What is The Future for Cities?
- Épisodes
- 770
- Parution
- quotidienne
- Dernier épisode
- 11 Nov 2026
À propos du podcast
WTF for Cities? is a platform to introduce and connect people who are actively and consciously working on the future of cities and to introduce research about the future of cities.
Épisodes 770
480I_Jonas Birgersson, founder and vice chairman of the Board of ViaEuropa
“The meta story is that we go from few large expensive to many small cheap… the cities are the many small, and instead of being cheap, they can be many small quick. Compared to national policy to change the …
Notes de l’épisode
“The meta story is that we go from few large expensive to many small cheap… the cities are the many small, and instead of being cheap, they can be many small quick. Compared to national policy to change the energy system, it’s lightning fast.”
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?
Interview with Jonas Birgersson, founder and vice chairman of the Board of ViaEuropa. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, the energynet, flexible resource use, cities as catalysts, local energy markets, and many more.
Jonas "Birger" Birgersson is a Swedish serial entrepreneur and visionary known for creating two billion-dollar companies before age 30. He founded Framtidsfabriken (Framfab), a pioneering digital design and ecommerce powerhouse serving clients like Volvo, IKEA, and Nike, and Svenska Bredbandsbolaget (BBB), the world’s first modern broadband operator. Sold to Telenor in 2005, BBB transformed Sweden into a global digital leader and earned him the nickname “Broadband Jesus.” Today, through ViaEuropa and Project Energy Society, he is pioneering EnergyNet - a decentralised electricity grid enabling local sharing and abundance, applying the same “Fiber to all” philosophy to energy.
Find out more about Jonas through these links:
- Jonas Birgersson on Wikipedia
- ViaEuropa website
- Making the electricity grid work like the internet - Jonas Birgersson on the Volts podcast
- The Grid Doesn't Need More Power Plants (It Needs This) - Jonas Birgesson and EnergyNet on Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Connected episodes you might be interested in:
- No.425R - The Energy Foundation (book summary)
- No.426 - Interview with AJ Perkins about energy as the foundation of everything
- No.459R - National Standard Practice Manual - For benefit-cost analysis of distributed energy resources - Summary
- No.460 - Interview with Karl R. Rábago about distributed energy systems
- No.479R - EnergyNet explained: Internetification of energy distribution
What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.
I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Instead of the old energy grid, let's take back control - Jonas Birgersson (480I trailer 3)
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?Trailer for episode 480 - interview with Jonas Birgersson …
Notes de l’épisode
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?
Trailer for episode 480 - interview with Jonas Birgersson, founder and vice chairman of the Board of ViaEuropa. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, the energynet, flexible resource use, cities as catalysts, local energy markets, and many more.
Find out more in the episode.
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
479R_EnergyNet explained: Internetification of energy distribution
Are you interested in how to create an energy system in the 21st century? Debate of the article titled EnergyNet explained: Internetification of energy distribution from 2025, by Jonas Birgersson, Dr. Marc A …
Notes de l’épisode
Are you interested in how to create an energy system in the 21st century?
Debate of the article titled EnergyNet explained: Internetification of energy distribution from 2025, by Jonas Birgersson, Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Dr. Jimmy Chen, Dr. Daniel Kammen, Dr. Tomas Kåberger, Dr. Franklin Carrero-Martínez, Dr. Joakim Wernberg, Dr. Michael Menser, and Dr. Newsha K. Ajami.
This is a great preparation to our next interview with Jonas Brigersson in episode 480 talking about distributed energy systems and the EnergyNet itself.
Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how we can implement the thinking of internet to energy systems. This article introduces a groundbreaking blueprint for decentralising electricity distribution.
Find the article through this link.
Abstract: In developing EnergyNet we have leveraged and are extending lessons from telecom's shift from a centralized, circuit-switched phone system to decentralized, packet-switched data networks. EnergyNet utilizes 1) an Energy Router that enforces galvanic separation and utilizes software-controlled energy flows over a DC backplane, 2) Energy Local and Wide Area Networks (ELAN/EWAN) based on DC microgrids that interconnect through an open Energy Protocol (EP), and 3) a control plane comprised of the Energy Router Operating System (EROS) and EP Server which is managed at operator scale through an Energy Network Management System (ENMS). We distinguish the architectural contribution (Tier-1 including components, interfaces, and operating model) from expected outcomes contingent on adoption (Tier-2). The latter includes local-first autonomy with global interoperability, near-real-time operation with local buffering, removal of EV-charging bottlenecks, freed grid capacity for data centers and industrial electrification, as well as a trend toward low, predictable, fixed-cost clean energy. Evidence from early municipal demonstrators illustrates feasibility and migration paths. The contribution is a coherent, open, and testable blueprint for software-defined, decentralized energy distribution, aligning power-systems engineering with networking principles and offering a practical route from legacy, synchronous grids to resilient, digitally routed energy distribution systems.
Connected episodes you might be interested in:
- No.425R - The Energy Foundation (book summary)
- No.426 - Interview with AJ Perkins about energy as the foundation of everything
- No.459R - National Standard Practice Manual - For benefit-cost analysis of distributed energy resources - Summary
- No.460 - Interview with Karl R. Rábago about distributed energy systems
You can find the transcript through this link.
What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available
I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link)
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Smart grids to distribute energy - Jonas Birgersson (480I trailer 2)
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?Trailer for episode 480 - interview with Jonas Birgersson …
Notes de l’épisode
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?
Trailer for episode 480 - interview with Jonas Birgersson, founder and vice chairman of the Board of ViaEuropa. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, the energynet, flexible resource use, cities as catalysts, local energy markets, and many more.
Find out more in the episode.
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
We have everything today for the energy transformation - Jonas Birgersson (480I trailer 1)
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?Trailer for episode 480 - interview with Jonas Birgersson …
Notes de l’épisode
Are you interested in the internetification of energy? What do you think about the energynet? How can we rethink how our urban grid is serving us?
Trailer for episode 480 - interview with Jonas Birgersson, founder and vice chairman of the Board of ViaEuropa. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, the energynet, flexible resource use, cities as catalysts, local energy markets, and many more.
Find out more in the episode.
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Cities that work with natural cycles - Moein Nodehi (478)
Moein Nodehi, Founder and CEO of Biotonomy, argues that cities have been built in a way that disrupts almost every natural cycle, and that every building decision stays in the city for about a hundred …
Notes de l’épisode
Moein Nodehi, Founder and CEO of Biotonomy, argues that cities have been built in a way that disrupts almost every natural cycle, and that every building decision stays in the city for about a hundred years.
Water is his first concern: paving caps the ground, groundwater is taken and never put back, and designers are barely taught what water is. He adds wind, food and green space, then puts the responsibility on every developer, architect and builder rather than waiting for policy, citing a wastewater reuse project the city later turned into standards. He closes on holistic design, grey water reuse, paving the road for the next generation, and doing what is needed.
(00:00) Cities against natural cycles
(05:00) Why cities exist
(08:30) Growing constructively
(10:15) Water, the cycle we don't understand
(13:19) Wind and food cycles
(16:02) Green is how water gets back
(17:40) Whose responsibility?
(20:53) Build it, then the policy follows
(22:35) Fears: water and heat
(25:38) Human wellbeing and nature
(29:01) The solutions are easier
(33:18) Holistic design and the greenhouse
(36:33) Water recycling within reach
(41:03) Paving the road
(44:32) Be bold, do what is needed
Pairs with episode 477
What is The Future for Cities?
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Don't save the world. Do what is needed. - Moein Nodehi (478)
Moein Nodehi tells people they will not save the world on their own, but their contribution matters. There will be broken pipes and hard days, and the advice is not to give up: do what you love, but if you want …
Notes de l’épisode
Moein Nodehi tells people they will not save the world on their own, but their contribution matters. There will be broken pipes and hard days, and the advice is not to give up: do what you love, but if you want to contribute, do what is needed.
From the interview with Moein Nodehi in episode 478, on natural cycles and water recycling.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Nature-based solutions and the water-energy-food nexus (477)
Carvalho and colleagues' review of 19 urban case studies asks whether nature-based solutions can manage a city's water, energy and food together. This debate tests whether living infrastructure is a system or a …
Notes de l’épisode
Carvalho and colleagues' review of 19 urban case studies asks whether nature-based solutions can manage a city's water, energy and food together. This debate tests whether living infrastructure is a system or a set of single-purpose pilots.
One side points to Brooklyn Grange's rooftop farm, Singapore's vertical gardens, constructed wetlands that turn biomass into energy, and Seoul's Cheonggyecheon River restoration, and argues that a mosaic of small projects adds up to a citywide nexus. The other points to the missing food-energy data at large scales, the lack of grey water guidelines and the cost of retrofitting, and calls citywide reliance premature. Both agree the field needs standardised, multipurpose indicators that measure water, energy and food together. The research transcript is on the site.
(00:00) Living infrastructure or grey pipes
(03:03) The water-energy-food nexus
(04:27) The central question
(05:11) Brooklyn Grange and the Treehouse
(07:20) Micro success, macro silence
(08:23) The roof mosaic
(09:06) Missing food-energy data
(10:37) Constructed wetlands
(11:40) Grey water and technical barriers
(12:52) Cheonggyecheon River
(14:16) Costs and retrofitting
(16:03) Closing positions
(16:49) Where both sides meet
Research article: Nature-based solutions addressing the water-energy-food nexus: Review of theoretical concepts and urban case studies
Pairs with episode 478
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
One greenhouse ties water, food, and heat - Moein Nodehi (478)
Moein Nodehi designs every project holistically. Shower water is treated by plants in a greenhouse that also grows food and works as a buffer space, so water recycling, food production, heating and cooling are …
Notes de l’épisode
Moein Nodehi designs every project holistically. Shower water is treated by plants in a greenhouse that also grows food and works as a buffer space, so water recycling, food production, heating and cooling are designed together.
From the interview with Moein Nodehi in episode 478, on natural cycles and water recycling.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Do the right project, then the policy follows - Moein Nodehi (478)
Moein Nodehi says it is the responsibility of every developer, architect and home builder to do the right thing. His team reused a building's wastewater for its green walls and roofs without any policy, and the …
Notes de l’épisode
Moein Nodehi says it is the responsibility of every developer, architect and home builder to do the right thing. His team reused a building's wastewater for its green walls and roofs without any policy, and the city then came asking for standards.
From the interview with Moein Nodehi in episode 478, on natural cycles and water recycling.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Public space as the product - Howard Kozloff (476)
Howard Kozloff, founder of Agora Partners, argues that public space is the product and buildings are the walls around it. Projects, in his practice, have to be financially viable and civically valuable …
Notes de l’épisode
Howard Kozloff, founder of Agora Partners, argues that public space is the product and buildings are the walls around it. Projects, in his practice, have to be financially viable and civically valuable together.
He calls the method entrepreneurial planning: developer discipline and risk tolerance applied to problems usually left to policy, so a plan shapes what gets built. Cities, he says, absorb shocks and still gather, and public space is what makes density livable. Government's useful role is a rule the land market can price on day one, and someone still has to own the operating costs or the welcome fails. He closes on people in the street, and on the claim that the demise of the city is greatly overstated.
(00:00) Cities absorb every shock
(02:11) Entrepreneurial planning
(06:40) Capital, design, and policy
(09:55) Why cities still gather
(12:47) Public space, not just density
(16:04) Capital misses the public realm
(18:48) Affordability is structural
(23:14) The developer's social contract
(27:36) Fears for the future of cities
(32:01) Government and predictable rules
(35:47) Innovation and building risk
(44:45) Reuse, stewardship, and labs
(52:11) People on the street
Pairs with episode 475
What is The Future for Cities?
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Who pays to run a public space - Howard Kozloff (476)
Howard Kozloff says someone has to own the operating costs of a public space, and that this is a design and financing question if the welcome is going to last. Stewardship, for him, belongs in the capital …
Notes de l’épisode
Howard Kozloff says someone has to own the operating costs of a public space, and that this is a design and financing question if the welcome is going to last. Stewardship, for him, belongs in the capital structure.
From the interview with Howard Kozloff in episode 476, on public space as the product.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
How much are public spaces worth? (475)
Jagoda Adamus's 2023 paper asks what public spaces are worth when the market will not name a price. This debate tests whether total economic value can hold a plaza's cultural worth.One side of the conversation …
Notes de l’épisode
Jagoda Adamus's 2023 paper asks what public spaces are worth when the market will not name a price. This debate tests whether total economic value can hold a plaza's cultural worth.
One side of the conversation treats culture, bequest, and the joy of a bench as human utility already inside the economic account, and points to hedonic prices and contingent valuation as the tools. The other treats David Throsby's cultural capital as a separate category, and argues that genius loci cannot be transferred to a shopping mall that only copies the functions. Both agree that floor area and commercial income miss what public space does for wellbeing, and that a city negotiates better when it can speak about worth in more than one language. The research transcript is on the site.
(00:00) What a plaza is worth
(03:17) Total economic value
(04:16) Cultural capital apart
(05:02) Pricing the unpriceable
(06:03) Urban squares resist the tools
(07:37) Scarcity and free riders
(09:28) Replacement and the mall
(10:18) Genius loci
(11:10) The language of capital
(12:28) Where both sides meet
https://doi.org/10.33119/GN/163105
Pairs with episode 476
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link)
Zoning gets priced into the land - Howard Kozloff (476)
Howard Kozloff argues that land markets price a zoning rule as soon as a city approves it, sometimes overnight. A late demand for a park can stop a building that an early rule would have allowed.From the …
Notes de l’épisode
Howard Kozloff argues that land markets price a zoning rule as soon as a city approves it, sometimes overnight. A late demand for a park can stop a building that an early rule would have allowed.
From the interview with Howard Kozloff in episode 476, on public space as the product.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Entrepreneurial planning for public space - Howard Kozloff (476)
Howard Kozloff calls entrepreneurial planning the habit of using developer discipline on problems usually left to policy, so a plan shapes what gets built. He treats the park and the sidewalk as the …
Notes de l’épisode
Howard Kozloff calls entrepreneurial planning the habit of using developer discipline on problems usually left to policy, so a plan shapes what gets built. He treats the park and the sidewalk as the product.
From the interview with Howard Kozloff in episode 476, on public space as the product.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Urban logistics in large cities - Laetitia Dablanc (474)
Laetitia Dablanc, professor at the University Gustave Eiffel, says urban logistics in large cities already delivers the goods. The gap she names is planner skill, not a missing technology.She places the most …
Notes de l’épisode
Laetitia Dablanc, professor at the University Gustave Eiffel, says urban logistics in large cities already delivers the goods. The gap she names is planner skill, not a missing technology.
She places the most sophisticated logistics in large cities, defines a megacity as a connection of up to about 40 million people, and splits the field into warehousing and transportation. E-commerce, in her account, can be better for CO2 than store retail and worse for the quality of the jobs.
Robots already do the worst warehouse work. Transport models are about 20 years behind the city they describe. She is hopeful because solar panels, new vegetation, and a swimmable Seine are already here, and because she educates about 10 people a year to use that kind of tool.
(00:00) Cities are the future
(02:50) What a city is
(06:29) Mega-regions as one connection
(07:56) Warehousing and transport
(10:36) The goods system already works
(12:59) Air, noise, and the jobs
(15:16) E-commerce, carbon, and work
(17:08) Automation and warehouse robots
(20:45) Planner skills are the concern
(24:12) Transport models left behind
(27:35) Where skills still concentrate
(31:08) Hope, because the tools exist
(33:44) Engineering that is already here
(37:57) Educating ten experts a year
What is The Future for Cities?
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Engineering cities can use now - Laetitia Dablanc (474)
Laetitia Dablanc points to solar panels, new vegetation, and two years of swimming in the Seine as engineering cities already have, and still do not use enough.From the interview with Laetitia Dablanc in …
Notes de l’épisode
Laetitia Dablanc points to solar panels, new vegetation, and two years of swimming in the Seine as engineering cities already have, and still do not use enough.
From the interview with Laetitia Dablanc in episode 474, on urban logistics in large cities.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Last-mile urban logistics in Portuguese cities (473)
Diogo Correia, Cristiano Vagos, João Lourenço Marques, and Leonor Teixeira test last-mile logistics in Portuguese cities. Over 76% of municipalities lack real-time tools, so a 15-minute city-led network is …
Notes de l’épisode
Diogo Correia, Cristiano Vagos, João Lourenço Marques, and Leonor Teixeira test last-mile logistics in Portuguese cities. Over 76% of municipalities lack real-time tools, so a 15-minute city-led network is elegant on paper and hard to run.
The debate is whether a municipality should orchestrate shared hubs, cargo bikes, and a predictive map, or whether missing data and thin coordination make that role impractical. Proprietary vans account for up to 21% of CO2 in residential areas, and only about 2% of municipalities said they would not struggle to mobilise a 15-minute response.
Lisbon is the worked example: DBSCAN inside 1.5 kilometres, Uber's H3 grid, and Valhalla 15-minute bike isochrones. GDPR, hills, cold storage, and private operators who compete on routing are the constraints. The research transcript is on the show site.
(00:00) The last-mile free-for-all
(02:41) A 15-minute logistics question
(03:41) Logistics 4.0 and shared hubs
(04:40) Lisbon's tools and algorithm
(06:05) Data, privacy, and radar
(07:08) Sharing work with operators
(08:26) Hills, storage, and bikes
(09:46) What both sides still share
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13675567.2022.2130211
Pairs with episode 474
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link)
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Why skills gather in big cities - Laetitia Dablanc (474)
Laetitia Dablanc argues that innovations come from a concentration of different people, and that a campus, a hospital, or a city hall still needs a big city to become real.From the interview with Laetitia …
Notes de l’épisode
Laetitia Dablanc argues that innovations come from a concentration of different people, and that a campus, a hospital, or a city hall still needs a big city to become real.
From the interview with Laetitia Dablanc in episode 474, on urban logistics in large cities.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Robots and better warehouse jobs - Laetitia Dablanc (474)
Laetitia Dablanc says automated warehouses make the work less miserable, because robots take the worst jobs, and that training today's workers into the new ones will not be easy.From the interview with Laetitia …
Notes de l’épisode
Laetitia Dablanc says automated warehouses make the work less miserable, because robots take the worst jobs, and that training today's workers into the new ones will not be easy.
From the interview with Laetitia Dablanc in episode 474, on urban logistics in large cities.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
V. Kelly Turner: Thermal literacy and which heat (472)
V. Kelly Turner, associate director and professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA's Luskin Center for Innovation, on treating extreme heat as a daily planning problem: which heat, whose body, and what a …
Notes de l’épisode
V. Kelly Turner, associate director and professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA's Luskin Center for Innovation, on treating extreme heat as a daily planning problem: which heat, whose body, and what a city can still redesign.
She argues that heat, in the American Meteorological Society's definition, is a process, and that a temperature is only a snapshot of it. Thermal literacy is the working knowledge of why you feel hot, why a city heats up, and how to cool down. The urban heat island, she says, is a useful caricature and a poor guide to a person standing in sun or shade.
Her concerns are unequal access to cooling, streets designed without shade, and a spectacle of record temperatures that does not change practice. Her hopes sit with thermophysiology, cooling that changes what a body has to do, public water, and heat governance that is still young enough to build with equity in mind. She frames what a household can do as agency, and she keeps the problem collective.Cities, she says, are mutable: if we built them, we can retrofit them.
(00:00) Heat is a verb
(01:54) Futures we plan for
(04:10) What thermal literacy means
(06:58) What counts as a city
(07:58) The heat island straw man
(13:04) Inequity, shade, spectacle
(16:21) Heat in ordinary days
(19:47) The three Ps of heat
(23:36) Water as a cooling tool
(26:57) Building heat governance
(31:40) Agency, not blame
(33:40) Heat exposure settings
(35:56) Cities can be redesigned
(39:17) Bridging research and policy
Pairs with episode 471
Show notes: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/
What is The Future for Cities?
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Passive cooling as agency, not blame - V. Kelly Turner (472)
V. Kelly Turner would cool a home by night ventilation and covered windows, and she refuses to call that a private duty. Agency, she says, still sits inside a collective challenge.The skill reduces strain on …
Notes de l’épisode
V. Kelly Turner would cool a home by night ventilation and covered windows, and she refuses to call that a private duty. Agency, she says, still sits inside a collective challenge.
The skill reduces strain on the grid and on a household bill. The responsibility for safe heat, in her framing, does not stop at the front door.
Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Hyper-local heat beyond surface temperature (471)
V. Kelly Turner and colleagues find that a satellite map of land surface temperature is a poor guide to theheat a person feels in Civano, Tucson. Painting a street white can cool the pixel and heat the …
Notes de l’épisode
V. Kelly Turner and colleagues find that a satellite map of land surface temperature is a poor guide to theheat a person feels in Civano, Tucson. Painting a street white can cool the pixel and heat the pedestrian.
The debate is on their 2022 paper in the Journal of Land Use Science. One side keeps 30 metre Landsat maps as the tool cities can actually use. The other shows how a morning snapshot, and a coat of reflective paint, can miss or worsen mean radiant temperature for the person on the street. Shade cools that person and keeps the asphalt from charging overnight, with a night-time catch when a dense canopy holds heat in.
(00:00) White streets and pedestrians
(02:46) Civano as a laboratory
(03:39) Mean radiant temperature
(06:00) A 10am satellite pass
(07:03) Walking with MaRTy
(08:46) The cool-street trap
(10:57) Shade and stored heat
(11:37) Trees that warm the night
(12:40) Which heat problem
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1747423X.2021.2015003
Shownotes: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/13/471r_more-than-surface-temperature-mitigating-thermal-exposure-inhyper-local-land-system/
Pairs with episode 472, V. Kelly Turner: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link)
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
If we built it, we can cool it - V. Kelly Turner (472)
V. Kelly Turner finds optimism in a simple fact: cities are mutable. If people built a hot street, they canretrofit it, and local staff writing heat plans already know their cities. She points to the City of LA …
Notes de l’épisode
V. Kelly Turner finds optimism in a simple fact: cities are mutable. If people built a hot street, they canretrofit it, and local staff writing heat plans already know their cities. She points to the City of LA andLos Angeles County, where the people on heat action plans now know heat as well as they know their streets.Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Heat is a verb, so ask which heat - V. Kelly Turner (472)
V. Kelly Turner says heat is a verb. A weather-app temperature is one snapshot of an energy exchange, and a city that plans to manage heat still has to say which heat.Air temperature, a surface, and sunlight on …
Notes de l’épisode
V. Kelly Turner says heat is a verb. A weather-app temperature is one snapshot of an energy exchange, and a city that plans to manage heat still has to say which heat.
Air temperature, a surface, and sunlight on skin are different. She wants that distinction in everyday language and in local government.
Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Geoffrey West: Urban Scaling Laws and the Future of Cities (470)
Geoffrey West, theoretical physicist and distinguished professor at the Santa Fe Institute, on urban scaling laws,cities that grow faster than exponential, and what happens when populations start to shrink. He …
Notes de l’épisode
Geoffrey West, theoretical physicist and distinguished professor at the Santa Fe Institute, on urban scaling laws,cities that grow faster than exponential, and what happens when populations start to shrink. He treats the future of cities as the future of the planet. Cities drive resource use and climate change because that is where the people are. Without immigration, much of Europe and the United States would already be shrinking, even while other places cannot build housing fast enough.
A city, for him, is a machine for social interaction: A talks to B talks to C. Globalization widens that loop and also risks sanding off the diversity of thought cities need. He wants the rise in living standards kept, and energy returned to the sun. A science of cities would predict the rough baseline for roads, police, crime, and patents from city size alone, then ask why a particular city beats or misses that line. The same scaling laws show up from Cleveland to cities in Chile, China, and Sweden.Episode 469 is the debate on the 2007 paper he co-authored.
(00:00) Cities need science
(00:58) Who Geoffrey West is
(02:06) Cities and the planet
(07:39) Immigration and the singularity
(17:39) A machine for interaction
(23:30) Globalization and diversity
(27:43) What to sustain
(36:13) Three concerns
(42:23) Why cities outlast companies
(50:42) A science of cities
(01:02:41) How scaling laws work
(01:13:02) A precarious planet
Show notes and transcript:https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/08/470i_geoffrey-west-theoretical-physicist-and-distinguished-professor-at-the-santa-fe-institute/
What is The Future for Cities? podcast
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Scaling Laws from Cells to Cities | Geoffrey West
Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting. He calls the far side of …
Notes de l’épisode
Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting.
He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once.
Find out more in the episode.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Growth, Innovation, and the Pace of Life in Cities (469)
A research debate on the 2007 paper Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities, by Luís M. A. Bettencourt, José Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kühnert, and Geoffrey B. West.When a city doubles …
Notes de l’épisode
A research debate on the 2007 paper Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities, by Luís M. A. Bettencourt, José Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kühnert, and Geoffrey B. West.
When a city doubles in population, wealth and invention grow by more than double. Biology does the opposite: a larger animal uses energy more efficiently and lives more slowly. The paper's growth equations say a superlinear city has to produce major innovations at a continually faster rate, or growth stalls and can collapse. One reading treats the city as an engine that makes solutions faster than problems, because people share a common store of knowledge. The other says shrinking innovation cycles run into fixed human limits: walking speed, the nervous system, and the roughly twenty years it takes to reach productive maturity. In the figures discussed, patents sit near 1.27, inventors near 1.25, wages near 1.12, and serious crime near 1.16. The argument is whether that thin gap is a surplus, or a system already at the wall.
(00:00) Scaling and the pace of life
(01:57) An engine, or a collision course
(03:56) Sublinear biology, superlinear cities
(05:15) The finite-time singularity
(06:44) Walking speed is not infinite
(08:27) The twenty-year limit
(09:46) Crime, disease, and energy waste
(11:11) A surplus, or a wall
(12:40) Read your city against the laws
Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0610172104
Show notes: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/06/469r_growth-innovation-scaling-and-the-pace-of-life-in-cities/
What is The Future for Cities? podcast
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link)
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
A City Is a Machine for Social Interaction | Geoffrey West
Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting. He calls the far side of …
Notes de l’épisode
Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting.
He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once.
Find out more in the episode.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Cities Growing Faster Than Exponential | Geoffrey West
Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting. He calls the far side of …
Notes de l’épisode
Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting.
He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once.
Find out more in the episode.
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Voici les 40 derniers épisodes sur 770. Les épisodes plus anciens se trouvent dans le flux du podcast.
Podcasts similaires
Plus de podcasts : Sciences
C’est votre podcast ?
Confirmez-le avec une entrée dans votre flux : vous recevez ici un code, vous l’ajoutez comme podcast:txt dans le canal de votre flux, et nous le vérifions. Votre podcast apparaît ensuite comme « vérifié » sur SoundNode.