Urban Radar

Come with us to Johannesburg and Dhaka in this month's feature. Visit the markets and stalls of Jeppe, in inner city Johannesburg, a dynamic ecosystem of informal traders, sometimes called Africa’s shopping Mecca. Head with us to Korail, an informal settlement of 300,000 dwellers, sometimes called Bangladesh’s largest slum.
In this double book talk, we are joined by two critically-acclaimed authors. With Tanya Zack we discuss her book The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a Port City, a narrative of how migrant Ethiopians have shaped this trading post in the inner city. With Tanzil Shafique we explore his book City of Desire: An Urban Biography of the Largest Slum in Bangladesh which challenges what and how we know the different desires of settlement-dwellers. 
Together we consider:
how global-local dynamics shape and are shaped by different urban places around the world 
how formal and informal spaces in cities are managed, policed and regulated
the epistemic politics and positions of doing urban research
Guests
Tanya Zack is a South African urban planner and writer whose work has focused on urban regeneration, contemporary migration, informal work, urban policy and affordable housing. Her writing in Wake Up This Is Joburg (Duke University Press, 2022) has been lauded for being amongst the freshest and most original material on an African city. It was included in the longlist of the 2024 Sunday Times/Exclusive Books Literary Awards. The products of her professional practice in Johannesburg's inner city, including an inner-city transformation policy, and a study of cross border shopping, are recognised as ground-
breaking interventions. 
Tanzil is Senior Lecturer of Urban Design at the Sheffield School of Architecture and Associate of the Urban Institute. Tanzil’s research looks at southern urbanism, pluriversal architectural practice and informal planning, mainly focusing on the ongoing adaptation and transformation due to climate change led by the local citizens. He is currently leading a dweller-led urban wetland restoration stewardship project in Dhaka and co-convenes the Platform for Just Housing (Najjyo Abashon Moncho or NAM), which works towards housing and climate justice with local activists and citizens.

Hosts:
Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.  His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441) 
Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)
Email feedback to: [email protected]
You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.

This month, Tom and Beth are joined by Hannah Sender, University of Sheffield, and Mariam Bazzi, Beirut Urban Lab to discuss how propertied families in small towns in Lebanon have responded to violence and displacement over the past years (Go to 35:04 for guests). 
When left with no savings, and little help to repair and reconstruct after military interventions, property becomes a moral relationship, as much as a personal asset: what ought housing to be used for, when urbicide becomes a core goal of warfare?
Also on our radar:
Infrastructural causes of flooding in Nairobi
What Cubans in Miami reveal about how diaspora shape urban politics 
Banksy's loss of anonymity in an era of surveillance capitalism
Data centre politics in the French local elections
Scam centres in Cambodia
Habermas, an unrecognised urbanist?
Guests:
Hannah Sender is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. Her current research examines land and housing relations in Lebanon. 
Mariam Bazzi is a researcher at the Beirut Urban Lab, working on cultural heritage destruction and reconstruction in Palestine and Lebanon. Previous work included tracking the urbicide in Gaza.
And More:
Compound capitalism - Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, Mark Bo
Capitalism and conflict at the margins - Xu Peng, Jonathan Goodhand, Patrick Meehan, Naomi Yonder
Habermas and the City - Tommaso Vitale
The Sheffield Declaration (see also episode 4)
Planning and crisis - Mona Fawaz (see also episode 10)
Hosts:
Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.  His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441) 
Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)
Email feedback to: [email protected]
You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.

In this episode Beth and Tom are joined by Cristina Temenos from the University of Manchester to discuss a wide range of issues from trust in medicine, responses to COVID-19 and experimentation and evidence in localised healthcare settings. Together, they ask:
Faced with crisis after crisis, how do municipalities deliver public health care in Athens, Santiago and Greater Manchester?
What forms of experimentation, innovation and alternative provision emerge during crisis, and what does this mean for the role of state and non-state services in addressing the needs of vulnerable populations?
What does crisis policy-making look like and how is it changing the way we are thinking about evidence and expertise?
Guests:
Cristina Temenos is a Reader in Human Geography, an urban, political geographer, her current project explores how cities are managing intersecting health, economic and social crises to negotiate more just urban futures. Her research is focused on health inequalities and the politics of access to care in cities globally. Working in the field of policy mobilities, she has developed this work in relation to drug use and treatment, public health, housing, economic austerity, environmental sustainability, transport, and climate change.  She has recently published in journals such as Progress in Human Geography, IJURR and Dialogues in Urban Research.

Read More:
Crisis policy-making and revanchist public health politics
The modalities and politics of crisis urbanism
Urban crisis as infrastructure, not event: A view from Beirut
Crisis and the urban imagination
Austerity co-production
Hosts:
Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.  His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441) 
Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)
Email feedback to: [email protected]
You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by Professor Aidan While from the University of Sheffield to explore how robotic urban infrastructures are already reshaping everyday lives, homes and mobilities. 
From self-driving taxis to autonomous delivery drones the size of a lorry, we take a closer look at how experimentation in US cities, across Africa and now in the UK foreshadows the stealthy rise of robots across multiple domains.
Go straight to 37:33 for this discussion.
First in our radar, we cover:
Leaflet wars in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Greater Manchester
How space and stigma play out in the Epstein and UK grooming scandals
What the UK Royal Family have to do with cities 
Urban foundations & fallouts from the death of Mexican drug lord, El Mencho
The promise of Spain's approach to regularising undocumented migrants
How to better assess the vulnerabilities of regions and cities to the green transition
Guests:
Aidan While researches environmental and climate policy, urban technology and future cities, and the politics of planning in the UK and internationally.  This podcast draws on his ESRC project on Robotics as Urban Automation. He has written on sidewalk delivery robots, ecologies of automation, and regulating urban robotics.
Hosts:
Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.  His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441) 
Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)
Email feedback to: [email protected]
You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by visiting researchers to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, Junia Mortimer and Felipe Magalhães. 
They discuss:
How can we see and understand the city in this geopolitical age of conflict and global uncertainty?
How can photographs and visual archives make visible the complexities of cities, particularly those in the Global South?
When seeing directly is not possible, what other approaches can help us analyse the intense volatility of cities impacted by urbanisation and industrialisation processes?
What do these methods mean for urbanists interested in urban change? What endures, what transforms and how do we validate what counts as knowledge?
Guests:
Junia Mortimer is an Assistant Prof at the Department of Urban Planning at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. She is currently an Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. She has curated exhibitions including Urbanos Arquivos (2023) in Salvador, which won first prize in the 2024 Arquisur Competition and she coordinates the Laboratory of Experiments on Image and Architecture.
Felipe Magalhães is an Assistant Prof at the Department of Geography, UFMG, Brazil and Visiting Fellow at University of Manchester. He has been working on popular and solidarity economies, deindustrialization and extractivism in the Brazilian context. He has recently published in the journals Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, IJURR and Antipode.
Key archives/figures mentioned:
Zumvi Afro-Photographic Archive: Lázaro Roberto.
Roberto Monte Mor
Edneia Aparecida de Souza
Ariella Azoulay
Francisco de Oliveira
Hosts:
Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.  His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441) 
Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)
Email feedback to: [email protected]
You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.