71. Kids & How Cities Work

City Road Podcast

What do authors think about when they’re writing a book about cities for kids? And why are books about cities and urban life important for kids? Dallas chats with kids book illustrator James Gulliver Hancock and Alexandra Crosby and Jesse Stein from UTS about kids, books and cities. We cover a lot of ground, from what it’s like to be an author to being a reader, parent and urbanist. Guests James Gulliver Hancock stylishly illustrated the popular book How Cities Work 1 (How Things Work). This innovative book for younger readers is packed with city facts, loads of flaps to lift, and unfolding pages to see inside buildings and under the streets. Children aged 5+ can learn about skyscrapers, subway systems and stinky sewers. Discover where people live and peek behind closed doors to see what’s going on in houses and apartments, or why not find out about what goes on underneath the streets you walk on every day? Dr Alexandra Crosby is an internationally recognised scholar and visual communicator with an interest in expanding design practice. Her current body of research is focused on more-than-human design and recombinant ecologies in urban environments. Here, she explores the relationships between plants and people, revealing the systems and ecologies that will be critical to overcoming the impacts of climate change on our cities. Key projects include Mapping Edges, a transdisciplinary research studio in partnership with Associate Professor Ilaria Vanni Accarigi that uses permaculture design principles to create sustainable systems within urban environments. Repair Design, a collaboration with UTS researcher Dr Jesse Adams Stein, is another major piece of work that embeds repair practices and designing for zero waste at the core of traditional design disciplines. Dr Jesse Adams Stein is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow at the UTS School of Design. She is an interdisciplinary design researcher specialising in the relationship between technology, work and material culture. Her research shifts between historical and contemporary contexts and focuses on the quieter and less fashionable aspects of design: industrial craft, manufacturing, repair, skill loss and the human experience of economic restructuring and deindustrialisation. Stein was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Fellowship (DECRA), commenced July 2021, and is currently investigating the project “Makers, Manufacturers & Designers: Connecting Histories”, a project that brings together design histories with manufacturing, production and technical education, in the Australian context.