In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by Professor Aidan While from the University of Sheffield to explore how robotic urban infrastructures are already reshaping everyday lives, homes and mobilities.

From self-driving taxis to autonomous delivery drones the size of a lorry, we take a closer look at how experimentation in US cities, across Africa and now in the UK foreshadows the stealthy rise of robots across multiple domains.

Go straight to 37:33 for this discussion.

First in our radar, we cover:

• Leaflet wars in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Greater Manchester
• How space and stigma play out in the Epstein and UK grooming scandals
• What the UK Royal Family have to do with cities
• Urban foundations & fallouts from the death of Mexican drug lord, El Mencho
• The promise of Spain's approach to regularising undocumented migrants
• How to better assess the vulnerabilities of regions and cities to the green transition

Guests:

Aidan While researches environmental and climate policy, urban technology and future cities, and the politics of planning in the UK and internationally. This podcast draws on his ESRC project on Robotics as Urban Automation. He has written on sidewalk delivery robots, ecologies of automation, and regulating urban robotics.

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.

In this episode Tom and Beth are joined by visiting researchers to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, Junia Mortimer and Felipe Magalhães.

They discuss:

• How can we see and understand the city in this geopolitical age of conflict and global uncertainty?
• How can photographs and visual archives make visible the complexities of cities, particularly those in the Global South?
• When seeing directly is not possible, what other approaches can help us analyse the intense volatility of cities impacted by urbanisation and industrialisation processes?
• What do these methods mean for urbanists interested in urban change? What endures, what transforms and how do we validate what counts as knowledge?

Guests:

Junia Mortimer is an Assistant Prof at the Department of Urban Planning at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. She is currently an Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. She has curated exhibitions including Urbanos Arquivos (2023) in Salvador, which won first prize in the 2024 Arquisur Competition and she coordinates the Laboratory of Experiments on Image and Architecture.

Felipe Magalhães is an Assistant Prof at the Department of Geography, UFMG, Brazil and Visiting Fellow at University of Manchester. He has been working on popular and solidarity economies, deindustrialization and extractivism in the Brazilian context. He has recently published in the journals Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, IJURR and Antipode.

Key archives/figures mentioned:

Zumvi Afro-Photographic Archive: Lázaro Roberto.

Roberto Monte Mor

Edneia Aparecida de Souza

Ariella Azoulay

Francisco de Oliveira

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.

In this first episode of Series 2 of Urban Radar, Beth and Tom start to tackle some of the many ways in which the current moment of geopolitical turmoil is filtering down into in cities and towns across the world.

We make the most of our new Sheffield-Manchester partnership by bringing on Dr. Erika Garcia Fermin (29:45 minutes onwards) from the University of Manchester's Global Development Institute, for an in-depth conversation on the Venezuala crisis and its urban dimensions. With Erika we delve into Venezuela's recent history and how Hugo Chavez's distinctly urban populist project of redistribution morphed over two decades into extreme authoritarianism, mass population exodus and dysfunctional, disempowered city governments under Maduro.

We then consider whether and how the dramatic US intervention and removal of Maduro might serve as a window of opportunity for opposition forces in the cities to reverse the tide of authoritarian, centralizing governance.

Before, this, on our radar (from 05:40) we ponder:

- The view from Greenland's capital, Nuuk, on potential US invasion and what this tells us about how urban areas are being geopolitically re-mapped

- the approval of plans for a Chinese 'mega-embassy' in London and its local and geopolitical significance

- Overlooked cities and towns in the US affected by Trumpian funding cuts and other 'erasures'

- Reforms to neighbourhood governance in the UK, and the importance of the neighbourhood scale for addressing wider division and challenges to democracy

- Dis/misinformation and crime stats in London, and the growing recognition of the need for urban anti-disinfo strategies

- Iran's protest and the politics of physically relocating capital cities

Guest:

Erika Garcia Fermin completed her PhD at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, in 2024. Grounded in questions of urban governance and socio-spatial justice, her work focuses on the politics of value extraction in urban development, especially around urban land, and in how these processes relate to the ways urban spaces are planned, governed, and valued.

Read More:

https://thetruesize.com/

Disinformation in the City: Response Playbook - https://www.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/5060724/Disinformation-in-the-City-Reponse-Playbook_compressed-1.pdf

Controlling the Capital: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/controlling-the-capital-9780192868329?cc=gb&lang=en&

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast.