Design Is Our Key to an Emotional City

Episode 06

This Must Be the Place

Home is where the dumplings are—and dumplings are best shared in shared spaces. In our Toronto series finale, Eunice reflects on their emotional city, and Erika and Lauren reflect on the public-space lessons they’re taking home to rural Massachusetts and Atlanta. Also: momo moments.

Episode 05

Whose Parks? Our Parks!

We’ve been working up to this one all series. They’re the public spaces that show off in plain sight: PARKS! Eunice, Erika, Lauren, and friends of Inhabit take a snowy walk through Eunice’s neighborhood park and then dive deep with public park advocates Adri Stark and Wes Reibeling about designing for dignity and Toronto’s oldest openly queer park space. Also: pigeon fixing.

Episode 04

Parking Lots for the People

Eunice introduces their boss, Paul Kulig, who shares his big thesis about Toronto’s suburbs and the walkable city. Then Eunice takes Erika and Lauren to Jane and Finch, where the community has reclaimed an unused corner of a mall parking lot as a proud public space called Corner Commons—a National Urban Design winner! Also: truth bombs.

Inhabitat 01

NeoCon 2023 with David Cordell and Joey Shimoda

Dr. Producer Lauren hits the road to NeoCon 2023 with interior designer—and Inhabit nerd—David Cordell. She shares highlights from his panel on the Principles of Sustainable Design, then heads into the podcast booth with him and co-panelist Joey Shimoda to get their hot takes on sustainability in design. Also: the Diddy clan.

Episode 03

You Can’t Google This

Erika, Eunice, and Lauren continue their food tour of Toronto’s North York suburb with food writer Suresh Doss. Inside Dream Yunnan Chòng’s new uptown location, they discover Suresh’s tech roots and get his hot takes on big data’s blind spots. Then the very person who inspired Eunice to become an urban planner, Dr. Zhixi Zhuang, shares her keys to planning an emotional city. Also: the Internet of Things.

Episode 02

Bao and Belonging with Suresh Doss

Erika, Eunice, and Lauren take the subway north on the longest street in the world for Part 1 of an ethnoburb food tour with acclaimed Toronto food writer Suresh Doss. They start with lattes at a cozy third-wave coffeeshop on what urban planners call a “soft site.” Then they go for juicy Shanghai baos at a complex on Yonge Street where developers have made growth AND cultural preservation possible. Also: grandmas.

Episode 01

What’s Public About Public Space?

Head outside with hosts Eunice Wong and Dr. Erika Eitland as they kick off a new season focused on public space. Together they unpack the tension between who designs our public space and who occupies it. They also explore the power of design, policy, and research with Zahra Ebrahim, CEO and co-founder of Monumental, an organization that specializes in deep, community-led approaches to policy, infrastructure, and service design. Is public space really for everyone?

Trailer

Design Is Our Key to an Emotional City

Inhabit is back for a third season! Over the coming weeks, co-host and urban designer Eunice Wong welcomes us to their home city of Toronto. We talk to a food writer, a professor, a parks nonprofit, a public interest designer, and a community center—and we learn how to unlock the power of public spaces along the way.