Urban Studies

Urban Studies

episodes

Interviews with scholars of urban studies about their new books

Lisa Messeri, "In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles" (Duke UP, 2024)

March 16, 2024

In the Land of the Unreal

Lisa Messeri
Hosted by Noopur Raval

In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), bel…

Gavin Butt, "No Machos Or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk" (Duke UP, 2022)

March 13, 2024

No Machos Or Pop Stars

Gavin Butt
Hosted by Dave O'Brien

How do art schools influence music? In No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk (Duke UP, 2022), Gavin Butt, a Professor of Fin…

Piotr Florczyk, "Swimming Pool" (Bloombury, 2024)

March 12, 2024

Swimming Pool

Piotr Florczyk
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

This instalment of the Object Lessons series focuses on the Swimming Pool (Bloomsbury, 2024). The book explores the pool as a place where humans seek…

Mara Albrecht and Alke Jenss, "The Spatiality and Temporality of Urban Violence: Histories, Rhythms and Ruptures" (Manchester UP, 2023)

March 10, 2024

The Spatiality and Temporality of Urban Violence

Mara Albrecht and Alke Jenss
Hosted by Roberto Mazza

The Spatiality and Temporality of Urban Violence: Histories, Rhythms and Ruptures (Manchester UP, 2023) asks how the city, with its spatial and tempor…

Benjamin J. Pauli, "Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis" (MIT Press, 2019)

March 9, 2024

Flint Fights Back

Benjamin J. Pauli
Hosted by Patricia Houser

Originally published in 2019, Benjamin Pauli’s book, Flint Fights Back offers lasting insights into one of the most important drinking water-caused pu…

Alexander Christie-Miller, "To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul" (Pegasus Books, 2024)

March 8, 2024

To the City

Alexander Christie-Miller
Hosted by Reuben Silverman

Walking along the crumbling defensive walls of Istanbul and talking to those he passes, Alexander Christie-Miller finds a distillation of the country’…

Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)

March 1, 2024

Life Underground

Terry Williams
Hosted by Stephen Pimpare

Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, disus…

Steve Ferzacca, "Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore" (NUS Press, 2021)

February 29, 2024

Sonic City

Steve Ferzacca
Hosted by Khadeeja Amenda

The basement of a veteran shopping mall located in the central business district of Singapore affords opportunities to a group of amateur and semi-pro…

Alessandro Gerosa, "The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism (UCL Press, 2024)

February 27, 2024

The Hipster Economy

Alessandro Gerosa
Hosted by Jeff Adler

Today, being authentic has become an aspiration and an imperative. The notion of authenticity shapes the consumption habits of individuals in the most…

Marcia Bricker Halperin, "Kibbitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria" (Cornell UP, 2023)

February 25, 2024

Kibbitz and Nosh

Marcia Bricker Halperin
Hosted by Robert Snyder

In the middle decades of the twentieth century in New York City, Dubrow’s cafeterias in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the garment district of M…

Calla Hummel, "Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State" (Oxford UP, 2022)

February 25, 2024

Why Informal Workers Organize

Calla Hummel
Hosted by Dhouha Djerbi

Informal workers make up over two billion workers or about 50 percent of the global workforce, and yet scholarly understandings of informal workers’ p…

Daniel Dain, "A History of Boston" (Peter E. Randall, 2023)

February 24, 2024

A History of Boston

Daniel Dain
Hosted by Caleb Zakarin

Boston is today one of the world's greatest cities, first in higher education, hospitals, life science companies, and sports teams. It was the home of…

What Does It Mean to Govern a Multilingual Society Well?

February 22, 2024

What Does It Mean to Govern a Multilingual Society Well?

Alexandra Grey

Hanna Torsh speaks with Alexandra Grey about good governance in linguistically diverse cities. Linguistic diversity is often seen through a deficit …

Laurence Ralph, "Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him" (Grand Central Publishing, 2023)

February 21, 2024

Sito

Laurence Ralph
Hosted by Reighan Gillam

In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was nin…

Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

February 21, 2024

The City and the Hospital

Daniel Skinner, Jonathan R. Wynn and Berkeley Franz
Hosted by Michael Johnston

An enduring paradox of urban public health is that many communities around hospitals are economically distressed and, counterintuitively, medically un…

Mirelsie Velazquez, "Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

February 17, 2024

Puerto Rican Chicago

Mirelsie Velazquez
Hosted by Max Jacobs

The postwar migration of Puerto Rican men and women to Chicago brought thousands of their children into city schools. These children's classroom exper…

Michael Stausberg, "Religions, Mumbai Style: Events-Media-Spaces" (Oxford UP, 2023)

February 15, 2024

Religions, Mumbai Style

Michael Stausberg
Hosted by Raj Balkaran

Mumbai is generally recognized as an environment of extraordinary religious diversity. The city is known at one and the same time for a habitual cosmo…

Sarah El-Kazaz, "Politics in the Crevices: Urban Design and the Making of Property Markets in Cairo and Istanbul" (Duke UP, 2023)

February 15, 2024

Politics in the Crevices

Sarah El-Kazaz
Hosted by Lamis Abdelaaty

In Politics in the Crevices: Urban Design and the Making of Property Markets in Cairo and Istanbul (Duke UP, 2023), Sarah El-Kazaz takes readers into …

Tim Keogh, "In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Postwar Suburb" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

February 11, 2024

In Levittown’s Shadow

Tim Keogh
Hosted by Deidre Tyler

There is a familiar narrative about American suburbs: after 1945, white residents left cities for leafy, affluent subdivisions and the prosperity they…

Jennifer Sdunzik, "The Geography of Hate: The Great Migration through Small-Town America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

February 9, 2024

The Geography of Hate

Jennifer Sdunzik

During the Great Migration, Black Americans sought new lives in midwestern small towns only to confront the pervasive efforts of white residents deter…