The Urbanist

We’re all hydrated and ready to go. This week we look at water-sensitive urban design, unpack our relationship with the ocean, discover the joys of cycling by the river and examine the devastating effects that water can have.

Angelika Fitz, an architecture critic and the future head of Vienna’s Architecture Museum, takes us to the Vienna State Opera. There we look back to the year 2000 when an artistic intervention in front of the opera house left tourists and passers-by in awe.

Dust off those sport socks and lace up your trainers – this week we’re all about sport in the city. We discuss everything from urban regeneration and sport to the origins of Australian rules football. Plus: the abundance of Olympic pools in Belgrade and what football clubs in Istanbul reveal about the modern city and the people who live there.

This week we head to Singapore to take a tour of Cavenagh Bridge. This elegant suspension bridge showcased new civil-engineering techniques under British rule and has featured in many of Joseph Conrad’s novels. Our guide is Kelvin Ang, director of conservation management at the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought to you by the team behind ‘The Urbanist’.

Compass and ruler in hand, we examine the history and politics behind the mapping of our cities. We look at new approaches in Toronto and find out more about the Graphia project, where Scandinavian aesthetics meet Hong Kong.

We head to one of Oslo’s most famous buildings: Rådhus, or city hall. Designed by Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson, it is the proud venue of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and was named the city’s structure of the century back in 2005. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought to you by the team behind ‘The Urbanist’.

Can old manufacturing towns hold the key to innovation? A new book called ‘The Smartest Places on Earth’ believes that rust-belt cities are now brain-belt ones. Plus: can you guess which city is set to be the first in the world to have its own bike mayor?

This week we head to Honolulu to visit one of the grandest and most peculiar buildings in the city. Not only does it commemorate the service personnel who died in the First World War but it’s also an open-air sea-water swimming pool. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought to you by the team behind ‘The Urbanist’.

How do you tackle overcrowding without expanding a city’s footprint? We explore a new study by Hassell and chat with Joel Kotkin, who’s challenging the conventional “pack-and-stack” and high-rise strategies. Plus: 60 years of designing Hong Kong.

This week we head to what was once Belgrade’s grandest edifice: the Cooperative Building. Established as the HQ for a joint-stock company, it became the seat of several institutions over the years and today houses the Belgrade Waterfront project. Our guide is Milutin Folic, Belgrade’s city architect. ‘Tall Stories’ is a weekly feature brought to you by the team behind ‘The Urbanist’.