Our latest guest is Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, an urban anthropologist and lecturer from Philadelphia. She co-founded the “The Women Led Cities Initiative” which aims to bring women's voices to the forefront of urban planning and design. In 2019 she was named to the “BBC’s 100 Women of 2019”, an annual listing of the most inspiring and influential women from around the world. She has served as a lecturer at Drexel University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. With this episode we tried something new, we conducted our interview on the streets of Philadelphia in Johnston-Zimmerman’s neighborhood, it was a great way to talk to her and learn more about urban anthropology. It was a really fun way to do the interview and we really enjoyed our conversation.
Show Notes & Links Of Interest
Introduction [0:00]
Question: What is an urban anthropologist and how does it fit into urban design?
Jane Jacobs [3:17]
Question: How has the pandemic changed how we think about and use public spaces? [5:03]
Question: How can society best combine different efforts to address bigger improvements in cities? [6:23]
Question: What advice does she give for young adults planning to pursue a career in urban anthropology? [9:18]
Question: How has she handled change over the course of her career? Is there anything she has dramatically changed her opinion on over the course of her career? [11:19]
Question: How does she see women improving cities in the future? [14:17]
TED Talk: What Does a Female Future Look Like in Our Cities?
Anne Hidalgo the mayor of Paris [15:22]
Ada Colau the mayor of Barcelona [15:23]
Question: Does she think some of the urban changes from Europe will come the United States soon? [16:52]
Question: If she had not become an urban anthropologist, what does she think she would be doing now? [17:47]
Question: When she was little what did she want to do when she grew up? [18:40]
Question: What are her thoughts on getting mentors and role models? [19:07]
Question: What is one of the hardest things she has had to overcome in her career? [21:00]
Question: Has she experienced imposters syndrome? [23:16]
Question: Is there a failure in her past that she feels has impacted her life in a positive way? [24:06]
Question: What advice does she have for young girls who are trying to pursue their dreams? [26:23]
Question: What one quality or trait does she feel young girls should embrace when pursuing their dreams? [27:31]
Question: Anything else she would like to share with our audience? [29:55]
Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman’s Bio
Katrina is a lecturer, researcher, and advocate for humanist cities. She is a consultant through her firm THINK.urban and adjunct professor for the Masters of Urban Strategy at Drexel University, as well as guest lecturer for the Masters in Urbanism program at the Royal Institute for Technology in Stockholm, Sweden (KTH). As an applied urban anthropologist, her work focuses on human behavior in public space and the relationship between behavior and design. Through the use of “spatial ethnographies”, she utilizes principles of user experience research and design to assess the effectiveness of urban form on the human condition, physically and psychologically. Lectures include instruction on qualitative research methods, observation techniques, survey research, and ancient urban history with an emphasis on public space.
Previously, she has worked with organizations including Copenhagenize, Project for Public Spaces, and City ID to bring humanist philosophy and practice into city planning and design. She was the co-founder of the Women Led Cities Initiative, a Knight Foundation funded series of working conferences in 2018-2019 aiming to explore and advocate for the role of women in urbanism. Her work can be found in popular contexts such as Next City, as well as academic journals including Urban Geography and the Journal of Urbanism. She was recently named to BBC’s 100 Women list and invited to speak at the annual event in London on the future of cities and women.
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