What is The Future for Cities?

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13 Oct 2026 · 2 minNew

Passive cooling as agency, not blame - V. Kelly Turner (472)

V. Kelly Turner would cool a home by night ventilation and covered windows, and she refuses to call that a private duty. Agency, she says, still sits inside a collective challenge. The skill reduces strain on the grid and on a household bill. The responsibility for safe heat, in her framing, does not stop at the front door. Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/ If you would like to support the podcast, check out the ⁠⁠Building Better Cities…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

1. 

   E471 · 12 Oct 2026 · 14 minNew

   Hyper-local heat beyond surface temperature (471)

   V. Kelly Turner and colleagues find that a satellite map of land surface temperature is a poor guide to theheat a person feels in Civano, Tucson. Painting a street white can cool the pixel and heat the pedestrian. The debate is on their 2022 paper in the Journal of Land Use Science. One side keeps 30 metre Landsat maps as the tool cities can actually use. The other shows how a morning snapshot, and a coat of reflective paint, can miss or worsen mean radiant temperature for the person on the street. Shade cools that person and keeps the asphalt from charging overnight, with a night-time catch…

2. 

   E472 · 11 Oct 2026 · 2 minNew

   If we built it, we can cool it - V. Kelly Turner (472)

   V. Kelly Turner finds optimism in a simple fact: cities are mutable. If people built a hot street, they canretrofit it, and local staff writing heat plans already know their cities. She points to the City of LA andLos Angeles County, where the people on heat action plans now know heat as well as they know their streets.Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/ If you would like to support the podcast, check out the ⁠⁠Building Better Cities book⁠⁠…

3. 

   E472 · 10 Oct 2026 · 2 min

   Heat is a verb, so ask which heat - V. Kelly Turner (472)

   V. Kelly Turner says heat is a verb. A weather-app temperature is one snapshot of an energy exchange, and a city that plans to manage heat still has to say which heat. Air temperature, a surface, and sunlight on skin are different. She wants that distinction in everyday language and in local government. Full conversation in episode 472: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/ If you would like to support the podcast, check out the ⁠Building Better Cities book⁠ or our ⁠Patreon⁠…

4. 

   E470 · 7 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

   Geoffrey West: Urban Scaling Laws and the Future of Cities (470)

   Geoffrey West, theoretical physicist and distinguished professor at the Santa Fe Institute, on urban scaling laws,cities that grow faster than exponential, and what happens when populations start to shrink. He treats the future of cities as the future of the planet. Cities drive resource use and climate change because that is where the people are. Without immigration, much of Europe and the United States would already be shrinking, even while other places cannot build housing fast enough. A city, for him, is a machine for social interaction: A talks to B talks to C. Globalization widens that…

5. 

   E470 · 6 Oct 2026 · 2 min

   Scaling Laws from Cells to Cities | Geoffrey West

   Geoffrey West on urban populations growing faster than exponential, and the strange present in which some cities cannot build housing fast enough while others are already contracting. He calls the far side of that growth a singularity: depopulation, contraction, and possibly collapse. The short-term future of cities is both problems at once. Find out more in the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠episode⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . If you would like to support the podcast, check out the ⁠⁠⁠Building Better Cities book⁠⁠⁠ or our…

6. 

   E469 · 5 Oct 2026 · 14 min

   Growth, Innovation, and the Pace of Life in Cities (469)

   A research debate on the 2007 paper Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities, by Luís M. A. Bettencourt, José Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kühnert, and Geoffrey B. West. When a city doubles in population, wealth and invention grow by more than double. Biology does the opposite: a larger animal uses energy more efficiently and lives more slowly. The paper's growth equations say a superlinear city has to produce major innovations at a continually faster rate, or growth stalls and can collapse. One reading treats the city as an engine that makes solutions faster than…

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