Hi and welcome to this first published piece of the Cities Reimagine Podcast.
You might call it a teaser because this is not a full show just yet.
This is just a little warm-up exercise if you will.
My name is Johannes Riegler.
I'm your host for Cities Reimagined.
And today I'm going to tell you a little bit about my motivation of starting a podcast
called Cities Reimagine and who I am, what my background is and what I want to achieve
with this podcast or what you can expect from it.
So I'm an urbanist based in Vienna, Austria.
And over more than 10 years I have been working in a European research innovation program
on transforming urban areas.
And it was also this job where I had the privilege to do things I like best and that is, you
know, working with a super messy and complex and oftentimes confusing things we call cities,
which bring together people, the building environment, mobility, architecture, economy,
and so on.
And what really fascinates me is that cities are so hyper complex that they are impossible
to fully understand.
This job also allowed me to meet and talk to people, make friends with people who really
push the boundaries of urbanism and shape discourses.
It allowed me to learn about urbanism on different continents.
It allowed me to get to know local cultures across the world.
And it made me recognize that non-European perspectives on what cities are, how they
should be and what the challenges are to transform them are very different across the world,
but also within countries, within cities, and also within neighborhoods.
I have to say that these last 10 years really shaped me and these experiences really build
up who I am today and how I view the world and its cities.
I had the chance to make all these amazing experiences, be it, for example, being invited
into a tiny apartment in a working class neighborhood of Beijing or hearing stories about how life
in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro changed after the Olympics, or also witnessing power outages
and the smell of coal being burned in the informal settlements of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia,
and also spending endless hours in traffic and transit over the last 10 years being stranded
because of missed connections.
That really does change the way you go about your life.
In this time, I also had the chance to speak and work with hundreds of people working on
urban transformation, ranging from neighborhoods to European and UN level.
You know, this experience really stuck with me and changed the way I perceive the world
around me.
But although I really like my job and what I've been doing, it was time for me to take
a step back from the work on the EU and global level, partly for personal reasons, because
I saw the need to spend more time with my loved ones and friends.
Also I wanted to spend more time in the outdoors, you know, climbing those nice mountains we
have here in Austria, but also professionally, it was time for me to take a step back.
It was time to reflect on what has happened over the last decade and reflect on a very
busy and very fast life also.
So I decided to take a year off from my job and the motivation for that was to, yeah,
I wanted to learn new things, see different perspectives related to urbanism and changing
cities.
And you might have guessed it already, travel again and work with people throughout Europe
on making their environments and cities better places.
So if you know me personally, you might know that I'm a kind of, yeah, one of those restless
characters and I love to explore new things and taking up new challenges.
And it's five months now since I'm gone from my job.
And I have to say life didn't didn't slow down much.
And that is a good thing because, you know, living the life to its fullest, it's it's
kind of rewarding.
So one day during that period, I had a conversation with my partner, Maria, on podcasts, what
we like about podcasts, those things we absolutely do not like about podcasts.
During our talk, it became quite evident that there were not many shows on urbanism and
cities as such.
And those who are out there did not show too much of a focus on alternative urban futures
and challenging the status quo, especially not who told the stories and the experiences
of people who do amazing things in their city to do things differently and contribute to
shaping a discourse and highlighting alternatives.
Yeah, so at first, I was very reluctant to even consider taking up another project and
starting a podcast due to the fact that they still only have 24 hours.
And I have to say, I like to use at least seven to eight hours of those for sleeping.
So but at the end of the evening, I somehow worked persuasive magic and you know, because
of a very strong do it yourself ethic, which I still somehow have in me from my punk and
hardcore days, I decided to give it a shot with no experience whatsoever of recording
stuff on a computer and making a podcast and cutting things and so on.
So so I started listening to tons of podcasts and podcasts on making podcasts and how to
get the tech right and so on.
I developed the concept for the show and a lot of other things, which, yeah, to be honest,
took me quite long.
And on the other hand, because I was traveling and only spent a handful of weeks in Vienna
over the last five months and found out that, you know, in that time being a way that recording
audio tracks in heated hotels rooms without a C in July is not a very pleasant experience.
But also because it all is new to me and I'm learning on the go here.
So I really hope you stick with me on this journey.
But enough about myself and how this podcast idea came about.
Let's talk a little bit about what the podcast is aimed at.
Cities Reimagined is a podcast exploring the crucial role of urban areas in creating more
sustainable and regenerative futures.
So the world faces the human-made challenges and crisis we are in at the moment, including
climate change and biodiversity loss and other evolving conditions.
And in this crisis, cities are central to adapt and to transform to meet these new realities.
So the urgency to change how we as humans do things, how human practices are organized
is tremendous.
And we get reminded of that fact every day, be it by new reports published by the United
Nations, headlines about wildfires, floods, changing weather conditions, the loss of biodiversity
and so on.
You all know of them.
But while all of that is really important and scary stuff, it also runs the risk of
paralyzing people, leaving them overwhelmed with climate anxieties and feeling hopeless
as well.
And this is exactly what I do not want to do with this podcast.
Because we really have it in our hands.
And of course, it is messy and super complex.
And it would be boring if it wouldn't be that way.
But Cities Reimagined aims to be one of these empowering puzzle pieces to reignite the imagination
of how urban life could be if we really want to change it.
So in the Cities Reimagined podcast, we will uncover the stories, both grand and small,
that challenge the status quo of doing urbanism.
And we will also talk to people providing ideas, hear from their experiences and also
failures for shaping our cities.
So we will delve into the minds of all kinds of people who are driving and are concerned
about positive change in our cities and beyond.
The Cities Reimagined podcast will bring you the insights and trends that aim to make our
cities and the planet a better place for humans and nature to thrive.
So my aim is that it becomes a platform for inspiration and exchange.
And I would love to make this show contribute to unfolding the complexity of urbanism by
talking to people who are playing a part in it.
And this will not be only academics or local public administration who work on the big
questions and our cities every day.
But there are so many people, so many other people playing a role and contributing to
change.
And at times, they don't even recognize that they do.
So my aim is to set up a well-created show which aims for quality and depth instead of
quantity.
That means there will most likely not be hundreds of episodes of Cities Reimagined, but various
seasons with 10 to 15 episodes each.
So much for myself and the background of the Cities Reimagined podcast.
I hope this little teaser created some appetite in you to find out more.
If it did, so please consider subscribing to the podcast or find Cities Reimagined on
social media.
Or even better, send me an email at johannes at antropocene.city.
I would really like to hear from you.
I would also love to hear your expectations to a podcast and where you see the need or
a niche to put this podcast in and what would you like to learn and hear in this podcast.
I really hope that I can provide you an interesting platform to learn and get inspired.
If you're an early listener, so the first episode should be uploaded next week.
And that will be a talk I had with Luisa Bravo from Citiescape-based architecture based in
Bologna.
So we talk all kinds of things public space related.
So thank you so much for tuning in to this teaser and I hope to catch you soon.