Urban Political Podcast

Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, Mais Jafari, Nitin Bathla, Julio Paulos, Nicolas Goez, Talja Blokland
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Semimonthly

The **Urban Political** delves into contemporary urban issues with activists, scholars and policy-makers from around the world. Providing informed views, state-of-the-art knowledge, and unusual insights, the podcast aims to advance our understanding of urban environments and how we might make them more just and democratic. The **Urban Political** provides a new forum for reflection on bridging urban activism and scholarship, where regular features offer snapshots of pressing issues and new publications, allowing multiple voices of scholars and activists to enter into a transnational debate directly. Hosted and produced by: Ross Beveridge (University of Glasgow) Markus Kip (Georg-Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Mais Jafari (Technische Universität Dortmund) Nitin Bathla (ETH-Zürich) Julio Paulos (Université de Lausanne) Nicolas Goez (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar) Talja Blokland (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Hanna Hilbrandt (Universität Zürich) Powered in partnership with the Georg-Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Music credits: "Something Elated" by Broke For Free, CC BY 3.0 US If you would like to produce an episode with us or have comments, please get in touch! Follow us on Twitter: @political_urban Instagram: @urban_political Featured on wisspod: https://wissenschaftspodcasts.de/podcasts/urban-political/ Email: urbanpolitical@protonmail.com

  1. 109 - Corridors, Logistics, and Circulation (Cities and Geopolitics III)

    3d ago

    109 - Corridors, Logistics, and Circulation (Cities and Geopolitics III)

    The third episode of the Cities and Geopolitics series explores the spatial and operational logics of circulation, examining how the movement of goods, capital, data, and people is organised, accelerated, and contested across urban and regional space. Our guests discuss how circulation has become a central terrain of geopolitical strategy, focusing on a range of infrastructures, from economic corridors and port expansions to special economic zones, rail networks, and digital logistics platforms. The episode highlights how circulatory systems are not only designed to facilitate flows, but also to direct, channel, and control them, reconfiguring territories, reshaping urban hierarchies, and producing new forms of inclusion and exclusion. The conversation traces how the control of corridors and logistical infrastructures materialises geopolitical ambitions in highly uneven ways, often generating fragmentation, dispossession, and environmental transformation along their routes. Cities emerge here not simply as nodes within global networks, but as sites where the frictions of circulation are negotiated, where congestion, labour struggles, infrastructural bottlenecks, and regulatory regimes reveal the limits and contradictions of seamless flow. At the same time, the episode attends to the lived and situated dimensions of logistics, showing how everyday practices rework infrastructural spaces. This episode invites listeners to rethink geopolitics through the lens of movement and mobility, highlighting how the governance of flows has become central to the organisation of global power, and how urban space is continuously remade through the infrastructures, and frictions of circulation.

    48 min
  2. 108 – Infrastructures of Power (Cities and Geopolitics II)

    May 25

    108 – Infrastructures of Power (Cities and Geopolitics II)

    The second episode of the Cities and Geopolitics series turns to the material architectures through which geopolitical power is organised and exercised. From energy grids and digital networks to ports, logistics hubs, and semiconductor infrastructures, contemporary geopolitical rivalries are increasingly mediated through complex, often invisible, urban systems. This episode explores how infrastructures are not merely technical backdrops to global politics, but strategic assets and active instruments of power. Our guests examine how infrastructures are designed, financed, and governed in ways that embed geopolitical priorities, whether through the securitisation of supply chains, the territorialisation of digital systems, or the reconfiguration of energy networks in the context of climate transitions and resource competition. At the same time, the conversation highlights how these large-scale infrastructural transformations are grounded in specific urban contexts. It considers how cities become key sites where global ambitions materialise in concrete forms, such as data centres, ports, corridors, and grids, and how these infrastructures reshape urban space, governance, and everyday life. In doing so, the episode foregrounds the uneven geographies of infrastructural development, asking who benefits, who is marginalised, and how these systems are contested on the ground. Moving between planetary strategies and situated urban experiences, our guests invite listeners to rethink infrastructure not as neutral or purely functional, but as deeply political, contested, and central to the making of contemporary geopolitics.

    49 min
  3. 107 - Tenant Politics and Urban Political Economy

    May 12

    107 - Tenant Politics and Urban Political Economy

    Within the last years four books have been published exploring the political economy of the private rental sector, with a focus on inequality and resistance. This episode would bring together all four authors (see below) to explore the political economy forces driving the growth of the private rental sector and associated forms of housing injustice (e.g. unaffordability, evictions), the analytical approaches that can best draw out what is at stake in all this (especially from a political perspective), and how this all relates to the renaissance of tenant organizing across many countries in the Global North. By bringing together four of the most prominent authors/activists in this area, the episode aims to capture a crucial moment in the articulation of the emerging politics of the private rental sector. The four books all share a critical urban political economy orientation, drawing on concepts such as financialization and rent. They are all also all interested in ‘residents as agents’, and the practices and organizational forms through which movements seek to create ‘tenants as subject’. The episode would not focus on any of the four books as such, but rather discuss the cross-cutting themes. As the books reflect a variety of different cities/countries, this discussion has the potential to gain a wide listenership and to inform tenant organizing and scholar activism.

    1h 24m
  4. 106 - Cities and Geopolitics I

    Apr 27

    106 - Cities and Geopolitics I

    In an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalries, the terrains of global power are increasingly being reconfigured through the infrastructure, economies, and everyday rhythms of urbanisation. From semiconductor supply chains and energy transitions to port expansions, data centres, and housing markets, urban space has become a critical arena through which geopolitical strategies are organised, exercised, and contested. This mini-series starts from the premise that geopolitics is not simply something that happens to cities, but something that is actively produced through them. Cities and Geopolitics brings together a set of conversations that explore how contemporary geopolitical transformations unfold across urban space. The series traces the material and spatial logics of power: how infrastructure become strategic assets, how logistics and circulation reorganise territories, and how investment, governance, and technological systems reposition cities within shifting global orders. In doing so, it highlights cities as key nodes where global rivalries are translated into concrete forms, such as roads, ports, grids, and digital systems that shape both planetary connections and urban everyday life. At the same time, the series attends to the uneven and lived dimensions of these transformations. It asks how geopolitical dynamics are encountered in everyday urban contexts, such as: how they are negotiated by residents, mediated by local institutions, and contested through situated practices. By moving between large-scale infrastructural shifts and the textures of daily life, the series develops a grounded understanding of how global power operates across scales. The episodes in this five-part mini-series are organised around themes such as infrastructure of power, corridors and circulation, urban political economies, and everyday geopolitics. The series offers a distinctly urban lens on contemporary geopolitics, inviting listeners to rethink the geographies of global power by foregrounding urbanisation not as a passive backdrop, but as active sites where geopolitical futures are being made, contested, and transformed. In the first episode of this mini-series our guests, Kevin Ward and Seth Schindler explore what it is to think of cities and geopolitics in the current conjuncture, often described as a “Second Cold War” and how is it differs from earlier geopolitical conjunctures.

    35 min
  5. 105 -Transforming Local Statehood II: Progressive Possibilities?

    Mar 12

    105 -Transforming Local Statehood II: Progressive Possibilities?

    While the first episode on the transformations of the local state focussed on current authoritarian takeover in different European contexts, this episode will zoom into the progressive possibilities of local state transformations. The episode discusses institutional changes within the local state, the role of other political actors and geographical scales as well as the limitations of localist solutions. The episode is moderated by Matthias Naumann and Gala Nettelbladt, with contributions from Anil Sindhwani, Anke Strüver and Enikö Zöller.

    55 min
  6. 104 - Transforming Local Statehood I: Towards Authoritarian Takeover?

    Feb 16

    104 - Transforming Local Statehood I: Towards Authoritarian Takeover?

    Across Europe, local states are in a dire predicament, experiencing the consequences of austerity cuts, shortage of staff as well as a lack of trust in (local) government. Overlapping crises such as climate change, military conflicts and displacement, precarious provisions of public services, the production of so-called left-behind spaces and the rise of the far right pose severe challenges to its institutions – on various scales and across a wide range of sectors. This situation has sparked seemingly paradoxical developments. In some contexts, it has evoked the loss of legitimacy of democratic institutions and authoritarian takeover, while in other cases the local state is becoming an arena for progressive statecraft tailored at social justice and sustainability. Much is being written on these authoritarian and progressive tendencies. In two episodes on the transformation of the local state, we want to complicate binary thinking that can be quick to romanticise progressive local institutions or paint a homogenous picture of authoritarian situations. Paying close attention to the intricacies of the local state, we want to draw attention to its inherent contradictions and frictions by asking: How does progressivism and authoritarianism play out in the everyday processes of the local state? What are the grey spaces where they might overlap and even coproduce each other? What power relations shape these processes? Both episodes are hosted by Matthias Naumann and Gala Nettelbladt. In the first episode, moderated by Ross Beveridge, we discuss authoritarian developments in local statehood with Harriet Dunn, Crispian Fuller and Theo Temple.

    1h 22m
  7. 103 – Beyond Neoliberal Urbanism?

    Feb 2

    103 – Beyond Neoliberal Urbanism?

    Are we seeing the emergence of a new conjuncture for urbanism? The final part of our mini series asks whether authoritarian neoliberalism has created the conditions for a more illiberal and distinct type of urban governance . Authoritarianism is not new to neoliberalism – the Pinochet regime, Thatcherism in the UK – these were evidently authoritarian and neoliberal, and given crises and stagnation it is no surprise to see these tendencies re-animated. But is something more also happening? The high point of neoliberal hegemony was associated with the development of technocratic, often obscure, market systems as well as notions of ‘sustainable development and even at times ‘participation’ and ‘consensus’ even if these were highly circumscribed. When we look at some new urban projects today, and those envisaged by leading powers, there seems to be less room for both markets, preventing climate breakdown or ‘woke’ notions of democracy and instead a more naked focus on iconoclastic real estate projects regardless of the social and ecological cost. The episode is hosted by Gareth Fearn with guests Jason Luger, Miklós Dürr, Aysegul Can and Oksana Zaporozhets. This episode is one of a three-part series which cover different aspects of ‘authoritarian neoliberal urbanism’, based on a special issue in the Urban Studies Journal edited by Guldem Ozatagan, Gareth Fearn and Ayda Eraydin.

    1h 8m
  8. 102 - Authoritarian Practices in Urban Government

    Jan 19

    102 - Authoritarian Practices in Urban Government

    Today it seems fairly obvious to say that urban government has become more authoritarian – there is vastly increased levels of surveillance, violent and militarised policing of dissent and the targeting of migrant, queer and ethnic minority communities. Building on the previous episode on ‘authoritarian populism’, the panel discussion focuses on the ‘authoritarian practices’ of urban governments. We discuss issues of scale i.e. the relationship between central and municipal government and global capital flows drawing on research on Turkey, Mexico, India, Russia and Eastern Europe. We cover overtly draconian practices such as violent crackdowns on protestors and the more subtle ‘sabotaging’ of accountability for key sections of capital – developers, big tech – and national infrastructure and whether this takes us beyond the era of neoliberal urban governance. The episode is hosted by Gareth Fearn with guests Ebru Kurt Özman, Alke Jenns, Nitin Bathla and Sven Daniel Wolfe. This episode is second in a three-part series which cover different aspects of ‘authoritarian neoliberal urbanism’, based on a special issue in the Urban Studies Journal edited by Guldem Ozatagan, Gareth Fearn and Ayda Eraydin.

    1h 29m
See All (109)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The **Urban Political** delves into contemporary urban issues with activists, scholars and policy-makers from around the world. Providing informed views, state-of-the-art knowledge, and unusual insights, the podcast aims to advance our understanding of urban environments and how we might make them more just and democratic. The **Urban Political** provides a new forum for reflection on bridging urban activism and scholarship, where regular features offer snapshots of pressing issues and new publications, allowing multiple voices of scholars and activists to enter into a transnational debate directly. Hosted and produced by: Ross Beveridge (University of Glasgow) Markus Kip (Georg-Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Mais Jafari (Technische Universität Dortmund) Nitin Bathla (ETH-Zürich) Julio Paulos (Université de Lausanne) Nicolas Goez (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar) Talja Blokland (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Hanna Hilbrandt (Universität Zürich) Powered in partnership with the Georg-Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Music credits: "Something Elated" by Broke For Free, CC BY 3.0 US If you would like to produce an episode with us or have comments, please get in touch! Follow us on Twitter: @political_urban Instagram: @urban_political Featured on wisspod: https://wissenschaftspodcasts.de/podcasts/urban-political/ Email: urbanpolitical@protonmail.com

Information

  • Creator
    Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, Mais Jafari, Nitin Bathla, Julio Paulos, Nicolas Goez, Talja Blokland
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    109
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Urban Political Podcast

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