If you have ever been to Bruges, or seen it in films or photos, chances are you have noticed at least one of the following: canals, swans, water, tourist boats. What often goes unnoticed is that Bruges, and the wider region of Flanders in Belgium, regularly suffers from droughts.

In this episode, we meet Astrid Stroobandt from the City of Bruges and Simon Thys from the non-profit organisation Waterland, who are currently running the Blue4Green project, an Innovative Action funded by the European Urban Initiative. Astrid and Simon explain how the project aims to change the city’s relationship with water in multiple ways, and how children’s dreams can inspire change just as much as data and technological innovation. We also hear how the city is experimenting with medieval infrastructure as water buffers, and how green and blue algae are cutting summer fun short.

If you would like to find out more about the project, have a look at the links below, connect with Astrid, Simon and Johannes on LinkedIn and follow Blue4Green on Portico.

· European Urban Initiatives: https://www.urban-initiative.eu

· Portico - Gateway to urban learning: https://portico.urban-initiative.eu

· Article: From smart sensors to medieval cultural heritage: A new chapter in Bruges' water identity with Blue4Green

· Article: A hot summer’s wake-up call to the City of Bruges: A blue-green algae crisis and what comes next

I have to start with an apology. To the guest of this episode, Kristijan Radojcic. After we had this conversation in a wild hotel room with tacky wallpaper in Wroclaw, Poland, the raw version of the recording was sitting unedited on my notebook for much too long.

Finally, I am more than happy to share this episode with you, where Kris takes on a deep dive into his childhood in Slovenia and how a trip to Southeast Asia changed everything.

If you are around urban EU programmes, you might have bumped into Kris on various occasions as he is working with URBACT, a programme that helps cities to develop an integrated set of actions for sustainable change. He and his family live in Paris.

Connect with Kristijan and Johannes on LinkedIn and take a look at URBACT.

In this episode:

How did growing up in 1980s Ljubljana shape everyday urban life?

How do music and architecture intersect in shaping cities and communities?

How can encounters beyond Europe reshape ideas of sustainable urbanism?

How do European cities learn from each other in practice, not theory?

How do paradox economies shape our societies?

Why does neighbourhood-level community matter for urban resilience?

Do you remember the first time you learned how to ride a bike? Chances are that you do, and if you kept on kicking those pedals, you might have some fond memories about the (daily) adventures with your bicycle. But… although biking ticks almost all boxes when it comes to urban sustainability, health, livability, affordability and accessibility, our cities still do not unfold the full potential of how urban biking can make our neighbourhoods better places.

My guest today, Josip Rotar from the Maribor Cycling Network, is one of those who pushed for change in the city. Find out how advocacy for urban biking led Josip to take a political role and why urban biking is competing with the SUV of your neighbourhood (or your own?).

Find out more about Josip and the Maribor Cycling Network here.

Josip and the Maribor Cycling Network was part of the first round of Driving Urban Transition’s Urban Doers Community. We recorded this conversation just before the ACT NOW Mayor’s Conference in Vienna.

Urban rewilding is more than planting trees. It’s about reshaping cities by de-sealing land and inviting nature back in. In this episode, we head to Ghent to explore REWILD, a bold project funded by the European Urban Initiative that breaks up concrete, engages residents, and creates space for ecosystems. With Linde Vertriest and Annelies Sevenant, we talk about the barriers and challenges and touch upon the 1 Mio dollar question: what does it take to rewild a city?

🔗 www.rewildthecity.eu

🔗 Read more: Where the pavement ends. Can Ghent become a truly rewilded city?

🔗 Rewild is an European Urban Initiative Innovative Action: https://www.urban-initiative.eu

Today we go back to the City of Mechelen, to find out how nature is making a comeback in Mechelen’s old town, why that is not only good for house sparrow, eels, and otters but for everyone living and working in the city and how residents are part of the journey for cleaner water, more biodiversity and green in the city.

Healthy rivers and rich ecosystems cool our cities, filter our air, and offer places for both people and wildlife to thrive. Yet, for decades, urban waterways have been neglected, covered, or polluted, breaking the vital link between cities and nature.

We have Michiel van Mele who is the City Ecologiest of Mechelen and Marteen de Jonge who is the head of the lab department of the Flanders Environmental Agency on the show. Tune in to find out more...

This episode is part of the Johannes' work with the City of Mechelen's WATSUPS project, a New European Bauhaus demonstrator. WATSUPS is an Innovation Action funded by the European Urban Initiatives. More information here:

• European Urban Initiative
• WATSUPS - Water as the Source of Urban Public Spaces project

In case you missed it: To dig in deeper into the amazing work of Mechelen's, you might want to give these past episodes a listen.

• Reimagining Mechelen Pt. 1 - Water as the Source of Urban Public Space with Nicole La Iacona
• Reimagining Mechelen Pt. 2 - Nature as a Stakeholder in the Revival of the River Dijle with Mark Van der Veken

Have you ever felt how different cities feel, look, and smell at night? How everything is seems to be so different than during the day… having organised punk rock concerts and worked in a club myself during my teenage and student years, I had many touchpoints with the nighttime economy from early on. You might think now of all the clubs and bars… yes, they are part of that, but there is much more to it: workers in culture, logistics, health care, communication, and many more.

In today’s episode, I FINALLY have Simone d’Antonio on the show. Simone is based in Rome, Italy, and you may have come across Simone’s name at some point. Because he’s a familiar face in urban innovation circles, both in Europe and worldwide.

Currently, he is working with 10 cities on their nighttime policies and activities (find out more about the Cities After Dark URBACT Network here), and it was high time to connect online

In our conversation, he convinced me that working on nighttime policies is more than hanging out in bars…

Tune in to find out why the night doesn’t only belong to lovers, as Patti Smith once claimed, but to everyone.

Tune in to find out:

• What if the night-time economy was about care, culture, and community, not just clubs and bars
• Why cities at night are fighting a quiet war against the sofa and the apps on your phone
• Why the right to the city should be a 24/7 thing
• Why Naples might be the northernmost city of the Global South
• How urban nightlife differs depending on cultures, geographies and climates.

Almost every city has them - spaces and places that feel like they’re waiting. Waiting to be reawakened, reimagined, and reconnected to the people around them. Too often, though, that reawakening follows a predictable script: maximise economic return, build apartments, squeeze in shops, add a parking lot. Little thought is given to anything beyond profit.

That’s exactly why I loved hearing Alenka Korenjak and Zala Velkavrh from Prostorož (a not-for-profit urban design agency from Ljubljana/Slovenia) speak about “unloved” places - because it shifts the lens. It’s not just about return on investment, but about how people relate to space, how public life can be cultivated, and how cities can become more liveable, more layered, more human.

So when I spent a few weeks in Klagenfurt, it was high time to jump over the Karawanken Mountains to Ljubljana and visit the Prostorož studio in person on a Friday afternoon in May 2025.

Further info:

• More on Prostorož: https://www.prostoroz.org
• Alenka, Zala and Johannes on LinkedIn
• Cities Reimagined on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citiesreimagined/
• The book I mentioned in the show: Vocabularies for an Urbanising Planet: Theory Buidling through Comparison - https://birkhauser.com/en/book/9783035623031

Hi and welcome back to the first episode of season 3 of the Cities Reimagined Podcast.

To kick things off, I’m joined by Donagh Horgan — a social designer, researcher, and all-round urban thinker who’s doing some pretty exciting work at the intersection of placemaking and tourism. Donagh is based between Ireland and the Netherlands, where he leads the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab at Inholland University. He’s also a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam and works with cities around the world to make them more inclusive, creative, and resilient.

In this episode, we dive into the changing role of tourism in our cities. Urban tourism exploded after the 2008 financial crisis — bringing in money, but also creating real tensions: rising rents, disappearing housing, and a sense of alienation for many local communities. Together with Donagh, we explore how regenerative tourism might offer a way forward — one that puts local people, stories, and places at the centre. We talk about reimagining tourism as something that can give back rather than just take, and how we might start thinking about cities as ecosystems again, rather than playgrounds for capital.

Donagh popped by my apartment while in Vienna and we had a great conversation — I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed recording it.