Season 1 - Leaders of the New Urban Careers

Leaders of the New Urban Careers

This initial series of Temporarily Urbane, the SFU Urban Studies podcast, engages URB alumni in conversations about how they are navigating the new landscape of urban work and research in Vancouver and farther afield. Each of these episodes consists of an interview style conversation between Urban Studies Program director Meg Holden and a panel of alumni. The episodes are oriented around the career paths of guest alumni post-Urban Studies -- although at different stages of their careers, the conversations are about aspects of the paths they have traveled in the world of urban work, or where they find themselves, or both. In each episode, the conversation engages practical questions about work and research choices as well as more conceptual and existential questions about our contemporary urban moment. 

(S1E9) TRAFFIC'S GORDIAN KNOT

The treatment of “traffic” in urban studies and urban policy over the past generation appears to keep making about-faces – from evil, to necessary evil, to evil-with-benefits, and back again.

(S1E8) RADICAL. URBAN. WORK.

At the frontier of disgrace, dispossession, and sometimes abject horror, we raise questions of home, identity, violence and evil.

(S1E7) LEADING LIKE AN OSTRICH, LEADING LIKE ICARUS

What is urban sustainability and how does it contribute to future thinking for our cities?

(S1E6) BEYOND BOUNDARY ROAD

Exploring the question of what newcomers to Vancouver and to Canada, and those who do not see Vancouver as ground zero for all matters urban, can learn and can contribute uniquely in SFU Urban Studies.

(S1E5) URBANISTS IN THE OUTPOSTS

When is an urban community not a city? And what are some of the best trained urbanists in BC doing in small and remote communities?

(S1E4) DISORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Working for a city organization is a tried and true career choice for urbanists. Or is it?

(S1E3) VOICES FROM THE "DEVELOPMENT SIDE"

What happens when Urban Studies graduates wind up working in ways that conventionally are considered to be “pro-development” and how can this work promote the future of progressive cities?

(S1E2) CHANGE AGENTS IN DARK GLASSES

How have some successful change agents used their work in the Urban Studies program to gain skills, capacities, confidence, and the other qualities they needed to be the change they want to see in their city?

(S1E1) STICKING YOUR NECK OUT

What have SFU Urban Studies alumni learned about theory and how can inform practice from the trenches of elected leadership, and what did they learn about leadership?