The DNA of Cities

In our second episode on The DNA of Shanghai we discover more about the social and cultural factors that make Shanghai, Shanghai.

We ask how many Shanghai’s are there? What is the city’s role within China and what is its relationship to other Chinese cities? And we find out how Shanghai’s unique history led it to become the birthplace of the Chinese adaptation of communism.

With special thanks to Stella Dong, Dr Hou Li and Professor Jenny Lin.

To learn more about the DNA of Cities and sign up for our latest updates visit www.thednaofcities.com.

In our final episode of Season 1, we ask our urban experts ‘what does The DNA of Cities not yet explain about how cities evolve?’ We debate the limits of The DNA of Cities and what it is that cannot be explained using this way of exploring, conceptualising and understanding urban identity.

Thank you to Professor Michele Acuto, A/Professor Ellie Cosgrave, Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Professor Edgar Pieterse, Dr Jaana Remes, Dr Karissa Sanbonmatsu and Geerte Udo for joining us in this episode. We also hear from Abha Joshi-Ghani, who we dedicate this season to with great respect and affection.

Whether this is the first episode you have listened to this season, or you have been with us from the beginning, thank you for tuning in.

We will be back soon!

To learn more about The DNA of Cities and sign up for our latest updates visit www.thednaofcities.com

Welcome to the first episode in our three-part mini-series exploring The DNA of Sydney. The beauty and appeal of Sydney’s dramatic, dreamy, and diverse scenery have always been, and are still, an inspiration for people. Today, the Sydney metropolitan region is home to over five million people in a region whose spatial boundaries are defined by the Pacific Ocean on the eastern coast, the Blue Mountains to the west, the Hawkesbury River to the north and the swampy Woronora Plateau to the south. It's a place of abundance, where an environment of immense lushness and attractiveness combine with a temperate climate that has been very conducive to human flourishing.

It’s an obvious point to make, but the mountains, the sea, the rivers, the climate and wider geography of this location are really quite important in shaping the way people have lived and congregated here. As we learn in this episode, that is true of the diverse Aboriginal communities that have always called this place home, to the relatively more recent urban story of Sydney.

We are hugely grateful to the wonderful experts who joined us in this episode to decode what makes Sydney, Sydney. Thank you to Monica Barone, Dr Danièle Hromek, Dr Sarah Hill, Alex O’Mara, Michael Rose AM, Rob Stokes and Eamon Waterford. You can read our full interviews with each of our local experts on our website.

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Dainius Kacinskas.

In Part II of The DNA of Kyiv, we learn about the people who live in Kyiv and the strong feelings the city stirs within those who choose to make it their home. We discover what it means to be and become a Kyivan, and we explore the manifestations of the common struggle for cultural freedom and self-government in the city's protests and revolutions.

Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and amid possible air-raid sirens, power-blackouts and the threat of Russian missile strikes, our local experts spoke about how Kyiv has been responding to the full-scale invasion and enduring under more than 1,000 days of war. They told us how the trauma of war has scarred the city, and their dreams for the future of the city.

With special thanks to Denys Nazarenko, Dr Victoria Itskovych, Professor Serhy Yekelchyk, Yulia Bevzenko and Stanislav Kukhtyk for joining us in this episode, and to Denys for the invitation to explore Kyiv in this season of the podcast.

To learn more about The DNA of Cities and to read each of our interviews in full, head to www.thednaofcities.com.

To find out more about the history of Kyiv, check out these resources:

Yulia Bevzenko - Shukai

Serhii Plokhy - The Gates of Europe

Serhy Yekelchyk - Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know

Serhy Yekelchyk - Understanding Ukraine for Legion Magazine

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Dainius Kacinskas.

We are honoured to have historian Ben Wilson as our first Keynote guest. Ben is the author of several acclaimed books, including Metropolis which was released in 2020 and Urban Jungle which was published in 2023.

In Part I of this global adventure spanning 5,000 years of urbanisation, Ben reveals:

• How cities rewire humans biologically, culturally and socially both individually and collectively
• Why the permanence of human settlement in cities catalyses innovation
• The innate duality of cities as places of opportunity and hardship, brute and beauty, enchantment and horror

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What are the Keynotes? These are the episodes where we zoom out from our city-to-city voyage to meet global expert voices from a range of different disciplinary vantage points (e.g. from history, to theology, to genetics, to archaeology, to design) to understand the place of cities in their work. We want to know how they would approach and investigate the relationship between cities and human experience and evolution.

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Dainius Kacinskas.