Hosted by Unknown Host · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 92 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
Iain Montgomery of Now or Never Ventures interviews urbanists, creatives, transit and development types to explore how cities can punch above their weight and create distinctive new futures outside of the tired playbooks.
Unknown Host hosts Challenger Cities, a arts show with 92 episodes published.
This episode is a zinger. Because Gil Penalosa came in ready to talk! He doesn't hold back as he discussed the issues with Toronto municipal projects, where the city could be amazing but is often found lacking in ambitio
Alicia Pederson went from a Renaissance literature PhD and a two-year stint as an au pair in Florence to becoming one of the best voices on a deceptively simple idea: the courtyard in the middle of apartments. After watc
Canada is about to spend more on transit and rail than the oil sands are worth, and it's doing it without a national rulebook, a training pipeline or much recent memory of how to build well. So is that a crisis, or the b
Good new Challenger Cities episode today, all about autonomous vehicles and the bit that our guest, Bern Grush, thinks cities need to be thinking about more now. Like them or not, robotaxis are coming to cities. And for
Canada is, well might be, building a high speed train. At long last after 50 odd years of talking about doing so. But concerningly, there is much negative noise around the project as it seems it might not really be learn
Two risk-management cultures looking at each other across a table, each waiting for the other to move. That's rail's relationship with venture capital. Iain talks to Richard Fisher, founder of Future Travel Studio, about
This is a lovely episode with Thomas Ableman (a returning guest!) that is mostly about an amazing project he and a few volunteers recently secured funding to go and deliver called Mini Switzerland in the Derbyshire hills
One of the best people I met last year was Samantha Peart. We were in Copenhagen for a few days and of our fellows group, I have to say she asked the best questions. She’s also exceptionally good at getting you to questi
If you liked our episode with Ilana Altman about The Bentway, then you'll like this one with Ken Greenberg, because he's part of that origin story. Ken is a legend in Toronto urbanism circles, as someone who did pioneeri
This is a bit of a different episode because we're talking about what cities are made of, rather than how we make our cities. I had the pleasure of meeting Saurabh Mangla on a day where I was hot, tired and just wanted a
Gerald Babel-Sutter is the founder of Urban Future, a 14-year-old event that has grown from a workshop for ten city officials in Graz to a gathering of 2,000 people from 290 cities in 48 countries. The premise hasn't cha
Jen Angel thinks Canada is closer to a moment of triumph in how it builds than it has been in her lifetime. The conditions are there. What's missing is enough people in positions of authority with the permission to say y
Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic for the Globe and Mail, which in practice means he writes about everything from housing politics to the public realm to the quiet cultural erosion that happens when a city stops
Exploring Urban Troubleshooting In this episode, Heath Gledhill and Tom Shield, founders of GledHill Shield, share their extensive experience navigating complex urban infrastructure projects. They discuss how early decis
When the cod fishery collapsed in the nineties, Fogo Island lost its economy almost overnight. What came next — slowly, imperfectly and without a guarantee of success — became one of the most compelling stories in Canadi
Bronwyn Williams is a South African futurist and economist, a combination she'll tell you should not be the oxymoron most people assume it is. She's been doing sharp thinking about cities lately, and this conversation is
Phil Tabah is the co-founder of The Main, Montreal's city magazine, and one of the most thoughtful people working on the question of how cities see themselves and tell their own story. In this conversation we get into wh
Most cities debate their troubled infrastructure to a standstill. Toronto has been arguing about the Gardiner Expressway for decades. Ilana Altman didn't wait for that debate to resolve. As CEO of The Bentway — a public
We have spent a lot of time on the podcast talking about physical cities as streets, buildings and the spaces between them. What we perhaps don't talk about enough is the digital layer underneath all of it, and how badly
Anson Kwok has spent fourteen years building Canada's tallest tower at the foot of Yonge Street. As VP of Sales and Marketing at Pinnacle International, he's had a front row seat to how Toronto has transformed from a cit
Pete Brown
author, journalist, broadcaster and consultant specializing in food and drink · Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University
1 appearance on this show
Evan Snow
Zero Empty Spaces
2 appearances on this show
Simon Kuper
columnist · The Financial Times
1 appearance on this show
Peter Ryan
host of the Ryan Research Podcast · Ryan Strategic Advisory
1 appearance on this show
Melissa Bruntlett
1 appearance on this show
Jeff Siegler
author of Your City is Sick · Revitalize, or Die
1 appearance on this show
Arthur Smith
TV Titan Behind Hell's Kitchen and American Ninja Warrior · Arthur Smith Advising
1 appearance on this show
Chris Bruntlett
1 appearance on this show
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Challenger Cities is hosted by Unknown Host. The show is categorised under Arts (design) and has published 92 episodes.
Challenger Cities has published 92 episodes.
Challenger Cities regularly covers Arts, Design, Society, Culture, Places. It sits in the Arts category, with a design focus.
Challenger Cities is accessible for guests with genuine arts expertise. A personalised, episode-aware pitch will still outperform a generic one every time.
Challenger Cities hasn't explicitly signalled guest openness in recent episodes. That doesn't rule out pitching. your hook just needs to be especially compelling and relevant to their recent content.
Episodes of Challenger Cities average 58 minutes. a focused format where a clear narrative arc and tight preparation matter most.
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