Professor Nabeel Hamdi is a pioneering architect, introducing participatory action planning and development agenda in designing our cities. This episode showcases how built environment practitioners can play a ‘developmental’ role in placemaking. Nabeel was born in Afghanistan and is of Iraqi origin. He started his school in the UK and was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London. Nabeel then worked for Greater London Council on social housing, applying participatory design process, that enabled homeowners to actively negotiate their needs to the local authorities. He then taught in many architectural schools worldwide including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Oxford Brookes University. Nabeel was influenced by 3 architects - John Habraken, Colin Ward and John Turner, who shaped his approach to development practice.

Nabeel has written many influential books, such as Housing Without Houses (IT Publications, 1995), The Placemaker's Guide to Building Community (Earthscan, 2010), Small Change (Earthscan, 2004), co-author of Making Micro Plans (IT Publications, 1988) and Action Planning for Cities (John Wiley and Sons, 1997), and edited the collected volumes Educating for Real (IT Publications, 1996) and Urban Futures (IT Publications, 2005).

Nabeel also won the prestigious UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour for his work on Community Action Planning.

Nabeel MARS mantra is ‘providing’, ‘enabling’, ‘adapting’ and ‘sustaining’ (P.E.A.S), suggesting these four inter-related sets of responsibility intrinsic to the art of practice in development.

Farhat Afzal studied architecture to broaden her horizon and to think outside the box. Farhat also writes about the thoughts that goes through young minds, including masculinity, our day to day, urban hurdle of moving in our streets, to quarter life crisis faced by young people regarding key decisions in their lives. Now she is using her critical thinking to question how we were taught following colonial and then a modern style, heavily influenced by the west. Farhat is now pursuing a PhD in architecture at the University of Cincinnati and is also baffled by how unsustainable the modern American lifestyle is!
Farhat enjoys photographing old buildings, documenting her reading habits on Instagram, and maintaining her blog at farhatafzal.com
স্থাপত্য নিয়ে পড়াশুনা করলেও, ফারহাত আফজাল নিজেকে স্থপতির চেয়ে স্থাপত্যের গবেষক হিসেবে পরিচয় দিতে স্বাচ্ছন্দ বোধ করেন। বাংলাদেশ থেকে স্নাতক পর্যায়ে পড়াশুনা শেষ করে তিনি এখন যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের ইউনিভার্সিটি অফ সিন্সিন্নাটিতে পি এইচ ডি করছেন। এর পাশাপাশি বাংলাদেশের বিভিন্ন পত্র পত্রিকায় তরুণ সমাজ, নগর উন্নয়ন, ও স্থাপত্যের ইতিহাস নিয়ে লেখালিখি করেছেন। স্থাপত্য ও নির্মাণ শিল্পের যে প্রভাব প্রকৃতি ও পরিবেশে পড়ে, সেটা নিয়ে কাজ করার অনেক আগ্রহ আছে তার। তার মঙ্গল মন্ত্র হচ্ছে, একটি দেশের নাগরিক হিসেবে, সকল শ্রোতাদের তিনি পরিবেশ বান্ধব উদ্যোগ নেয়ার ব্যাপারে আহ্বান জানাতে চান।

Priti’s passion for working in the slums of India with her dad, encouraged her to dedicate her engineering career to improve the lives of people, by providing quality infrastructure across Asia, Africa and the UK. Priti has been awarded as one of the top 50 women in engineering as well as the top 100 academics for policy making. Priti holds many influential positions, as the Director of Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, as the founder of Engineering for International Development Research Centre, and several charity trustee roles. Priti also got invited to present the importance of investing in sustainable infrastructure to the UK parliament. Priti conveys strong messages about the absence of infrastructure though stand-up comedy, which can be found here https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1147542435847289

Shahriar Caesar Rahman, is passionate about saving wildlife in Bangladesh. As a child, growing up in New York city, he volunteered to save the urban animals there. This inspired him to form his own charity ‘Creative Conservation Alliance’. Caesar has been working patiently for over 15 years to bring changes to the mindsets and policies on wildlife conservation. He is a champion for community based conservation, and won many prestigious awards worldwide. As we modernise and build new cities, we should not forget to make space for other species and let nature heal our planet.

শাহরিয়ার সিজার রহমান, বাংলাদেশের বন্যপ্রাণী সংরক্ষনের বিষয়ে, বিগত ১৫ বছর ধরে কাজ করছেন। শৈশবে নিউ ইয়র্ক শহরে বেড়ে ওঠার সময়ে তিনি সেখানকার শহুরে প্রাণীদের বাঁচাতে স্বেচ্ছাসেবক হিসেবে কাজ করেছিলেন। এখন সিজার 'ক্রিয়েটিভ কনজারভেশন অ্যালায়েন্স' প্রতিষ্ঠান এর মাধ্যমে, আমাদের মন-মানসিকতা এবং নীতিমালা পরিবর্তনে ধৈর্যের সাথে এগিয়ে যাচ্ছেন।

Michèle Young has over two decades of experience as an architect, in the UK and Poland, and as a humanitarian and international development practitioner. Michèle advised and supported teams worldwide to deliver best practice in emergency shelter, housing reconstruction and social infrastructure (re)construction in both conflict and environmental disasters in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific.

Now Michèle is the Development Coordination Manager, for Tower Hamlet, a local authority in London. In this role she is offering innovative and practical solutions to tackling the negative impacts of construction on residents and businesses and supporting a move toward a Circular Economy for the built environment.

Have you ever thought why the world map is upside down in My MARS mantra podcast logo? Meet Richard Turner, who gave me this idea to look at things from a fresh perspective. As we are celebrating the Earth Day earlier this week, let’s find out from Richard, what Sustainable Fundraising mean? How can we bring both the profit and not-for profit sectors together to reach a common goal for saving our planet?

Richard has over 30 years of fundraising experience for many UK-based charities, like Solar Aid, Action Aid, Farm Africa and Oxfam. Richard also trains on fundraising for charities around the world to turn supporters into advocates, by offering a great experience, by learning from failure and by telling a great story.

Farah Mihlar grew up in Sri Lanka, witnessing the civil war. She then became a journalist, and now a human rights activist working at international policy level, while teaching at Oxford Brookes University. Farah is passionate on advocating minority rights and women's rights, working on conflict prevention, peace building and transitional justice. Farah holds a PhD, where she did an ethnographic field research on political Islam and Islamic religious movements in Sri Lanka. Farah also continues to challenge the concept of decolonisation, and its impact on us in our day to day lives in academia as well as in practice.

Kate Bowen-Evans shares her story of growing up between two cultures in Buruni and England. This helped her to develop empathy and inner resilience to thrive and work in some of the most difficult places like Afghanistan, Palatine, Israel and many other conflict and disaster prone countries. Kate has now moved on from working in disasters and conflict zones to teaching on Humanitarian Practice. Kate’s own daughter's and her brother’s experience of living with disability motivated her to research on Disability Theology and to pursue a PhD in Biblical studies and marginalisation; and working on building leadership in various integrated projects in the Africa region.