The Developer podcast

The Developer
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How do we make places where people want to live, work, play and learn? A podcast on cities, property, architecture and urban design. Support us on Patreon www.patreon.com/thedeveloperuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Homesick: What happens when London's affordability crisis meets the climate crisis?

    MAR 11

    Homesick: What happens when London's affordability crisis meets the climate crisis?

    What happens when London's housing crisis meets the climate crisis? Journalist Peter Apps discusses the changing demographics of the capital and how the lack of affordable housing has ruptured its social fabric, pushing families and workers out to its edges and "taken away people's ability to stay in a place and to gain some sense of ownership and belonging." "What has been lost is a sense of permanence and a sense of security that London used to offer to working class and lower-and-middle income people and now doesn’t. It’s a struggle to find somewhere to stay, you probably don’t know the people around you, and that bond of being part of a rooted community isn’t available to people anymore. The key driver is housing." When you add climate change to the mix, not only does this worsen inequality between those who can afford to install air conditioning and those who can't – it endangers lives. "London has flooded before. It went through the Blitz. The thing that gets us through disasters is community," says Apps. "The lack of a spiritual sense of home will make it harder to be resilient." Apps shares what he discovered while writing his latest book, Homesick: How London Broke Housing and How to Fix It, which recounts the changes to London over the past 40 years and looks 40 years ahead. Apps speaks to Christine Murray about the three big threats London is facing in addition to housing crises: Wildfire, flooding and overheating. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    56 min
  2. Participatory building: How community construction takes engagement to a new level

    12/18/2025

    Participatory building: How community construction takes engagement to a new level

    You've heard of co-design and of course, community engagement, but what about participatory building? That's when people are invited on site to help build, fostering teamwork, imparting skills and empowering a neighbourhood. Working in collaboration with charity Global Generation, Dr Jan Kattein has been building community spaces with volunteers aged 6 to 76 on site – and redefining the role of the architect in shaping places. On these sites, the process – not the final project – is the core purpose. That's a different kind of design challenge. And these are no ordinary construction sites – Global Generation has a mission to connect youth with nature, so they have used traditional techniques with natural materials such as cordwood, and volunteers have been busy making bricks, shakes and rammed earth walls, while youth apprentices have also been training on site. “For two years, we’ve been making bricks out of clay… we’ve been making wooden shakes out of Sweet Chestnut… we’ve been building with earth…” says Kattein. “It’s a very inclusive process. All ages can participate,” says Kattein. Kattein talks about the shifting role of the architect in participatory processes, the need to reduce carbon and embrace natural materials and the transformative power of construction: The moment when a child drags their parent to a building and says, "Mum, I helped build that part of the wall." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    53 min
  3. Neuroarchitecture: The impact of design on the unconscious mind

    12/08/2025

    Neuroarchitecture: The impact of design on the unconscious mind

    Get on a crowded train, and your brain may not like it. With strangers around you, cortisol levels shoot up to prepare you for fight or flight, stimulating the liver to produce and release glucose into your blood stream, just in case. Unless you run screaming from the train, your blood sugar levels won’t go down for a few hours – just in time for you to take the train again. “You’re dosing yourself with almost pure glucose twice a day for your working life,” says Nick Tyler, a professor who investigates the ways in which people interact with the built environment. Tyler believes we need to design the built environment not solely for the conscious mind, but for brain and the body impacts taking place out of sight. As Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering, Tyler works with a transdisciplinary team to study what that means for design – collaborating with psychologists, neuroscientists, architects and others to research the health and safety impacts of the built environment. Learn about his immense laboratory in East London, PEARL, and his large-scale experiments with bus stops, zebra crossings, urban parks, supermarkets and e-scooters that have revealed safety gaps and failings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    44 min
  4. Design by AI: Why we need to hack the algorithm

    09/26/2025

    Design by AI: Why we need to hack the algorithm

    Wait five minutes and someone will tell you the latest thing they’ve outsourced to AI; How it’s taking minutes of meetings or summarising reports they haven’t read. If you point out that the work of AI isn't exceptional, they say 'Just wait, it will get smarter'. But will it? According to Professor Jutta Treviranus, director and founder of the Inclusive Design Research Centre in Toronto, the answer is, well, concerning: Unless we do something fundamental about how it works, the output of AI will continue to be just average.  “When we’re using statistical replicators, they are making decisions based on statistics, so they look for the statistical average and use predictive analytics to decide the best thing to do.”  Of all the possible dystopian predictions, the fact that AI tends towards the typical, standard and normative doesn’t sound so bad – except that when applied to systems including the built environment, it’s dangerous.  “What people don’t seem to recognise is that for people who are outliers, the systems will always decide against them.” And who is an outlier? All of us at some point. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    39 min
  5. Trauma and place: Avoiding triggers in design and engagement

    09/08/2025

    Trauma and place: Avoiding triggers in design and engagement

    If we want to create inclusive, supportive and safe places, we can't ignore trauma. At least half of all people will experience a trauma at some point in their lives and may be triggered by sights, sounds, questions or spaces that remind them of a past traumatic event. Olaide Oboh, a director at the developer Socius and managing director of Populate, speaks about how she learned about trauma-informed practice and why as a developer they are adopting trauma-informed practice at scale on the London Cancer Hub, a £1bn development to create a leading centre for research and treatment in Sutton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    30 min
  6. Purple pounds: Designing for the deaf and disabled

    08/02/2025

    Purple pounds: Designing for the deaf and disabled

    The spending power of disabled people, known as the purple pound, is worth £300bn: "Hello, does that not tell you something?" says Amanprit Arnold, a deaf city urban strategist passionate about creating an accessible city for everyone. "It's not charity. There's a commercial return to inclusive design." Born deaf, Amanprit Arnold is a visionary built environment changemaker renowned for her expertise and commitment to inclusivity. In this interview, Arnold speaks about belonging, the growing role for technology and AI in enabling greater participation, the increasing awareness of neurodiversity and her work to create a Deaf City Hub for the deaf community – a cultural hub for the deaf in the city. A video of this interview with Arnold signing in BSL and captions is also available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/4ueuJ9Vr0o0 with a transcript on www.thedeveloper.live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    42 min
  7. Fighting for a Feminist City in Glasgow

    07/18/2025

    Fighting for a Feminist City in Glasgow

    How do we change policy to create gender equal cities? This story starts with a book: Feminist City by Leslie Kern. Read during lockdown, Holly Bruce, Scottish Greens councillor for Langside in Glasgow said it opened her eyes to the ways in which design can limit a women's participation in city life. The book was “the catalyst” for a political movement that would see Bruce move from reflection to action in short order, first joining a women’s collective and eventually leading a political movement. In 2022, Bruce led a successful motion for feminist town planning to be written into policy, which saw Glasgow become the first “Feminist City” in the UK. Bruce describes her “relentless” effort to get feminist urban planning into policy with Christine Murray. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    41 min
  8. The civic role of a new town hall

    04/12/2024

    The civic role of a new town hall

    How do you develop a new town hall and civic hub in a community with a longstanding mistrust of its local authority? “You’ve got to listen,” says James Stockdale, Development Director at Muse. Your New Town Hall in Brixton, the project to restore the Grade II-listed Lambeth town hall was never going to be easy. According to a 2013 resident’s survey, the council was not held in high regard. The report said residents felt “policymakers have stopped listening to them, and their culture and identity is gradually being lost.” Not a great starting point for a major development project. “Regeneration is always going to be contentious. Buildings will get knocked down,” says Stockdale. “You’ve got to listen. And by doing that hopefully more people will be happier than not.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    54 min
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About

How do we make places where people want to live, work, play and learn? A podcast on cities, property, architecture and urban design. Support us on Patreon www.patreon.com/thedeveloperuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    The Developer
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    113
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    The Developer podcast

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