The spotlight interview editors decided not to publish

Samantha Suppiah
5 min readAug 15, 2023
Me, a professional, 2023

Urbanist Platform helps “you shape your local area; sharing informative content and connecting you with industry roles”, with the aim to “make the built environment more inclusive”.

I was virtually interviewed by one of Urbanist Platform’s award-winning built environment professionals in April 2021 for a piece that, for reasons not communicated to me, remained unpublished. Hazard a guess.

Of course, “inclusion” is co-opted and gatekept. It exists to maintain an illusion of accountability primarily for the appeasement of the propagandized masses, in order to sustain reliable profits from systemic violence and oppression. Bonus points for non-white gatekeepers living in the beating heart of Empire.

I found the article again recently and thought it illuminating to spend time with my past self, toying with the nonsense concept of “The Urbanist” — or even “The Sustainability Strategist”.

For fun, here is that piece.

“Uncontacted” people, Acre, Brazil (Gleison Miranda, FUNAI/Survival International, published NatGeo)

Q&A questions with Samantha Suppiah

Samantha, what made you choose to become a Sustainability…

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Samantha Suppiah

Southeast Asian trickster. Design strategist for decolonial sustainability & regeneration. www.possiblefutures.earth/crew#samantha