CITYMAKERS

In this podcast series, Kika Yang spoke with CITYMAKERS Lab participants about their personal motivations and background as city makers and invited them to brainstorm about the potentials of the CITYMAKERS platform.

Laura Bruns, co-founder of StadtStattStrand, speaks with Kika Yang about the project “Urbane Liga”, the importance of lobbying and building trust as well as their publications launched to empower citizens to ‘just do it’. This podcast is part of our series recorded at the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

In this podcast, Kika Yang talks to Erik Ackner, Country Manager at Startup Grind and former organiser of Startup Grind in Chengdu, about the innovation ecosystem in China. This podcast is part of the series recorded against the background of the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

With her broad experience within start-ups and social organisations, Jah Ying Chung identified a gap that she is now dedicating her time to fill: Her consultancy “The Good Growth Co” helps companies after their successful launching period to develop a consistent strategy for their development. This podcast is part of our series recorded at the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

Combining their backgrounds in stage design, architecture and movement-based expressive arts, Andrea Weigt & Cyrus Khazaheli offer an environment in which people can connect with nature and with themselves – and generate new ideas. They see themselves as a part of a movement towards a new model of community life in the countryside. This podcast is part of our series recorded at the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

Marlene Welzl shares with us what inspired her to create the concept of WOHNBUDDY, a matchmaking platform for elderly and young people to live together. This podcast is part of our series recorded at the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

Jonas Schorr talks with Kika Yang about his journey: From growing up in East Berlin to moving to West Germany and then step-by-step turning into a cosmopolitan social entrepreneur with his recently founded company, Urban Impact. This podcast is part of our series recorded at the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

How to make sure to hear and harvest all the interesting individual stories of participants and make them available to a larger audience? We set up a one-to-one dialogue space hosted by CITYMAKERS-editor and architect Kika Yang. Our key questions of interest: What motivates and drives you personally as a city maker? What was your particular interest in joining this lab? What potential do you see in the CITYMAKERS-platform? Here we share results from these conversations with Laura Bruns, Sebastian Schlecht, Jah Ying Chung, Jonas Schorr, Marlene Welzl, Andrea Weigt & Cyrus Khazaheli through a series of podcasts.

Sebastian Schlecht is an optimist: He believes that we have the necessary resources to generate, test and implement new solutions to sustainable built environments. In his talk with Kika Yang he shares how enriching it can be to experience different perspectives of particular processes. This podcast is part of our podcast series recorded at the CITYMAKERS Social Entrepreneurship Competence Lab.

In September 2018, YANG Fan from CECP (China Endangered Culture Protectors) and Silvan Hagenbrock, urbanist and editor of CITYMAKERS, travelled together for 10 days from Xi’an to Taiyuan tracing cultural relics sites. Why go to all these places?

For sociology M.A. student LI Mingjiu, healthy city-making means enhancing human rights instead of adhering to neoliberal concerns. For him it is paramount that the individual person is centered as the end to urban health initiatives and not mobilized or discarded as an instrument in the name of urban stability and “harmony.” Read this analysis to learn about his thoughts on healthy city making.

Für mich ist die gesunde Stadt so etwas wie eine Riesin. Ein lächelndes Wesen, welches den Autos vor den Stadttoren den Weg versperrt, die Dächer der häuslichen Gewalt aufdeckt, sexistische Werbung abreißt und eine Mixtur an Düften ausatmet, die die Städter:innen ganz verrückt macht nach dem Urbanen und Ländlichen.

Maja Linnemann studierte Sinologie in Bremen, Chengdu, Hamburg und London. Sie lebte 14 Jahre in Peking, wo sie u.a. als Redakteurin arbeitete. Unser Team begleitet sie seit 2017. Maja spricht in diesem Interview über den chinesischen Stadtraum, Sprache, Schrift und Friedhöfe.

Health concerns and the built environment have an intertwined history. In fact, health is the topic which has greatly shaped the profession of urban planning, landscape planning and modern architecture for one-and-a-half centuries. What was the concern yesterday and what is it today? And how about the context of China? CITYMAKERS-Guest Author and researcher in Architecture Theory at RWTH Aachen, Zhen ZHANG, presents some of the answers through reviewing the newest research in the book „Lifestyled – Health and Places“, a 2016 publication of research at Harvard University.

Die Neuberlinerin und Urbanistin Kika Yang hat die Plattform Urban Sports Club ausprobiert. Damit hat sie sich nicht nur fit gehalten, sondern auch die Stadt neu entdeckt.

Was verursacht Großstadtbewohner*innen Stress und wie können sie damit besser umgehen? Wie würde eine ideale Stadt aussehen und wieviel Stress, also auch Anregungen, sollte sie bieten? Diese und viele andere Aspekte behandelt der Arzt, Psychiater und Stressforscher Mazda Adli in seinem Buch „Stress and the City“. STADTMACHER hat das Buch für Sie gelesen.

STADTMACHER-Teammitglied Luisa Keinprecht befragte den Mitbegründer der Markthalle Neun Florian Niedermeier zum Entstehungsprozess, der Zukunftsvision und dem Beitrag der Markthalle zur Gesundheit Berlins.

LU Ying brings experience from eight cities and three continents to her business in Shanghai. Her enterprise Future Urban Living aims at promoting a circular economy instead of the well-established ‘make-use-dispose’ model.

Shi Ming ist freier Journalist, und lebt seit 1987 in Deutschland. Für die Berlin-Beijing Learning Cities Map untersucht er die Berliner Schnauze und die Pekinger Zunge.

Christian Y. Schmidt ist Journalist, Satiriker und Schriftsteller. Er lebt in Peking und Berlin. Für die Berlin-Beijing Learning Cities Map begibt er sich auf die Dächer von Polizeistationen, in den Dunst der Lammspießgriller und die Dunkelheit des Babaoshan-Friedhofs.