The biennial Festival of the Future City returns this year, with a range of experts and panellists discussing the challenges facing cities today, including the housing crisis, rising inequality, conflict and war, climate change and the failings of democracy. They will pose radical ideas about how we can build better, fairer, happier cities for all.

This year’s Festival of the Future City will take place from 17-19 October, with a line-up of thinkers and change-makers discussing the challenges facing cities today – and what we need to do to help build better cities of the future.

Conflict is often one of the leading causes of mass migration, a topic that will be at the forefront of our discussion with Ben Judah, author of This is Europe: the Way We Live Now. He will look at the changing populations around Europe and how migration has raised questions about identity and assimilation, work and housing.

With cities around the world emerging from lockdown, the festival will look at how we can create better, happier cities. Hillary Schieve – mayor of Reno, Nevada – joins us to discuss how she made creating better mental health in her city a priority – while a panel of architects and entrepreneurs examine the radical ideas for building better, fairer cities. Better living can’t be discussed without addressing better dying, so our panel of urban planners, anthropologists and funeral directors look at the future of death – and how this might evolve as we consider more environmentally sustainable practices in body disposition.

While many of this year’s events will be held at Watershed, there will also be several guided walks around different areas of the city centre. Bristol Steppin Sistas was a group created as a way of encouraging local Black women and women of colour to walk and thrive in open spaces. They’ll join the festival for the first time on a walk around the city centre, discussing the importance of being able to explore new places in the safety and company of others who share similar experiences of discrimination and disadvantage. Michael Manson will lead walks on the Bristol Bridge Massacre of 1793; the riots, postwar decline and subsequent rejuvenation of Old Market; and what Bristol might have looked like in Saxon times. Eugene Byrne will take walkers around the city to bust Bristol’s urban myths and discuss ‘Unbuilt Bristol’: the projects and ideas that never quite made it to fruition.

Also featured in this year’s Festival of the Future City is Suffocating City, a new public art installation projected onto the Arnolfini on the evenings of 18-19 October. Southwest artist Leo Jamelli created this new work to raise awareness of the worsening problem of urban air pollution and encourage people to adopt a greener approach to city living to help address the climate emergency. Air quality has been identified as the greatest environmental threat to public health globally. The project has been funded by Arts Council England.