related
(03:11):
to urban studies.
So yeah, make sure you listen to the whole episode.
And I hope you really enjoy the show.
Really appreciate that you're tuning in again.
If you like what you hear, consider subscribing to Cities Rematch and only favorite podcasting
platform or follow us on Instagram.
Like rate the show, leave a comment and tell your friends all about it.
I also really love hearing from listeners, so feel free to send me an email at johannesatatropocene.city.
(03:39):
You can also find the contact in the show notes.
Hi, Yvonne and Steph.
It's good to have you on the Cities Rematch and podcast.
How are you doing on this Friday morning?
Very good.
Yes.
Having a cup of tea.
So.
Yeah.
(04:00):
Or after holidays?
Well, being awake already for a while.
Same here.
Also temperature is quite convenient today in Vienna.
So ready to have a nice conversation with you.
Thanks for having us.
Very good.
First of all, I was wondering, how did you actually end up building a career or all your
(04:20):
interests around cities?
What triggered that?
How did you come about working on that topic?
It's a pure coincidence.
But my interest about cities, I think it already started when I was a little child growing
up in Bavaria and always pushing my parents' heart to go somewhere else to see some, yeah,
(04:42):
let's say more variation of life.
And my, let's say my happiest moments are those when I could see something new and this
was mostly related to cities.
Nice.
How about you, Steph?
For me, it's a bit similar.
So I grew up in the suburbs of Brussels and which I found great until I was 13, 14.
(05:07):
I really got fed up with having to cycle very far to get to friends and there was nothing
going on because before you were just young kids playing around in gardens and so on.
But that's, you know, if you turn a bit older, that's not what you want to do.
So the moment I could, you know, I went to the city at the beginning, just I'm still
(05:33):
living with my parents, but then moved into it.
And so I was always had a fascination for, yeah, lots of stuff happening there was different,
was unexpected.
I think traveling also looking backwards.
So I traveled a year after school before actually studying my studies.
(05:56):
And if I look back on that travel, which was to the East as far as India, mainly went to
cities.
So I did all the big cities on the way.
Once in a while, I went to the mountains or somewhere, but you always ended up in cities,
which I found really intriguing.
So fast forward now, you both work at universities.
(06:17):
Tell us a little bit about your role at the university, starting with you, Steph.
Yes, so my role changed over the years.
So I started out as a PhD student and I did a lot of contract work, which was at the geography
department of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels.
(06:41):
I'm originally trained as a geographer.
And then over the years, I got involved into interdisciplinary studies because there was
a colleague who showed up at our department, which was very inspiring.
And he actually was the one who set up the very first kind of international program where
(07:07):
students traveled between cities.
So this is somewhere second half of the 1990s.
And yeah, I then got involved in one of these programs he was running, which was called
POLIS, which was actually what you could call four cities on speed because students went
(07:31):
to four cities in one academic year and had to finish a thesis.
So that was quite a challenge.
So in the beginning, I was just helping out, doing the organization and did a little bit
of teaching and then came along the opportunity to actually start four cities.
So I was involved right from the start together with colleagues from the VUB to set it up.
(07:59):
And at the beginning, yeah, I mean, it nearly everything, doing the international organization,
consulting, teaching, urban geography, and urban analysis, which is a practice course
in the first semester, going to all these cities and so on and so forth.
And then I think after like a couple of years into the program, actually switched to a polytechnic
(08:24):
and I was out of the program for a couple of years then came back.
Meanwhile, also switched role in the university.
So I'm not teaching anymore, I'm not doing research anymore, but I'm well, I have an
organizational managerial position.
Four cities also grew, meanwhile, because we had the Erasmus-Mundustan, we talk about
(08:45):
this later, maybe.
And it also grew in number of students, started out with small students and then ended up
with many more, also very different students compared to the beginning, and now much more
involved in at the level of organization.
So I have less interaction with students, it's much more trying to run the shop internationally
(09:13):
and locally also.
Yvonne, you're still in touch with the students, but the last cohort just finished in Vienna,
I believe.
What's your thoughts about your work and your involvement of Four Cities, because you're
also one of the artifacts in Four Cities, I think.
Yeah, I hope my age is not visible already, but when I calculated, I started with Four
(09:35):
Cities in 2009, so that means I was 15 years younger.
So you can tell that obviously also my role changed similar to Steph's.
When I started back then, I was just starting a so-called pre-doc position at the department
of geography.
So I graduated as a geographer at University of Vienna, and then I had the big chance to
(09:58):
apply for a doctoral position with the privilege that it has been a faculty position, which
means that you're not only involved in research for your PhD, but you do everything from teaching
to administration.
It's a privilege, but I didn't know that it also comes with a sweet pill called Four Cities,
(10:19):
because Four Cities was on the table already.
I think they second-forward already, and I jumped in without knowing anything about the
program.
And that was quite overwhelming.
I still remember some sleepless nights or weekends where I just didn't know how to handle
teaching, building up the programs.
(10:43):
As you still remember, in the first years, it was, let's be honest, it was quite a chaos,
having 20 helpless students traveling from Brussels to Vienna, finding housing, getting
to know the rules of each university, the written rules, but also the invisibility.
So this was on top of my own personal, say, change that I started a PhD, and I had to
(11:10):
find my way in academia as well.
But I settled, and after a while, where suddenly you become postdoc, and I also left for a
while a program similar to Steph when I went to other institutions as a postdoc researcher
and fellow, for instance, in Stanford or other universities.
(11:30):
And then I came back to the University of Vienna as a postdoc researcher.
And only recently I became senior lecturer, which is, surprise, surprise.
My first permanent position in academia.
So it's a personal route, so to say, a personal journey with four cities.
(11:50):
But I must say, it's also very rewarding that I can look back on this journey, also being
right now in this first time ever situation that I can say that I have a permanent position
now.
I mean, that's amazing.
(12:10):
Because of you, you spent your whole career basically on four cities, or you built it.
It is part of your life, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Takes over, takes over your life.
No, you wouldn't do this, of course, if you're not interested, and if you're not a little
(12:31):
bit mad, I think.
The good thing is, I remember at the beginning, setting up four cities, you basically don't
know what's coming.
I mean, you get good ideas, discuss about it, there was this opportunity to do it, and
then you just go for it.
In hindsight, if you look back, I think, wow, if I would have known, I probably would have
(12:56):
done it again.
But beforehand, you just don't know what it is.
Because as Ivana says, it's not just putting a program together, it's this whole practical
side to it.
We also didn't know, will it work?
What about the students?
Because it is also a really heavy program for the students.
(13:18):
I mean, you did it yourself.
So you have to go to four cities, find your way around.
What we thought was really a plus for the program, EI, you go to four different cities.
It's not just four different cities, there are four different societies, there are four
(13:38):
different practices, resistances, politics, etc.
Also comes with having to adapt each time.
And students, I mean, it's really a challenging thing for students, which I think we sometimes
really underestimated.
And especially during the trajectory, I think it's really hard.
(14:01):
It's really hard for some students.
But then afterwards, it seems to be really rewarding.
If I look at the feedback we get from the alumni, etc., when they look back a few years
after the program, then it seems to be very rewarding.
And yes, it takes over your life.
Isn't that the fun?
(14:24):
That's right.
Yeah.
If you just would count all the weekends and partially holidays that went from our side
into the program, as well as from the student side, I think that is really, we sometimes
speak about the four cities family, right?
Although we don't really.
Well, it's not a family by DNA, of course.
(14:44):
But I think that relates to Stefan's argument that we underestimated in the beginning also
the challenges, but we also underestimated this potential for making not only friends,
but really making see my family members.
We probably only received 20% of the rumors going on in the alumni group.
(15:07):
But if you look back at couples, four cities children, friendships, on a professional perspective,
also collaborations, we come back to this a bit later.
But wherever we go from a professional point of view, we probably bump into a four cities
alumni.
We see people having a career who did the four cities program.
(15:33):
We are super proud in many ways.
And I think back then, again, 29, I haven't thought about that.
Yeah, me either.
I really like, Stefan, you said that you have to be mad, somehow mad to set this up.
Because also, in 2008, when it started, it was a different time.
(15:54):
Also, just in terms of technology, now I can go around with my phone and I can connect
anytime with anybody around the world, basically, regardless in the country.
But when I started in 2009, that was not the case.
At some point, I got a Nokia phone which looked like a blueberry.
Now, what was it?
(16:16):
Not blueberry, likeberry?
Yeah, likeberry.
There's a million keys on it.
But I tell you a little bit about how I found out about four cities and how I started it.
So I started geography first in the south of Austria in Klagenfurt, did my bachelor's
there.
And I thought about going to Vienna and doing my master's, somehow related to planning on
(16:41):
the geography department.
And then one day, I spent the night in Graz with a friend because next to my studies,
I was counting cars for money at the traffic planning company.
And he was a geographer as well.
Marco is his name.
He might listen to this podcast as well.
(17:01):
Shout out, hello, Marco.
Yeah, Marco, yeah.
And he told me, oh, yeah, he found his master's at the University of Vienna, which seems
interesting.
It might be something for me.
And then we checked it out in the evening.
Just like, what is this?
It is in four different cities?
How is that even possible?
(17:23):
That is impossible.
But I was immediately intrigued and applied and got in.
And really fast forward, that changed everything from that moment on.
Just this experience from staying in four cities over two years, it gives you so much.
You learn so much, not only on urbanism, which I, you know, perspectives I didn't even think
(17:46):
of before starting it, being a geographer, but then also just moving every other month
and having to build up your network and your life in four different cities.
It changes your life.
At least it did with mine.
I can imagine.
(18:07):
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
What a surprise.
And we are happy that this surprise in Graz, shout out to colleagues in Graz, happened.
And you just said, you asked yourself, how is that possible?
Just as a, not so funny, but as a funny side anecdote, it was almost impossible.
(18:30):
We made it possible.
So just to give you an internal perspective of this program, probably everybody at the
University of Vienna, so from controlling to student inscription office to the rectorate
knows about this program, not because it is so great also, of course, but mainly because
(18:52):
we have been a pain in the, to make, to find solutions.
Because our biggest critique, sometimes we forget about this, is that the European Union
have these bold ideas of joint curricula later with the Erasmus-Munus, but local administration
(19:12):
is not ready for that.
It's not even national administration.
So it's really boring to talk about it, but I think, Steph, correct me if I'm wrong, probably
half of our working time on the program, we spend into finding solutions of regulations
that are existing, but we have to overcome these regulations, otherwise, four cities
(19:37):
would not work out as it's running.
I think you can compare it to the saga of the visas, which most of you who are non-European
actually went through to repeat, I mean, it's a bit better these days, although.
So how did it work?
(19:57):
You had to get the visa to get to Belgium, then you had to wait for a police officer
to come to your student room.
That gave you a paper from the municipality, you needed a paper to go to the embassy to
get the next visa for Austria, then the same in Austria, then the same in for Copenhagen,
(20:17):
and then the same for Spain with nationalities like Macedonians who are not officially recognized
by Spain.
So they can't get, I mean, just these kinds of things you have just at the practical level
of a university with rules and regulations and yeah, but this diploma and this curriculum
(20:41):
and yeah, but we want this marking, they do it differently over there, it's a lot of energy
goes in there, but it's worthwhile because when it works out, it works out.
And again, you have to be a little bit mad and you have to also stand your ground, and
(21:03):
that works very well if you have a program which is coherent, you can say, look, this
is really something worthwhile doing.
You want to do it as a university, yes or no, because we several times had the situation,
we really asked them like, okay, fine, we stop it, but do you want not to have this
anymore and they go, no, no, no, and then they go out and look for solutions.
(21:25):
So yes, that's probably, I mean, now, as I'm much more on the organizational managerial
side, yeah, that takes a lot of time, which is sometimes frustrating, but very rewarding.
And that's also a stuff we don't tell students too much because for them in the end, you
(21:46):
know, what do they care?
They just want to get a program and get along with it.
But yes, there's a lot of things behind it.
And as Yvonne rightly says, so there's a lot of talk about setting up international things,
utilizing, et cetera, et cetera.
But then if it comes down, sometimes there's a nitty gritty conservatism and, you know,
(22:10):
local rules of everything.
And then in the end, the international is not so much thought international.
It's very, very local with like many things.
Yeah.
Because it's complicated also, right?
You need to go over boundaries and find ways to do it.
Yeah, congratulations to that, that you held on for that.
(22:34):
We're not the only two ones.
I mean, there's a lot of others.
So we speak in the name of about 15 people who do this on a daily basis.
But coming back a bit to the topic of urbanism as such.
So the debate is about around cities in the last 15 years has very much developed and
shifted also.
(22:55):
It gained significant kind of strategic importance on European and global level.
And I feel like it is also understood very differently than 15 years ago, whereas you
had to argue more for this more integrated approach of bringing different disciplines
and different perspectives together.
Now it is broadly understood and dealt as such.
(23:17):
How do you see these changes?
What is your take on that?
What changed throughout the years in the bigger debate since you started making Four Cities
happen?
Starting with you, Yvonne, maybe.
Yeah, I might use my example of my PhD research that I started back then.
It was on gentrification and the term gentrification I learned through the Four Cities program.
(23:43):
It was not such a phenomenon or theory already established while I did my diploma studies
in geography.
So first, Four Cities always helped to, let's say, push knowledge in a state-of-the-art
manner.
So we've always been confronted with very recent developments in urban studies.
(24:10):
And secondly, back then, you could tell we already kind of grasped that cities are changing.
Every city has a unique DNA.
But in a certain moment, if you really look analytically on processes, you realize, wait
a minute, gentrification, displacement of people from their residential areas.
(24:32):
This happens not only in Paris, London, and New York.
It also happens in Berlin and even in a city like Vienna, where you quote, where a social
housing stock should prevent people from displacement.
So this was my starting point to realize, well, cities are not museums.
They are constantly changing.
(24:54):
And they have similarities, but they also have discrepancies.
And these similarities and discrepancies, this was also the core of the Four Cities
program to always compare with each other, to understand and come beyond idiographic
or to achieve more generalizing ideas and theories on how cities work.
(25:19):
And I would argue that over the years, it became much more complex.
So nowadays, we speak about planetary urbanization, localization.
So we have global processes, but we see the change in the local neighborhood.
We do discuss post-growth theories because we are aware that cities cannot grow or also
(25:43):
economies cannot grow as we accepted it in the last decades.
So it became more complex.
And I would argue from my personal academic research perspective that it's relational.
Cities are not singular entities.
(26:05):
Cities are connected to the periphery, to the global stage.
It's all in relation.
And we really need to develop a very comprehensive skill set to understand these relations.
And this includes much more disciplines, even more than we have in our Four Cities program.
So that is also the reason why we expanded our network with other stakeholders.
(26:29):
We might speak about this a bit later.
And it includes much more skills in terms of transdisciplinarity, how to speak to each
other, how to understand each other.
And this, I would say, this is the cherry bottom on everything, how to really take action
to change something.
Yes, yes, I agree with Yvonne.
(26:52):
I mean, what I would add is that I think a lot of the processes in cities which are going
on are not so fundamentally different from when we started out.
I think the scale and the scope of things changed a lot.
And there are some teams or some issues which have become more important than they used
(27:17):
to be, or at least people are more aware of it, people and policymakers and so on.
And the big issue there, of course, is everything which has to do with the relationship between
nature and the city and the climate.
I think that's one really one big thing.
The other one, all cities have known an incredible increase in migration.
(27:37):
I mean, there are peaks and ups and downs and depending on policy and so on.
But I think, I mean, I was trained already in a view on the city is basically the container
where migration is coming in and going out and so on.
But that process just intensified and also the characteristics of it changed a bit.
(28:02):
I think recently, if you look a little bit, geopolitics came in much stronger.
You know, cities also become, they become items of war to be conquered, to be destroyed.
This of course, again, depends a little bit from where you are and how do you look on
the world?
(28:22):
But it's also a big change, I think that when we started out and have a look at academics
and the interests in Europe and the United States at that moment, I mean, there is much
more of an awareness of the situatedness of, you know, of that research of these academics
and so on and so forth.
So I think on the one hand, side cities have changed.
(28:45):
Mentioning all these things are just said, just a few of them.
But I think also the way we look at them, we analyze them has also shifted.
I think for me, these are some important things.
Yeah, and they became also somehow, let's say, strategic entities to fulfill or to reach
(29:07):
sustainability targets or other targets, right?
With the SDGs and the UN-Habitat New Urban Agenda.
I mean, they had a paper before on that as well, but it's gained significant relevance
for these debates, right?
Absolutely.
I think it was very much needed also to think about the leverage points and also the impact
(29:31):
that specific entities might have or not.
And I think to narrow it down and to agree on the fact that cities can be changemakers,
this was really crucial.
I would now argue that it became pretty mainstream.
So this is a narrative that is quite well accepted.
And now the next step is probably to really think not only about what its cities actually
(29:57):
achieved during the last 10, 15 years as a changemaker and what role do they play in
all these transformations that steps on just mentioned, like the socio-ecological transformation.
Cities are not so sustainable if you open up the algorithm and calculate what people
really consume that is produced somewhere else outside of cities.
(30:21):
So you know these debates.
So I think we are now in this phase of becoming more critical about the role of cities and
also about the long trajectories that are inherent in changes.
And we are now in a moment of our society and humanity where we need actual change and
(30:44):
better fast than slow.
So it's really a moment now that is really interesting to be part of this debate and
really do something for the better, of course.
Do you think for cities still reflects this kind of ambition with the program?
(31:08):
How did it develop over the years?
How did it bring in these new perspectives?
Well I think, but that's a personal opinion about this.
I mean there was a very strong narrative, at least in Brussels when we started out,
which was around this kind of the city versus the nation state.
(31:33):
Like this idea that for a very long time, sciences, politics, popular thinking was based
on a view on the world which is about countries.
You're a member of the country, your identity is defined by being a Belgian or German or
(31:54):
you know.
And then as a kind of antidote to this, that actually the world doesn't function only like
this.
It also functions through cities which are organized in networks which have another geography,
etc.
And I think at the beginning it was a very strong plea that in a way these cities are
(32:15):
a solution to a lot of problems.
So there was a kind of outspoken political thing.
Now that also depended a little bit on which city we're talking about.
I mean in the sense which of the four cities and the teaching crew there because our colleagues
in Copenhagen for example, which are from the humanities, they do have a different approach
on this.
(32:36):
I mean their politicization is different in a way and I think over the years and especially
last years it became more academic the program I think.
Also because this was a request at a certain point by the students and I would not say
(33:00):
that like the critical edge or so is out of it but it's not.
I mean it leaves a bit more possibility to have a wider debate, also political debate
within the program.
I don't know if you agree with this Ivana but I think for me this is I mean from Brussels
and the position I'm in this is a little bit to shift which it has had.
(33:23):
Yeah I would agree.
Do you have a better insight on that of course?
But what I would add is that with the program we didn't expect that in the beginning but
we are somehow an actor that is changing the system if you want to say from within.
So the ecosystem of cities and how cities work we contribute with a teaching program.
(33:48):
It's a graduate program but it's an educational contribution.
So we educate the next generations, we can speak about the rules here already, how we
think about cities and also how we influence the narratives on the dates related to urban
(34:09):
and artistic topics and I think here we have still, we always had and I think now we actually
can see the impact we have with the core cities program.
If we just look at the local working or labor market, I can only speak now for the Austrian
local labor market, whenever we speak to people who look for new employees they approach us
(34:37):
and they ask us do you have graduate students who could be interested in this because we
really appreciate this broad scope and knowledge base of for city students.
This is really something that makes it special being a graduate from the for cities program
compared to any other national program at the university.
So if you really look for people who have this general knowledge on what is going on,
(35:03):
being not the nerd in the tiny little details but being this generalistic person, understanding
what relates to each other, I think that makes for cities still very unique.
Yes, I think that's true.
We also see it in Brussels, most of our PhD students are actually for city students and
(35:25):
they have to go to a competition to actually get a scholarship.
And yeah, it's actually adaptability to be quite wide.
The other day I had a talk with the former Baumeister of Antwerp.
(35:50):
Baumeister you would kind of translate as a kind of urban facilitator.
It's an important person because he has to get consulted by the municipality before big
urbanistic projects are implemented.
And he told me, he said yes, they actually engaged somebody from four cities.
(36:11):
And the only reason why we did this was because we looked at that CV and we thought, wow,
a strange thing.
What kind of studies is that?
And then they invited her and yes, to the interview then they thought, well, this is
exactly what we needed.
And I think from the start we had in mind to create or to enhance the possibility of
(36:37):
having people which can be intermediaries, which can bring together, I'm not afraid to
deal with things which you don't know into detail, but quickly make up their thing.
I myself had to learn it.
I remember it.
So I told you at the beginning about this Polis program.
There was a very first time I was involved in this kind of international things.
(37:00):
And I remember that I was afraid to go to the very first meeting because I was sitting
with architecture and cultural scientists and I didn't know anything about it.
But then yes, in a way after a while you understood, okay, if somebody talks about something you
don't understand, you just can ask it and he gives you a quick resume and just absorb
(37:21):
very quickly a lot of information.
And then you also feel how strongly you form to a particular discipline, which is not as
such as a problem.
But I think if you can combine a strong disciplinary background on the one hand side with this
kind of broader adaptive kind of approach, that's really a strong thing.
(37:47):
By the way, I mean, preparing this, I went through the questionnaires we sent out to alumni.
And if you just look at the answers to the question, what were the main skills you get
from 4City?
So adaptability is one holistic perspective, work well with others, international experience,
critical thinking, interdisciplinary approach.
(38:10):
So I think in that sense, we succeeded quite well in transmitting these kind of things.
Absolutely.
And I think you were with the program, you were kind of ahead of the time.
I mean, Yvonne, you said that you kind of paved the way also to this understanding of
this, at least I interpreted it as such, of transdisciplinarity on urban matters.
(38:34):
When I graduated in 2011, the month that followed when I was looking for a job, I was quite,
yeah, disappointed.
Not that disappointed, but I received a couple of rejections from jobs because they couldn't
grasp what that is.
They didn't know they wanted to have an architect, they wanted to have a sociologist or something
(38:55):
in between, but they couldn't grasp why there is somebody with this interesting background
but maybe it's a bit too edgy and we don't fall for that yet.
We want to have this very specific competence on subject matter.
And I was actually pretty lucky how I got the job.
(39:18):
I mean, it's not the same job, but I'm still kind of working for that.
I was just applying at the Austrian Institute of Technology for a job I was absolutely not
qualified for.
It was a kind of research, it was kind of portfolio management for the mobility department.
So I just applied, but I got lucky because my still kind of colleague, boss, led this
(39:50):
mobility department for a couple of months because they had an offer.
And she was building up this research innovation program called JPI Europe on a European scale.
It took a couple of months, but eventually I did not get the portfolio job, which I was
absolutely not qualified for.
But I started this job to contribute to building up a European research innovation program,
(40:15):
which is extremely fascinating and interesting.
And that was exactly why I was hired and why I kind of was well placed to contribute to
this work was because of this broad generalist perspective and background that Four Cities
led me, just to bring in a personal story here.
(40:39):
But you must have like 400 to 500 alumni until now.
And Yvonne, you already said you bounce into Four Cities everywhere.
I have the same experience when you have a coffee at the conference or so and start talking
to somebody and then it happens regularly that you find out that this person did the
(41:01):
same program you did.
But Steph, do you have some details on the statistics or backgrounds of the people?
Yeah, well, not in a systematic way, because we're going to prepare this for the big end
party, which will be in September 2025.
I like that you already prepared a big...
(41:21):
Two years, we think about this already.
Yeah, it has to be two years we think about this already.
This is going to be a blast.
Now it's announced.
So we literally have students from all over the world, but there are fewer from large
parts of Africa.
We had discussions also with students, student representatives who told us, yeah, how come?
(41:47):
Why aren't there more?
But then literally, I think I didn't check if there are how many countries are missing
in the whole list, but that goes always.
So yeah.
Yvonne, in the beginning, you already said Four Cities Made gave you some sleepless nights
(42:10):
in the beginning.
I mean, you set up a program where there's a group of people traveling through Europe.
What could possibly go wrong?
And you have a lot of field visits and so on.
People going to be lost late and so on.
Do you want to share some moments which gave you the sleepless nights or some strange or
(42:31):
funny moments which you experienced through the years?
I think sleepless nights always occurred when there was some personal emotional connection.
So some were stuck close to a border because of visa issues or whatever, or having a really
bad landlord who pushed out people from their apartments or asked for additional money,
(42:57):
something like this.
And then there's a very blurry line between I'm the professional coordinator at the University
of Vienna and I'm also a human being.
So on that point.
But there are also so many funny moments.
So there is, let's say, a common saying that we have, say, not only an academic delay of
(43:20):
15 minutes when we start teaching with Four Cities students, it might be a Four Cities
15 minutes, which usually is a 30 minute or 45 minute delay.
My theory is that if there would be no waiting time in Four Cities, it would be actually
a one year master.
Yeah, that's a very, I would agree.
(43:43):
And this is, of course, especially challenging when you're, as you just mentioned, on the
go during explorations of field trips where you're also supposed to meet other people
who take their time to meet you.
And then you're there with five people, but actually you announced 43 people.
I'm exaggerating, but this is sometimes where you are in between, that's my personal reputation,
(44:05):
please show up in time.
And also, yeah, so all of this, but you know, what never happens with Four Cities students
is a quiet minute or quiet five minutes.
I've always got to know Four Cities students as eagerly curious, interested in the topics,
(44:27):
very reflective, also very knowledgeable in sharing their knowledge.
So when we talk with other people outside of the program, the stakeholders, the city
administrators, the NGOs, practitioners, everybody is so trained in sharing where they
come from, what background they have and what makes them special, that is always a learning
(44:50):
situation for the other part as well.
And I can just say, I love you so much for that, Four Cities graduates, because this
is really, really pleasant to have during meetings, site visits whatsoever.
So this is really the rewarding part.
And maybe just as a little anecdote, what was really a surprise a few months ago when
(45:16):
a colleague at the city administration at the city of Vienna got retired, he published
a book on everything he did in urban development over the last decades.
His name is Volker Palmeier, shout out here, you might listen to this podcast.
And when he presented this book in front of his colleagues and the head of department,
(45:40):
so it was a really, really nice celebration, I think he opened the book or he mentioned
it.
And there was a group picture by Four Cities students, must be 2010, 2011, when we did
a so-called living lab in the southern part of the city, working this folklore on questions
(46:03):
they had from city administration back then when they thought about how to develop this
area of the city.
And we did the lab with the students, it went so la la, because expectations from the students
side were also different.
Just to share, the students expect that their suggestions are implemented right away.
(46:25):
I'm telling you now the story, so we had this lab in 2010, 2011, and 13 years later, this
neighborhood is in the development process, so it cannot be a right away implementation
of ideas.
But it was such a nice moment to open this book, and I still have it here, it's a really
nice coffee book.
(46:48):
You open it and there's a group picture by the Four Cities who gave the initial ideas
for all the strategic planning that happened.
That's amazing, that's beautiful.
I also heard just a side story, this week I met somebody from another university and
they did a fieldwork in a certain city and also their students got very fed up that it
(47:12):
doesn't happen right now and they need a permit to try something out in the city, so the students
called the city administration and said, we need this permit now.
Of course, that was not perceived so well.
But Steph, what is your take on this?
What is a funny or strange moment in Four Cities?
(47:34):
But strange to come to that in a moment, but I fully subscribe.
But Yvonne just said, it's very rewarding to actually, I mean, I'm not teaching anymore,
when I was teaching, I'm still doing the excursion when we start in Brussels, the crossing Brussels
excursion and I'm actually right now looking here at several pictures, group pictures of
(48:00):
Four Cities students which hang here.
It's a very interested group, it's very rare that you have a student who's not interested.
I mean, you can be bored because it's a topic, but in general, all of the students are extremely
interested, they're bright, they ask questions.
So it's really nice if you go and visit places.
(48:23):
The feedback was always afterwards.
Wow, what a group, they really challenged me here.
I just wanted to say a few words about what we're doing and then ask the questions why
you're doing this and what about this and we know this example somewhere else and they
do it differently.
Why do you do it like this?
So it's actually quite nice.
(48:43):
So yeah, it's a privilege, honestly, it's a privilege to teach because now as a program
is to an end, I think, especially for those who teach, they start to realize, okay, we're
losing a really interesting public and even, I mean, we got similar programs at the VUB
(49:04):
right now, but it still is different because it also has this intensity, having these four
cities makes it really intense.
Which every time cities for the students intense, but also for the staff and we'll meet up once
in every city once a year, not just to meet, but to have a board meeting, to listen to
(49:26):
you guys, how you're doing with your thesis, you have to present and then we are free.
We are free out of all the burdens of our university because we are there either in
Copenhagen or Vienna, we have a long weekend, we can really concentrate on four cities.
This is really an experience, it's very hard to mimic.
(49:48):
I'm trying to mimic this in Brussels right now with colleagues, which are in Brussels
all the time, et cetera.
It's just impossible to do.
So that's one and the other thing.
I think also the strength of really have an interdisciplinary kind of approach and students
actually become really people with knowledge, which actually can discuss with you at the
(50:11):
same kind of level because they just can tell you about the city.
I mean, as a student from Kiev, he or she can talk about the city.
So that gives kind of an input without having done all the courses, et cetera, which is
really rewarding.
And then there are lots of really funny situations and so on.
(50:33):
But I mean, this is for the graduation ceremony in the pictures at the end.
You keep it exciting.
But the awkward thing was, I mean, for me, at least was this whole, I mean, the day COVID
forced us to stay inside, postpone one intake, try to run the program remotely, knowing that
(50:57):
students were locked literally in a room.
We had students in Madrid, which were not allowed out of their apartment for months.
So that was really, I mean, apart from the experience you go through yourself, you had
at the same time this big group of people, which room you had to deal with.
(51:19):
So that for me was really, that really marked my recent history.
I mean, everybody got well through it, but it left traces.
Yeah.
And you both described this experience you had with it as a very personal one.
(51:40):
Yeah, you feel responsible.
Yeah, you feel responsible.
I think that's the, it also gives you a lot of stress, to be honest.
I mean, maybe has to do with my character too, but it gives you an awful lot of stress.
It really is, and all things which can go wrong and so on.
And that's really, but then, yeah, it works when it works out fine.
(52:01):
It's also, as I said, it's very rewarding.
You also mentioned that there's people from all over the place joining Fucides, who have
been part of Fucides from all over the world.
Do you think that a program like Fucides, which is so travel intense, is still something
we can afford doing in the 2020s?
(52:22):
That's a good question.
Well, if you would say no, yes, I think we would not have learned what happens in the
last decade.
Probably not.
I think we had also the privilege to experiment a lot.
I think connecting to the insights by staff on the COVID and pandemic phase, we also realized
(52:47):
that some parts can really be done hybrid or online.
And also this traveling across four cities, it's a privilege also in financial means.
And to be honest, without the second Erasmus Mundus funding that we successfully achieved,
we could not have run this program.
(53:08):
It's so cost intensive.
If we would go back to the initial phase from the first four cohorts, no university would
agree to be part of it because it's not only resource intensive in terms of staff costs,
but also staff costs.
(53:28):
Staff costs.
Staff costs.
That is a separate cost item on the balance sheet.
But traveling costs and also our time.
Maybe as a critical note, I lost a lot of time with the four cities program as a researcher.
(53:48):
So if I would go for this ideal career, just saying indexing and high level publishing,
I made my choice to run four cities and to be part of it.
No hard feelings, but it's a choice and you compensate in a way.
(54:12):
And so I think nowadays the travel issue, me personally, I'd say we would need to design
it in a more smart way.
Smart meaning cost efficient, but also organizational wise.
You cannot imagine how much organization it needs to organize meetings, to have all the
(54:34):
students on board, blah, blah, blah.
So I think, no, it would not be the same design in my opinion.
The four cities, Brussels, Vienna, Madrid, Copenhagen, sorry, Copenhagen, Madrid.
Those four cities, they came up as being these brave, bold, but also mad people in the beginning
(54:57):
building up this program.
Now with a critical reflection on everything we know about post-colonial approaches and
so on and so forth, probably it would also not be this Eurocentric program anymore.
So all these kinds of...
I think you're right, Yvonne.
I mean, share a lot of these things.
(55:17):
There's just one little anecdote I want to tell you.
So I was in a city and went to a museum and it was mid of the day, so we had a...
Well, we were eating and by accident, the rector, so the head of our university, sees
(55:39):
me, knows me, comes to stay next to me and, ah, how are you doing, et cetera.
And this was just after COVID.
I was doing well.
And I mentioned four cities, said, oh yeah, you guys are traveling around all the time,
but now we can do it all easily.
I mean, we actually can have lots of these international programs just using Zoom and
the like.
(56:00):
And I just turned to her and said, look, Zoom only works if you really, really know each
other, but you can't set up a program and it's very difficult to replace it by just
having it online.
I mean, we saw it with students, we had lots of meetings with all these little things and
it's very hard.
(56:21):
So if you have to run a program like this, you have to move anyway, because I thought
your question was actually on ecological costs also.
So yeah, you know, in a way you could say, well, four cities, which is about Europe,
in a way it's a better choice because you're not too far and you can easily, I mean, everybody
(56:43):
would take trains, et cetera, if they would be affordable or if they would run.
I'm saying Germany is.
Then you could do it.
But I mean, it's true.
It's a traveling circus, which has an impact that for sure, and you have to think about
it.
Because I also think that this with four cities comes not only the teaching and getting to
(57:04):
know the program points, which are organized by the universities, but I think a huge part
is just what happens around it.
You know, the experience you have from living in a city.
And I can tell you so many different different anecdotes from, you know, from living in Copenhagen
in winter, how to, how you learn to do stuff like dumpster diving or something like that.
(57:27):
You would never think of when you're when you're in Austria home or, you know, and these
are these experiences which give you a complete different view on the world, which I think
is not to be underestimated with four cities, at least for me.
And I think you you can do courses online, maybe, but this whole experience around it
and the visits and you know, I think that is very difficult to I think this is what
(57:53):
made four cities, at least for me, a program which is life changing.
I mean, maybe this might be a repetition, but I think it's important to keep that in
mind.
The last point, if one has said universities have changed a lot.
Universities I think have become less of a free space, not only intellectual, but also
organizational.
(58:13):
So that really makes it very hard.
And you know, even if you would like to set up a program like that these days, I mean,
you're just, you know, you're punished because you don't publish enough because you don't
do what gives you a high, you know, reward from the university.
(58:34):
And that's really something I think universities should think about it.
Because if you want to have good education, because I think four cities really is good
education.
And I also think the education comes with a certain limit of numbers of students which
you put together.
And I think we really reached our limit there with four cities.
(58:55):
We went from small groups of 15, something like this to to 40 students right now in a
group.
But above that, you can't, I mean, you can't do it.
I think it's really becomes hard.
I mean, we see it through experience what what the kind of thing is.
(59:16):
And of course, the more students you can serve, the cheaper it gets per student, blah, blah,
blah, you know, the kind of economics behind it.
I mean, quite important.
I'm quite surprised that you said that the university becomes less of a free space to
do these kind of things.
Unfortunately.
Yes.
I mean, elaborate a bit on that.
My thing would always be take David Harvey as he is present everywhere in the program.
(59:44):
It's probably very unlikely he would make a career.
And lots of others.
I mean, all my inspiring professors I had at my own university, they would not even
get a job in their early career.
So universities professionalize in a way that they are they are they really have knowledgeable
(01:00:09):
management bodies.
So and this is what you can also see that everything and come back to the four cities
program related to mobility or joint degrees is now nowadays much more structured, built
on much more knowledge how to do it.
I mean, again, four cities was for run up model and we did many mistakes and we learned
(01:00:29):
through the mistakes, but now you have a certain professional level.
And this is what you experience also nowadays at the universities that you do not have the
free space to experiment and make mistakes.
You have to be successful.
Yes, that's absolutely true.
All right.
With four cities coming to an end next year, what is next for you personally?
(01:00:54):
Starting with you, Yvonne.
A lot.
So we are we are preparing the space, so to say, after four cities as a consortium.
So as you already heard, there's going to be a big party, but also other serious stuff
that we are planning to document the legacy of four cities.
(01:01:14):
We also think about not only think, but we also come into practice in terms of new curricula.
So education on urban studies is key, of course, as an urban geographer, it would be a pity
to not being able to do that.
So we are right now at University of Vienna, starting the process for the development of
(01:01:35):
new curricula and urban studies is included in that.
So spoiler, try to include as much of our learnings from the four cities program and
then really well grounded and and thorough program in the future.
We have the geography department.
So interdisciplinary approaches, transdisciplinarity are going to be key components here.
(01:02:01):
And then from a personal perspective, I mean, researching, writing, publishing, dissemination,
talking about what we know.
So this brings me to one of my, let's say, biggest areas of where I would like to develop
(01:02:21):
even more skills to really translate what we are doing.
I think universities and researchers in their role as knowledge keepers, we really need
to become knowledge providers.
It's now time to really explain what we do, what we know and how we can together, as you
(01:02:42):
just mentioned, Johannes, co-create a better future, not only in cities, but in regions
in our modern human world.
This is, I think, something that strikes me as a personal goal for the future.
And I'm very optimistic in terms of what we can do, but times are different compared to
(01:03:08):
15 years ago, also at a global and broader scale.
So we really need to be cautious how we change the future of our world.
I hope that I can make a useful contribution to that.
Beautiful.
How about you, Steph?
(01:03:31):
Well, first of all, we have to close Four Cities, which is a lot of work.
That probably will take my next two years.
And for me, it's not so much a drastic change in the sense that other things have started
because, as I mentioned before, we have a spinoff of Four Cities, which is a kind of
(01:03:53):
local residential program, but with mainly international students in, which is also a
two-year program, Master of Urban Studies.
And I'm responsible for organizing this thing and doing the follow-up of it.
So that takes most of my time.
And new thing I'm involved in and which has to be developed further.
(01:04:15):
And these are also the things I like the most is setting up new things and trying out things
and so on.
I'm happy with doing a kind of follow-up and routine things, but it has to be, you know,
elicited with new things.
So this is this collaboration I just mentioned before in the former barracks, which comes
(01:04:39):
under the name of USET, U-S-E-T.
If you Google it, you'll find it, which is this cooperation VUB will be with Urban Studies
research units from both universities, which also have, I mean, an open lab, so kind of
(01:05:03):
social lab connected to it, which really does the outreach and really having this concentrated
at one building is an interesting thing.
So I'm already involved together with a colleague to, well, on the one hand, you know, make
sure this project contents wise also goes in a certain direction, but then just make
(01:05:24):
it happen.
I mean, there's all these things.
It's like for cities, there's a lot of nitty gritty background work to be done.
Otherwise, things just don't happen.
Good idea is not enough.
You need enough people who are willing to actually do some of the less pleasant but
very rewarding work.
(01:05:47):
Thank you.
And I'll just close.
Thank you so much for being part of the Cities Remedial Podcast.
I enjoy talking to you a lot and it was so good to see you, Steph, again, and congratulations
for setting up this program for over 15 years, you know, which came out of this very strong
drive which you described and it showed that how you push the boundaries also on the debate
(01:06:10):
on what is urban education, I find, throughout Europe.
I think you really left a mark there and ultimately also changed many people's lives, certainly
mine, who joined for cities.
Thank you for that.
And we'll meet for a coffee for sure before that, but we'll meet for the closing event
(01:06:33):
next year, September.
Yes, September 25th.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you for having us, Johan.
It's been a pleasure.
That's it for today.
I hope you liked the show.
And if you were part of the Cities, maybe we meet at the big closing party in Brussels
in September.
If you like the content, consider subscribing to Cities Remedial on your favorite podcasting
(01:06:56):
platform that would be great or follow us on Instagram.
Like the show or rate the show and tell everybody about it.
Also please feel free to send me an email at johannes at Anthropocene.city.
That's it for today.
Until next time.
Please stay healthy everyone.
Hey, welcome back to the Cities Reimagined podcast.
(00:11):
I hope you had a good start into the year if you're listening right away in the early
days of January 2025.
I'm your voice of choice, Johannes Riegler, and this is Reimagining Urban Education.
Yeah, as the title suggests, today we dive into urban studies and education for making
(00:32):
cities better places.
Since I graduated from my masters in urban studies some 15 years ago, a lot has changed.
Back then, it was an emerging field where people seemed to have trouble understanding
what it was, urban studies.
Is it sociology?
Is it architecture?
Is it economics?
(00:54):
Is it all of that or none of that?
Today it is widely recognized as one key discipline in understanding cities, which combines all
of these perspectives.
If you're into urban studies or a related field in Europe, the chances are pretty high
that you've heard of the Four Cities Master Program.
As the name suggests, that two-year master program brings students across four cities,
(01:19):
and that is Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen, and Madrid, with numerous excursions to other
European cities while you're traveling from one place to another.
It is, I have to say, a really life-changing experience, and I can tell you that from my
own experiences.
I was part of the program in its early days, starting in 2009.
(01:40):
What makes this program so special is not only the pain in the neck that you need to
find housing and a proper accommodation every couple of months in a different city, but
it is that you study at six universities and you get to know so many different urban contexts
all across Europe.
Now some 15 years after I graduated from the program, Four Cities will come to an end in
(02:04):
2025, and I thought it would be the perfect moment to sit down with two people who helped
bring this program to life from the very beginning.
Yvonne Franz, who is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Department of Geography
at the University of Vienna, and Stefan de Kort, also from the Geography Department,
(02:26):
or Urban Studies Wing of the Geography Department at the Freie Universität Brussels.
So in the upcoming 60 minutes, we will talk about how urban studies has changed since
the start of Four Cities, whether a program like Four Cities with its European perspective
is still contemporary, and how the universities or the work at universities in general has
(02:50):
changed.
There are also so many stories and anecdotes, personal anecdotes of the two in this conversation,
which you absolutely do not want to miss, whether you have been a Four Cities student
yourself or not.
There is a lot to uncover that's remained hidden over the last 15 to 20 years related
(03:11):
to urban studies.
So yeah, make sure you listen to the whole episode.
And I hope you really enjoy the show.
Really appreciate that you're tuning in again.
If you like what you hear, consider subscribing to Cities Rematch and only favorite podcasting
platform or follow us on Instagram.
Like rate the show, leave a comment and tell your friends all about it.
I also really love hearing from listeners, so feel free to send me an email at johannesatatropocene.city.
(03:39):
You can also find the contact in the show notes.
Hi, Yvonne and Steph.
It's good to have you on the Cities Rematch and podcast.
How are you doing on this Friday morning?
Very good.
Yes.
Having a cup of tea.
So.
Yeah.
(04:00):
Or after holidays?
Well, being awake already for a while.
Same here.
Also temperature is quite convenient today in Vienna.
So ready to have a nice conversation with you.
Thanks for having us.
Very good.
First of all, I was wondering, how did you actually end up building a career or all your
(04:20):
interests around cities?
What triggered that?
How did you come about working on that topic?
It's a pure coincidence.
But my interest about cities, I think it already started when I was a little child growing
up in Bavaria and always pushing my parents' heart to go somewhere else to see some, yeah,
(04:42):
let's say more variation of life.
And my, let's say my happiest moments are those when I could see something new and this
was mostly related to cities.
Nice.
How about you, Steph?
For me, it's a bit similar.
So I grew up in the suburbs of Brussels and which I found great until I was 13, 14.
(05:07):
I really got fed up with having to cycle very far to get to friends and there was nothing
going on because before you were just young kids playing around in gardens and so on.
But that's, you know, if you turn a bit older, that's not what you want to do.
So the moment I could, you know, I went to the city at the beginning, just I'm still
(05:33):
living with my parents, but then moved into it.
And so I was always had a fascination for, yeah, lots of stuff happening there was different,
was unexpected.
I think traveling also looking backwards.
So I traveled a year after school before actually studying my studies.
(05:56):
And if I look back on that travel, which was to the East as far as India, mainly went to
cities.
So I did all the big cities on the way.
Once in a while, I went to the mountains or somewhere, but you always ended up in cities,
which I found really intriguing.
So fast forward now, you both work at universities.
(06:17):
Tell us a little bit about your role at the university, starting with you, Steph.
Yes, so my role changed over the years.
So I started out as a PhD student and I did a lot of contract work, which was at the geography
department of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels.
(06:41):
I'm originally trained as a geographer.
And then over the years, I got involved into interdisciplinary studies because there was
a colleague who showed up at our department, which was very inspiring.
And he actually was the one who set up the very first kind of international program where
(07:07):
students traveled between cities.
So this is somewhere second half of the 1990s.
And yeah, I then got involved in one of these programs he was running, which was called
POLIS, which was actually what you could call four cities on speed because students went
(07:31):
to four cities in one academic year and had to finish a thesis.
So that was quite a challenge.
So in the beginning, I was just helping out, doing the organization and did a little bit
of teaching and then came along the opportunity to actually start four cities.
So I was involved right from the start together with colleagues from the VUB to set it up.
(07:59):
And at the beginning, yeah, I mean, it nearly everything, doing the international organization,
consulting, teaching, urban geography, and urban analysis, which is a practice course
in the first semester, going to all these cities and so on and so forth.
And then I think after like a couple of years into the program, actually switched to a polytechnic
(08:24):
and I was out of the program for a couple of years then came back.
Meanwhile, also switched role in the university.
So I'm not teaching anymore, I'm not doing research anymore, but I'm well, I have an
organizational managerial position.
Four cities also grew, meanwhile, because we had the Erasmus-Mundustan, we talk about
(08:45):
this later, maybe.
And it also grew in number of students, started out with small students and then ended up
with many more, also very different students compared to the beginning, and now much more
involved in at the level of organization.
So I have less interaction with students, it's much more trying to run the shop internationally
(09:13):
and locally also.
Yvonne, you're still in touch with the students, but the last cohort just finished in Vienna,
I believe.
What's your thoughts about your work and your involvement of Four Cities, because you're
also one of the artifacts in Four Cities, I think.
Yeah, I hope my age is not visible already, but when I calculated, I started with Four
(09:35):
Cities in 2009, so that means I was 15 years younger.
So you can tell that obviously also my role changed similar to Steph's.
When I started back then, I was just starting a so-called pre-doc position at the department
of geography.
So I graduated as a geographer at University of Vienna, and then I had the big chance to
(09:58):
apply for a doctoral position with the privilege that it has been a faculty position, which
means that you're not only involved in research for your PhD, but you do everything from teaching
to administration.
It's a privilege, but I didn't know that it also comes with a sweet pill called Four Cities,
(10:19):
because Four Cities was on the table already.
I think they second-forward already, and I jumped in without knowing anything about the
program.
And that was quite overwhelming.
I still remember some sleepless nights or weekends where I just didn't know how to handle
teaching, building up the programs.
(10:43):
As you still remember, in the first years, it was, let's be honest, it was quite a chaos,
having 20 helpless students traveling from Brussels to Vienna, finding housing, getting
to know the rules of each university, the written rules, but also the invisibility.
So this was on top of my own personal, say, change that I started a PhD, and I had to
(11:10):
find my way in academia as well.
But I settled, and after a while, where suddenly you become postdoc, and I also left for a
while a program similar to Steph when I went to other institutions as a postdoc researcher
and fellow, for instance, in Stanford or other universities.
(11:30):
And then I came back to the University of Vienna as a postdoc researcher.
And only recently I became senior lecturer, which is, surprise, surprise.
My first permanent position in academia.
So it's a personal route, so to say, a personal journey with four cities.
(11:50):
But I must say, it's also very rewarding that I can look back on this journey, also being
right now in this first time ever situation that I can say that I have a permanent position
now.
I mean, that's amazing.
(12:10):
Because of you, you spent your whole career basically on four cities, or you built it.
It is part of your life, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Takes over, takes over your life.
No, you wouldn't do this, of course, if you're not interested, and if you're not a little
(12:31):
bit mad, I think.
The good thing is, I remember at the beginning, setting up four cities, you basically don't
know what's coming.
I mean, you get good ideas, discuss about it, there was this opportunity to do it, and
then you just go for it.
In hindsight, if you look back, I think, wow, if I would have known, I probably would have
(12:56):
done it again.
But beforehand, you just don't know what it is.
Because as Ivana says, it's not just putting a program together, it's this whole practical
side to it.
We also didn't know, will it work?
What about the students?
Because it is also a really heavy program for the students.
(13:18):
I mean, you did it yourself.
So you have to go to four cities, find your way around.
What we thought was really a plus for the program, EI, you go to four different cities.
It's not just four different cities, there are four different societies, there are four
(13:38):
different practices, resistances, politics, etc.
Also comes with having to adapt each time.
And students, I mean, it's really a challenging thing for students, which I think we sometimes
really underestimated.
And especially during the trajectory, I think it's really hard.
(14:01):
It's really hard for some students.
But then afterwards, it seems to be really rewarding.
If I look at the feedback we get from the alumni, etc., when they look back a few years
after the program, then it seems to be very rewarding.
And yes, it takes over your life.
Isn't that the fun?
(14:24):
That's right.
Yeah.
If you just would count all the weekends and partially holidays that went from our side
into the program, as well as from the student side, I think that is really, we sometimes
speak about the four cities family, right?
Although we don't really.
Well, it's not a family by DNA, of course.
(14:44):
But I think that relates to Stefan's argument that we underestimated in the beginning also
the challenges, but we also underestimated this potential for making not only friends,
but really making see my family members.
We probably only received 20% of the rumors going on in the alumni group.
(15:07):
But if you look back at couples, four cities children, friendships, on a professional perspective,
also collaborations, we come back to this a bit later.
But wherever we go from a professional point of view, we probably bump into a four cities
alumni.
We see people having a career who did the four cities program.
(15:33):
We are super proud in many ways.
And I think back then, again, 29, I haven't thought about that.
Yeah, me either.
I really like, Stefan, you said that you have to be mad, somehow mad to set this up.
Because also, in 2008, when it started, it was a different time.
(15:54):
Also, just in terms of technology, now I can go around with my phone and I can connect
anytime with anybody around the world, basically, regardless in the country.
But when I started in 2009, that was not the case.
At some point, I got a Nokia phone which looked like a blueberry.
Now, what was it?
(16:16):
Not blueberry, likeberry?
Yeah, likeberry.
There's a million keys on it.
But I tell you a little bit about how I found out about four cities and how I started it.
So I started geography first in the south of Austria in Klagenfurt, did my bachelor's
there.
And I thought about going to Vienna and doing my master's, somehow related to planning on
(16:41):
the geography department.
And then one day, I spent the night in Graz with a friend because next to my studies,
I was counting cars for money at the traffic planning company.
And he was a geographer as well.
Marco is his name.
He might listen to this podcast as well.
(17:01):
Shout out, hello, Marco.
Yeah, Marco, yeah.
And he told me, oh, yeah, he found his master's at the University of Vienna, which seems
interesting.
It might be something for me.
And then we checked it out in the evening.
Just like, what is this?
It is in four different cities?
How is that even possible?
(17:23):
That is impossible.
But I was immediately intrigued and applied and got in.
And really fast forward, that changed everything from that moment on.
Just this experience from staying in four cities over two years, it gives you so much.
You learn so much, not only on urbanism, which I, you know, perspectives I didn't even think
(17:46):
of before starting it, being a geographer, but then also just moving every other month
and having to build up your network and your life in four different cities.
It changes your life.
At least it did with mine.
I can imagine.
(18:07):
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
What a surprise.
And we are happy that this surprise in Graz, shout out to colleagues in Graz, happened.
And you just said, you asked yourself, how is that possible?
Just as a, not so funny, but as a funny side anecdote, it was almost impossible.
(18:30):
We made it possible.
So just to give you an internal perspective of this program, probably everybody at the
University of Vienna, so from controlling to student inscription office to the rectorate
knows about this program, not because it is so great also, of course, but mainly because
(18:52):
we have been a pain in the, to make, to find solutions.
Because our biggest critique, sometimes we forget about this, is that the European Union
have these bold ideas of joint curricula later with the Erasmus-Munus, but local administration
(19:12):
is not ready for that.
It's not even national administration.
So it's really boring to talk about it, but I think, Steph, correct me if I'm wrong, probably
half of our working time on the program, we spend into finding solutions of regulations
that are existing, but we have to overcome these regulations, otherwise, four cities
(19:37):
would not work out as it's running.
I think you can compare it to the saga of the visas, which most of you who are non-European
actually went through to repeat, I mean, it's a bit better these days, although.
So how did it work?
(19:57):
You had to get the visa to get to Belgium, then you had to wait for a police officer
to come to your student room.
That gave you a paper from the municipality, you needed a paper to go to the embassy to
get the next visa for Austria, then the same in Austria, then the same in for Copenhagen,
(20:17):
and then the same for Spain with nationalities like Macedonians who are not officially recognized
by Spain.
So they can't get, I mean, just these kinds of things you have just at the practical level
of a university with rules and regulations and yeah, but this diploma and this curriculum
(20:41):
and yeah, but we want this marking, they do it differently over there, it's a lot of energy
goes in there, but it's worthwhile because when it works out, it works out.
And again, you have to be a little bit mad and you have to also stand your ground, and
(21:03):
that works very well if you have a program which is coherent, you can say, look, this
is really something worthwhile doing.
You want to do it as a university, yes or no, because we several times had the situation,
we really asked them like, okay, fine, we stop it, but do you want not to have this
anymore and they go, no, no, no, and then they go out and look for solutions.
(21:25):
So yes, that's probably, I mean, now, as I'm much more on the organizational managerial
side, yeah, that takes a lot of time, which is sometimes frustrating, but very rewarding.
And that's also a stuff we don't tell students too much because for them in the end, you
(21:46):
know, what do they care?
They just want to get a program and get along with it.
But yes, there's a lot of things behind it.
And as Yvonne rightly says, so there's a lot of talk about setting up international things,
utilizing, et cetera, et cetera.
But then if it comes down, sometimes there's a nitty gritty conservatism and, you know,
(22:10):
local rules of everything.
And then in the end, the international is not so much thought international.
It's very, very local with like many things.
Yeah.
Because it's complicated also, right?
You need to go over boundaries and find ways to do it.
Yeah, congratulations to that, that you held on for that.
(22:34):
We're not the only two ones.
I mean, there's a lot of others.
So we speak in the name of about 15 people who do this on a daily basis.
But coming back a bit to the topic of urbanism as such.
So the debate is about around cities in the last 15 years has very much developed and
shifted also.
(22:55):
It gained significant kind of strategic importance on European and global level.
And I feel like it is also understood very differently than 15 years ago, whereas you
had to argue more for this more integrated approach of bringing different disciplines
and different perspectives together.
Now it is broadly understood and dealt as such.
(23:17):
How do you see these changes?
What is your take on that?
What changed throughout the years in the bigger debate since you started making Four Cities
happen?
Starting with you, Yvonne, maybe.
Yeah, I might use my example of my PhD research that I started back then.
It was on gentrification and the term gentrification I learned through the Four Cities program.
(23:43):
It was not such a phenomenon or theory already established while I did my diploma studies
in geography.
So first, Four Cities always helped to, let's say, push knowledge in a state-of-the-art
manner.
So we've always been confronted with very recent developments in urban studies.
(24:10):
And secondly, back then, you could tell we already kind of grasped that cities are changing.
Every city has a unique DNA.
But in a certain moment, if you really look analytically on processes, you realize, wait
a minute, gentrification, displacement of people from their residential areas.
(24:32):
This happens not only in Paris, London, and New York.
It also happens in Berlin and even in a city like Vienna, where you quote, where a social
housing stock should prevent people from displacement.
So this was my starting point to realize, well, cities are not museums.
They are constantly changing.
(24:54):
And they have similarities, but they also have discrepancies.
And these similarities and discrepancies, this was also the core of the Four Cities
program to always compare with each other, to understand and come beyond idiographic
or to achieve more generalizing ideas and theories on how cities work.
(25:19):
And I would argue that over the years, it became much more complex.
So nowadays, we speak about planetary urbanization, localization.
So we have global processes, but we see the change in the local neighborhood.
We do discuss post-growth theories because we are aware that cities cannot grow or also
(25:43):
economies cannot grow as we accepted it in the last decades.
So it became more complex.
And I would argue from my personal academic research perspective that it's relational.
Cities are not singular entities.
(26:05):
Cities are connected to the periphery, to the global stage.
It's all in relation.
And we really need to develop a very comprehensive skill set to understand these relations.
And this includes much more disciplines, even more than we have in our Four Cities program.
So that is also the reason why we expanded our network with other stakeholders.
(26:29):
We might speak about this a bit later.
And it includes much more skills in terms of transdisciplinarity, how to speak to each
other, how to understand each other.
And this, I would say, this is the cherry bottom on everything, how to really take action
to change something.
Yes, yes, I agree with Yvonne.
(26:52):
I mean, what I would add is that I think a lot of the processes in cities which are going
on are not so fundamentally different from when we started out.
I think the scale and the scope of things changed a lot.
And there are some teams or some issues which have become more important than they used
(27:17):
to be, or at least people are more aware of it, people and policymakers and so on.
And the big issue there, of course, is everything which has to do with the relationship between
nature and the city and the climate.
I think that's one really one big thing.
The other one, all cities have known an incredible increase in migration.
(27:37):
I mean, there are peaks and ups and downs and depending on policy and so on.
But I think, I mean, I was trained already in a view on the city is basically the container
where migration is coming in and going out and so on.
But that process just intensified and also the characteristics of it changed a bit.
(28:02):
I think recently, if you look a little bit, geopolitics came in much stronger.
You know, cities also become, they become items of war to be conquered, to be destroyed.
This of course, again, depends a little bit from where you are and how do you look on
the world?
(28:22):
But it's also a big change, I think that when we started out and have a look at academics
and the interests in Europe and the United States at that moment, I mean, there is much
more of an awareness of the situatedness of, you know, of that research of these academics
and so on and so forth.
So I think on the one hand, side cities have changed.
(28:45):
Mentioning all these things are just said, just a few of them.
But I think also the way we look at them, we analyze them has also shifted.
I think for me, these are some important things.
Yeah, and they became also somehow, let's say, strategic entities to fulfill or to reach
(29:07):
sustainability targets or other targets, right?
With the SDGs and the UN-Habitat New Urban Agenda.
I mean, they had a paper before on that as well, but it's gained significant relevance
for these debates, right?
Absolutely.
I think it was very much needed also to think about the leverage points and also the impact
(29:31):
that specific entities might have or not.
And I think to narrow it down and to agree on the fact that cities can be changemakers,
this was really crucial.
I would now argue that it became pretty mainstream.
So this is a narrative that is quite well accepted.
And now the next step is probably to really think not only about what its cities actually
(29:57):
achieved during the last 10, 15 years as a changemaker and what role do they play in
all these transformations that steps on just mentioned, like the socio-ecological transformation.
Cities are not so sustainable if you open up the algorithm and calculate what people
really consume that is produced somewhere else outside of cities.
(30:21):
So you know these debates.
So I think we are now in this phase of becoming more critical about the role of cities and
also about the long trajectories that are inherent in changes.
And we are now in a moment of our society and humanity where we need actual change and
(30:44):
better fast than slow.
So it's really a moment now that is really interesting to be part of this debate and
really do something for the better, of course.
Do you think for cities still reflects this kind of ambition with the program?
(31:08):
How did it develop over the years?
How did it bring in these new perspectives?
Well I think, but that's a personal opinion about this.
I mean there was a very strong narrative, at least in Brussels when we started out,
which was around this kind of the city versus the nation state.
(31:33):
Like this idea that for a very long time, sciences, politics, popular thinking was based
on a view on the world which is about countries.
You're a member of the country, your identity is defined by being a Belgian or German or
(31:54):
you know.
And then as a kind of antidote to this, that actually the world doesn't function only like
this.
It also functions through cities which are organized in networks which have another geography,
etc.
And I think at the beginning it was a very strong plea that in a way these cities are
(32:15):
a solution to a lot of problems.
So there was a kind of outspoken political thing.
Now that also depended a little bit on which city we're talking about.
I mean in the sense which of the four cities and the teaching crew there because our colleagues
in Copenhagen for example, which are from the humanities, they do have a different approach
on this.
(32:36):
I mean their politicization is different in a way and I think over the years and especially
last years it became more academic the program I think.
Also because this was a request at a certain point by the students and I would not say
(33:00):
that like the critical edge or so is out of it but it's not.
I mean it leaves a bit more possibility to have a wider debate, also political debate
within the program.
I don't know if you agree with this Ivana but I think for me this is I mean from Brussels
and the position I'm in this is a little bit to shift which it has had.
(33:23):
Yeah I would agree.
Do you have a better insight on that of course?
But what I would add is that with the program we didn't expect that in the beginning but
we are somehow an actor that is changing the system if you want to say from within.
So the ecosystem of cities and how cities work we contribute with a teaching program.
(33:48):
It's a graduate program but it's an educational contribution.
So we educate the next generations, we can speak about the rules here already, how we
think about cities and also how we influence the narratives on the dates related to urban
(34:09):
and artistic topics and I think here we have still, we always had and I think now we actually
can see the impact we have with the core cities program.
If we just look at the local working or labor market, I can only speak now for the Austrian
local labor market, whenever we speak to people who look for new employees they approach us
(34:37):
and they ask us do you have graduate students who could be interested in this because we
really appreciate this broad scope and knowledge base of for city students.
This is really something that makes it special being a graduate from the for cities program
compared to any other national program at the university.
So if you really look for people who have this general knowledge on what is going on,
(35:03):
being not the nerd in the tiny little details but being this generalistic person, understanding
what relates to each other, I think that makes for cities still very unique.
Yes, I think that's true.
We also see it in Brussels, most of our PhD students are actually for city students and
(35:25):
they have to go to a competition to actually get a scholarship.
And yeah, it's actually adaptability to be quite wide.
The other day I had a talk with the former Baumeister of Antwerp.
(35:50):
Baumeister you would kind of translate as a kind of urban facilitator.
It's an important person because he has to get consulted by the municipality before big
urbanistic projects are implemented.
And he told me, he said yes, they actually engaged somebody from four cities.
(36:11):
And the only reason why we did this was because we looked at that CV and we thought, wow,
a strange thing.
What kind of studies is that?
And then they invited her and yes, to the interview then they thought, well, this is
exactly what we needed.
And I think from the start we had in mind to create or to enhance the possibility of
(36:37):
having people which can be intermediaries, which can bring together, I'm not afraid to
deal with things which you don't know into detail, but quickly make up their thing.
I myself had to learn it.
I remember it.
So I told you at the beginning about this Polis program.
There was a very first time I was involved in this kind of international things.
(37:00):
And I remember that I was afraid to go to the very first meeting because I was sitting
with architecture and cultural scientists and I didn't know anything about it.
But then yes, in a way after a while you understood, okay, if somebody talks about something you
don't understand, you just can ask it and he gives you a quick resume and just absorb
(37:21):
very quickly a lot of information.
And then you also feel how strongly you form to a particular discipline, which is not as
such as a problem.
But I think if you can combine a strong disciplinary background on the one hand side with this
kind of broader adaptive kind of approach, that's really a strong thing.
(37:47):
By the way, I mean, preparing this, I went through the questionnaires we sent out to alumni.
And if you just look at the answers to the question, what were the main skills you get
from 4City?
So adaptability is one holistic perspective, work well with others, international experience,
critical thinking, interdisciplinary approach.
(38:10):
So I think in that sense, we succeeded quite well in transmitting these kind of things.
Absolutely.
And I think you were with the program, you were kind of ahead of the time.
I mean, Yvonne, you said that you kind of paved the way also to this understanding of
this, at least I interpreted it as such, of transdisciplinarity on urban matters.
(38:34):
When I graduated in 2011, the month that followed when I was looking for a job, I was quite,
yeah, disappointed.
Not that disappointed, but I received a couple of rejections from jobs because they couldn't
grasp what that is.
They didn't know they wanted to have an architect, they wanted to have a sociologist or something
(38:55):
in between, but they couldn't grasp why there is somebody with this interesting background
but maybe it's a bit too edgy and we don't fall for that yet.
We want to have this very specific competence on subject matter.
And I was actually pretty lucky how I got the job.
(39:18):
I mean, it's not the same job, but I'm still kind of working for that.
I was just applying at the Austrian Institute of Technology for a job I was absolutely not
qualified for.
It was a kind of research, it was kind of portfolio management for the mobility department.
So I just applied, but I got lucky because my still kind of colleague, boss, led this
(39:50):
mobility department for a couple of months because they had an offer.
And she was building up this research innovation program called JPI Europe on a European scale.
It took a couple of months, but eventually I did not get the portfolio job, which I was
absolutely not qualified for.
But I started this job to contribute to building up a European research innovation program,
(40:15):
which is extremely fascinating and interesting.
And that was exactly why I was hired and why I kind of was well placed to contribute to
this work was because of this broad generalist perspective and background that Four Cities
led me, just to bring in a personal story here.
(40:39):
But you must have like 400 to 500 alumni until now.
And Yvonne, you already said you bounce into Four Cities everywhere.
I have the same experience when you have a coffee at the conference or so and start talking
to somebody and then it happens regularly that you find out that this person did the
(41:01):
same program you did.
But Steph, do you have some details on the statistics or backgrounds of the people?
Yeah, well, not in a systematic way, because we're going to prepare this for the big end
party, which will be in September 2025.
I like that you already prepared a big...
(41:21):
Two years, we think about this already.
Yeah, it has to be two years we think about this already.
This is going to be a blast.
Now it's announced.
So we literally have students from all over the world, but there are fewer from large
parts of Africa.
We had discussions also with students, student representatives who told us, yeah, how come?
(41:47):
Why aren't there more?
But then literally, I think I didn't check if there are how many countries are missing
in the whole list, but that goes always.
So yeah.
Yvonne, in the beginning, you already said Four Cities Made gave you some sleepless nights
(42:10):
in the beginning.
I mean, you set up a program where there's a group of people traveling through Europe.
What could possibly go wrong?
And you have a lot of field visits and so on.
People going to be lost late and so on.
Do you want to share some moments which gave you the sleepless nights or some strange or
(42:31):
funny moments which you experienced through the years?
I think sleepless nights always occurred when there was some personal emotional connection.
So some were stuck close to a border because of visa issues or whatever, or having a really
bad landlord who pushed out people from their apartments or asked for additional money,
(42:57):
something like this.
And then there's a very blurry line between I'm the professional coordinator at the University
of Vienna and I'm also a human being.
So on that point.
But there are also so many funny moments.
So there is, let's say, a common saying that we have, say, not only an academic delay of
(43:20):
15 minutes when we start teaching with Four Cities students, it might be a Four Cities
15 minutes, which usually is a 30 minute or 45 minute delay.
My theory is that if there would be no waiting time in Four Cities, it would be actually
a one year master.
Yeah, that's a very, I would agree.
(43:43):
And this is, of course, especially challenging when you're, as you just mentioned, on the
go during explorations of field trips where you're also supposed to meet other people
who take their time to meet you.
And then you're there with five people, but actually you announced 43 people.
I'm exaggerating, but this is sometimes where you are in between, that's my personal reputation,
(44:05):
please show up in time.
And also, yeah, so all of this, but you know, what never happens with Four Cities students
is a quiet minute or quiet five minutes.
I've always got to know Four Cities students as eagerly curious, interested in the topics,
(44:27):
very reflective, also very knowledgeable in sharing their knowledge.
So when we talk with other people outside of the program, the stakeholders, the city
administrators, the NGOs, practitioners, everybody is so trained in sharing where they
come from, what background they have and what makes them special, that is always a learning
(44:50):
situation for the other part as well.
And I can just say, I love you so much for that, Four Cities graduates, because this
is really, really pleasant to have during meetings, site visits whatsoever.
So this is really the rewarding part.
And maybe just as a little anecdote, what was really a surprise a few months ago when
(45:16):
a colleague at the city administration at the city of Vienna got retired, he published
a book on everything he did in urban development over the last decades.
His name is Volker Palmeier, shout out here, you might listen to this podcast.
And when he presented this book in front of his colleagues and the head of department,
(45:40):
so it was a really, really nice celebration, I think he opened the book or he mentioned
it.
And there was a group picture by Four Cities students, must be 2010, 2011, when we did
a so-called living lab in the southern part of the city, working this folklore on questions
(46:03):
they had from city administration back then when they thought about how to develop this
area of the city.
And we did the lab with the students, it went so la la, because expectations from the students
side were also different.
Just to share, the students expect that their suggestions are implemented right away.
(46:25):
I'm telling you now the story, so we had this lab in 2010, 2011, and 13 years later, this
neighborhood is in the development process, so it cannot be a right away implementation
of ideas.
But it was such a nice moment to open this book, and I still have it here, it's a really
nice coffee book.
(46:48):
You open it and there's a group picture by the Four Cities who gave the initial ideas
for all the strategic planning that happened.
That's amazing, that's beautiful.
I also heard just a side story, this week I met somebody from another university and
they did a fieldwork in a certain city and also their students got very fed up that it
(47:12):
doesn't happen right now and they need a permit to try something out in the city, so the students
called the city administration and said, we need this permit now.
Of course, that was not perceived so well.
But Steph, what is your take on this?
What is a funny or strange moment in Four Cities?
(47:34):
But strange to come to that in a moment, but I fully subscribe.
But Yvonne just said, it's very rewarding to actually, I mean, I'm not teaching anymore,
when I was teaching, I'm still doing the excursion when we start in Brussels, the crossing Brussels
excursion and I'm actually right now looking here at several pictures, group pictures of
(48:00):
Four Cities students which hang here.
It's a very interested group, it's very rare that you have a student who's not interested.
I mean, you can be bored because it's a topic, but in general, all of the students are extremely
interested, they're bright, they ask questions.
So it's really nice if you go and visit places.
(48:23):
The feedback was always afterwards.
Wow, what a group, they really challenged me here.
I just wanted to say a few words about what we're doing and then ask the questions why
you're doing this and what about this and we know this example somewhere else and they
do it differently.
Why do you do it like this?
So it's actually quite nice.
(48:43):
So yeah, it's a privilege, honestly, it's a privilege to teach because now as a program
is to an end, I think, especially for those who teach, they start to realize, okay, we're
losing a really interesting public and even, I mean, we got similar programs at the VUB
(49:04):
right now, but it still is different because it also has this intensity, having these four
cities makes it really intense.
Which every time cities for the students intense, but also for the staff and we'll meet up once
in every city once a year, not just to meet, but to have a board meeting, to listen to
(49:26):
you guys, how you're doing with your thesis, you have to present and then we are free.
We are free out of all the burdens of our university because we are there either in
Copenhagen or Vienna, we have a long weekend, we can really concentrate on four cities.
This is really an experience, it's very hard to mimic.
(49:48):
I'm trying to mimic this in Brussels right now with colleagues, which are in Brussels
all the time, et cetera.
It's just impossible to do.
So that's one and the other thing.
I think also the strength of really have an interdisciplinary kind of approach and students
actually become really people with knowledge, which actually can discuss with you at the
(50:11):
same kind of level because they just can tell you about the city.
I mean, as a student from Kiev, he or she can talk about the city.
So that gives kind of an input without having done all the courses, et cetera, which is
really rewarding.
And then there are lots of really funny situations and so on.
(50:33):
But I mean, this is for the graduation ceremony in the pictures at the end.
You keep it exciting.
But the awkward thing was, I mean, for me, at least was this whole, I mean, the day COVID
forced us to stay inside, postpone one intake, try to run the program remotely, knowing that
(50:57):
students were locked literally in a room.
We had students in Madrid, which were not allowed out of their apartment for months.
So that was really, I mean, apart from the experience you go through yourself, you had
at the same time this big group of people, which room you had to deal with.
(51:19):
So that for me was really, that really marked my recent history.
I mean, everybody got well through it, but it left traces.
Yeah.
And you both described this experience you had with it as a very personal one.
(51:40):
Yeah, you feel responsible.
Yeah, you feel responsible.
I think that's the, it also gives you a lot of stress, to be honest.
I mean, maybe has to do with my character too, but it gives you an awful lot of stress.
It really is, and all things which can go wrong and so on.
And that's really, but then, yeah, it works when it works out fine.
(52:01):
It's also, as I said, it's very rewarding.
You also mentioned that there's people from all over the place joining Fucides, who have
been part of Fucides from all over the world.
Do you think that a program like Fucides, which is so travel intense, is still something
we can afford doing in the 2020s?
(52:22):
That's a good question.
Well, if you would say no, yes, I think we would not have learned what happens in the
last decade.
Probably not.
I think we had also the privilege to experiment a lot.
I think connecting to the insights by staff on the COVID and pandemic phase, we also realized
(52:47):
that some parts can really be done hybrid or online.
And also this traveling across four cities, it's a privilege also in financial means.
And to be honest, without the second Erasmus Mundus funding that we successfully achieved,
we could not have run this program.
(53:08):
It's so cost intensive.
If we would go back to the initial phase from the first four cohorts, no university would
agree to be part of it because it's not only resource intensive in terms of staff costs,
but also staff costs.
(53:28):
Staff costs.
Staff costs.
That is a separate cost item on the balance sheet.
But traveling costs and also our time.
Maybe as a critical note, I lost a lot of time with the four cities program as a researcher.
(53:48):
So if I would go for this ideal career, just saying indexing and high level publishing,
I made my choice to run four cities and to be part of it.
No hard feelings, but it's a choice and you compensate in a way.
(54:12):
And so I think nowadays the travel issue, me personally, I'd say we would need to design
it in a more smart way.
Smart meaning cost efficient, but also organizational wise.
You cannot imagine how much organization it needs to organize meetings, to have all the
(54:34):
students on board, blah, blah, blah.
So I think, no, it would not be the same design in my opinion.
The four cities, Brussels, Vienna, Madrid, Copenhagen, sorry, Copenhagen, Madrid.
Those four cities, they came up as being these brave, bold, but also mad people in the beginning
(54:57):
building up this program.
Now with a critical reflection on everything we know about post-colonial approaches and
so on and so forth, probably it would also not be this Eurocentric program anymore.
So all these kinds of...
I think you're right, Yvonne.
I mean, share a lot of these things.
(55:17):
There's just one little anecdote I want to tell you.
So I was in a city and went to a museum and it was mid of the day, so we had a...
Well, we were eating and by accident, the rector, so the head of our university, sees
(55:39):
me, knows me, comes to stay next to me and, ah, how are you doing, et cetera.
And this was just after COVID.
I was doing well.
And I mentioned four cities, said, oh yeah, you guys are traveling around all the time,
but now we can do it all easily.
I mean, we actually can have lots of these international programs just using Zoom and
the like.
(56:00):
And I just turned to her and said, look, Zoom only works if you really, really know each
other, but you can't set up a program and it's very difficult to replace it by just
having it online.
I mean, we saw it with students, we had lots of meetings with all these little things and
it's very hard.
(56:21):
So if you have to run a program like this, you have to move anyway, because I thought
your question was actually on ecological costs also.
So yeah, you know, in a way you could say, well, four cities, which is about Europe,
in a way it's a better choice because you're not too far and you can easily, I mean, everybody
(56:43):
would take trains, et cetera, if they would be affordable or if they would run.
I'm saying Germany is.
Then you could do it.
But I mean, it's true.
It's a traveling circus, which has an impact that for sure, and you have to think about
it.
Because I also think that this with four cities comes not only the teaching and getting to
(57:04):
know the program points, which are organized by the universities, but I think a huge part
is just what happens around it.
You know, the experience you have from living in a city.
And I can tell you so many different different anecdotes from, you know, from living in Copenhagen
in winter, how to, how you learn to do stuff like dumpster diving or something like that.
(57:27):
You would never think of when you're when you're in Austria home or, you know, and these
are these experiences which give you a complete different view on the world, which I think
is not to be underestimated with four cities, at least for me.
And I think you you can do courses online, maybe, but this whole experience around it
and the visits and you know, I think that is very difficult to I think this is what
(57:53):
made four cities, at least for me, a program which is life changing.
I mean, maybe this might be a repetition, but I think it's important to keep that in
mind.
The last point, if one has said universities have changed a lot.
Universities I think have become less of a free space, not only intellectual, but also
organizational.
(58:13):
So that really makes it very hard.
And you know, even if you would like to set up a program like that these days, I mean,
you're just, you know, you're punished because you don't publish enough because you don't
do what gives you a high, you know, reward from the university.
(58:34):
And that's really something I think universities should think about it.
Because if you want to have good education, because I think four cities really is good
education.
And I also think the education comes with a certain limit of numbers of students which
you put together.
And I think we really reached our limit there with four cities.
(58:55):
We went from small groups of 15, something like this to to 40 students right now in a
group.
But above that, you can't, I mean, you can't do it.
I think it's really becomes hard.
I mean, we see it through experience what what the kind of thing is.
(59:16):
And of course, the more students you can serve, the cheaper it gets per student, blah, blah,
blah, you know, the kind of economics behind it.
I mean, quite important.
I'm quite surprised that you said that the university becomes less of a free space to
do these kind of things.
Unfortunately.
Yes.
I mean, elaborate a bit on that.
My thing would always be take David Harvey as he is present everywhere in the program.
(59:44):
It's probably very unlikely he would make a career.
And lots of others.
I mean, all my inspiring professors I had at my own university, they would not even
get a job in their early career.
So universities professionalize in a way that they are they are they really have knowledgeable
(01:00:09):
management bodies.
So and this is what you can also see that everything and come back to the four cities
program related to mobility or joint degrees is now nowadays much more structured, built
on much more knowledge how to do it.
I mean, again, four cities was for run up model and we did many mistakes and we learned
(01:00:29):
through the mistakes, but now you have a certain professional level.
And this is what you experience also nowadays at the universities that you do not have the
free space to experiment and make mistakes.
You have to be successful.
Yes, that's absolutely true.
All right.
With four cities coming to an end next year, what is next for you personally?
(01:00:54):
Starting with you, Yvonne.
A lot.
So we are we are preparing the space, so to say, after four cities as a consortium.
So as you already heard, there's going to be a big party, but also other serious stuff
that we are planning to document the legacy of four cities.
(01:01:14):
We also think about not only think, but we also come into practice in terms of new curricula.
So education on urban studies is key, of course, as an urban geographer, it would be a pity
to not being able to do that.
So we are right now at University of Vienna, starting the process for the development of
(01:01:35):
new curricula and urban studies is included in that.
So spoiler, try to include as much of our learnings from the four cities program and
then really well grounded and and thorough program in the future.
We have the geography department.
So interdisciplinary approaches, transdisciplinarity are going to be key components here.
(01:02:01):
And then from a personal perspective, I mean, researching, writing, publishing, dissemination,
talking about what we know.
So this brings me to one of my, let's say, biggest areas of where I would like to develop
(01:02:21):
even more skills to really translate what we are doing.
I think universities and researchers in their role as knowledge keepers, we really need
to become knowledge providers.
It's now time to really explain what we do, what we know and how we can together, as you
(01:02:42):
just mentioned, Johannes, co-create a better future, not only in cities, but in regions
in our modern human world.
This is, I think, something that strikes me as a personal goal for the future.
And I'm very optimistic in terms of what we can do, but times are different compared to
(01:03:08):
15 years ago, also at a global and broader scale.
So we really need to be cautious how we change the future of our world.
I hope that I can make a useful contribution to that.
Beautiful.
How about you, Steph?
(01:03:31):
Well, first of all, we have to close Four Cities, which is a lot of work.
That probably will take my next two years.
And for me, it's not so much a drastic change in the sense that other things have started
because, as I mentioned before, we have a spinoff of Four Cities, which is a kind of
(01:03:53):
local residential program, but with mainly international students in, which is also a
two-year program, Master of Urban Studies.
And I'm responsible for organizing this thing and doing the follow-up of it.
So that takes most of my time.
And new thing I'm involved in and which has to be developed further.
(01:04:15):
And these are also the things I like the most is setting up new things and trying out things
and so on.
I'm happy with doing a kind of follow-up and routine things, but it has to be, you know,
elicited with new things.
So this is this collaboration I just mentioned before in the former barracks, which comes
(01:04:39):
under the name of USET, U-S-E-T.
If you Google it, you'll find it, which is this cooperation VUB will be with Urban Studies
research units from both universities, which also have, I mean, an open lab, so kind of
(01:05:03):
social lab connected to it, which really does the outreach and really having this concentrated
at one building is an interesting thing.
So I'm already involved together with a colleague to, well, on the one hand, you know, make
sure this project contents wise also goes in a certain direction, but then just make
(01:05:24):
it happen.
I mean, there's all these things.
It's like for cities, there's a lot of nitty gritty background work to be done.
Otherwise, things just don't happen.
Good idea is not enough.
You need enough people who are willing to actually do some of the less pleasant but
very rewarding work.
(01:05:47):
Thank you.
And I'll just close.
Thank you so much for being part of the Cities Remedial Podcast.
I enjoy talking to you a lot and it was so good to see you, Steph, again, and congratulations
for setting up this program for over 15 years, you know, which came out of this very strong
drive which you described and it showed that how you push the boundaries also on the debate
(01:06:10):
on what is urban education, I find, throughout Europe.
I think you really left a mark there and ultimately also changed many people's lives, certainly
mine, who joined for cities.
Thank you for that.
And we'll meet for a coffee for sure before that, but we'll meet for the closing event
(01:06:33):
next year, September.
Yes, September 25th.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you for having us, Johan.
It's been a pleasure.
That's it for today.
I hope you liked the show.
And if you were part of the Cities, maybe we meet at the big closing party in Brussels
in September.
If you like the content, consider subscribing to Cities Remedial on your favorite podcasting
(01:06:56):
platform that would be great or follow us on Instagram.
Like the show or rate the show and tell everybody about it.
Also please feel free to send me an email at johannes at Anthropocene.city.
That's it for today.
Until next time.
Please stay healthy everyone.
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