We have some exciting news to share.

Urban Limitrophe has been recognized twice by Feedspot,  a platform that curates and ranks podcasts from around the world, ranking #34 on the Top 80 Urban Planning Podcasts globally, and #15 on the Top 25 Best Podcasts for People Who Love Cities in 2026.

As an independent bilingual podcast exploring cities, architecture, and urban innovation across Africa and its diasporas, this recognition means a great deal. When Urban Limitrophe started, we saw a gap. Too often, conversations about urban planning and city-building overlooked the wealth of knowledge, innovation, and lived experience emerging from African cities and communities. We wanted to create a platform to document those stories, learn from them, and connect them to broader conversations about how cities are shaped around the world.

Being listed alongside some of the most established names in urban planning media is a reminder that the stories coming out of African cities, diasporas, and communities—from Nairobi to Lubumbashi, São Paulo to Tangier, Accra to Toronto—belong in the global conversation about how we build, design, and reimagine and develop our neighbourhoods, cities, and regions.

Thank you to every guest who trusted us with their work and their ideas. Thank you to everyone who has listened, shared, and supported the show since the beginning.

If Urban Limitrophe has taught you something, introduced you to a new perspective, or helped you see cities differently, please consider leaving a rating, review, or comment wherever you listen. Every rating helps the podcast reach new audiences and keeps these conversations growing.

New episode dropping every month. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow along at urbanlimitrophe.com.

What does it mean to design from an African perspective? And how do questions of identity, belonging, and culture shape the spaces we create?

In this episode, I speak with Eunice Nanzala Schumacher, architect and founder of My African Aesthetic, about how her experiences living between Uganda and Norway inspired a deeper exploration of African aesthetics, design philosophy, and placemaking. Through conversations with architects, artists, designers, and community-builders from across Africa and its diasporas, Eunice has been documenting the ideas, histories, and practices that shape how people create meaningful places and communities.

Together, we explore:

• What African aesthetics can teach us about design, community, and belonging
• How identity and culture influence the spaces we build and inhabit
• Insights from previous seasons of the My African Aesthetic podcast and platform
• The role of diaspora experiences in shaping contemporary placemaking
• Why documenting African knowledge systems and design traditions matters
• Professor Mugendi's concept of "Africa with a K" and the importance of looking inward
• What it means to create "home" across multiple places, cultures, and contexts
• Whether an African placemaking toolbox is possible—and what it might contain

Ultimately, this conversation explores what happens when different worlds meet. As ideas, identities, and cultural traditions move across borders, they reshape how we understand home, belonging, and place. It is a reminder that home is not always somewhere we return to—it is something we continually create.

A gift isn't always free. But when a foreign government offers to build your parliament—for free—it's easy to miss where the real cost lands.

In this episode, Dr. Innocent (Ib) Batsani-Ncube discusses China's role in constructing parliament buildings across Africa, and what these projects reveal about architecture, power, procurement, and urban development.

Drawing from years of research across Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho, Ib unpacks how these landmark buildings reshape cities and political systems—from imported construction materials and sidelined local architects to leaking domes that only foreign maintenance crews can repair.

Together, we explore:

• How parliament buildings shape political culture and urban identity
• What gets lost when foreign actors design local democratic spaces
• Why procurement and infrastructure are never politically neutral
• The tension between modernity, symbolism, and local belonging
• What ordinary citizens, planners, and parliament staff really think about these projects

Dr. Batsani-Ncube's book, China and African Parliaments, is available now via Oxford University Press. 

We often think of innovation as something inherently good — new technologies, sleek apps, disruptive ideas, and economic growth.

But who actually benefits from innovation? And what gets erased in the process?

In this episode, Alexandra speaks with Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, a knowledge architect and social change educator based in Botswana, about the relationship between innovation, development, land, power, and cultural knowledge systems.

Together, they unpack Botswana’s efforts to build an innovation economy beyond diamonds, while exploring larger questions around colonialism, intellectual property, indigenous knowledge systems, youth unemployment, and the politics of global development.  

Dr. Pierce shares how land, policy, history, and local knowledge shape what innovation can — and cannot — achieve; how national ambition meets lived reality; and what other countries, regions, and cities can learn from Botswana’s approach.

Together, we explore: