United Nations Human Settlements Programme

And this journey led her to MIT, to NASA, and the UN.

While in Iraq with UN Habitat, she barely escapes a car bomb.

What follows is a chain of events that changed her life in ways she could have never imagined.

Let's listen.

where you can identify when car bombs would go off in places that needed them, Ardach included.

And the idea was when a car bomb would go off, usually there would be a second wave, like there'd be a second wave of bombs because first responders come and they'd want them to die.

When I was in Ardach for UN Habitat, one day I was like crossing, I was driving to my aunt's house from another aunt's house.

And by the time I got to my aunt's house, there was a baker who just saw me walking as a young woman and literally yelled to me like, ma'am, like, don't go on xyz bridge there was just a car bomb that's how information was traveling he was just like a caring citizen who saw a innocent woman who just wanted to let her know and the idea was my responsibility was then to tell my people and that's how word would spread right because the second wave of bombs might happen so we wanted to turn that into technology and And so at that point, I'm working on this as research.

And of course, in Nigeria, as referred, freezers are working very, very well.

okay okay i'm so glad that you've helped us to you know give a good pre-decision to this conversation and for our dear listeners who are here i'm having mr magical to me here a renowned environmentalist as we all know um but it will be interesting for you at home to understand where this conversation is coming from like i said yesterday was the world cleanup day and um It has been recorded already by the United Nations, the UN Habitat to be precise, that every day more than 1 billion meals are wasted globally.

More than one billion.

So it is said right now in the world, we're over seven billion, right? So more than one billion meals are wasted globally because the World Cleanup Day 2026 is, you know, censoring, of course, on waste, but majorly food waste.

I would like you to know that as at the 12th of April this year, 2026, The Punch reported that, you know, Nigeria wastes about 38 million tons of food amid worsening hunger.

Do you know what that means? We are wasting 38 million.

Remember that I told you that from the UN Habitat platform, it was stated clearly that over 1 billion, you know, tons of food is wasted globally.

Right now, out of that over 1 billion.

version of the work they do when, and they don't really get the insight in like the pros and the cons of that work, or if you even want to do that work.

I remember I always thought I wanted to work at UN Habitat or UN, the one acronym where they work with the refugees.

And I finally got it.

I got an informational interview with that person and She was very honest.

In this episode, we're going to discuss how cities can become more climate-ready and resilient in the face of rising heat.

We'll be talking with Eleni Miravilli, Global Chief Heat Officer at the UN Habitat.

You'll hear our chat with Eleni after this break.

Want to learn more about cities, sustainable transportation, and good urban design? Listen in to Talking Headways at Streets Blog USA, one of the longest running transportation and urban planning shows in the United States.

My name is Eleni Myriviling and I am right now in Greece.

My base is in Athens, Greece, and my title is Global Chief Heat Officer.

And I've been working with UN Habitat and increasingly now with UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme.

trying to help cities deal with extreme heat.

what we're trying to see in these international processes.

The existing mechanisms we do have, UN Habitat, UCLG, single issue processes like the IPCC just are great.

They're valuable.

They have their merits, but they weren't really built for this.

Now, housing has remained central to her work ever since, and she was one of the two coordinators of the EU Urban Partnership on Affordable Housing from 2015 to 2021.

And she has worked extensively with EU institutions, the OECD, UN Habitat, UNICEF, and all that on affordable housing and urban policy.

So that makes her particularly well-placed and I'm very excited to have her on the podcast to talk to us and look beyond Vienna itself as an example of how to deal with the housing crisis.

And let's look beyond Vienna and ask what Europe can actually learn from the housing model of that beautiful city.