All Things Urban

Aisha Mugo is an aspiring urbanist and cultural geographer from Nairobi, who uses film photography to archive African urban culture. After graduating with a focus on Global South urbanism and migration, Aisha worked at an international NGO. She is currently pursuing a Master’s at Malmö University and is Creative Content Curator at Matri-Archi(tecture).

Lea Bou Sleiman is an urban economist, currently pursuing her PhD at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. She was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to France for her studies. Diving into the world of research, she tackles in her thesis the economic impact of pedestrianizing parts of the Seine river quays.

As an official partner of the Wellbeing Cities Forum, All Things Urban sets off to find out what it takes to put wellbeing at the heart of the cities’ development strategy. In search of the main trends and ideas behind the wellbeing principles, we spoke with Niels Lund, Vice-President at Novo Nordisk and a member of the Advisory Board for the Wellbeing Cities Award that celebrated cities implementing ambitious, inspiring, innovative and inclusive initiatives.

Kristen Zupancic grew up in Canada, just outside of Toronto. After graduating from Media Communications, she developed a niche interest in coliving, a community-driven shared living model. To pursue her career and dreams, she moved to Amsterdam in 2018 and is now working as Trend & Innovation Analyst at The Class of 2020.

In the run-up to CoMotion LA, we spoke with Greg Lindsay, its director of strategy, as well as a journalist, urbanist and futurist, about his career in urbanism, what brought him to the field and how he envisions the future of cities and urban mobility.

Carla Cammilla Hjort is co-founder and Vision Director at SPACE10, a research and design lab in Copenhagen on a mission to create better and more sustainable ways of living. In this interview, Carla tells about her journey to founding SPACE10 and shares insights on tackling future challenges through mindful technology adoption.

Ori Succary is the VP of Design at Colu, an Israeli startup that issues local currencies for cities and encourages people to spend locally. In this piece, Ori explains how the app helps cities achieve economic sustainability and shares his vision on the role of design in shaping the future of places we live in.

Urs Thomann is a Swiss urban planner and a co-founder of the CANactions School in Kyiv and Amsterdam – a unique educational platform where different actors of urban change meet. Bringing together planners, economists, politicians, activists, the school promotes a collaborative approach to urban development and supports multiple initiatives throughout Ukraine. In this interview, Urs shares his vision on urbanism education and the challenges of urban professions.

Cities are constantly changing, as well as the ways in which we analyse them. Damiano Cerrone, co-founder of Spin Unit, a consulting and research lab, tells about a new approach to urban research, the role of data in contemporary policy making, and how urban planning is turning into interaction planning.

Future cities need to be healthier and respond to human needs, which is calling for a new profession: the Conscious Design Consultant. Itai Palti, founder of Conscious Cities explains how to use behavioural insights to make cities more human-centred, and how neuroscience will change the future of urban development.