All Things Urban

As an official media partner for the upcoming CoMotion LA LIVE, All Things Urban spoke with John Rossant, the Founder and CEO of CoMotion and the Founder and Chairman of the NewCities Foundation, about a professional pathway from a journalist to one of the leading experts in urbanism, his opinion on the future of mobility, and the best solutions for cities to recover after the current pandemic.

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.

The multidisciplinary nature of urbanism means there is a wide range of research methods available. Can filmmaking be one of them? The founders of Maison d'Être described their cinematic experiments and how they use documentary to explore the notion of ‘home’, one of the least studied yet promising themes in contemporary urban studies.

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.