April 3, 2024 • 71 mins
Here it is, the finale of the first season of the Cities Reimagined podcast and it is nothing shy of (plot) twists, secrets coming to light and what is to be expected for the way forward for the show, me personally and for Anthropocene.City: an idea I developed with today’s guest Jonas Bylund which is taking shape. Besides being a good friend and former year-long colleague, Jonas a researcher at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
Tune into this episode to hear about…
🕵️ Unravelling Urban Mysteries in all corners of urban life with Anthropocene.City: From Godzilla friendships to reimagining cityscapes for all.
🔧 Embrace Do It Yourself Urbanism and how a 'naive' stance leads to groundbreaking urban insights. We're talking DIY empowerment, the wisdom of action, and the art of reflection.
🦖 The Journey to Urban Wisdom: What are urban transitions with a dose of love and care and what does it have to do with Godzilla or a dusty mountain bike?
🐉 Preview of Season 2: As we close this season, we tease the next chapter: a blend of mysteries, inspiration, and innovative urban connections.
🪕 A special Godzilla remix of the Cities Reimagined intro music.
When I started developing the first concept for Cities Reimagined 10 months ago, I did not imagine the feedback I received until now. Thanks to everyone who reached out, listened to the show, gave feedback and helped me along the journey! Honestly, thank you. It is what makes this work worthwhile.
For saying hello, reaching out with (cooperation) requests and anything at all, please send me an email: johannes@anthropocene.city .
Cities Reimagined will take a break from here and is planned to return in September/October 2024. In the meantime, I will be busy working with the City of Mechelen (Belgium) on a European Urban Initiative project alongside the blue-green corridor river Dyle which will connect people, water and nature, kicking-off Anthropocene.City and my ‘regular’ job working with the Management Board of the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And simply made Godzilla the informal mascot or archetype for wicked issues.
(00:15):
Welcome back to the Cities Rematch podcast, the show we are looking into how we can learn
from each other's experiences and become the best urban change makers we can be.
I'm your voice of choice, Johannes Riegler and this is Godzilla's Fury for Reimagining
Cities.
Yeah, that was a bit too dramatic I guess.
(00:43):
But it's the season finale and this is a little bit of a party episode.
And you need to listen closely today to find out about the truth and secrets behind the
Cities Reimagined and what is going to happen in the future and what that has to do with
the old Japanese.
Godzilla, Squales, do it yourself practices, power brokers and the band Kraftwerk.
(01:06):
So we really have reached the end of season one and I'm super happy to have Jonas Buldner
on the show again.
You might have heard the show where he was on Cities Reimagined on Reimagining Urban
Futures a couple of months back.
The last months have been quite a ride I tell you.
(01:29):
So we had thousands of downloads of the podcast and countless of interactions on social media
and emails and comments and conversations on Cities Reimagined.
I'm super happy and grateful that you stuck with me and went on this journey together
with me.
(01:51):
So reflecting on the last 11 or 13, depending on how you count, episodes of Cities Reimagined,
I really recognized soon after starting the podcast that producing the show took a specific
twist for me.
It was not only about producing a podcast anymore, it became something larger than that
actually.
(02:13):
It became part of a larger learning story on urban matters of linking people, topics,
approaches and making them accessible to a broader audience.
But it was not only that, it was also a way for me to distill key messages behind the
stories and narratives people brought onto the show.
(02:38):
My guest today, Jonas Bullhund, is a researcher at the Royal University of Technology KTH
in Stockholm, Sweden.
He's also a musician, so you need to stick around to the end of the episode to find out
about his special Godzilla remix of the Cities Reimagined jingle.
(03:00):
If you like the content of the show, please subscribe to the channel, rate it, leave a
comment, follow us on social media, just like Instagram to find out more background stories
on the show, and let me know what you think of it.
Give me your feedback by sending an email at johannes at Anthropocene.city.
That's all for the monologue today.
(03:21):
Enjoy this wild episode called Godzilla's Fury for Reimagining Cities.
Okay let's start.
Bring it on.
Hi Jonas, how are you doing?
I'm fine.
It's okay.
How are you?
I'm very well.
I got up at six this morning, so I have an early schedule nowadays, and I already sat
(03:46):
on the balcony preparing for our talk.
So it was a good slow morning already, although it's Friday.
It's not just weekend yet.
Yeah, I think this is a very good Friday activity.
Yeah, I think so too.
So now it's 10 for everybody listening.
How are the metropolis of Nesta on this Friday morning?
(04:08):
It's nice.
It's how do you say, gray-blueish sky, typical March sky, high clouds, but thick, and then
intense, and everybody's waiting for the rains in the weekend.
Jonas, the regular listeners of Cities Reimagined might remember you from, I think it was episode
(04:28):
three, where you and Josephine Wangel were on the show to talk about urban futures.
So you're not only an urban researcher, I would also say you're a musician, and you're
doing take one door as well, right?
Yes.
So I have one question for you, because I worked with you for a couple of years, and
(04:50):
I know that you draw your inspiration from a lot of different sources, not only urban
related sources.
And I was wondering, how does this non-urban stuff you're doing, like take one door, being
a musician, playing in bands, how does that influence your practice and your thinking,
(05:12):
your creativity on urban related things?
I'm not sure.
In both Taekwondo and in music, there are some analogies to also working, maybe not
when I'm working alone.
Well, there is something to that as well, finding rhythms, finding things which you
(05:34):
can sense when it has a beat and how you can learn techniques in order to improvise.
And be creative.
That's a typical thing.
And both in kind of martial arts, that's kind of a trick, where there's seemingly a lot
of discipline.
(05:54):
But if you're sparring, and if you think about it as self-defense, you also need to be able
to improvise quite quickly, but still have a lot of technique in your muscle memory.
It's similar with playing music, creating music alone, or also, especially if you're
playing in a band, and how you are, how to, as some other musicians call it, how to get
(06:21):
yourself out of the way, so to speak.
To make things that are inviting, that are kind of how you invite others to also be able
to shine.
Yeah.
That's also how we train in the martial arts.
(06:42):
It's like, how can we train with each other, not against each other, is a saying.
But it sounds to me that it's very much both in martial arts, Taekwondo, and being a musician,
it also relates to all the experiences you had in the past, what you learned in the past,
(07:03):
the impulses, the creativity, which was exposed to you, coming back to the discussion actually
we had with Josephine, you were exposed to, which you, at some point later, you might
be able to make sense out of that.
And I think often it is with urban studies and with urbanism, it's a bit similar.
(07:23):
Yes.
Quite so.
I mean, one part in the, I mean, it always, of course, depends on what aspects of urban
studies you are doing, kind of.
But just the way of finding, let's say the stories, the interesting mysteries and so
(07:45):
on that has, it has sometimes a similar kind of, it may draw, you may draw upon what you've
been exposed to, to find it interesting, of course.
But sometimes I can also have a sense that, oh, but this, it swings, right?
As a groove, it has something that I like, which is hard to pin down a sense of it.
(08:10):
And sometimes it may also be because of the kind of the comedy that I like, for example,
Monty Python.
Yeah.
That influences what kinds of urban stuff that I find interesting and worthy of kind
of examination has usually has some kind of bizarre comedy around it.
(08:31):
Is Monty Python like urban policy making?
I think so.
Yeah.
A lot.
Maybe unintentionally at times, but yeah.
Sometimes the effects are quite similar, one might say.
Jonas, I invited you again to City's Reimagined and I'm very thankful that you are taking
(08:57):
the time again to reflect what has happened in the first season of City's Reimagined.
So this episode is a bit of a season finale.
It will be very dramatic.
The truth will come out.
All the hidden layers between and under the episodes will be exposed.
I'm not sure that that will happen, but I would like to reflect with you on the show
(09:20):
and what has happened.
What were three key moments for you in season one of City's Reimagined?
Well, first of all, I would say looking at the podcast and what has happened over half
a year or so, a little bit more.
Congratulations, I would like to say to you.
(09:42):
Thank you.
A wonderful set of conversations.
I mean, I must say I truly enjoyed it listening to a lot of it.
And of course, okay, so I made some notes.
Three key moments.
I think City's Reimagined was one and I'm not taking them in order now.
Yeah.
I'm taking kind of episodes.
(10:04):
Pretty mind because Sophie and Jim's perspective on the Emergent City, the changing city.
I think that their way of working with collective and kind of a non-arrogant research that they
enable is I thought that was quite hopeful.
(10:28):
Also the episode on cultural centers, which in my head was on provisional spaces, but
it's more than that, of course.
But Tiffany's kind of transnational networking aspects and doing what you're passionate about
locally.
I thought that was interesting.
The kind of the networking, the almost global networking and very local action.
(10:52):
And there was that kind of punk ethos in there.
And the third one, I actually kind of collude Alexander and the Urban Food and Ecology,
(11:15):
Ukraine and the Urban Food because they were articulating kind of the urban collective
or conviviality to use a very technical term.
What is that?
In the social conviviality, how to live together, principles for living together more or less
that they were both talking about, I thought was also kind of key, even if it's, I know
(11:37):
it's a bit more conceptual, but they both tried to ground it very well, those two episodes.
Yeah.
For me, it was also, there was so much key messages coming out.
There was so much interesting conversations in all of these episodes where you can just,
I think there's so much to learn, unpack.
(11:58):
And hopefully coming back to what we started with today, people will listen to it and being
exposed or hearing new insights in a way and come back to a later stage to this inspiration,
hopefully.
But for me, what I was very interested in, and I think I still have a way to go to improve
that, but it is to show the people and the motivations behind projects and knowledge
(12:26):
produced because it is so often that we go to conferences, be somewhere where you present
a project, you talk about what you're doing, what the aim of a project is, what urban challenge
you're addressing.
But there's rarely a space where you talk about the motivation, where you come from personally.
(12:48):
And I think with cities we imagined with the first season, it somehow succeeded to break
the shell of that a little bit, to go a little bit deeper, what motivates people.
So what are the stories behind?
I remember Luisa Bravo in the first episode talking about her childhood and teenage memories
(13:09):
of public spaces in Italy, which ultimately led her to focus on public space research
and working with that.
But there's also more stories hidden behind that.
We talked about it, how we first were going to the bigger cities and being somehow impressed
(13:33):
by that.
But there's so much different motivations, also with City Mind, with Jim and Sophie,
who brought a different perspective to that.
There was a recurring topic of punk and hardcore somehow in this ethic.
But also it showed with a conversation with Stefan Fuga also coming from a very different
(13:56):
angle of local urban journalism, which doesn't have an urbanism focus as such, that there
is so many different perspectives and so many different ambitions and motivations to dive
into urban stuff.
Let's call it like that.
And I wanted you to showcase or show that a little bit on the show.
(14:20):
So how would you sum up season one?
What did it add to a broader debate on urbanism, would you say?
Yeah.
Well, that's kind of a tricky question.
I don't think there is a broader debate on urbanism, actually.
I mean, sometimes in different contexts, it may seem as this is the big debate on urbanism,
(14:45):
but then there are so many debates going on in parallel, depending on where you are.
If you're in Brussels in a policy setting or if you're in an activist camp or if you
are in some engineering sector and so on.
I think some efforts are made to frame urbanity in single statements, like in policy.
(15:08):
And for example, research like Richard Sennett, he has a way of doing that sometimes.
But it's usually quite obvious that it's only about key aspects for certain parts of how
humans can live their lives together and in between urban settings.
(15:30):
So I think the kind of the important thing, if we're thinking about a broader debate on
urbanism is or perhaps the challenge is to keep in mind all of these different ways of
living and understanding the city.
Right.
Contemporary human societies even more so, but the urban part of it and shaping through
(15:56):
that a broader sense of what the urban is.
And I think, well, to preempt a little bit, something that we've been thinking about is
that it shows the need for squirrels to live that way and making friends with Godzilla.
Oh, yeah, good to see.
We will come back to that hopefully today.
But the question was particularly right on season one.
(16:21):
Yeah.
I just had to talk about that sense of the broader urban debate because it's rarely
in singular.
But I think season one was a bit like it was drawing by numbers.
Do you do that?
Is that an English expression where you have a picture but you have nodes identified by
numbers and then you draw and suddenly there's an elephant or something?
(16:44):
Yeah.
And I was thinking about what kinds of urbanities that are emerging from the sample of about,
I don't know, was it 12, 11, 12 episodes?
Yeah, it was 11 full ones and in total it was 13.
So with the bonus on the trailer.
So this is a set of aspects of imagining or reimagining the city across the world today.
(17:11):
So what reimaginations are kind of coming forward through if we draw through all these
numbers?
I think that's an exercise to do and I think I'm still trying to do it.
You mentioned to me that it has been a longer journey of learning, right?
Yeah.
The picaresque as you would say in literature like Voltaire and Candide.
(17:38):
So I think that there is also to this a kind of a naive stance.
It's like, for example, approaching urban wildlife or African urbanity with honest curiosity
and as much prejudice open, I mean, transparent as possible.
And hence in that way, taking a naive stance, but not being naive.
(18:03):
I think that's a characterization of the season, which is very good for me.
I think that's kind of an humble approach to it, but it also makes me very curious as
to what you actually learn, right?
And for this conversation where I'm listening a lot to what you've learned and one of the
red threads, one of these kinds of drawing by numbers and the journey, I think is what
(18:25):
you already mentioned is to do it yourself practices and aesthetics, right?
That kind of punk ethos that you were surprisingly, you were commenting in some of the episodes.
Hey, now I'm hearing that you also have a punk background.
Oh, and you also, and you also.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So that kind of, let's say the attitude of not waiting for permission to do important
(18:48):
stuff seems to be an important kind of line to draw through all the episodes.
Yeah.
But also there is something here.
It's not just doing, not just rushing away and I don't need permission, but there's also
a kind of a sense to make sure how you reflect upon if it's wise to do it.
(19:14):
So I think that's kind of also important.
What I found very interesting with season one is that it showed this very local aspects
to urban, I just call it urban stuff, because skateboarding per se is not an urbanist topic,
if you will, building a skateboarding in the suburb of Peru.
(19:37):
I don't think many people involved in urbanism would see that as something related to urban
transitions.
But at the same time, you have, I had the conversation with Alexander on reimagining
Ukrainian cities after the war, which is a complete different topic on a complete different
(19:57):
scale on a, and then at the same time, I had the conversation with Paul Curie, who talked
about, yeah, basically, I wouldn't say for the whole of Africa, but he covered aspects
of urbanism across Africa, which has another scale to the debate.
Yeah, exactly.
(20:19):
So these are very different perspectives, but sharing a kind of, let's say an ethos
or kind of, how would you say, many times sharing away an attitude towards the work,
which is, I think is the interesting aspects.
(20:44):
And as you say that it's because it's urban stuff, so we could, I think we could do, it's
not just that urban farming, urban agriculture is for some people still a bit odd, but I
think we could just put urban in front of anything and trying to see if there is an
(21:07):
episode to be done about it.
That would be an interesting mix.
Yeah.
I think, I mean, all over the world, we probably would find an example of how that, however
unimaginable it would be to do in a city, you'd find someone doing it.
(21:32):
It's that famous video, for example, from Dinosaur Jr., I think, when they're just driving
around Manhattan or New York, Manhattan in a golf car and playing golf and not in the
parks, but everywhere.
And I think, so we also saw later on that there is actually urban golf.
(21:53):
That's so funny.
That's what I did in the teenage years.
We bought a golf club for a couple of euros.
Maybe it was shilling back then still when a sports shop closed down and then we played
golf everywhere in parks, on the street and so on.
It was a great experience also because it was, before becoming an urbanist, it was a
(22:17):
reimagining cities kind of situation.
So let me try one thing.
I'm not sure if I will put that on the podcast, but I open a chat GTP and I say, what should
I put in?
Give me a list of stuff.
Give me a list of stuff.
(22:39):
10, maximum 10.
Of course, here's a diverse list of things you might be interested or you might find
interesting or useful.
Book recommendation, travel destination, gadget, hobby, movie, recipe to try, online course,
(23:02):
fitness activity, podcast, do it yourself project.
Okay.
So we have an urban book recommendation, urban travel destination, urban gadget, an urban
hobby, urban movie, urban recipe, urban online course, urban fitness activity, urban podcast.
(23:23):
Yeah.
That's easy.
And urban DIY project.
So we have the topics for the next season.
Yeah, you have 10 topics there, right?
Yeah.
You can do an episode about urban podcasting.
Yeah.
There's more people doing podcasts.
Maybe I actually thought about that.
(23:44):
I think you have to publish this list on Instagram and then have people like telling you if they
have any recommendations or ideas.
I'm a bit disappointed.
I have to say, I thought it would have been funnier now.
The 10 recommendations, that's a bit random.
Well, we tried.
But that's the thing with chat GDP and also the visuals that AI seems to be producing
(24:09):
at the moment.
It always turns out a little bit less exciting than one would hope.
Sometimes surprising and fascinating, but always slightly less surprising, a bit like
shut the stock images of meetings or LinkedIn kind of postings.
(24:30):
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
But coming back to season one, what do you think were the deep buried secrets in season
one?
What was the drama we found?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You see my hesitation.
(24:50):
I think I've learned a lot, but there's still something elusive secretive about how the city
can be reimagined from what to what and for whom.
I think that's still a deep buried secret I can't really have out in the daylight yet
(25:12):
from the episodes.
I think we still need to explore a little bit more on that from what to what and for
whom.
I think we will never succeed in being clear in that.
No.
It will be always a reimagining one aspect for specific people, for specific interests
(25:34):
also which comes together and then manifests in urban space.
Yeah.
I think that's the trick.
Rather, it's not always the point to give a kind of a synthesis and make a clear statement.
Maybe that's what I was on to.
(25:55):
What were the mysteries we solved?
What was the clue?
What was the detective work we did over the first season?
What was the mysteries, the murder solved?
Yeah, again, I think that's the interesting thing.
I thought of it this way.
(26:16):
Maybe the urban mysteries or it's the urban transitions that they are like planning an
intentional change.
Of course, I say that because that's one of the kind of research topics I do.
They rarely turn out as you imagine them, right?
Also, one should be very careful for what one wishes for.
(26:38):
Maybe that's one of the mysteries not solved but pointed at.
In what way?
Can you be more specific?
Yeah, because it's kind of an old saying like with Aladdin and having wishes.
Of course, powers the universe can grant you wishes, but it also comes with unexpected
(27:04):
kind of consequences as well.
We can never just have those mysteries.
There is a mystery around how still.
I think that's especially so for urban transitions that when we want to change in a certain way
(27:25):
and when we do it, there is also a ton of other things, a mass, a lot of other things
that changed as well, which we perhaps weren't ready for.
There's something in the episodes that points to this and how to actually work with that
kind of in technical terms, you would call it probably externalities.
(27:48):
I mean, both positive and negative ones.
How do you take care of the positive ones?
How do you kind of picked up the challenge of the negative ones and so on?
That leads us to Godzilla, doesn't it?
So for everybody out there who doesn't know what we mean by Godzilla, that is a bit of
(28:11):
an internal joke we have.
And it leads back to a presentation I gave, I think, six, seven years ago once in Brussels,
which I think confused a lot of people.
And we kept the narrative going.
So it was about how complex urban development is and how complex urbanism is and how wicked
(28:33):
it is.
What a wicked issue it is by bringing together these complexities between disciplines, interests,
fields of work as well.
It is so complex that you cannot solve it.
And I just compared it to Godzilla, because if you try to get rid of Godzilla in, let's
(28:59):
say, with technological solutions, so basically by shooting rockets at Godzilla, Godzilla
doesn't mind.
Godzilla will go further and will become more angry and will let you feel the consequences
of your actions.
And it is a bit similar to in urbanism, where you might try to not kill Godzilla, so break
(29:24):
down the complexity, but actually work with it.
So befriend Godzilla, make him somehow, you will never understand Godzilla and his actions
fully, but you might be able to, yeah, you know, make him your pet in a way, or make
him your friend, you know, your old friend you don't really understand, but make him
(29:49):
go along with you.
Yeah, I think, of course, I remember that.
And I think what you actually did, I remember, how I experienced it was that we had been
started talking about urban dilemmas and wicked issues.
(30:10):
And you'd been kind of around in some projects talking about super wicked issues and simply
made Godzilla the informal mascot or archetype for wicked issues.
I wouldn't like to say monster.
Of course, it's the same kind of mystery, but it was to talk about urban issues, environmental,
(30:33):
economic, innovation, dynamics, public administration practices out of hand, for example.
So a bit like Frankenstein's monster, right?
It only becomes monstrous when we don't care about it, when we don't love it, when we don't
make friends with it, so to speak.
So I thought of that idea was somehow to give the very abstract nature of urban dilemmas
(30:57):
and wicked issue a face, a personality.
So I think that's why it stuck and it kept on popping up in PowerPoints over the years.
And only a few knew about it, kind of saw it even.
But that kind of personality wrecking urban landscapes, and it is reckless yet misunderstood.
(31:19):
I think sometimes I also felt planners, planning practitioners or anyone who was trying to
do urban policy was also kind of in that Godzilla genre.
Yeah.
And so I've been thinking a little bit about this since we are talking a lot about Godzilla
and the kind of fury that's involved in that, the mystery and the fury that wicked issues
(31:45):
and dilemmas, they tend to shape what one could call fire spaces.
I mean, not fires like burning cities, but fire spaces are spaces where there is a lot
of friction and controversy, right?
Urban policy hates this, but it means that you have to work with a lot of uncomfortable
tolerance perhaps.
(32:06):
It takes time, takes a lot of time and trust.
It needs a lot of trust.
So this is far from the kind of common Western techno-rational approach of looking for perhaps
quick fixes, looking for solutions.
And to bring on that, what the episodes also point at is that this kind of challenge, one
(32:33):
of the better descriptions I've read is actually situated on Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson's
Mars trilogy.
It's worthy of a read or listen to when it comes to these kinds of wicked issues that
constantly pop up and also the kind of working with very different angles, aspects, perspectives
(32:55):
on how to live together.
So we could add it to this, there is this kind of activism, do it yourself, local community
actors that are not always seen with good eyes by informal politics and power brokers
or formal politics and power brokers, right?
So they are small or large monsters depending on the situation.
(33:19):
What happens if policy would start to truly love them, right?
Would they be loved to death?
As I seem to remember Sophie and Jim of Sit to Mind, they fear that, right?
But if they really, if policy is such a straw figure of something, but there is something
(33:41):
to how different types of actors could start getting near to each other with tolerance
and with care, I guess.
Yeah.
And I really like that we keep the Godzilla going and now it's out there.
I hope when people see a Godzilla now, they think of wicked urban issues and they think
(34:06):
about your comment just now.
I mean, yeah, I think we were maybe you could count us on one hand who knew what Godzilla
stands for.
Yeah, now it's out there.
Now everybody does.
That's good.
So welcome to the club, dear Lisa.
Welcome to the club, everybody.
Feel invited to put little Godzilla's on your PowerPoints.
(34:30):
You know, it is from now on a bit of a secret sign that when Godzilla is on your slides,
you are one of those who understand.
Yeah.
And of course, I think many times one can simply just use the emoji for Tornasaurus
Rex.
I think it is.
(34:50):
I think that's our stand in.
Yeah, that is the pro tip.
Yeah.
Okay.
Coming back to Siddy's rematch.
And so I'm, I have to say, I'm quite happy with the content and decoration of the, of
season one, how it turned out.
So some, some of the topics I planned on having on the show from the very beginning, when
I started Siddy's rematch, and some just popped in for various reasons, like the skateboarding
(35:13):
one in Peru, which I found very, a very interesting angle to it.
And then it was Christian Fisher saying, Hey, I have this documentary coming.
And then it just, it just made sense.
What do you think?
Did we cover, what aspects did we not cover?
What was not in there?
What could have been in there?
And what is, what is there missed for season?
(35:36):
What we might be able to pick up in season two?
I'm not sure about topics, especially.
I think about this way, maybe there are more mysteries out there.
(36:05):
Yeah.
That you don't solve.
You don't explain it.
It's not like MythBusters or anything, but, but rather, I was thinking about the kind
of re-enchantment that we sometimes also need, that mysteries are also kind of drivers inspiration
(36:25):
for just keep on doing what you do.
Seeing like your everyday places, spaces, urban public spaces, perhaps in a slightly
different light means that, Oh, there's something that might be exciting or it might make you
(36:47):
angry or passionate, even more passionate about the work you do.
But that's a very conceptual and abstract.
Yeah.
So very practical breaking it down.
I think for season two, I would like to have more city administration on the show because
I think there, there has been, yeah, they are not very well represented in this debate
(37:07):
yet, at least not on cities we imagined.
So it would be interesting to have a person who is very visionary also to not reinforce
development strategies.
Let's put it like that.
A bit boring stuff, but like really goes into a visionary process to reimagine a city with
(37:31):
people living in the city and with what it means also in terms of public administration
to go beyond the silos of the sectoral approach of mobility and environment and so on, because
I think there's a lot of challenges and I would really like to have an honest conversation
about these issues.
(37:52):
Yeah.
I think you're right.
I didn't want to propose it since I do a lot of research on public administration and how
they are trying.
Of course, they are seen as these kind of monolith sometimes, but it's just a lot of
(38:14):
very different types of persons and organizations that we are talking about when we're talking
about public administrations.
And I think also not a few of them that I've met in our work are actually very passionate
about trying to find new connections and they are very kind of sometimes sincere, but very
(38:38):
mindful of what exactly they can do, what they are allowed to do in terms of mandate,
et cetera.
But I think that there is usually a kind of a passion in there sometimes, sometimes it's
not.
And so that kind of an honest conversation might be very interesting.
(39:02):
So that kind of brings me to what I thought about more as thinking about the second season
as it would continue these, let's say, mysteries and red thread around do it yourself or what
you can do perhaps as a person, because that's the conversation, right?
(39:25):
But that they're looking at the context that there are a lot of new ways of connecting.
There is an intuition there and I'm also drawing from the Godzilla thinking.
What is sustainable development with a healthy dose of love added, for example.
(39:46):
But love in the kind of not the romantic type of what do I get?
What kind of state am I in?
But rather, how can I care for this?
How can I be in a regenerative ethos about this?
Yeah.
And that's where I think the public administrations, policymakers, other types of actors might
(40:13):
get into the conversation as well.
Very interesting that you bring up love or this kind of this perspective, because it
links to a notion of caring and a notion of emotions and more personal, more soft stuff.
Whereas in urbanism, it's too often, I would say, focused on the facts, focus on the hard
(40:40):
stuff, focus on the concrete.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, first of all, I would like to avoid the adjectives hard and soft, since it's quite
fellowcentric, quite simply.
It usually goes for facts and so on, but you can talk about it in different ways and still
(41:01):
have the same meaning.
I mean, if it's graspable or not, the contours of facts and the contours of understandings
and so on.
But yeah, there is a kind of a logic of care that I think could be a good way.
And I'm inspired by some of my master's students who are kind of reading up on feminist theories
(41:24):
about architecture of care and how to do design care, care as a design principle and so on.
But how perhaps it's also about how we find the freedom to act with care rather than just
push an agenda of freedom of choice is something that I see as a kind of a theme.
(41:49):
And okay, so if I go into it a little bit, there is a kind of a Western concept of freedom
that is somehow, in the last instance, free from responsibilities or connections even,
right?
And it's probably one reason why we have this rampant type of neoliberal capitalism
(42:10):
that that is that kind of choice is felt like a right apart from being right wing many times.
Because it's a very powerful aesthetic.
And also for a lot of the people on the left side and the activists, there is this kind
of freedom that you're not connected to the wrong stuff, so to speak.
(42:34):
But care kind of has the potential to perhaps put that in a different light as care is about
connections and some of them are you're not free to choose, but you can become very free
in them or fulfilled and feel kind of that action is something that you can do stuff
(43:03):
because of the connections, because of your nurturing connections, because you're feeding
connections and so on.
So there's been a lot of that and some types of feminist science and technology studies
as well.
And I think that's where we're getting near to the principle of being regenerative.
Right.
(43:24):
And I think the fulfillment of giving kind of.
Yeah, I want to pick your brain on that as well.
Because I at the moment I see this this care for what is regenerative principle, regenerative
idea for caring for the planet and for humans or for people at the same time as very cutting
(43:45):
edge and coming in more and more in urban studies.
And I think this is at least for me, this is one of the most interesting places, topics
at the moment, which are developing in practice, but also in thinking about it and eventually
also policy.
I don't know.
(44:06):
I haven't seen too much about it yet because people are still stuck with their idea of
their GDP growth and these kind of these kind of old school thinking, which limits everything,
all the other thinking in a certain way, I would say.
I just inattentively said old school thinking, but I somehow maybe that's that describes
(44:27):
it very well.
What's your take on this?
Well, maybe not that it's old school, perhaps in that sense.
But what I've also heard a lot from people who are working close to planning practitioners
and also some of the investigations I've been part of myself, there is a sense sometimes
(44:51):
that we're getting directives and we're doing this, but we're supposed to do the other
thing.
Right.
So that there is a kind of a disconnect, a dissonance, if you will, between what the
job should be about and what you clearly see as this needs to be done and what you can
(45:12):
do and what you're allowed to do, etc.
And I think even politicians, local politicians, regional politicians, national politicians
also feel this at times.
So I wouldn't blame politicians for setting this up.
It's more of a situation that kind of sets a scene where you can act in certain ways
(45:34):
and you can't act in others.
Yeah, you're stuck.
Yeah, which probably makes some of these policymakers and planning practitioners, perhaps, I wouldn't
say jealous of the activists, so to speak, even if someone like the label, but that you
have in the first season.
(45:56):
But we're also coming back to something that you mentioned just before we started, the
bike that's in your living room, which you haven't got around to repair for quite some
time.
And I started thinking about that kind of care, as in that old book, Zen and the art
(46:18):
of repairing motorcycles or the art of motorcycle maintenance.
There is a similar kind of, even if that's a lot more male coded, but there's a similar
kind of thing around thinking and doing things with the care.
It doesn't necessarily mean that everything will be successful or come out great, but
(46:43):
it might mean that you can carve out some space, time to try to do what feels right.
And that might be important, but maybe that's more hypothetical.
But here I'm going to go into kind of urban transformations from this point and say that
(47:09):
this might be about going from information and data that we have for problems that AI
can help us with, of course, but there's a lot of digitalization, but we get a lot of
knowledge on what a problem is or what's going on.
(47:30):
And then we go to knowledge, and that's been mainly our job in research and innovation
programming and so on.
There are probably thousands of papers and reports that are saying something, providing
knowledge on gaps and issues of some kinds.
(47:54):
But that knowledge on what is needed for urban transformations is probably only part of the
mix.
I think what you may be kind of searching for is also the capacities among different
actors to do transformations.
So it's not just about individual training or one or the other decision making support
(48:18):
tool.
So this is about setting up resources for actors to move between settings, perhaps,
sectors and generating wisdom, hopefully.
Wisdom is an interesting word, of course, but it's about care, kind of driven by an
ethos of care, perhaps.
(48:40):
Great.
I think that for some listeners that might sound a bit abstract, but I think this captures
very well what we have been working on or talking about the last weeks and months.
Right?
Yeah.
So should we go into that a little bit?
Because I actually like this very transparent process of what we work on and see where it
(49:02):
leads us.
So just to let you know, Jonas and I have been working on an idea called Anthropocene
City.
And it's not an idea, the idea is more what Anthropocene City is.
So it could be a kind of platform or an initiative for urban learning, for connecting knowledge
(49:22):
with policy and other urban actors to actually cultivate the wisdom required for reimagining
cities or for doing things differently in cities.
And at the moment, there's a kind of gap between those, I would say, oftentimes, because there
is the knowledge, the production of knowledge and experiences, which is often coming out
(49:45):
of the funding logic of being financed for three or four years.
But then there is a gap on what to do with that.
Some cities and in some cases, it might be taken up by a longer process of experimentation
and being used very strategically.
While in others, it would just end up in a report and in a kind of communication logic,
(50:08):
which goes from, you know, we have some findings, we throw them out there, do with it what you
want.
And that usually that doesn't fly.
That doesn't lead to a bigger transformation in other cities.
So we are kind of working on that.
Yeah, kind of to be continued.
(50:30):
To be continued.
But I think that it kind of grows out of the podcast season one.
Some of the conclusions are kind of fed into and probably made more into a very typical
consultancy prospect sheet.
But you know, you have to do that as well.
(50:53):
But I think that season two is also interesting as a kind of a lab to try some of these thoughts.
Yeah, right.
And I have to say that you're absolutely right.
I think while doing these talks, I wouldn't call it interviews, but having these conversations
with people working on reimagining cities, I at some point found out, wait a minute,
(51:18):
this is a bit more than just having a conversation.
This is about getting personal perspective, but also distilling kind of the gist out of
what is very often not written in reports and cannot be easily communicated.
(51:41):
So that's the thinking behind that.
And hopefully we will hear about that.
It will go eventually in a direction where we can publish more stuff and be more detailed
because we need to wrap our head around that still.
Yeah.
Right.
But coming back to two very operational kind of things with cities reimagined.
(52:02):
So I had all of the episodes transcribed and I sit on a pile of about 150 A4 single lined
pages of transcript of cities reimagined.
And I think it would be a pity not to use this knowledge and these outcomes of the podcast.
(52:28):
And I was thinking coming back to AI, that is already now a topic which reoccurs in our
conversation.
But it's very difficult to fit in the work of cities reimagined in a regular job already.
And it would be even more difficult to feed that into, to produce a publication out of
(52:52):
that.
So I was thinking of somehow trying with AI to make sense out of these interviews by taking
the key messages which are distilled out of that and letting AI formulate a text of the
transcripts.
What are your takes on that?
Do you think that would work or would it be too flat?
Would it lose too much nuances which are actually the value of these conversations?
(53:21):
Well, so let me put it this way and a little story from one of the courses that I'm part
of teaching at my work at university more or less.
Where we had the students to analyze two, let's say two, very well, two, three pages
(53:51):
long research proposals.
That is, research proposals are to give you an idea of, hey, there's a problem here.
And hey, this is what you can do to solve it.
Or this is what I can do and give me money to do it, kind of to shape that kind of interest.
And wow, what's going on here?
Oh, this is important, right?
(54:15):
But we had them analyze and compare one research proposal that was written by a student in
the course preceding and which had a very good grade and one written by Chet TTPT or
AI, I think.
I think it was Chet TTPT.
(54:35):
Even though two of the other teachers who actually sat down and tried to have the AI
write the proposal after a couple of iterations, they thought, okay, this is probably as much
time as we have and as good as it gets.
Within two seconds, my students, oh, this is the AI.
(54:58):
It's flat.
It's not really interesting.
It's not really grabbing me.
It's just doing the kind of a business pitch, but it's not really setting up a kind of a
problem, a mystery that, hey, this is where we want to go.
So I think it's a good experiment, but I think almost you or we should do one of our own
(55:22):
first and then do the experiment.
You mean a summary of a conversation and then trying it with AI to see how it compares.
Good experiment.
We'd have to do the synthesis of the 150 pages and then we have AI to do it.
(55:48):
Of course, we can mix it however we want.
It's a bit like if we're going back to music and Taekwondo, perhaps, but music even more
so.
Yes, I'm very used to do stuff with analog, like acoustic guitars or electric guitars,
but mixing that with kind of more machine and programmed sounds, it's not a thing today.
(56:14):
Yeah.
It actually makes for a lot of very interesting music.
I think it was very interesting also, I think back in the days when Kraftwerk were kind
of in their early days, they were doing it and so on.
So I don't think it's more about how if we find it interesting and engaging enough to
(56:35):
do that kind of a mix.
And for us, it's about finding time to do the synthesis.
Yeah.
I will keep it in mind.
It would be very interesting to try something out and see if we find a way which makes sense,
where we don't think that too much is lost in the going via machine while producing something
(57:02):
meaningful eventually.
Yeah.
So my point was perhaps that, I mean, usually drum machines in their own right, they don't
really groove, but sometimes they can unexpectedly groove because of it's a bit queer, quaint,
the things that kind of brings how a groove actually emerges from when you're playing
(57:28):
together.
Let's try it.
We will see.
All right.
But I think that leads us to the last point I would like to discuss with you today.
And that is a bit also about the future and season two of Cities Reimagined.
And that is a bit, yeah, mixing formats.
(57:48):
So for the first season, there were these conversations and they're good as they are.
I also learned that it is quite, it makes a more interesting conversation when you have
three people.
So me as moderating and then two others joining, it makes a more lively discussion or more
(58:08):
lively exchange.
Jonas, what are your takes on the formats for the next season?
So I thought about, we also talked about that having kind of shorts covering specific urban
phenomena in maybe a 10 minute discussion.
We had this example of Italian men who apparently tend to stand around construction sites and
(58:36):
being smart on commenting on what is happening on the, what was the name?
Umarel?
I think it was Umarel.
Umarel.
Yeah.
I think there's much to unpack there because it could be, you know, the reasons and the
interest of these Italian older men could be that it is a form of socialization.
(58:58):
It's a form of community engagement, but we don't need to go into that now.
Otherwise we'd produce a short right now.
I wanted to discuss with you.
So we have the shorts.
And then the second one is I initially thought it would be good to have confrontations on
the show, having opposing standpoints, two people with opposing standpoints on the show
(59:21):
discussing it.
But then this morning when I prepared for our conversation, I actually thought like,
no, this is not, I would not like that because it is, there is already so much confrontation
everywhere, but actually rather I would like to bring two opposites together to have a
kind of, you know, generating, creating a kind of understanding between them, you know,
(59:48):
not going into the calling it a confrontation, but having two opposing standpoints and eventually
figuring out, I wouldn't say middle ground, but what is it, where are the connections,
you know, listening to the other ideas and other standpoints and thus maybe contributing
to understanding the Godzilla.
(01:00:10):
Yeah.
Or making friends.
Making friends.
It's not always fully understanding, but understanding some of it.
I guess what I also hear is something that we know in political philosophy as the difference
between antagonism, like understanding politics as you have antagonists and they are trying
(01:00:33):
to destroy each other, which you have a lot in US American kind of politics, it seems,
especially so at the moment.
On the other hand, you have an ideal or an idea about how you could work in an agonistic
way that is you share some values, perhaps one of them being we shouldn't destroy our
(01:01:00):
opponents by any means necessary, but rather trying to figure out ways and it's usually
quite uncomfortable ways of shedding light on different sides of an issue.
(01:01:22):
And then that's the kind of becomes an idea for democratic discussion or constructive
democratic discussion and so on.
That's Chantal Mouffe, I guess is the kind of the origin of how that's conceptualized.
And I think that's a very good way to go thinking about that as a format.
(01:01:43):
There might be a way of having one of these shorts and then you have two people talking
about that, but who perhaps don't agree to interpretations, what it means, what possible
consequences X or Y could have and so on.
Yeah, excellent.
(01:02:04):
I think they both should have one cake each that they can throw in each other's faces.
What kind of cake?
Cherry?
Yeah, but lots of cream.
Otherwise it hurts.
Oh, cream.
Yeah.
Needs to be a thick one.
A thick cake.
Big, thick cake.
Yeah, excellent.
So season two will be about good sealers, cake, regenerative AI.
(01:02:34):
Is that what came out of this?
Yeah.
I think so.
I think so.
I think so.
Very interesting.
I really have a sense of that there is a genuine challenge here for you in the next season,
how to deal with complexity and still make accessible stories or conversation out of
it.
(01:02:55):
So I do think that that's where the formats are playing a lot of a role.
And it depends on how much people are willing to give you kind of loose shackles to fuck
around and find out.
Yeah.
I think we will just try it out.
(01:03:16):
I think this is the thematic challenge.
I have a very practical challenge to see how I fit in producing Cities Rematchened now
being back on the job and having other projects on the side as well.
So this is just an add on, a free time project.
It will be quite challenging, but I enjoy it so much and I get so much out of it, so
(01:03:37):
much joy out of it and so much pleasure.
And I think it really touches upon very interesting points which are worth diving in for many,
at least the feedback I got is really positive that people find it useful.
Yes.
But one question a bit more specific to this might be perhaps something that I'm learning
(01:03:58):
more from the kind of the artsy stuff is how do you do this in a way where you perhaps
counter what a lot of communication professionals say that you should think about your audience,
(01:04:23):
the target audience and so on.
Think about making it accessible.
How do you think it would be possible to do without thinking about them at all and just
do it because you need find joy in doing it and need to have these conversations and these
(01:04:48):
different aspects of urbanity move along?
And I think that is exactly the pleasure in it because I'm very free to explore whatever
topic in whatever form I want to.
So I'm not bound to think about target audiences, how to get the message out, how to do that.
(01:05:08):
It's either I get the joy out of it and I find it somehow meaningful and I hope that
it is also meaningful for others.
So it's not seeking the people who receive, but more like seeing if there's like-minded
people or people who also find that helpful and seeing how to go along.
(01:05:29):
And that is, it has a bit of a different logic out there because I personally, I kind of
take joy, you know, just I kind of take joy to be on a personal budget producing these
shows and then comparing myself to initiatives and organizations which are loaded with money.
(01:05:51):
And you see in social media, you get more likes or more interactions to the stuff you
produce without a budget than them.
That is a bit of a, I have to say that is a bit of a personal joy as well.
But that brings me a bit to what I also learned over the last year that it is so important
to be kind of authentic in what you do, in what you personally do, but also it might
(01:06:19):
create more inspiration if people are very authentic, very open, if they share some vulnerabilities,
some uncertainties, do not try to shine out whoever else is out there, but you know, having
(01:06:39):
very honest conversations which are joyful at the end of the day.
Yeah.
You're speaking like a true musician.
Musician?
Yeah.
That maybe that comes because I'm at the moment again reading Rick Rubin.
All right.
I think that leaves us with a lot of secrets and cliffhangers for season two, right?
(01:07:05):
So we didn't solve Godzilla.
We got to know Godzilla a bit better.
And now it's about us to pull him a bit closer and make him a closer friend, isn't it?
Yeah.
And I would be surprised if anyone is any wiser after this season finale show.
Oh, don't you think so?
(01:07:28):
I hope so.
Yeah, maybe.
And even if not, I had a great time talking to you, Jonas.
Oh yeah.
And you made a great remix of the City's Rematch and Jingles, which we will play right now.
So Jonas, thank you so much for being on the show again.
And yeah, have a good weekend.
(01:07:51):
Thank you.
Looking forward to the next What's Coming.
Thanks a lot, Johannes.
Yeah, you made it to the end of this wild episode of the season finale of City's Reimagined.
City's Reimagined will take a break from here and will hopefully come back around, let's
say September, October of this year.
Let's see how it goes.
(01:08:12):
If we don't come back, then this is the only season of City's Reimagined, which is also
fine because, you know, there's other projects just starting for me now and I'm not sure
if I have the time to run this podcast still after that.
And yeah, having said that, I actually would love to continue it because it is very, very
(01:08:32):
rewarding.
So if you like the content, please share it with your friends and colleagues.
Give it a like on social media and on your favorite podcasting platform.
And with that, we play you out today with the remix of the City's Reimagined jingle
by Jonas Bulland.
It's the Godzilla's Fury remix.
So give it a listen.
(01:08:53):
It's also a wild one, just like this episode.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And I hope to catch you soon.
And simply made Godzilla the informal mascot or archetype for wicked issues.
(00:15):
Welcome back to the Cities Rematch podcast, the show we are looking into how we can learn
from each other's experiences and become the best urban change makers we can be.
I'm your voice of choice, Johannes Riegler and this is Godzilla's Fury for Reimagining
Cities.
Yeah, that was a bit too dramatic I guess.
(00:43):
But it's the season finale and this is a little bit of a party episode.
And you need to listen closely today to find out about the truth and secrets behind the
Cities Reimagined and what is going to happen in the future and what that has to do with
the old Japanese.
Godzilla, Squales, do it yourself practices, power brokers and the band Kraftwerk.
(01:06):
So we really have reached the end of season one and I'm super happy to have Jonas Buldner
on the show again.
You might have heard the show where he was on Cities Reimagined on Reimagining Urban
Futures a couple of months back.
The last months have been quite a ride I tell you.
(01:29):
So we had thousands of downloads of the podcast and countless of interactions on social media
and emails and comments and conversations on Cities Reimagined.
I'm super happy and grateful that you stuck with me and went on this journey together
with me.
(01:51):
So reflecting on the last 11 or 13, depending on how you count, episodes of Cities Reimagined,
I really recognized soon after starting the podcast that producing the show took a specific
twist for me.
It was not only about producing a podcast anymore, it became something larger than that
actually.
(02:13):
It became part of a larger learning story on urban matters of linking people, topics,
approaches and making them accessible to a broader audience.
But it was not only that, it was also a way for me to distill key messages behind the
stories and narratives people brought onto the show.
(02:38):
My guest today, Jonas Bullhund, is a researcher at the Royal University of Technology KTH
in Stockholm, Sweden.
He's also a musician, so you need to stick around to the end of the episode to find out
about his special Godzilla remix of the Cities Reimagined jingle.
(03:00):
If you like the content of the show, please subscribe to the channel, rate it, leave a
comment, follow us on social media, just like Instagram to find out more background stories
on the show, and let me know what you think of it.
Give me your feedback by sending an email at johannes at Anthropocene.city.
That's all for the monologue today.
(03:21):
Enjoy this wild episode called Godzilla's Fury for Reimagining Cities.
Okay let's start.
Bring it on.
Hi Jonas, how are you doing?
I'm fine.
It's okay.
How are you?
I'm very well.
I got up at six this morning, so I have an early schedule nowadays, and I already sat
(03:46):
on the balcony preparing for our talk.
So it was a good slow morning already, although it's Friday.
It's not just weekend yet.
Yeah, I think this is a very good Friday activity.
Yeah, I think so too.
So now it's 10 for everybody listening.
How are the metropolis of Nesta on this Friday morning?
(04:08):
It's nice.
It's how do you say, gray-blueish sky, typical March sky, high clouds, but thick, and then
intense, and everybody's waiting for the rains in the weekend.
Jonas, the regular listeners of Cities Reimagined might remember you from, I think it was episode
(04:28):
three, where you and Josephine Wangel were on the show to talk about urban futures.
So you're not only an urban researcher, I would also say you're a musician, and you're
doing take one door as well, right?
Yes.
So I have one question for you, because I worked with you for a couple of years, and
(04:50):
I know that you draw your inspiration from a lot of different sources, not only urban
related sources.
And I was wondering, how does this non-urban stuff you're doing, like take one door, being
a musician, playing in bands, how does that influence your practice and your thinking,
(05:12):
your creativity on urban related things?
I'm not sure.
In both Taekwondo and in music, there are some analogies to also working, maybe not
when I'm working alone.
Well, there is something to that as well, finding rhythms, finding things which you
(05:34):
can sense when it has a beat and how you can learn techniques in order to improvise.
And be creative.
That's a typical thing.
And both in kind of martial arts, that's kind of a trick, where there's seemingly a lot
of discipline.
(05:54):
But if you're sparring, and if you think about it as self-defense, you also need to be able
to improvise quite quickly, but still have a lot of technique in your muscle memory.
It's similar with playing music, creating music alone, or also, especially if you're
playing in a band, and how you are, how to, as some other musicians call it, how to get
(06:21):
yourself out of the way, so to speak.
To make things that are inviting, that are kind of how you invite others to also be able
to shine.
Yeah.
That's also how we train in the martial arts.
(06:42):
It's like, how can we train with each other, not against each other, is a saying.
But it sounds to me that it's very much both in martial arts, Taekwondo, and being a musician,
it also relates to all the experiences you had in the past, what you learned in the past,
(07:03):
the impulses, the creativity, which was exposed to you, coming back to the discussion actually
we had with Josephine, you were exposed to, which you, at some point later, you might
be able to make sense out of that.
And I think often it is with urban studies and with urbanism, it's a bit similar.
(07:23):
Yes.
Quite so.
I mean, one part in the, I mean, it always, of course, depends on what aspects of urban
studies you are doing, kind of.
But just the way of finding, let's say the stories, the interesting mysteries and so
(07:45):
on that has, it has sometimes a similar kind of, it may draw, you may draw upon what you've
been exposed to, to find it interesting, of course.
But sometimes I can also have a sense that, oh, but this, it swings, right?
As a groove, it has something that I like, which is hard to pin down a sense of it.
(08:10):
And sometimes it may also be because of the kind of the comedy that I like, for example,
Monty Python.
Yeah.
That influences what kinds of urban stuff that I find interesting and worthy of kind
of examination has usually has some kind of bizarre comedy around it.
(08:31):
Is Monty Python like urban policy making?
I think so.
Yeah.
A lot.
Maybe unintentionally at times, but yeah.
Sometimes the effects are quite similar, one might say.
Jonas, I invited you again to City's Reimagined and I'm very thankful that you are taking
(08:57):
the time again to reflect what has happened in the first season of City's Reimagined.
So this episode is a bit of a season finale.
It will be very dramatic.
The truth will come out.
All the hidden layers between and under the episodes will be exposed.
I'm not sure that that will happen, but I would like to reflect with you on the show
(09:20):
and what has happened.
What were three key moments for you in season one of City's Reimagined?
Well, first of all, I would say looking at the podcast and what has happened over half
a year or so, a little bit more.
Congratulations, I would like to say to you.
(09:42):
Thank you.
A wonderful set of conversations.
I mean, I must say I truly enjoyed it listening to a lot of it.
And of course, okay, so I made some notes.
Three key moments.
I think City's Reimagined was one and I'm not taking them in order now.
Yeah.
I'm taking kind of episodes.
(10:04):
Pretty mind because Sophie and Jim's perspective on the Emergent City, the changing city.
I think that their way of working with collective and kind of a non-arrogant research that they
enable is I thought that was quite hopeful.
(10:28):
Also the episode on cultural centers, which in my head was on provisional spaces, but
it's more than that, of course.
But Tiffany's kind of transnational networking aspects and doing what you're passionate about
locally.
I thought that was interesting.
The kind of the networking, the almost global networking and very local action.
(10:52):
And there was that kind of punk ethos in there.
And the third one, I actually kind of collude Alexander and the Urban Food and Ecology,
(11:15):
Ukraine and the Urban Food because they were articulating kind of the urban collective
or conviviality to use a very technical term.
What is that?
In the social conviviality, how to live together, principles for living together more or less
that they were both talking about, I thought was also kind of key, even if it's, I know
(11:37):
it's a bit more conceptual, but they both tried to ground it very well, those two episodes.
Yeah.
For me, it was also, there was so much key messages coming out.
There was so much interesting conversations in all of these episodes where you can just,
I think there's so much to learn, unpack.
(11:58):
And hopefully coming back to what we started with today, people will listen to it and being
exposed or hearing new insights in a way and come back to a later stage to this inspiration,
hopefully.
But for me, what I was very interested in, and I think I still have a way to go to improve
that, but it is to show the people and the motivations behind projects and knowledge
(12:26):
produced because it is so often that we go to conferences, be somewhere where you present
a project, you talk about what you're doing, what the aim of a project is, what urban challenge
you're addressing.
But there's rarely a space where you talk about the motivation, where you come from personally.
(12:48):
And I think with cities we imagined with the first season, it somehow succeeded to break
the shell of that a little bit, to go a little bit deeper, what motivates people.
So what are the stories behind?
I remember Luisa Bravo in the first episode talking about her childhood and teenage memories
(13:09):
of public spaces in Italy, which ultimately led her to focus on public space research
and working with that.
But there's also more stories hidden behind that.
We talked about it, how we first were going to the bigger cities and being somehow impressed
(13:33):
by that.
But there's so much different motivations, also with City Mind, with Jim and Sophie,
who brought a different perspective to that.
There was a recurring topic of punk and hardcore somehow in this ethic.
But also it showed with a conversation with Stefan Fuga also coming from a very different
(13:56):
angle of local urban journalism, which doesn't have an urbanism focus as such, that there
is so many different perspectives and so many different ambitions and motivations to dive
into urban stuff.
Let's call it like that.
And I wanted you to showcase or show that a little bit on the show.
(14:20):
So how would you sum up season one?
What did it add to a broader debate on urbanism, would you say?
Yeah.
Well, that's kind of a tricky question.
I don't think there is a broader debate on urbanism, actually.
I mean, sometimes in different contexts, it may seem as this is the big debate on urbanism,
(14:45):
but then there are so many debates going on in parallel, depending on where you are.
If you're in Brussels in a policy setting or if you're in an activist camp or if you
are in some engineering sector and so on.
I think some efforts are made to frame urbanity in single statements, like in policy.
(15:08):
And for example, research like Richard Sennett, he has a way of doing that sometimes.
But it's usually quite obvious that it's only about key aspects for certain parts of how
humans can live their lives together and in between urban settings.
(15:30):
So I think the kind of the important thing, if we're thinking about a broader debate on
urbanism is or perhaps the challenge is to keep in mind all of these different ways of
living and understanding the city.
Right.
Contemporary human societies even more so, but the urban part of it and shaping through
(15:56):
that a broader sense of what the urban is.
And I think, well, to preempt a little bit, something that we've been thinking about is
that it shows the need for squirrels to live that way and making friends with Godzilla.
Oh, yeah, good to see.
We will come back to that hopefully today.
But the question was particularly right on season one.
(16:21):
Yeah.
I just had to talk about that sense of the broader urban debate because it's rarely
in singular.
But I think season one was a bit like it was drawing by numbers.
Do you do that?
Is that an English expression where you have a picture but you have nodes identified by
numbers and then you draw and suddenly there's an elephant or something?
(16:44):
Yeah.
And I was thinking about what kinds of urbanities that are emerging from the sample of about,
I don't know, was it 12, 11, 12 episodes?
Yeah, it was 11 full ones and in total it was 13.
So with the bonus on the trailer.
So this is a set of aspects of imagining or reimagining the city across the world today.
(17:11):
So what reimaginations are kind of coming forward through if we draw through all these
numbers?
I think that's an exercise to do and I think I'm still trying to do it.
You mentioned to me that it has been a longer journey of learning, right?
Yeah.
The picaresque as you would say in literature like Voltaire and Candide.
(17:38):
So I think that there is also to this a kind of a naive stance.
It's like, for example, approaching urban wildlife or African urbanity with honest curiosity
and as much prejudice open, I mean, transparent as possible.
And hence in that way, taking a naive stance, but not being naive.
(18:03):
I think that's a characterization of the season, which is very good for me.
I think that's kind of an humble approach to it, but it also makes me very curious as
to what you actually learn, right?
And for this conversation where I'm listening a lot to what you've learned and one of the
red threads, one of these kinds of drawing by numbers and the journey, I think is what
(18:25):
you already mentioned is to do it yourself practices and aesthetics, right?
That kind of punk ethos that you were surprisingly, you were commenting in some of the episodes.
Hey, now I'm hearing that you also have a punk background.
Oh, and you also, and you also.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So that kind of, let's say the attitude of not waiting for permission to do important
(18:48):
stuff seems to be an important kind of line to draw through all the episodes.
Yeah.
But also there is something here.
It's not just doing, not just rushing away and I don't need permission, but there's also
a kind of a sense to make sure how you reflect upon if it's wise to do it.
(19:14):
So I think that's kind of also important.
What I found very interesting with season one is that it showed this very local aspects
to urban, I just call it urban stuff, because skateboarding per se is not an urbanist topic,
if you will, building a skateboarding in the suburb of Peru.
(19:37):
I don't think many people involved in urbanism would see that as something related to urban
transitions.
But at the same time, you have, I had the conversation with Alexander on reimagining
Ukrainian cities after the war, which is a complete different topic on a complete different
(19:57):
scale on a, and then at the same time, I had the conversation with Paul Curie, who talked
about, yeah, basically, I wouldn't say for the whole of Africa, but he covered aspects
of urbanism across Africa, which has another scale to the debate.
Yeah, exactly.
(20:19):
So these are very different perspectives, but sharing a kind of, let's say an ethos
or kind of, how would you say, many times sharing away an attitude towards the work,
which is, I think is the interesting aspects.
(20:44):
And as you say that it's because it's urban stuff, so we could, I think we could do, it's
not just that urban farming, urban agriculture is for some people still a bit odd, but I
think we could just put urban in front of anything and trying to see if there is an
(21:07):
episode to be done about it.
That would be an interesting mix.
Yeah.
I think, I mean, all over the world, we probably would find an example of how that, however
unimaginable it would be to do in a city, you'd find someone doing it.
(21:32):
It's that famous video, for example, from Dinosaur Jr., I think, when they're just driving
around Manhattan or New York, Manhattan in a golf car and playing golf and not in the
parks, but everywhere.
And I think, so we also saw later on that there is actually urban golf.
(21:53):
That's so funny.
That's what I did in the teenage years.
We bought a golf club for a couple of euros.
Maybe it was shilling back then still when a sports shop closed down and then we played
golf everywhere in parks, on the street and so on.
It was a great experience also because it was, before becoming an urbanist, it was a
(22:17):
reimagining cities kind of situation.
So let me try one thing.
I'm not sure if I will put that on the podcast, but I open a chat GTP and I say, what should
I put in?
Give me a list of stuff.
Give me a list of stuff.
(22:39):
10, maximum 10.
Of course, here's a diverse list of things you might be interested or you might find
interesting or useful.
Book recommendation, travel destination, gadget, hobby, movie, recipe to try, online course,
(23:02):
fitness activity, podcast, do it yourself project.
Okay.
So we have an urban book recommendation, urban travel destination, urban gadget, an urban
hobby, urban movie, urban recipe, urban online course, urban fitness activity, urban podcast.
(23:23):
Yeah.
That's easy.
And urban DIY project.
So we have the topics for the next season.
Yeah, you have 10 topics there, right?
Yeah.
You can do an episode about urban podcasting.
Yeah.
There's more people doing podcasts.
Maybe I actually thought about that.
(23:44):
I think you have to publish this list on Instagram and then have people like telling you if they
have any recommendations or ideas.
I'm a bit disappointed.
I have to say, I thought it would have been funnier now.
The 10 recommendations, that's a bit random.
Well, we tried.
But that's the thing with chat GDP and also the visuals that AI seems to be producing
(24:09):
at the moment.
It always turns out a little bit less exciting than one would hope.
Sometimes surprising and fascinating, but always slightly less surprising, a bit like
shut the stock images of meetings or LinkedIn kind of postings.
(24:30):
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
But coming back to season one, what do you think were the deep buried secrets in season
one?
What was the drama we found?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You see my hesitation.
(24:50):
I think I've learned a lot, but there's still something elusive secretive about how the city
can be reimagined from what to what and for whom.
I think that's still a deep buried secret I can't really have out in the daylight yet
(25:12):
from the episodes.
I think we still need to explore a little bit more on that from what to what and for
whom.
I think we will never succeed in being clear in that.
No.
It will be always a reimagining one aspect for specific people, for specific interests
(25:34):
also which comes together and then manifests in urban space.
Yeah.
I think that's the trick.
Rather, it's not always the point to give a kind of a synthesis and make a clear statement.
Maybe that's what I was on to.
(25:55):
What were the mysteries we solved?
What was the clue?
What was the detective work we did over the first season?
What was the mysteries, the murder solved?
Yeah, again, I think that's the interesting thing.
I thought of it this way.
(26:16):
Maybe the urban mysteries or it's the urban transitions that they are like planning an
intentional change.
Of course, I say that because that's one of the kind of research topics I do.
They rarely turn out as you imagine them, right?
Also, one should be very careful for what one wishes for.
(26:38):
Maybe that's one of the mysteries not solved but pointed at.
In what way?
Can you be more specific?
Yeah, because it's kind of an old saying like with Aladdin and having wishes.
Of course, powers the universe can grant you wishes, but it also comes with unexpected
(27:04):
kind of consequences as well.
We can never just have those mysteries.
There is a mystery around how still.
I think that's especially so for urban transitions that when we want to change in a certain way
(27:25):
and when we do it, there is also a ton of other things, a mass, a lot of other things
that changed as well, which we perhaps weren't ready for.
There's something in the episodes that points to this and how to actually work with that
kind of in technical terms, you would call it probably externalities.
(27:48):
I mean, both positive and negative ones.
How do you take care of the positive ones?
How do you kind of picked up the challenge of the negative ones and so on?
That leads us to Godzilla, doesn't it?
So for everybody out there who doesn't know what we mean by Godzilla, that is a bit of
(28:11):
an internal joke we have.
And it leads back to a presentation I gave, I think, six, seven years ago once in Brussels,
which I think confused a lot of people.
And we kept the narrative going.
So it was about how complex urban development is and how complex urbanism is and how wicked
(28:33):
it is.
What a wicked issue it is by bringing together these complexities between disciplines, interests,
fields of work as well.
It is so complex that you cannot solve it.
And I just compared it to Godzilla, because if you try to get rid of Godzilla in, let's
(28:59):
say, with technological solutions, so basically by shooting rockets at Godzilla, Godzilla
doesn't mind.
Godzilla will go further and will become more angry and will let you feel the consequences
of your actions.
And it is a bit similar to in urbanism, where you might try to not kill Godzilla, so break
(29:24):
down the complexity, but actually work with it.
So befriend Godzilla, make him somehow, you will never understand Godzilla and his actions
fully, but you might be able to, yeah, you know, make him your pet in a way, or make
him your friend, you know, your old friend you don't really understand, but make him
(29:49):
go along with you.
Yeah, I think, of course, I remember that.
And I think what you actually did, I remember, how I experienced it was that we had been
started talking about urban dilemmas and wicked issues.
(30:10):
And you'd been kind of around in some projects talking about super wicked issues and simply
made Godzilla the informal mascot or archetype for wicked issues.
I wouldn't like to say monster.
Of course, it's the same kind of mystery, but it was to talk about urban issues, environmental,
(30:33):
economic, innovation, dynamics, public administration practices out of hand, for example.
So a bit like Frankenstein's monster, right?
It only becomes monstrous when we don't care about it, when we don't love it, when we don't
make friends with it, so to speak.
So I thought of that idea was somehow to give the very abstract nature of urban dilemmas
(30:57):
and wicked issue a face, a personality.
So I think that's why it stuck and it kept on popping up in PowerPoints over the years.
And only a few knew about it, kind of saw it even.
But that kind of personality wrecking urban landscapes, and it is reckless yet misunderstood.
(31:19):
I think sometimes I also felt planners, planning practitioners or anyone who was trying to
do urban policy was also kind of in that Godzilla genre.
Yeah.
And so I've been thinking a little bit about this since we are talking a lot about Godzilla
and the kind of fury that's involved in that, the mystery and the fury that wicked issues
(31:45):
and dilemmas, they tend to shape what one could call fire spaces.
I mean, not fires like burning cities, but fire spaces are spaces where there is a lot
of friction and controversy, right?
Urban policy hates this, but it means that you have to work with a lot of uncomfortable
tolerance perhaps.
(32:06):
It takes time, takes a lot of time and trust.
It needs a lot of trust.
So this is far from the kind of common Western techno-rational approach of looking for perhaps
quick fixes, looking for solutions.
And to bring on that, what the episodes also point at is that this kind of challenge, one
(32:33):
of the better descriptions I've read is actually situated on Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson's
Mars trilogy.
It's worthy of a read or listen to when it comes to these kinds of wicked issues that
constantly pop up and also the kind of working with very different angles, aspects, perspectives
(32:55):
on how to live together.
So we could add it to this, there is this kind of activism, do it yourself, local community
actors that are not always seen with good eyes by informal politics and power brokers
or formal politics and power brokers, right?
So they are small or large monsters depending on the situation.
(33:19):
What happens if policy would start to truly love them, right?
Would they be loved to death?
As I seem to remember Sophie and Jim of Sit to Mind, they fear that, right?
But if they really, if policy is such a straw figure of something, but there is something
(33:41):
to how different types of actors could start getting near to each other with tolerance
and with care, I guess.
Yeah.
And I really like that we keep the Godzilla going and now it's out there.
I hope when people see a Godzilla now, they think of wicked urban issues and they think
(34:06):
about your comment just now.
I mean, yeah, I think we were maybe you could count us on one hand who knew what Godzilla
stands for.
Yeah, now it's out there.
Now everybody does.
That's good.
So welcome to the club, dear Lisa.
Welcome to the club, everybody.
Feel invited to put little Godzilla's on your PowerPoints.
(34:30):
You know, it is from now on a bit of a secret sign that when Godzilla is on your slides,
you are one of those who understand.
Yeah.
And of course, I think many times one can simply just use the emoji for Tornasaurus
Rex.
I think it is.
(34:50):
I think that's our stand in.
Yeah, that is the pro tip.
Yeah.
Okay.
Coming back to Siddy's rematch.
And so I'm, I have to say, I'm quite happy with the content and decoration of the, of
season one, how it turned out.
So some, some of the topics I planned on having on the show from the very beginning, when
I started Siddy's rematch, and some just popped in for various reasons, like the skateboarding
(35:13):
one in Peru, which I found very, a very interesting angle to it.
And then it was Christian Fisher saying, Hey, I have this documentary coming.
And then it just, it just made sense.
What do you think?
Did we cover, what aspects did we not cover?
What was not in there?
What could have been in there?
And what is, what is there missed for season?
(35:36):
What we might be able to pick up in season two?
I'm not sure about topics, especially.
I think about this way, maybe there are more mysteries out there.
(36:05):
Yeah.
That you don't solve.
You don't explain it.
It's not like MythBusters or anything, but, but rather, I was thinking about the kind
of re-enchantment that we sometimes also need, that mysteries are also kind of drivers inspiration
(36:25):
for just keep on doing what you do.
Seeing like your everyday places, spaces, urban public spaces, perhaps in a slightly
different light means that, Oh, there's something that might be exciting or it might make you
(36:47):
angry or passionate, even more passionate about the work you do.
But that's a very conceptual and abstract.
Yeah.
So very practical breaking it down.
I think for season two, I would like to have more city administration on the show because
I think there, there has been, yeah, they are not very well represented in this debate
(37:07):
yet, at least not on cities we imagined.
So it would be interesting to have a person who is very visionary also to not reinforce
development strategies.
Let's put it like that.
A bit boring stuff, but like really goes into a visionary process to reimagine a city with
(37:31):
people living in the city and with what it means also in terms of public administration
to go beyond the silos of the sectoral approach of mobility and environment and so on, because
I think there's a lot of challenges and I would really like to have an honest conversation
about these issues.
(37:52):
Yeah.
I think you're right.
I didn't want to propose it since I do a lot of research on public administration and how
they are trying.
Of course, they are seen as these kind of monolith sometimes, but it's just a lot of
(38:14):
very different types of persons and organizations that we are talking about when we're talking
about public administrations.
And I think also not a few of them that I've met in our work are actually very passionate
about trying to find new connections and they are very kind of sometimes sincere, but very
(38:38):
mindful of what exactly they can do, what they are allowed to do in terms of mandate,
et cetera.
But I think that there is usually a kind of a passion in there sometimes, sometimes it's
not.
And so that kind of an honest conversation might be very interesting.
(39:02):
So that kind of brings me to what I thought about more as thinking about the second season
as it would continue these, let's say, mysteries and red thread around do it yourself or what
you can do perhaps as a person, because that's the conversation, right?
(39:25):
But that they're looking at the context that there are a lot of new ways of connecting.
There is an intuition there and I'm also drawing from the Godzilla thinking.
What is sustainable development with a healthy dose of love added, for example.
(39:46):
But love in the kind of not the romantic type of what do I get?
What kind of state am I in?
But rather, how can I care for this?
How can I be in a regenerative ethos about this?
Yeah.
And that's where I think the public administrations, policymakers, other types of actors might
(40:13):
get into the conversation as well.
Very interesting that you bring up love or this kind of this perspective, because it
links to a notion of caring and a notion of emotions and more personal, more soft stuff.
Whereas in urbanism, it's too often, I would say, focused on the facts, focus on the hard
(40:40):
stuff, focus on the concrete.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, first of all, I would like to avoid the adjectives hard and soft, since it's quite
fellowcentric, quite simply.
It usually goes for facts and so on, but you can talk about it in different ways and still
(41:01):
have the same meaning.
I mean, if it's graspable or not, the contours of facts and the contours of understandings
and so on.
But yeah, there is a kind of a logic of care that I think could be a good way.
And I'm inspired by some of my master's students who are kind of reading up on feminist theories
(41:24):
about architecture of care and how to do design care, care as a design principle and so on.
But how perhaps it's also about how we find the freedom to act with care rather than just
push an agenda of freedom of choice is something that I see as a kind of a theme.
(41:49):
And okay, so if I go into it a little bit, there is a kind of a Western concept of freedom
that is somehow, in the last instance, free from responsibilities or connections even,
right?
And it's probably one reason why we have this rampant type of neoliberal capitalism
(42:10):
that that is that kind of choice is felt like a right apart from being right wing many times.
Because it's a very powerful aesthetic.
And also for a lot of the people on the left side and the activists, there is this kind
of freedom that you're not connected to the wrong stuff, so to speak.
(42:34):
But care kind of has the potential to perhaps put that in a different light as care is about
connections and some of them are you're not free to choose, but you can become very free
in them or fulfilled and feel kind of that action is something that you can do stuff
(43:03):
because of the connections, because of your nurturing connections, because you're feeding
connections and so on.
So there's been a lot of that and some types of feminist science and technology studies
as well.
And I think that's where we're getting near to the principle of being regenerative.
Right.
(43:24):
And I think the fulfillment of giving kind of.
Yeah, I want to pick your brain on that as well.
Because I at the moment I see this this care for what is regenerative principle, regenerative
idea for caring for the planet and for humans or for people at the same time as very cutting
(43:45):
edge and coming in more and more in urban studies.
And I think this is at least for me, this is one of the most interesting places, topics
at the moment, which are developing in practice, but also in thinking about it and eventually
also policy.
I don't know.
(44:06):
I haven't seen too much about it yet because people are still stuck with their idea of
their GDP growth and these kind of these kind of old school thinking, which limits everything,
all the other thinking in a certain way, I would say.
I just inattentively said old school thinking, but I somehow maybe that's that describes
(44:27):
it very well.
What's your take on this?
Well, maybe not that it's old school, perhaps in that sense.
But what I've also heard a lot from people who are working close to planning practitioners
and also some of the investigations I've been part of myself, there is a sense sometimes
(44:51):
that we're getting directives and we're doing this, but we're supposed to do the other
thing.
Right.
So that there is a kind of a disconnect, a dissonance, if you will, between what the
job should be about and what you clearly see as this needs to be done and what you can
(45:12):
do and what you're allowed to do, etc.
And I think even politicians, local politicians, regional politicians, national politicians
also feel this at times.
So I wouldn't blame politicians for setting this up.
It's more of a situation that kind of sets a scene where you can act in certain ways
(45:34):
and you can't act in others.
Yeah, you're stuck.
Yeah, which probably makes some of these policymakers and planning practitioners, perhaps, I wouldn't
say jealous of the activists, so to speak, even if someone like the label, but that you
have in the first season.
(45:56):
But we're also coming back to something that you mentioned just before we started, the
bike that's in your living room, which you haven't got around to repair for quite some
time.
And I started thinking about that kind of care, as in that old book, Zen and the art
(46:18):
of repairing motorcycles or the art of motorcycle maintenance.
There is a similar kind of, even if that's a lot more male coded, but there's a similar
kind of thing around thinking and doing things with the care.
It doesn't necessarily mean that everything will be successful or come out great, but
(46:43):
it might mean that you can carve out some space, time to try to do what feels right.
And that might be important, but maybe that's more hypothetical.
But here I'm going to go into kind of urban transformations from this point and say that
(47:09):
this might be about going from information and data that we have for problems that AI
can help us with, of course, but there's a lot of digitalization, but we get a lot of
knowledge on what a problem is or what's going on.
(47:30):
And then we go to knowledge, and that's been mainly our job in research and innovation
programming and so on.
There are probably thousands of papers and reports that are saying something, providing
knowledge on gaps and issues of some kinds.
(47:54):
But that knowledge on what is needed for urban transformations is probably only part of the
mix.
I think what you may be kind of searching for is also the capacities among different
actors to do transformations.
So it's not just about individual training or one or the other decision making support
(48:18):
tool.
So this is about setting up resources for actors to move between settings, perhaps,
sectors and generating wisdom, hopefully.
Wisdom is an interesting word, of course, but it's about care, kind of driven by an
ethos of care, perhaps.
(48:40):
Great.
I think that for some listeners that might sound a bit abstract, but I think this captures
very well what we have been working on or talking about the last weeks and months.
Right?
Yeah.
So should we go into that a little bit?
Because I actually like this very transparent process of what we work on and see where it
(49:02):
leads us.
So just to let you know, Jonas and I have been working on an idea called Anthropocene
City.
And it's not an idea, the idea is more what Anthropocene City is.
So it could be a kind of platform or an initiative for urban learning, for connecting knowledge
(49:22):
with policy and other urban actors to actually cultivate the wisdom required for reimagining
cities or for doing things differently in cities.
And at the moment, there's a kind of gap between those, I would say, oftentimes, because there
is the knowledge, the production of knowledge and experiences, which is often coming out
(49:45):
of the funding logic of being financed for three or four years.
But then there is a gap on what to do with that.
Some cities and in some cases, it might be taken up by a longer process of experimentation
and being used very strategically.
While in others, it would just end up in a report and in a kind of communication logic,
(50:08):
which goes from, you know, we have some findings, we throw them out there, do with it what you
want.
And that usually that doesn't fly.
That doesn't lead to a bigger transformation in other cities.
So we are kind of working on that.
Yeah, kind of to be continued.
(50:30):
To be continued.
But I think that it kind of grows out of the podcast season one.
Some of the conclusions are kind of fed into and probably made more into a very typical
consultancy prospect sheet.
But you know, you have to do that as well.
(50:53):
But I think that season two is also interesting as a kind of a lab to try some of these thoughts.
Yeah, right.
And I have to say that you're absolutely right.
I think while doing these talks, I wouldn't call it interviews, but having these conversations
with people working on reimagining cities, I at some point found out, wait a minute,
(51:18):
this is a bit more than just having a conversation.
This is about getting personal perspective, but also distilling kind of the gist out of
what is very often not written in reports and cannot be easily communicated.
(51:41):
So that's the thinking behind that.
And hopefully we will hear about that.
It will go eventually in a direction where we can publish more stuff and be more detailed
because we need to wrap our head around that still.
Yeah.
Right.
But coming back to two very operational kind of things with cities reimagined.
(52:02):
So I had all of the episodes transcribed and I sit on a pile of about 150 A4 single lined
pages of transcript of cities reimagined.
And I think it would be a pity not to use this knowledge and these outcomes of the podcast.
(52:28):
And I was thinking coming back to AI, that is already now a topic which reoccurs in our
conversation.
But it's very difficult to fit in the work of cities reimagined in a regular job already.
And it would be even more difficult to feed that into, to produce a publication out of
(52:52):
that.
So I was thinking of somehow trying with AI to make sense out of these interviews by taking
the key messages which are distilled out of that and letting AI formulate a text of the
transcripts.
What are your takes on that?
Do you think that would work or would it be too flat?
Would it lose too much nuances which are actually the value of these conversations?
(53:21):
Well, so let me put it this way and a little story from one of the courses that I'm part
of teaching at my work at university more or less.
Where we had the students to analyze two, let's say two, very well, two, three pages
(53:51):
long research proposals.
That is, research proposals are to give you an idea of, hey, there's a problem here.
And hey, this is what you can do to solve it.
Or this is what I can do and give me money to do it, kind of to shape that kind of interest.
And wow, what's going on here?
Oh, this is important, right?
(54:15):
But we had them analyze and compare one research proposal that was written by a student in
the course preceding and which had a very good grade and one written by Chet TTPT or
AI, I think.
I think it was Chet TTPT.
(54:35):
Even though two of the other teachers who actually sat down and tried to have the AI
write the proposal after a couple of iterations, they thought, okay, this is probably as much
time as we have and as good as it gets.
Within two seconds, my students, oh, this is the AI.
(54:58):
It's flat.
It's not really interesting.
It's not really grabbing me.
It's just doing the kind of a business pitch, but it's not really setting up a kind of a
problem, a mystery that, hey, this is where we want to go.
So I think it's a good experiment, but I think almost you or we should do one of our own
(55:22):
first and then do the experiment.
You mean a summary of a conversation and then trying it with AI to see how it compares.
Good experiment.
We'd have to do the synthesis of the 150 pages and then we have AI to do it.
(55:48):
Of course, we can mix it however we want.
It's a bit like if we're going back to music and Taekwondo, perhaps, but music even more
so.
Yes, I'm very used to do stuff with analog, like acoustic guitars or electric guitars,
but mixing that with kind of more machine and programmed sounds, it's not a thing today.
(56:14):
Yeah.
It actually makes for a lot of very interesting music.
I think it was very interesting also, I think back in the days when Kraftwerk were kind
of in their early days, they were doing it and so on.
So I don't think it's more about how if we find it interesting and engaging enough to
(56:35):
do that kind of a mix.
And for us, it's about finding time to do the synthesis.
Yeah.
I will keep it in mind.
It would be very interesting to try something out and see if we find a way which makes sense,
where we don't think that too much is lost in the going via machine while producing something
(57:02):
meaningful eventually.
Yeah.
So my point was perhaps that, I mean, usually drum machines in their own right, they don't
really groove, but sometimes they can unexpectedly groove because of it's a bit queer, quaint,
the things that kind of brings how a groove actually emerges from when you're playing
(57:28):
together.
Let's try it.
We will see.
All right.
But I think that leads us to the last point I would like to discuss with you today.
And that is a bit also about the future and season two of Cities Reimagined.
And that is a bit, yeah, mixing formats.
(57:48):
So for the first season, there were these conversations and they're good as they are.
I also learned that it is quite, it makes a more interesting conversation when you have
three people.
So me as moderating and then two others joining, it makes a more lively discussion or more
(58:08):
lively exchange.
Jonas, what are your takes on the formats for the next season?
So I thought about, we also talked about that having kind of shorts covering specific urban
phenomena in maybe a 10 minute discussion.
We had this example of Italian men who apparently tend to stand around construction sites and
(58:36):
being smart on commenting on what is happening on the, what was the name?
Umarel?
I think it was Umarel.
Umarel.
Yeah.
I think there's much to unpack there because it could be, you know, the reasons and the
interest of these Italian older men could be that it is a form of socialization.
(58:58):
It's a form of community engagement, but we don't need to go into that now.
Otherwise we'd produce a short right now.
I wanted to discuss with you.
So we have the shorts.
And then the second one is I initially thought it would be good to have confrontations on
the show, having opposing standpoints, two people with opposing standpoints on the show
(59:21):
discussing it.
But then this morning when I prepared for our conversation, I actually thought like,
no, this is not, I would not like that because it is, there is already so much confrontation
everywhere, but actually rather I would like to bring two opposites together to have a
kind of, you know, generating, creating a kind of understanding between them, you know,
(59:48):
not going into the calling it a confrontation, but having two opposing standpoints and eventually
figuring out, I wouldn't say middle ground, but what is it, where are the connections,
you know, listening to the other ideas and other standpoints and thus maybe contributing
to understanding the Godzilla.
(01:00:10):
Yeah.
Or making friends.
Making friends.
It's not always fully understanding, but understanding some of it.
I guess what I also hear is something that we know in political philosophy as the difference
between antagonism, like understanding politics as you have antagonists and they are trying
(01:00:33):
to destroy each other, which you have a lot in US American kind of politics, it seems,
especially so at the moment.
On the other hand, you have an ideal or an idea about how you could work in an agonistic
way that is you share some values, perhaps one of them being we shouldn't destroy our
(01:01:00):
opponents by any means necessary, but rather trying to figure out ways and it's usually
quite uncomfortable ways of shedding light on different sides of an issue.
(01:01:22):
And then that's the kind of becomes an idea for democratic discussion or constructive
democratic discussion and so on.
That's Chantal Mouffe, I guess is the kind of the origin of how that's conceptualized.
And I think that's a very good way to go thinking about that as a format.
(01:01:43):
There might be a way of having one of these shorts and then you have two people talking
about that, but who perhaps don't agree to interpretations, what it means, what possible
consequences X or Y could have and so on.
Yeah, excellent.
(01:02:04):
I think they both should have one cake each that they can throw in each other's faces.
What kind of cake?
Cherry?
Yeah, but lots of cream.
Otherwise it hurts.
Oh, cream.
Yeah.
Needs to be a thick one.
A thick cake.
Big, thick cake.
Yeah, excellent.
So season two will be about good sealers, cake, regenerative AI.
(01:02:34):
Is that what came out of this?
Yeah.
I think so.
I think so.
I think so.
Very interesting.
I really have a sense of that there is a genuine challenge here for you in the next season,
how to deal with complexity and still make accessible stories or conversation out of
it.
(01:02:55):
So I do think that that's where the formats are playing a lot of a role.
And it depends on how much people are willing to give you kind of loose shackles to fuck
around and find out.
Yeah.
I think we will just try it out.
(01:03:16):
I think this is the thematic challenge.
I have a very practical challenge to see how I fit in producing Cities Rematchened now
being back on the job and having other projects on the side as well.
So this is just an add on, a free time project.
It will be quite challenging, but I enjoy it so much and I get so much out of it, so
(01:03:37):
much joy out of it and so much pleasure.
And I think it really touches upon very interesting points which are worth diving in for many,
at least the feedback I got is really positive that people find it useful.
Yes.
But one question a bit more specific to this might be perhaps something that I'm learning
(01:03:58):
more from the kind of the artsy stuff is how do you do this in a way where you perhaps
counter what a lot of communication professionals say that you should think about your audience,
(01:04:23):
the target audience and so on.
Think about making it accessible.
How do you think it would be possible to do without thinking about them at all and just
do it because you need find joy in doing it and need to have these conversations and these
(01:04:48):
different aspects of urbanity move along?
And I think that is exactly the pleasure in it because I'm very free to explore whatever
topic in whatever form I want to.
So I'm not bound to think about target audiences, how to get the message out, how to do that.
(01:05:08):
It's either I get the joy out of it and I find it somehow meaningful and I hope that
it is also meaningful for others.
So it's not seeking the people who receive, but more like seeing if there's like-minded
people or people who also find that helpful and seeing how to go along.
(01:05:29):
And that is, it has a bit of a different logic out there because I personally, I kind of
take joy, you know, just I kind of take joy to be on a personal budget producing these
shows and then comparing myself to initiatives and organizations which are loaded with money.
(01:05:51):
And you see in social media, you get more likes or more interactions to the stuff you
produce without a budget than them.
That is a bit of a, I have to say that is a bit of a personal joy as well.
But that brings me a bit to what I also learned over the last year that it is so important
to be kind of authentic in what you do, in what you personally do, but also it might
(01:06:19):
create more inspiration if people are very authentic, very open, if they share some vulnerabilities,
some uncertainties, do not try to shine out whoever else is out there, but you know, having
(01:06:39):
very honest conversations which are joyful at the end of the day.
Yeah.
You're speaking like a true musician.
Musician?
Yeah.
That maybe that comes because I'm at the moment again reading Rick Rubin.
All right.
I think that leaves us with a lot of secrets and cliffhangers for season two, right?
(01:07:05):
So we didn't solve Godzilla.
We got to know Godzilla a bit better.
And now it's about us to pull him a bit closer and make him a closer friend, isn't it?
Yeah.
And I would be surprised if anyone is any wiser after this season finale show.
Oh, don't you think so?
(01:07:28):
I hope so.
Yeah, maybe.
And even if not, I had a great time talking to you, Jonas.
Oh yeah.
And you made a great remix of the City's Rematch and Jingles, which we will play right now.
So Jonas, thank you so much for being on the show again.
And yeah, have a good weekend.
(01:07:51):
Thank you.
Looking forward to the next What's Coming.
Thanks a lot, Johannes.
Yeah, you made it to the end of this wild episode of the season finale of City's Reimagined.
City's Reimagined will take a break from here and will hopefully come back around, let's
say September, October of this year.
Let's see how it goes.
(01:08:12):
If we don't come back, then this is the only season of City's Reimagined, which is also
fine because, you know, there's other projects just starting for me now and I'm not sure
if I have the time to run this podcast still after that.
And yeah, having said that, I actually would love to continue it because it is very, very
(01:08:32):
rewarding.
So if you like the content, please share it with your friends and colleagues.
Give it a like on social media and on your favorite podcasting platform.
And with that, we play you out today with the remix of the City's Reimagined jingle
by Jonas Bulland.
It's the Godzilla's Fury remix.
So give it a listen.
(01:08:53):
It's also a wild one, just like this episode.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And I hope to catch you soon.
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