The Aesthetic City

Mieke Bosse is an experienced architect at Scala Architecten, a traditional architecture firm based in The Hague, the Netherlands. With her firm she has created many projects that fit in their environment and are embraced by local residents and their new inhabitants alike. She is chair of INTBAU Nederland and has been a member of the exam committee of the Dutch architecture registry. Furthermore, Mieke was visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and teacher at the Engelsberg architecture summerschool.

In this episode, we talk about a wide range of topics, ranging from her vision on architecture in general, education, the housing shortage to the history of housing projects in the Netherlands.

Visit https://scala-architecten.nl/ for more information on Mieke's firm and their beautiful projects in the Netherlands.

Flavio Diaz Miron is a young urban planner based in La Paz, Mexico, with a background in political sciences. He did an internship at La Table Ronde d'Architecture in Brussels and is involved with INTBAU, aiming to set up the Mexican chapter of this organisation.
This is the first episode of The Aesthetic City Podcast, a podcast focused on the question: how do we improve our built environment to make it more suited to human wellbeing, more beautiful and pleasant? If you like this content, please consider to give us a favourable review on Apple Podcasts!

This episode was co-hosted by George Kerpestein of the blog CasualRealism: https://casualrealism.substack.com/
Visit https://theaestheticcity.com/ for more information about The Aesthetic City

Samuel Hughes is a research fellow at Oxford University and senior fellow at Policy Exchange and Create Streets. He has a background in philosophy, as he completed his PhD in Philosophy in 2020 in Cambridge. He spent time as a visiting researcher at many other universities and served as research assistant to the British governments’ Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.

In this episode, we talk about a variety of topics: we hear about Samuel's work with the Building Better, Building Beautiful committee for the UK government, about how 'beauty' is being spoken about again and how it is more important than we think, how to intensify urban areas and much more.

Samuel Hughes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SCP_Hughes

Find more information on the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission and its work here: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/building-better-building-beautiful-commission

Strong Suburbs paper with the street votes principle:

https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/strong-suburbs/

CreateStreets' website: https://www.createstreets.com/

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For more information on The Aesthetic City,

find our website on https://theaestheticcity.com/

Love what we do? Become a patron! With your help we can grow this platform even further, make more content and hopefully achieve real, lasting impact for more beautiful cities worldwide.

Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/the_aesthetic_city

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_Aesthetic_City

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.aesthetic.city/

Ben Southwood has worked for KPMG, was head of research at the Adam Smith Institute and the head of Housing, Transport and Urban Space at the UK think tank ‘Policy Exchange’.

He has also assisted CreateStreets as head of research. Currently he is editor at Stripe, for the online journal Works in Progress. An excellent source for high quality, optimistic articles on scientific progress, innovation and other topics.

In this episode he talks about the StreetVotes concept, how it can gently transition low density areas into beautiful, denser neighbourhoods, offering more housing units in overheated markets, giving more power to local communities and enabling them to reap the benefits of this densification. The concept is a true win-win solution that is now being tested out in the UK on a small scale.

Visit Works in Progress here: https://www.worksinprogress.co/

Find the StreetVotes concept and whitepaper here: https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/strong-suburbs/

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For more information on The Aesthetic City,

find our website on https://theaestheticcity.com/

Love what we do? Become a patron! With your help we can grow this platform even further, make more content and hopefully achieve real, lasting impact for more beautiful cities worldwide.

Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/the_aesthetic_city

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_Aesthetic_City

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.aesthetic.city/

Steve Mouzon is an architect, urbanist and author known for his work in the New Urbanism movement.

With several influential books and articles on the subject of sustainable and traditional architecture, including "The Original Green: Unlocking the Mystery of True Sustainability," today’s guest goes beyond the regular, technological solutions to fix our cities, and instead focuses on timeless, naturally sustainable ways of building and living.

In addition to his writing, Mouzon is a co-founder of the New Urban Guild, which is a group of architects, designers, and other professionals dedicated to the development of sustainable architectural practices and community designs. His work often emphasizes the importance of building practices that can endure and remain relevant over time, contributing to the creation of living traditions in architecture and urban design.

Mouzon's approach to architecture and urban planning is deeply rooted in the idea that buildings and communities should be designed with an eye toward their long-term impact on the environment and society. He advocates for a return to traditional architectural principles, which he believes offer time-tested solutions to contemporary challenges in building and urban design.

Find more information on the website of Urban Guild:

https://www.urbanguild.org/steve-mouzon

Visit the website of his design firm:

https://mouzon.com/about/

Read more about the Original Green:

https://originalgreen.org/

Follow Steve on X:

https://twitter.com/stevemouzon

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For more information on The Aesthetic City, find our website on https://theaestheticcity.com/

Love what we do? Become a patron! With your help we can grow this platform even further, make more content and hopefully achieve real, lasting impact for more beautiful cities worldwide.

Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/the_aesthetic_city?fan_landing=true

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@the_aesthetic_city

Follow us on X: https://x.com/_Aesthetic_City

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.aesthetic.city/

Substack: https://theaestheticcity.substack.com/

Get access to the Aesthetic City Knowledge Base: https://theaestheticcity.lemonsqueezy.com/checkout/buy/18809486-2532-4d91-90fd-f5c62775adec