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“The future is here, just not evenly distributed.”
Are you interested in urban conscious evolution and a hopeful future? What do you think about the saying: the future is here just not evenly distributed? How can we move towards better urban futures?
Special reflective episode with Ben Vass, senior research engineer and yours truly, Fanni Melles, future of cities researcher, discussing what the last five years of the podcast and the world have taught us. We will talk about energy abundance, not evenly distributed but already present futures, antifragility and residuality theory, human progress and hope, and many more.
Ben Vass is a senior research engineer, graph shaman and data magician who wants to build a Dyson swarm, explore the stars and understand consciousness. Standing between two worlds, he sees everything as a network of networks. He works on upgrading the world’s financial infrastructure for transparency and verifiability. And his voice might be familiar because he voiced the podcast intro. Ben is also my partner in crime in every sense.
My name is Fanni Melles, PhD and I am an architect, future of cities researcher and creator of the What is The Future for Cities? podcast. Hungarian-born and Melbourne-based, my PhD argued that generic solutions fail because every city is unique. I see cities as emergent properties of their people and want to help people shape places more consciously, creating urban conscious evolution.
And with Ben, we are expecting 2 new urban agents, thus, this seemed a good time to stop and reflect on the last five years of the podcast and look into the future before a major paradigm shift in our thinking.
Check out the Building Better Cities book which synthesises the last five years of the podcast, written by Fanni Melles.
Find out more about Ben through these links:
- Ben Vass on LinkedIn
- TokCast by Brett Hall
- The beginning of infinity by David Deutsch
Find out more about Fanni through these links:
- Fanni Melles on LinkedIn
- Fanni Melles website
- @fannimelles as Fanni Melles on X
- @fannimelles as Fanni Melles on Instagram
- Vitruvian Solutions website
- Vitruvian Solutions on LinkedIn
- Fanni Melles on RTRFM On Record program;
- Fanni Melles on RRR ByteIntoIT radio;
Find out more about the podcast through these links:
- WTF4Cities on LinkedIn
- WTF4Cities website
- @WTF4Cities as WTF4Cities on X
- @w.t.f.4cities as WTF4Cities on Instagram
- WTF4Cities on Youtube
Connected episodes you might be interested in:
- No.154R – Smart city, smarter city, smarter approaches
- No.156 – Interview with Fanni Melles about urban conscious evolution
- No.180 – Interview with Ben Vass about knowledge and knowledge-creation
- No.461R – Building Better Cities (book summary)
What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on twitter @WTF4Cities or here in the comment section!
If you would like to support the podcast, check out the Building Better Cities book or our Patreon!
Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing:
I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.
Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).


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