The Developer podcast

The Developer podcast

How do we make places where people want to live, work, play and learn? A podcast on cities, property, architecture and urban design. Support us on Patreon www.patreon.com/thedeveloperuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

Trauma and place: Avoiding triggers in design and engagement

September 8, 2025 • 30 mins
If we want to create inclusive, supportive and safe places, we can't ignore trauma. At least half of all people will experience a trauma at some point in their lives and may be triggered by sights, sounds, questions or spaces that remind them of a past traumatic event. Olaide Oboh, a director at the developer Socius and managing director of Populate, speaks about how she learned about trauma-informed practice and why as a developer...

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Purple pounds: Designing for the deaf and disabled

August 2, 2025 • 42 mins
The spending power of disabled people, known as the purple pound, is worth £300bn: "Hello, does that not tell you something?" says Amanprit Arnold, a deaf city urban strategist passionate about creating an accessible city for everyone. "It's not charity. There's a commercial return to inclusive design." Born deaf, Amanprit Arnold is a visionary built environment changemaker renowned for her expertise and commitment to inclusivity. ...

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Fighting for a Feminist City in Glasgow

July 18, 2025 • 40 mins
How do we change policy to create gender equal cities? This story starts with a book: Feminist City by Leslie Kern. Read during lockdown, Holly Bruce, Scottish Greens councillor for Langside in Glasgow said it opened her eyes to the ways in which design can limit a women's participation in city life. The book was “the catalyst” for a political movement that would see Bruce move from reflection to action in short order, first joinin...

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The civic role of a new town hall

April 12, 2024 • 53 mins
How do you develop a new town hall and civic hub in a community with a longstanding mistrust of its local authority? “You’ve got to listen,” says James Stockdale, Development Director at Muse. Your New Town Hall in Brixton, the project to restore the Grade II-listed Lambeth town hall was never going to be easy. According to a 2013 resident’s survey, the council was not held in high regard. The report said residents felt “...

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Is this the year of the landscape architect?

March 14, 2024 • 53 mins
As regulations on biodiversity net gain and sustainable drainage become mandatory, Carolin Göhler, president-elect of the Landscape Institute, explains why the role of the landscape architect is as vital as it is misunderstood. In areas prone to overheating, flooding or drought, having a lead designer focused on land use makes sense. The increase in social impact measurement, social prescribing and ESG investment also highlights th...

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How local councils are leading on net zero in spite of central government

January 22, 2024 • 51 mins
Local authorities are moving head with net zero and climate resilience plans, installing solar panels and heat pumps. But a recent report from Key Cities, a group of 27 UK cities, concludes that "progress is being hindered by central government through a lack of powers, clarity, capacity and funding". Gina Dowding Lancaster County Counsellor and Richard Cook, Leader of Gloucester City Council, discuss the recommendations from the r...

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We need to talk about SLOAPs: Sites Leftover After Planning

January 9, 2024 • 57 mins
We need to talk about SLOAPs, aka Sites Leftover After Planning. We've all seen them, corridors of tarmac or patches of grass with no purpose or social life. Could we put these fragmented spaces to better use as sites of biodiversity, food growing, play or connection? Soham De from EcoResponsive Environments and Valerie Beirne from Where Pathways Meet have been adding up the potential of this multitude of tiny sites, and want to sp...

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Turds in the plaza: How do we fix public art?

December 15, 2023 • 51 mins
Art in public space has long been subject to hot debate. It was back in the 1970s that James Wines referred to Modernist sculptures as "turds in the plaza" and "Plop Art". The removal of sculptures associated with slavery as part of the Black Lives Matter are proof positive that public art matters deeply to people and places. So when seeking to commission public art, is community involvement the answer to question of relevance, app...

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Painting the town: What street art brings to public spaces

December 4, 2023 • 57 mins
Street art has a lot to do with play, says Dr Lee Bofkin, co-founder of Global Street Art, who points to the evolving role of streets as a backdrop for content creation and personal digital expression. Global Street Art has connected street artists with sites to paint 3,000 murals in the UK since 2012, including pieces created under the Art for Estates programme and launching the London Mural Festival. In this podcast, the co-found...

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Dignity by design: What is the architecture of a good life?

November 15, 2023 • 57 mins
In this special 100th episode of The Developer Podcast, author Carolyn Steel hosts Stephen Witherford, co-founder of Witherford Watson Mann architects and Sophia Craxton, food anthropologist and manager of the community kitchen at almshouse Appleby Blue. What emerges is passionate and emotive discussion about how we design spaces for dignity, and the building as the beginning of a conversation about how we live and what we value. I...

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Could adventure playgrounds boost community and solve the building skills shortage?

October 22, 2023 • 50 mins
The construction industry is struggling to attract young people with an acute shortage of skilled workers hampering innovation and quality. Architecture and engineering need more diversity. At the same time, developers are creating playgrounds and spaces for teenagers to attract families and create community. What if we could solve all these needs with a single intervention? The adventure playground is not a new concept – the first...

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Embracing industrial: The call for more urban sheds, breweries and makerspaces

October 8, 2023 • 52 mins
The regeneration playbook is to takeover industrial spaces in favour of housing and mixed-use development, displacing the garages, workshops and sheds and pushing them to the margins of the city. But an increase in industrial rents and a shortage of industrial spaces has led to a radical rethink, with councils seeking industrial intensification instead, funding the creation of multi-storey light industrial spaces. In this interview...

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Camden Highline: The campaign to green the tracks

October 2, 2023 • 43 mins
The popularity of New York's Highline saw other cities scouring maps for disused infrastructure – and Camden was no exception. The discovery of a disused viaduct running between King's Cross and Camden Road sparked the campaign for a Highline. Fast-forward and the design has planning permission and is now fundraising towards the build. We speak to Simon Pitkeathley, CEO of Camden Town Unlimited and CEO of Camden Highline about the ...

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Breaking the cycle of demolish, rebuild

June 21, 2023 • 44 mins
Back in 2018, one of The Developer’s first podcasts was an interview with Linda Thiel, director of White Arkitekter’s London studio. The Scandinavian practice had been hired for the second phase of the regeneration of the Gascoigne estate in east London, replacing 1960s high rise blocks while adopting what the practice calls a “Scandinavian approach” with an emphasis on public space. More than four years on, Thiel got in touch to s...

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Cultural compact: How to fund grassroots arts and boost wellbeing in deprived places

June 5, 2023 • 56 mins
The Key Cities report, Culture and Place in Britain, identified access to culture as a driver of wellbeing in areas of socioeconomic deprivation. But how can we seek stable and sustainable funding for grassroots culture in our places? Alan Waters, Culture Lead for Key Cities and previous leader of Norwich City Council and Sarie Mairs Slee, who previously led the Salford Culture and Place Partnership, discuss how the Cultural Compac...

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Co-designing Horatio's Garden: "The planting is informed by different ways of seeing"

May 24, 2023 • 44 mins
Horatio’s Garden Chelsea, designed by Harris and Bugg with McMullan Studio, has been awarded the coveted Best in Show title at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. In this podcast, we sit down with Charlotte Harris and Andrew McMullan to discuss the process of designing a fully accessible garden for this UK-based charity that nurtures patients after spinal injury in NHS spinal centres.

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Paul Monaghan and the Office for Place: Beauty is not shorthand for 'traditional'

March 24, 2023 • 47 mins
Paul Monaghan, architect and co-founder of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, talks about his role on the advisory board for The Office for Place, a government body helping to shape design codes and neighbourhood plans in England. Announced in July 2021, having emerged out of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission, the purpose of the Office for Place is “to make it easier for all neighbourhood communities, wherever they might...

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The death and life of city trees with Elaine Cresswell, ReShaped

February 13, 2023 • 49 mins
What are we doing wrong when it comes to urban tree planting? With an estimated 30 to 70% of city trees expected to die within a year of planting, landscape architect Elaine Cresswell, founder of ReShaped, dishes the dirt on the reasons city trees die, from funding to specification, soil to maintenance. With targets for net zero, flood resilience, air pollution and Biodiversity Net Gain, we need our landscapes to work harder than e...

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Urban quilting: Valerie Beirne on stitching a place in time

January 31, 2023 • 40 mins
There are times when placemaking is about urban acupuncture; a series of strategic interventions that signpost and make accessible what is already there – microplans in lieu of masterplans. In this podcast, landscape architect Valerie Beirne, founder of Where Pathways Meet, discusses her 14 years at Better Bankside and the potential impact of incremental projects where a singular vision is delivered by local partnerships big and sm...

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Ageing in place: A new almshouse for London

January 20, 2023 • 46 mins
Psychologist B. F. Skinner famously compared old age to a foreign country: “You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.” But are UK towns and cities ready to welcome those on the journey? Figures from the 2021 census revealed that there are 2.5m people aged 50 or older living in London, while the OECD estimates that older adults comprise 15% of the population of metropolitan areas of the UK.Could a new almsh...

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