Planetary Cities with Liam Young

We are living through a polycrisis—a moment where cascading ecological, technological, social, political, and economic pressures are reshaping the world in real time. Complexity is not an anomaly of our time, but its default setting. The challenge is not merely to decode it, but to engage with its temporalities, influence its exchanges, and anticipate reactions before they spiral beyond control. The future is not something you stumble into—it is a continuous act, the unravelling of hacks that are coded, crafted, and built in the friction of the present.

To lead us through this domain, we are joined by Liam Young—an Australian architect and designer, filmmaker, director, BAFTA-nominated producer, and visionary storyteller whose work explores the intersection of architecture, technology, and the future city. He is the co-founder of the think tank Tomorrow's Thoughts Today and the nomadic research studio Unknown Fields Division. His film work is grounded in academic research at institutions including Princeton, MIT, and Cambridge, and he now leads the Master's program in Fiction and Entertainment at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.

We are interested in the agency of critical design practice—the tools, stories, and strategies we need to move from paralysis to possibility. This is not about imagining perfect futures or fearing catastrophic ones. It is about a grounded optimism. To speculate today is not an escape—it is a responsibility. Liam guides us through this domain with reference to his expansive body of work, including his book Planet City, which imagines a speculative city designed to house the entire population of the Earth.

SUP is hosted by Ian Nazareth, Graham Crist and Christine Phillips.  

This podcast is produced with support from the Alastair Swayn Foundation and the RMIT University School of Architecture & Urban Design.

We acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups on whose unceded Country we are recording this podcast.