#5: Conrad Richardson - Sustainable Transport, Innovation in the Global South, and Truly Smart Cities

Welcome to the Green Urbanist Podcast, hosted by Ross O'Ceallaigh. This podcast is all about how we can design and manage cities to reduce our carbon emissions, adapt to the climate emergency and live happier, healthier lives.

Today's episode is a conversation with Conrad Richardson.

Conrad is a mobility and climate activist with an international academic and professional background in urban and transport planning, engineering and design across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East. His experiences span the transport spectrum – he has worked on traditional infrastructure projects, such as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as well as on cutting-edge projects, like the RTA Big Data Platform Project in Dubai, UAE. He also lectures in Universities on a wide variety of transport engineering and ‘Future of Mobility’ topics. 

Conrad travels far and frequently, increasingly off the beaten track... shooting photographs and creating short videos telling the stories of different places, which he shares on his instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/conrad.richardson/?hl=en). 

This conversation is very wide ranging but some of the topics covered include:

• Why skateboarders make good urbanists. 
• How getting involved in student politics led to Conrad attending the United Nations Climate Conference in Warsaw.
• The magic of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems.
• Why every city has to get walking and cycling right. 
• What it means to be a truly Smart City. 
• How public transport can facilitate sustainable urban growth.
• Urban technological innovation in the developing world.

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References
Kinshasa traffic robot: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/mar/13/kinshasa-traffic-robots-robocops-in-pictures

Research on potential to build housing on car parks in England: https://www.knightfrank.co.uk/research/article/2020-07-15-government-owned-car-parks-could-hold-the-key-to-110000-new-homes

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Podcast website: https://greenurbanistpod.com/

The Green Urbanist podcast is hosted by Ross O'Ceallaigh.