Skylines, the CityMetric podcast

Casablanca is 102 minutes long. Citizen Kane runs for 119. This, the 150th and final episode of Skylines, the CityMetric podcast, is longer than either, at 124. You lucky, lucky people.I’ve loved doing this show over the last four and a bit years – it’s been a great opportunity to chat to interesting people about everything from transport and housing to smart cities and regional identities, with the odd argument about the tube or episode about ancient history thrown in for flavour. But for all sorts of reasons – not least of which is that I’ve stepped down as editor of CityMetric – this felt like the right time to stop.I wanted to go out with a bang, though, and to hell with worrying about self-indulgence. So in this final, feature-length episode of Skylines you will hear:Barbara Speed, my first co-host and the opinion editor of the I Paper, on her enduring love of baked goods chain Greggs;Our founding producer Roifield Brown, on the podcast’s origins, his native Birmingham and his love of San Francisco;New Statesman political correspondent Patrick Maguire on the rise of the metro mayor, and a movie about both zombies AND public transport;The Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson, one of our more frequent guests, on why Britain’s transport network is quite good, actually;New Statesman political editor Stephen Bush on the best and worst cities for party conferences;The New Statesman’s former environmental writer India Bourke on the joy of nature;The Centre for Cities’ Paul Swinney on the town/city divide;Our current producer Nick Hilton on the fun he’s had turning my rubbish into a podcast;An interview with myself, about my favourite things about doing the show, conducted Agnes Frimston (who, when not being my wonderful and tolerant partner co-hosts the Chatham House podcast, Undercurrents);And last, but very definitely not least, Sommer Mathis, CityMetric’s new editor in chief, on how she got into urbanism and her plans for the site.All that, plus some clips from listeners, and some previously unreleased bits of my entirely excellent former co-host Stephanie Boland.Thanks for tuning into Skylines these last few years. I’m gonna miss you guys.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site. It’s presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Partly because of the crisis, partly for reasons we’ll come to in a moment, our production schedule on Skylines has got a bit lax. So the first of this week’s interviews – with my pal Claire Cocks in Palermo, about what lockdown, Italian-flavour, looks like – is already a little out of date. Italy, unlike the UK, has begun lifting its lockdown. But it’s still a fascinating insight into both what a stricter lockdown looks like, and also into how great Palermo would be if she were allowed to see it at all – so I’ve kept the interview, but added a brief update from Claire about what the situation there is like now.Our second interview is with Hala El Akl, a senior associate at PLP Architecture and chair of the ULI’s UK Urban Art Forum. She tells us exactly why cities should be paying more attention to the role of arts and culture, and what she hopes to do with the role.Before I go – the explanation for the lax schedule I mentioned. In case you’ve missed the announcements on social media: Skylines is coming to an end. I’ve handed over the reins at CityMetric to the new editorial team, led by the outstanding Sommer Mathis, and the next episode will be number 150. For those and a host of other reasons, this felt like the right time to stop.But don’t worry, because our final episode is going to be an absolute monster, in which I speak to all sorts of people who’ve been involved in the show in some capacity over the last four and a bit years years, about their favourite episodes, what they would have liked to have spoken about but didn’t, and also, inevitably, the tube. It’s the messy self-indulgent send off this podcast deserves, and I hope the final product is as much fun to listen to as it was to record.Incidentally – as part of that I’m going to include some clips from listeners, being nice and/or mocking me in an amusing fashion. If you’d like to be one of them, email me your clip to jonnelledge at gmail dot com under the subject line “Final Skylines”.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site. It’s presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m still locked down, and so, I assume, are you, so this week’s show is a game of two-halves.In the present, I speak to my lockdown companion, my partner Agnes Frimston – who, as it happens, co-hosts the newly weekly Chatham House podcast Undercurrents – about how much fun she’s having being shut in a one-bedroom flat with me with no end in sight. We also talk about the various coping strategies the world at large is developing to help it get through lockdown; how public services are faring; and how the crisis might change the world and its politics.We also put on mousturising face masks. While recording. It was that kind of day.After that, an interview, from the before times. Back in March, I spoke with Donna Hall, the former chief executive of Wigan council and chair of the New Local Government Network. We talked about the interlocking crises – budgets, social care, and so forth – that were afflicting England’s councils even before the pandemic arrived. Once we’re out of this mess, such issues are, I fear, only going to get worse.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site. It’s presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apologies for the fact this week’s podcast is a little bit late. But in my defence, both time and the calendar have lost all meaning.Anyway. Something like a third of the world is currently in lockdown to deal with the coronavirus crisis, including Skylines’ little corner of it. So on the assumption that she didn’t have anywhere more fun to be right now, this seemed a good moment to invite my former co-host Stephanie Boland to Skype back into the podcast for the first time in about a year and a half. We discuss the strangeness of London, and its entirely empty transport system, in lockdown; how the UK government is doing at handling the crisis; and how it may, or may not, change the world and its politics.If you enjoyed this one and are a relatively recent subscriber to Skylines, then why not check out some episodes from Stephanie’s era as co-host? You can hear more of her in episodes 15-38, plus 51, 63, 100, and probably some more that I’ve forgotten because it was ages ago.On a different matter – the pandemic has meant a year’s delay to all this year’s English mayoral elections. That sadly means that the mayoral walks series is almost certainly finished, for the moment. But I nonetheless hope to persuade Sadiq Khan and Shaun Bailey to go for a walk with me at some point in the future. It’s good to have goals, isn’t it?Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The mayoral walks mini-series began in an act of trolling. Rory Stewart launched his campaign to be mayor of London through the unusual strategy of walking all over London and tweeting about it; I have spent large chunks of my life walking all over London and tweeting about it; Twitter at large suggested we combine forces, and maybe turn it into a podcast. And, once a couple of other candidates had helpfully put the pressure on by offering to go for a walk with me too, Stewart agreed. And suddenly what had started by taking the mick on Twitter because I was bored had become an actual thing.Alas, when the day finally came we were defeated by London’s famous weather: on the appointed morning, Friday 28 February, it was bucketing down, which isn’t really a good match with the Skylines recording equipment, also known as “my phone”. So instead this podcast was recorded in a cafe in South Kensington.During its course, I asked Rory why he felt London was crying out for a former Tory Cabinet minister as its independent mayor; why he had chosen to campaign by walking and, more recently, asking to sleep one night a week in other Londoners’ houses; and whether he thinks he really has a hope of defeating Sadiq Khan. All that, and we also chatted about his proposals to sort out the capital’’s housing and transport systems, and Rory ate some porridge, too.Incidentally, there’s a moment in this one when the candidate is unexpectedly enthusiastic about my proposals that we start giving the Overground network different line names and we have to stop talking about it before it takes over the entire podcast. Though we did discuss it for ten minutes after recording.This may be the last of my mayoral “walks”. I’m talking to the staffs of both Khan and his Tory rival Shaun Bailey, and am open to approaches from other candidates desperate for coverage... But at time of writing nothing else has been agreed. We shall see. If you happen to see someone running for mayor, send them my way, would you?Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In all the excitement over the London mayoral election, and Brexit, and coronavirus, and the end of civilisation as we know it, it might have escaped you that there are mayoral elections due in other English cities in early May. So, on this week’s podcast, we're looking at one of those. The last time Skylines spoke to Jen Williams, politics and investigations editor of the Manchester Evening News, it was to talk about exactly what had gone wrong with the northern rail network. Since that's still going wrong (lol), that’s our starting point this week, too. But we swiftly move on to talking about our real topic: Greater Manchester’s upcoming mayoral election and Andy Burnham’s record as mayor, as well as homelessness, policing and, my personal favourite, bus regulation. If you’re on Twitter and you don't follow Jen already, by the way, you’re doing it wrong: she’s on @JenWilliamsMEN. Next time, all being well, I’m off for a walk with independent London mayoral candidate Rory Stewart.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, it’s the second in our mayoral walks mini-series. Sian Berry is the co-leader of the Green party, a member of the London Assembly, and is currently running as the party’s candidate to be mayor of the capital for the third time. A few weeks before Christmas, we spent a gloriously crisp winter afternoon together walking from Manor House station to Dalston together, a route chosen mostly because it took us along Green Lanes (geddit?). Along the way we talked about, among other things, air pollution, and how to fix it; how London can reform regeneration schemes so that they don’t screw over existing residents; and, something which Sian still has personal experience of, the capital’s private rental sector. We also ended our walk at a community “parklet” – a parking space, converted into a teeny, tiny park – and talked about how to take back space from cars.My next walk, all being well, will take place later this month, and will be with the man who inspired the whole project, Rory Stewart.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's recorded and presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In just over three months, England goes to the polls, again, for local elections. This time round the big story, at least so far as we’re concerned, will be the mayoral elections in London, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and various other cities and city regions.To find out what to expect, I invited the New Statesman politics editor Stephen Bush back to Skylines to tell us what to look out for. At one point he genuinely argues that the exciting thing about these elections is that all the incumbents might win. Seriously.Also, while we’re here, we use our chat as an opportunity to trail our new podcast, Prime Ministerial, which looks back over 40 years of recent British political history.Lastly, a PSA for those who may have missed it: this is my last week on staff at the New Statesman. I’m off to freelance and work on some personal projects for a bit. I’ll be contributing to both the NS and CityMetric for a while yet, however, and Skylines will continue, at least for the moment... Stay tuned for further announcements.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rory Stewart likes to walk around London. So do I. And so, a few months ago, someone on Twitter gave me an idea for a fun wheeze: that we could walk together and turn it into a podcast.That walk will, hopefully, happen soon. But in the mean time I've been out and about with a number of the other candidates to be mayor of London.So this is the first of a mini-series. My companion on this walk, which took place last November, is the Liberal Democrat candidate Siobhan Benita. She took me to the Latin American market in Seven Sisters, which is currently under threat from developers, to talk about gentrification, housing, and all the things she'd hope to achieve as the mayor of this fine city.The next walk – though not necessarily the next episode – will see me wander through a different stretch of North London with the Green candidate and that party's co-leader, Sian Berry.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve barely been in the office since we released the last Skylines, so this week it's a guest episode. Commonwealth Voices is another podcast series from our founding producer Roifield Brown, of Map Corner fame. Last year it produced a lovely episode on the air pollution crisis currently afflicting Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. Here's Roifield's blurb:What happens when air quality is so dangerous, it brings businesses, schools and other services to a close and hundreds of people to the doors of public health clinics? The Jamaica Environment Trust were already calling on the government to tackle the public health risks of contaminated air and water. In 2018, when the decades old problem of fires at the Riverton city Dump resurfaced, their calls got louder.It's a lovely story – if you enjoy it please do check out the rest of Commonwealth Voices and Roifield's other podcasts. I'll be back with a normal episode of Skylines soon.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I realised earlier that this is the fourth Skylines Christmas Special, which apart from being a marker of quite how long I've been doing this thing now, presumably explains why there are giant steampunk robots marching across Victorian London again. Anyway. On this week's show, we're not going to talk about the election result – partly because I'm too depressed, partly because we've now got about four and a half years to think about that, but mostly because this episode was recorded 10 hours before the exit poll came out so we had no idea what the result was even going to be. (If you've just joined us: the left lost.)Instead, we're going to have a lovely conversation with Jay Foreman, distinguished host of such YouTube series as Unfinished London, Map Men and other things that frankly I wish I'd thought to do before he got there first. Jay tells me how he came to make a career making videos about London; how he and his co-host Mark Cooper-Jones had a blazing row about their favourite map projections; and why he's now six months into an online argument with a man who wrongly believes that Woking is in Greater London. It was, frankly, tremendous fun to record, so I can only hope it’s as fun to listen to. Not least because I realised afterwards I’d screwed up the recording and am nervous about how it sounds.Anyway. Happy Christmas, everybody – we’ll see you in 2020.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, here we go again. We’re seven days out from polling day here in the UK, and I don’t know about you but I’m not feeling great about it.So as a form of therapy I dragged Patrick Maguire, who’s been travelling around the country as part of his role as the New Statesman’s politics correspondent, back to the podcast to offer some reassurance. He couldn’t offer any.Anyway - we did have a fascinating chat about regional differences in voting patterns; how parts of Wales and the North East have never been the anti-Tory heartlands which they’re sometimes portrayed as; whether housing, transport and other similarly wonk-ish concerns are coming up on the doorstep; and how Napoleon III’s stay in Southport helped it win the title of “the Paris of the North”.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast has been a bit parochial of late (read: London-bound) so this week we're going abroad. Max Rashbrooke is a journalist, author and policy wonk based in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, with whom, a very long time ago, I used to work. We chat about the cities of his homeland, how one might travel between them, and how they came to have the sort of housing crisis that can almost make London look good. We also talk about New Zealand's politics and history more broadly - as well as its relationship with its bigger, better known neighbour Australia.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Skylines is out and about again this week. Epping Forest is a 13 mile long strip of wooded land straddling the border between London and Essex. I often visited during my childhood, have walked bits of it since, but I've never done the whole thing.So last week, I did, with a man who's just written the book on the subject. Luke Turner, with whom I worked briefly a depressingly long time ago, is the co-founder of the culture website The Quietus. He's also the author of Out Of The Woods, which he modestly describes as “a critically-acclaimed memoir of sexuality and nature”. He kindly agreed to spend an autumn day walking with me from Manor Park to Epping, all the while telling me about his book, the history of the forest and its place in the psyche of the city, and how it came to be owned by the City of London Corporation. We also talk, variously, about hermits, hallucinations, cows and our former boss Jeremy Hunt.Some excellent production work courtesy of our producer Nick on this one incidentally – while the podcast was recorded on location, the woodland sound effects are sadly a later addition.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, I finally invited someone I should have asked years ago onto the podcast. Anoosh Chakelian is a long time colleague of mine at the New Statesman – she joined the staff literally two days before I did – whose work focuses largely on public services and the state of the public realm. She also earlier this year replaced Helen Lewis as co-host of the main NS podcast, on which she is doing an excellent job.Anoosh joins me to talk about a subject very dear to her heart: outdoor gyms, which offer free community classes, and many of which are now under threat. While she's around we also chat about austerity, London's best parks, and why west London is not frankly very good.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In roughly the same manner as the Greenland Ice Sheet, the London mayoral election is hotting up. Ex-Tory Rory Stewart has entered the race as an independent and is chatting about it to anyone who goes near him. Continuing Tory Assembly Member Shaun Bailey gave a speech to the party's conference, and is refusing to chat to pretty much anyone. (No change there: during the selection race last year, he was the only shortlisted candidate to refuse to talk to us, forcing us to replace him with some music.)To discuss what all this means for the race, and whether it threatens Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan in next May's contest, I'm joined by New Statesman political correspondent Patrick Maguire, who, it's fair to say, has views. Also this week, the sort of Liverpudlian Patrick and sort of Londoner myself debate a question for the ages: which is better, Birmingham or Manchester?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the more exciting things to have happened in the already fairly exciting world of housing and planning policy in recent years is the rise of the YIMBY movement. Intended as a counterbalance to the "Not in my back yard" lot, YIMBYs aim to show politicians that there's support for policies that would get more housing built.They also, on occasion, write for CityMetric – so I invited two of them on to tell us about their work. John Myers is leader of the London Yimby group, while Sam Watling is director of Brighton Yimby. They tell me about the movement’s origins, its policy goals and how exactly they're going to solve the housing crisis.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The present is terrible and the future may be worse, so let's take refuge in the past. Monica L. Smith as an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles, whose latest book is Cities: The First 6,000 Years.In it she investigates why cities first emerged, how they have evolved, and why people are drawn to them. She was kind enough to pop by New Statesman towers to give us a flavour, and tell me why cities first emerged, where you can find their ruins and what they have to teach us today.If you like this one, by the way, you might want to check out episode 19, from way back in September 2016, when I spoke to the US history podcaster Rob Monaco about how it was we came to invent cities in the first place.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m on my summer holidays, so here’s a guest episode.Skylines’ founding producer Roifield Brown recently teamed up with Luton’s own Claire Astbury to launch a new podcast. Map Corner covers maps, cities, transport systems, and all the other things that Skylines listeners are into.They were kind enough to invite me on to talk about maps, Spain and Helsinki the other day, so this is that episode. It isn’t just me though - there’s also an extensive discussion of the British road number system, along with much, much more. If you like Skylines, you’ll like this, and you should subscribe immediately.All being well I’ll be back in two weeks.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few weeks ago, a man called Samir Jeraj got onto the Northern line of the London Underground at Bank station, promptly got his bag strap caught in the doors, and then spent the next 15 stops hoping in vain that the next would be the one where the doors in question would open again, freeing him again. He ended up at the end of the line in Edgware.This struck me as very funny, and since Samir is a housing campaigner and the author of The Rent Trap, I thought that a fun thing to do for the podcast would be to recreate the incident and then interview him about rent controls while trapped in a tube train’s doors. The result was… well, you’ll find out.I’m about to go on my holidays, by the way, so the next one will be a guest episode from friend of the podcast Roifield Brown. I'll be back with your next regular episode of Skylines in early September.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, it’s two interviews, unified by being at the intersection of politics and business, and also of my not really, if I’m absolutely honest with you, knowing what I’m talking about.First up, it’s Centre for Cities boss Andrew Carter, in our final “ask the expert” slot for the moment. This week, he’s telling me about Enterprise Zones, areas in which businesses are given special tax incentives to encourage them to invest. So, the question is – does this actually work, or just it just suck money from elsewhere?Then I’m off to City Hall to speak to London’s chief digital officer Theo Blackwell. He tells me about the city’s use of data, how it can improve life for Londoners and also, well, what a chief digital officer actually does.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So does “cultured-led regeneration” actually work? Can a shiny new museum ever be enough to fix a struggling post-industrial city? Or a particularly big sports day?Carolina Saludes of the Young Fabians has been looking into these and other questions, and kindly agreed to come and answer them for us. We talk about Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture; her home city of Barcelona’s regeneration after the 1992 Olympics; plus, inevitably, Bilbao and its Guggenheim. And a good time was had by all.Also this week: Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre for Cities, gives us an urban policy wishlist for Britain’s new Prime Minister.By the next episode of Skylines, that job will almost certainly be held by Boris Johnson. May god have mercy on our souls.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Finland, Finland, Finland, as Monty Python once sang: Finland has it all.Well, it has some things anyway, and more to the point its embassy in London was kind enough to invite me to visit, and to learn all about the country’s smart cities projects.And so I did. We visited Helsinki; Espoo, a rapidly growing city in the suburbs of the capital, which is something like a cross between Silicon Valley and Milton Keynes; and Tampere, effectively Finland’s second city, an industrial hub about 100 miles to the north.We went to Kalastatama, a new smart district being built from scratch in Helsinki’s Docklands. We went to the Nokia office park to learn about smart lampposts, and what you do when your biggest most profitable company suddenly stops being the world’s leading manufacturer of mobile phones. We even went to some museums, because who doesn’t love a national history museum?So, this episode, we’re talking about everything we learned. To do that I’m joined by one of my fellow travellers and a friend of the podcast: Agnes Frimston, deputy editor of the Chatham House magazine The World Today, and co-host of its podcast Undercurrents. If you’re interested in international affairs, you should definitely subscribe to the latter, because both she and it are brilliant, even if it did take us three goes to record the intro because she kept laughing at my podcast voice.(Agnes' comments, of course, reflect her own views, not those of Chatham House.)Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is John Boughton, teacher, historian and author of an excellent housing-flavoured blog, which last year appeared as a full-blown book. Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing is an incredibly readable look at the history, politics and architecture of public housing in Britain, from those first estates in the late 19th century to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017.It is genuinely one of the best books I have ever read on such a wonkish subject, and the paperback edition has just been published. So this seemed like an excellent moment to talk to John about what got him interested in this subject, what he learned from writing the book, and whether he is optimistic about the future of housing in this country.Somewhere around the New Labour years, we take a short break in that conversation to talk to Paul Swinney, head of policy at the Centre for Cities, about a different aspect of the housing crisis: what the divergence in house prices between the London area and the rest of the country has done to the wealth divide in this accursed nation.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire broke out in a west London tower block; 72 people died in the resulting conflagration, many of them, tragically, because they had followed the official safety instructions to remain in their homes.At the time the Grenfell fire felt like a turning point in Britain’s attitude to social housing. Two years on, though, precious little seems to have changed.Stuart Hodkinson, an associate professor at the University of Leeds, has spent a decade talking to estate residents about their experience of regeneration and maintenance of social housing estates at the hands of private firms. He tells me how a disaster like Grenfell could have come to happen – and whether something similar could happen again.Also this week: Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities tells me about Sheffield’s world-leading Advanced Manufacturing Park, which brings experts from different industries together with academics from the city’s universities to undertake joint research. The park is already a leader in its field – so can it help pull Sheffield out of its economic doldrums?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, two disparate segments linked by the idea of trading with the world. Well, vaguely. It’s there, but you have to squint.First up: I make my regular visit to the Centre for Cities office for the Ask the Experts slot with head of policy Paul Swinney. This week, he teaches me why cities need businesses that export internationally to truly thrive.After that, we’re off to Liverpool, with New Statesman politics correspondent Patrick Maguire. He tells me why the local Labour party tried to oust mayor Joe Anderson; how the city became the party’s heartlands; and how it ended up with quite so many mayors.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week it's one of those two-for-the-price-of-one episodes where I'm not even going to pretend the conversations are connected. They are, however, both interesting, so here's more about them:In the first half, I talk to Skylines regular Paul Swinney, head of policy at the Centre for Cities, about what should really have been one of the big UK urbanism stories of the moment. Last week, the North of Tyne region – what would once have been called Newcastle and Northumberland, but not, vexingly, Gateshead or Sunderland – elected its first metro mayor, Labour's Jamie Driscoll. Surprisingly few people noticed. So Paul and I discuss why that is, and what effect the region's strange geography – excluding, as it does, what is effectively the southern half of a city – might have on the post.I the second half, we change gears as I nip out to Somerset House to chat to curator Karishma Rafferty about her work using festivals, installations and other cultural offerings to raise awareness of climate change. We also find time to talk about Somerset House itself, and – not at all parochially – Westminster council's proposals for pedestrianising part of the Strand.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week it’s another live episode, of sorts. In early April I was lucky enough to chair an event at the Cambridge Literary Festival with the journalist and novelist John Lanchester. John was mostly there to promote his latest novel, The Wall, a “cli-fi” book about a Britain trundling on after catastrophic climate change has wiped out much of the planet. In the past he’s also written about other vaguely CityMetric-y topics like the housing crisis and the tube - so he’s a guest I’ve been hoping to get on for a while, and was kind enough to allow us to record our chat for posterity and podcasting purposes.Incidentally, I didn’t find a way of turning the conversation to the tube. We do lose ten minutes to talking about Game of Thrones, though.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last year, Burhan Wazir wrote a lovely piece for the New Statesman under the headline, “The changing shape of Britain’s mosques”. In it he talked about how the country’s Islamic community had initially co-opted sitting rooms and former pubs for its places of worship, but had gradually, over the decades, begun to build bigger, more communal mosques on the scale of churches or even cathedrals.All this sounded like it might make an interesting podcast, so I asked if Burhan fancied a chat. He suggested we go one better, and visit the stunningly beautiful New Cambridge Mosque, which is currently nearing completion.So that’s what we did. Dr Timothy Winter, chair of the Cambridge Mosque Trust, gave us the tour; then the three of us sat down and recorded a podcast about it. This, as you may have gathered, is that podcast.Also this week: Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities, on the skills gap in UK cities.The reason I was in Cambridge, incidentally, was to speak to the writer John Lanchester, about his new novel of climate dystopia novel The Wall, as well as other topics including Brexit, the housing crisis and, er, Game of Thrones. You can hear the recording of that event on the next Skylines.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The last few of these things have been quite serious, so let's mix it up a bit with some spurious nonsense. And what better way to do that than to invite Sarah Manavis back on, to answer a question I've been pondering for a while: why, exactly, does she hate London, the city in which she has chosen to live? This takes a while, because she keeps banging on about her dog.To mix things up a bit, we also have our regular Ask The Experts slot with Paul Swinney of the Centre for cities. This week: why are exports so important to cities?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve been on holiday, and when I came back the entirety of British politics was on fire. So, on this occasion, I’ve fallen a bit behind with my podcasting. Sorry, gang.No matter, though, for here’s a guest episode. City Talks, as you may know, is the monthly podcast from our friends at the Centre for Cities, hosted by chief executive Andrew Carter. Last December it released an episode posing the now depressingly topical quesiton: how will Brexit affect British cities? He’s joined by Naomi Clayton and friend of the podcast Paul Swinney in an attempt to answer that question.We’ll be back with a full-blown episode of Skylines next week.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s podcast is a live show, recorded at the New Local Government Network’s annual conference on 26 February. (We did this last year, and nobody got fired, so here we are again.)The topic under discussion this time is inclusive growth – who is losing out from our current economic model, and how we fix that. To discuss that I was joined by Paul Najsarek, the chief executive of the London Borough of Ealing; Tamar Reay, who works in procurement at Preston City Council, and has worked on the “Preston model”, in which councils do more to support local businesses; and Stuart Field, the founder of social enterprise Bread Funds UK.Live shows are FUN and we haven’t done enough of them, so in the no doubt highly likely event you’re reading this as someone with both a venue and some recording equipment, why not drop me a line?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two interviews this week, which are both about the future of our cities but are otherwise unrelated except for allowing me to come up with a sort of pun on the word “high”.First up: drones, the remote-operated buzzy flying things that recently managed to shut down several of London’s airports. The innovation charity NESTA has produced a report looking at what drones will do for our society, how we need to regulate them, and what role local government is likely to play in that. I spoke to the report’s author Kathy Notstine about all those things and asked: is it worth it?In the back half, I talk to Skylines regular Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities about the future of the high street – that, for non British listeners, is what towns generally call their central retail area (the name is roughly analogous to “Main Street”). Paul tells me how cities can regenerate their high streets in the age of Amazon.Next Tuesday, incidentally, I’ll be recording the second live edition of Skylines at the New Local Government Network’s annual conference in London. If you’re a local government professional, why not pop along?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Baby it's cold outside – or at least it was, in certain parts of the world, when we recorded this, ho hum.Anyway, that's the week's topic. Inspired by the polar vortex, which has seen temperatures of -30C in the US Midwest, we're chatting extremes of weather, with the New Statesman's US editor Nicky Woolf and its in-house midwesterner Sarah Manavis. We also talk about extreme heat and, this being CityMetric, manage a long and detailed argument about which temperature scale is actually better.(I'm not going to lie to you: everyone was in a particularly unruly mood that day, and at one point I had to leave the recording for a moment to deal with an editorial problem, so I'm a bit nervous of what they said behind my back. What's more, there was a problem with Nicky's mic that means his words are accompanied by a low hiss as if he's speaking parseltongue, and the process of editing that out means he sounds like he was literally phoning it in. All things considered, I am slightly terrified to hear the results of this one, but there we are.)Also this week, I talk to Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities about the other big freeze (DYSWIDT?) affecting British politics: austerity. Just how much damage has it done to our cities?The conversation was inspired in large part by this year's addition of the Centre's annual Cities Outlook report. You can find that here.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re off to China. Now the U.S. bureau chief for the South China Morning Post, Robert Delaney spent many years as a foreign correspondent reporting from the world’s most populous country.He now has a novel out: The Wounded Muse, based on real events that played out in Beijing as the 2008 Olympic Games approached. He spoke to us about how China, its economy and its cities have changed over the past two decades.This episode we also go back to the Centre for Cities’ Paul Swinney to ask another big question. If agglomeration – being able to get more people to more jobs – is the key to economic success could lack of good transport be the thing that’s holding England’s cities back?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s podcast is a bit of a sandwich. In the middle, you’ll find an informative and nutritious conversation with Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities, in which we try to answer a big question about cites. Generally speaking, in a phenomenon known as “agglomeration theory”, bigger cities are richer and more productive than smaller ones. That, though, doesn't seem to hold true in the UK, where - London excepted - the most productive settlements tend to be smaller.So, does size matter? And if so, why doesn't the rule hold in the UK?On either side of that though you'll find a rambling discussion about food in cities with Sarah Manavis and Nicky Woolf. What's with the midwest and fast food? Which cities are the best places to eat? And most importantly of all, will Sarah ever stop torturing our producer Nick by swearing?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, 'tis the season for large chunks of the population of any major city to up-sticks and head back to whatever small town they grew up in. Also this week, the racing driver Lewis Hamilton alienated his entire hometown by saying that he always wanted to get out of the slums. Lewis Hamilton grew up in Stevenage. At any rate: this feels like a good excuse to talk about, for want of a better phrase, shit towns, of the sort people tend to run away from so that they can live in the big city. To do that, I'm joined by two of my colleagues: Rohan Banerjee, who grew up in Thanet, the Kentish island which has twice now failed to choose Nigel Farage to be its member of Parliament; and Sarah Manavis, a refugee from Dayton, Ohio, who requires an enormous amount of bleeping out. We talk about the economic and cultural forces that drive people to move away from their hometowns, and what, if anything, could make them move back.I'm about to break off for Christmas, so this will be the last Skylines of the year. We'll be back in 2019. Thanks for listening - and god bless us, every one.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good news, everyone: this podcast doesn't even glance at Brexit. Bad news: it is about environmental catastrophe, or at least, the infrastructure that might save us from it. First up, I talk to the New Statesman environmental writer India Bourke about her recent trip to Oslo, where she learned all about carbon capture and storage, and visited a very exciting energy from waste plant. (Christmas has come early to the CityMetric offices.)Next, I talk to Sebastian Maire, chief resilience officer for the city of Paris, about what the French capital is doing to prepare itself for a changing climate. One of its biggest projects at present is grassing over its school playgrounds – a scheme with as many social as environmental benefits.And then, we're back in the podcast bunker again, to talk about vertical forests and other forms of green infrastructure.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, I’m chatting about the housing crisis with the Centre for London. Last summer, research manager Victoria Pinoncely was co-author of the think tank’s report, “Borough Builders: Delivering more housing across London”. She tells me about the role the capital’s 32 boroughs could play in solving its housing crisis, and the barriers preventing them from doing so. We also talk about the lessons all this holds for the rest of the country, as well as the housing market in her native France.Also this week, I talk to Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre for Cities, for our regular Ask the Expert segment. In a sort of sequel to our conversation in episode 110, I ask something that’s been bothering me for a while. Every other industrial revolution has created jobs and raised incomes – so why is everyone fretting that the automation one be any different?Lastly, some housekeeping: after nearly two years of producing this thing myself, this week we have a new producer, in the form of Nick Hilton (@nickfthilton), which should improve the sound quality markedly. Please make him feel welcome, but please don’t tell him how much better at this he is than I am.We’ll be back in a fortnight. Tara.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You'll be delighted, I'm sure, to learn this podcast is not about Brexit.I've been in Newcastle, capital in the north east of England, for a couple of days: partly for work, partly just because I wanted to get out of London for a bit, and it was the largest British city I'd never been to, and people kept telling me it was cool.And it is. It really, really is. Stunning architecture, great cultural offering, some seaside, a metro and the best collection of bridges you will find pretty much anywhere. You should go there at once.So – why did it take me so long? Or to put it another way: why don't we talk about it more? To find out, and to discuss the region and its politics more broadly, I spoke to local journalist Chris Stokel-Walker, and recorded it on my phone.While I'm here, some housekeeping. This is sort of a good news/bad news thing. The bad news is that Skylines is going fortnightly: I'm moving to a new role, and just won't have time to put out a podcast every week any more. If there's enough of an outcry - or even better, desperate promises of cash - we may reconsider this decision in the new year; but for the next few months at least we're cutting back.The good news is that it isn't going anywhere: we'll still be talking about cities, transport and other such nerd ambrosia. And the even better news is we're getting a proper producer, so it should sound better than it does when I'm in editing it.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

110. The rise of the robotsThis week, it’s about work, automation, fear and loathing in god’s own county of Essex.New Statesman tech writer Sarah Manavis has been to Tilbury to visit an “Amazon fulfilment centre”, which is almost exactly as fun as it sounds. She tells me what the experience taught her about modern corporate culture, as well as complaining about having to get up in the morning and also about her puppy Martha.Dove-tailing neatly with the issues raised by that conversation, this week’s Ask The Experts segment with Centre for Cities boss Andrew Carter concerned what automation will do to Britain’s cities – and how government can avoid repeating the mistakes it made in the 1980s.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a repeat – sorry gang, I’ve been horrendously busy.But, there are quite a lot of episodes of this thing now. And as the audience has grown, that means a lot of you haven’t heard our early work. So, to plug the gap, here’s an example of it. What follows is the original blurb, from August 2016.On this week's podcast, we're talking gender. Which of course is not actually the same as sex – the former is social, the latter biological – but until such time as HBO makes a hit sitcom called “Gender and the City”, this is our title and we're sticking to it. Anyway. This week's guests: Caroline Criado-Perez is the writer, journalist and feminist campaigner, who wrote a fantastic feature for us on why cities need to take women into account when planning. She gives us a whistlestop tour of her findings, from playgrounds in Vienna to toilets in Mumbai. Lauren Elkin is the author of "Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London", recently serialised on BBC Radio 4. She tells Stephanie about the origins of the book, and why walking can be a radical act. Sarah Coughlan and Marissa Santikarn are two-thirds of the Berlinials podcast. They tell us about the joys and hassles of ex-pat Berlin. Lastly, Stephanie and I discuss how her experiences of London differ from mine (most notably: I get cat-called surprisingly rarely). And we talk about how cities could be made more welcoming for women. Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland, and is a Roifield Brown production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, it’s all about mayors, and also someone who the smart money says will never become one.I’ve dragged Stephen Bush back into the podcasting catacomb to discuss Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate to be the next mayor of London. Bailey, alas, declined an invitation to appear on Skylines earlier this year - but given how well his contact with journalists is going at the moment, it’s by no means clear this was a mistake.Anyway: Stephen and I discuss his faltering campaign, explore why it’s going so badly, and ask if the Conservative party has any way out.Also, in this week’s ‘Ask The Experts’ segment with the Centre for Cities, I ask director of policy Paul Swinney: do mayors actually matter?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re off to an English city that, to my shame, I’ve been neglecting: Bristol, the largest city in the south west, and indeed the largest city in the south outside London.I’m joined by Sian Norris, founder of the Bristol Women’s Literary Festival, to talk about the city she’s lived in since her childhood. She tells me what makes Bristol so liveable, why it’s struggling with inequality, and how it’s coping with the recent influx of London expats bidding up house prices.Since we’re on his patch, I also spoke to Marvin Rees, who since 2016 has been the elected Labour mayor of the city. He tells me why he was so keen for Bristol to host the Global Parliament of Mayors, and why local politicians need to work together after Brexit. Oh, and he talks about his transport plans, too.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s a bit of a game of two halves this week.First up, I talk to Eric Klinenberg – director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University – about his new book, Palaces for the People. He argues that what he terms ‘social infrastructure’ has a major effect on everything from crime to disaster resilience. Solving the problems of the future, he suggests, is going to mean investing more in infrastructure, public space and community links.After that, it’s our semi-regular “Ask the experts” slot with the Centre for Cities. This time, I drag director of policy Paul Swinney into one of the noisiest debates going on in UK urban policy circles today: have we focused too much on cities, and not enough on towns?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Crossrail is running late. The opening of London’s £15bn new railway, also known, horribly, as the Elizabeth line, has been delayed by the better part of a year, to autumn 2019.This came as a bit of a surprise – but, given the horrible tendency of mega-projects like this to run both overtime and over-budget, should it have done?To find out, I decided to walk the length of the new section of track, from Woolwich in the east to Paddington in the west, to see, basically, whether or not the new line looked ready. To keep me company, and give me someone to talk at, I took the Guardian’s Jim Waterson along for the ride.Along the way, we recorded this podcast, describing the state of the infrastructure we say, chatting about the Woolwich tunnel, arguing about the appropriate names for stations, and generally nerding out. It was quite fun using a podcast as an excuse for a day out - so if you enjoy this one, please do let me know to give me an excuse to do it again.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Exciting news, lads: Skylines has been on tour! Well, sort of: this is the first episode we’ve ever recorded primarily outside London.I’ve just got back from Liverpool, where I was attending the Labour party’s annual conference. While I was there, friend of the podcast Neil Atkinson, the host of the Anfield Wrap football podcast who appeared way back Skylines 22, very kindly agreed to let us use his studio next to Albert Dock to record this week’s episode.The two of us are joined by his Anfield Wrap co-host, John Gibbons, and the writer Laura Brown, to talk about Scouse culture. Why does Liverpool has such a strong civic identity? How much did being European Capital of Culture in 2008 change the city? And is the tourism really all about the Beatles?Also, in our new semi-regular “Ask the Expert” segment, I ask our resident expert Andrew Carter, of the Centre for Cities: is England’s north-south divide actually fixable?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And so to the second of our London Tory mayoral candidate interviews.This time it's Joy Morrissey: an American-born Ealing councillor, former staffer at Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice, and private renter. She tells me how she got into the race largely to talk about housing policy, which lies at the root of the city's other social problems – and how she didn’t entirely expect to make it this far.Ideally there would be a part three of this series, in which I spoke to the third candidate in the race, Greater London Assembly member Shaun Bailey. There won't be, at least for the moment: Shaun has so far not been available. Should that change, however, you'll be the first to know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are three people on the shortlist to be the Conservative candidate for London mayor in the 2020 election. So this week, we're speaking with them.First up: Andrew Boff, a long-serving member of the Greater London Assembly and former leader of Hillingdon council, who has run for this particular gig five times now.Andrew tells me why housing targets should focus on bedrooms, not front doors; why he believes stop and search remains a valuable part of the Metropolitan Police's work; and why Sadiq Khan's war on the motorcyclist is a very real problem for the capital.Tomorrow we'll be back with the second part of this series, talking to his rival, Joy Morrissey.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leeds! Sheffield! Bradford! Huddersfield! This podcast has, figuratively speaking, not spent enough time in any of them.So, this week we’re off to the ancient county of Yorkshire, Britain’s largest, home to the biggest metropolitan area in England not to have its own devolution deal, to discuss God’s Own Country.To help me out, I’m joined by two Yorkshire-expats of my acquaintance, Halifax’s James Ball and Hull’s Jasmine Andersson. We talk about Yorkshire geography and identity, why the place feels ignored, and what it needs to thrive.Also, this week sees the first of a new regular segment, in which we ask the Centre for Cities’ chief executive Andrew Carter to explain something about cities and cities policy. We’re calling it “Ask the expert”, so no pressure.This week, in keeping with our theme, I’m asking: why doesn’t West Yorkshire have a mayor?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re just over halfway through Sadiq Khan’s term as mayor of London – and just under half-way through most of the various other metro mayors’ own terms elsewhere in the country. What better time, then, to drag the New Statesman special correspondent Stephen Bush back into the podcast bunker to ask how this whole mayor thing is going?To that end, we discuss the three candidates on the shortlist to be the Tory candidate in London’s 2020 mayoral election, how good Khan’s record really is, and whether he’s in any way beatable. We also discuss how the Labour primary is destined to become the real contest in Manchester and Liverpool; how the Midlands, Tees Valley and West of England are likely to be up for grabs next time round; and why more mayoralties are unlikely to materialise any time soon. Oh, and also how the Sheffield City Region, tragically, may not be long for this world.On that note: next week, we’re off to Yorkshire. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Human beings generally have ten fingers. In what is probably not a coincidence, the world’s most popular number system counts in base 10.And so, due to what was essentially a series of evolutionary accidents, the largely meaningless fact this is our 100th episode feels like A Big Deal.But I’m a huge fan of meaningless celebrations, especially when they’re about myself. So this episode is by way of a sort of party. Former co-host Stephanie Boland is back, with one of those city quizzes she sometimes makes me for podcasting purposes.We also have brief guest appearances from four friends of the show – my other former co-host, Barbara Speed; Centre for Cities economist and mackem Paul Swinney; Guardian journalist and noted train nerd Jim Waterson; and Skylines’ biggest fan, in Brazil or anywhere else, @AngrySigh Julia – each with a question for the two of us.There won’t be an episode next week, as I’m off on a trip. But we’ll be back in a fortnight.Thanks for listening. It’s really very nice that you do. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bit angry this week, lads. The CPRE – officially the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England; known also in certain circles as the campaign for the protection of the rural elite – has put out the latest volume of its great work of magical realism, the State of the Green Belt report.It’s nonsense, on multiple levels. I think the CPRE’s firmly held belief that the green belt should be sacrosanct is nonsense of course, but more than that – the figures it’s collected to show the rising tide of brick gradually swallowing the fields of England are demonstrably inaccurate; and its claim that brownfield can solve the housing crisis is demonstrably rubbish, too.So, I decided to spend this week’s podcast shouting about all this. I dragged New Statesman political correspondent and official young person Patrick Maguire into the podcasting bunker with me, so that I wouldn’t just be shouting at myself.Episode 100 next week, lads. Exciting times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re talking about one of the biggest problems facing the developing world today. Untold millions are moving from country to cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in search of a better life – but with a few exceptions, those cities are not building the infrastructure those new arrivals require. So, what to do?Luckily, we have an expert on hand to tell us. Sarah Colenbrander is an environmental economist currently working at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED). She tells me why the urban poor are growing in absolute terms, albeit not as a proportion of the world’s population; why their numbers have proved so difficult to measure; and what national and local governments can do to tackle the problem. She also tells me why things are going well in Brazil and Ghana – and not so well in Kinshasa.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last year, an American writer called Sarah Manavis joined me on the podcast to talk about her home state of Ohio (episode 47). Due to a series of unfortunate accidents that have taken place since, she now works at the next desk from me.And so, I asked her back, to talk about the cities of her homeland with myself and the editor of the soon-to-launch New Statesman America, Nicky Woolf. The three of us discuss why New York stinks in summer; why LA stinks the whole time; how Chicago invented an incredibly innovative transport technology with the one minor drawback of repeatedly killing people; and what kind of plane crash it would be best to die in. Critics might say that the result is under-researched and frankly faintly rude. To which I would respond: look, we've had a run of Big And Serious Topics lately and it's 34C today, cut a guy some slack.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No, it's not about Manchester.This is one of those guest episodes we sometimes do, where we repeat a CityMetric-ish episode of another podcast. This week, it's an episode of Friday 15, the show on which our erstwhile producer Roifield Brown chats to a guest about life and music.Roifield recently did an episode with Jez Collins, founder of the Birmingham Music Archive, which exists to recognise and celebrate the musical heritage of one of England's largest but least known cities. Roifield talks to Jez about how Birmingham gave the world heavy metal, and was a key site for the transmission of bhangra and reggae to western audiences, too – and asks why, with this history, does the city not have the musical tourism industry that Liverpool does? And is its status as England's second city really slipping away to Manchester?They also cover Birmingham's industrial history, its relationship with the rest of the West Midlands, the loss of its live venues – and whether Midlands Mayor Andy Street can do anything about it.I’ll be back with a normal episode next week.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Love this!” someone tweeted me when we recently did an episode on Victorian London. “Please do the Stuarts!” This sounded like an excellent idea, and it was, I’m sure, a coincidence that the person who suggested it was a historian specialising in 17th century Britain.So, here she is. Rebecca Rideal is the author of, “1666: Plague, War and Hellfire”, which covers the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London and a not especially great and indeed largely forgotten war with Holland. She came by to tell us about the politics of Restoration England, explain who it was who was charged with feeding and caring for plague victims, and combat a few myths about the conflagration which destroyed most of the City of London in the first few days of September 1666.Also, because she loves a bit of history, we also have a special guest appearance from my New Statesman colleague, Helen Lewis. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re going back to basics, and ignoring cities to talk about farms.Dr Sarah Taber is a North Carolina-based crop scientist who recently went viral. In a lengthy thread posted to Twitter, she explained why civilisations in different parts of the world developed entirely different diets: the short version is that wet regions developed low-meat diets, while dry regions developed high-meat diets. She went on to explain why cows are a useful source of food in those dryer regions, and also how much water you’d need to farm them.Being me, I found all this fascinating, so I invited her to talk to me about it, down an occasionally dodgy Skype connection from a Chicago hotel room. She promised to explain “crops, soil and cows” – but also managed to cover the history of American farming, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, too. Makes a change from trains, doesn’t it?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You wouldn’t necessarily know it reading the news from London, but the north of England’s railway network is in a bit of a mess. Delayed electrification work, a new timetable, mass cancellations, the whole shebang.To explain how bad things are, and how they got that way, I’m joined by Jen Williams, political and social affairs editor for the Manchester Evening News. She tells me why nobody seems sure who’s to blame for this mess, and whether there’s any realistic chance of anyone tidying it up any time soon. All that, and we talk about Andy Burnham, too.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicatedto helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical,social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s another international episode. Bet you can’t guess from the title where we’re off to this week.Elena Magrini is a researcher at the Centre for Cities, and a native of Bergamo, a city just outside Milan. Her colleague Gabriele Piazza is a native of Palermo, which, 900km to the south, is the largest city on Sicily. Since the Centre has staff from both the far north and far south of Italy, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to talk about Europe’s other big north south divide.During the course of our conversation we cover how local and regional government works in Italy; why populism looks so different at different ends of the country; and why Italian governments don’t tend to last for very long. My interviewees also try and, I fear, fail to explain to me what happened in Italy’s recent election.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.Skylines is supported by 100 Resilient Cities. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, 100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Can I come on Skylines and talk about the Victorians?” someone asked me the other week, and who am I to refuse an offer like that?So: this week’s guest is Ned Donovan, the foremost primogeniture nerd writing freelance in London today. He wanted to expound his theory that the great urban engineers of the Victorian era, like Joseph Bazalgette, would have distinctly mixed feelings about modern Britain – delighted that their work has endured, but baffled and a little irritated that it has had to. We do cover Bazalgette’s sewers, built in the aftermath of the Great Stink of 1858. But we ended up having a much broader conversation than I expected, taking in slum clearance, the history of social housing, the decline of noblesse oblige, and why it all means the modern Conservative party is stuffed. All subjects to warm the cockles of my heart.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re getting out of the British Isles and heading east. Milo Edwards is a British comedian who moved to Moscow and, slightly unexpectedly, found himself a Russian TV star (though one who is only, in his words, “Geordie Shore-level famous”). Milo tells me about life as a westerner in the Russian capital: why rich people won’t take the metro, why you might as well smoke in nightclubs, and why you should always watch out for icicles. Also, about the day he moved an oil painting and discovered the way to Russian Narnia. There won’t be a podcast next week I’m afraid as I’m going on holiday. If you have any tips about cool things to do in Valencia, though, please do drop me a line.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s a new urban think tank on the block. The Centre for Towns aims to research economic and social issues in the smaller communities that get less attention from politicians, journalists, and, well, CityMetric. The Centre has a number of founders, including statistician Ian Warren, Professor Will Jennings of the University of Southampton, and Lisa Nandy, the Labour MP for Wigan. Lisa was kind enough to talk to me for the podcast (despite a slight, and ongoing, disagreement between us about the existence of Greater Manchester). In her office in Portcullis House, across the road from the Palace of Westminster, she told me why she rejects the recent focus of policy on big metropolitan areas; what powers towns like Wigan need to get their economies booming again; and how the failure to grant them helped lead to Brexit. We also, briefly, discuss the vexed issue of exactly what a town is.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the English local elections post-mortem episode! You lucky, lucky people.Joined by the New Statesman’s newly returned politics wunderkind Patrick Maguire, I delve into the results in and around cities including Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and Plymouth.We talk about the fledgling LibDem revival; whether the Tories really are as stuffed in Britain’s cities as it appears, and whether the Midlands might be an exception to that; and whether Dan Jarvis really could one day be the mayor of all Yorkshire.We also, inevitably, discuss what, if anything, went wrong for Labour in London – and whether any party can win a national majority any time soon.(International listeners worrying we’ve been a bit parochial lately, fear not: we have episodes on Moscow and Italy coming up, I promise.)Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As I write, it’s local elections day here in England. There are elections in large chunks of the country, but to my shame I’ve only really been paying attention to two: the London borough ones (where there’s a lot of tension around how they might go for the various parties), and the Sheffield City Region mayoral one (where there’s no tension whatsoever because we’ve basically known that Labour’s Dan Jarvis was a lock for months now).Anyway. I talk about those, briefly – but because we won’t have any results until some silly time this evening, our main feature this week is something else entirely.Caroline Crampton was for many years in charge of the internet here at the New Statesman, and is one of the hosts of our pop culture podcast Srsly. Last year, she took on a new role as head of podcasts, and moved to Merseyside to write a book about the Thames Estuary.So, all things considered, I thought it was about time I invited her onto Skylines to talk about it. She tells me how her parents’ journey from South Africa and her childhood in Kent inspired an interest in the estuary; how and why its human, natural and economic geography all differ so radically from the proper Thames, up-river; and why the towns of the estuary keep showing such an enduring enthusiasm for right-wing populist racists.She also tells a frankly horrific story about 600 Victorians who drowned in sewage. It’s a fascinating conversation.Next week, in all likelihood, will be the local election post mortem episode. See you on the other side.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is one of our occasional guest episodes in which I hand the reins to somebody else/shamelessly re-release someone else's hard work.City Talks is the monthly podcast from the Centre for Cities think tank. Last May its host, the Centre's chief executive Andrew Carter, spoke to ex-Treasury staffer Mike Emmerich about his book Britain's Cities, Britain's Future. Together, the two of them look back over 200 year years of Britain's urban history. They discuss how cities like Manchester grew out of Industrial Revolution, and became some of the most prosperous and entrepreneurial cities there have ever been – yet came to decline so precipitously in the 20th century. Emmerich argues that, if Britain's cities are prosper in the future, we need to get to grips with the both the cultural and institutional reasons for that.It's a fascinating interview, and I'm very grateful to Andrew and his colleagues for allowing me to repurpose it as an episode of Skylines. (Why not subscribe to City Talks, to say thanks?) I'll be back to normal service next week.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s (normally) hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I sometimes worry I've got into a bit of a rut with this podcast, chatting away about housing and public transport with people who largely agree with me. So this week, to mix things up a bit, I decided to have a fight.Henry Hill is the assistant editor at Conservative Home (booooooooooo). There, he writes a lot about politisc of the devolved nations of Scotland and Wales – despite his belief that the late '90s devolution settlement that created the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly was a historic mistake (hissssssssssssssssssssss).So: what is Henry's argument? Doesn't a nation have the right to self-government? Hasn't the centralised British state been a disaster for much of the United Kingdom? And what about the parallels with Brexit? All these and more questions will be, if not answered, then at the very least discussed.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Don’t get too excited, but this week we’re talking about street furniture.Earlier this year, CityMetric regular Ed Jefferson wrote us a lengthy history of the bollard, taking in the Napoleonic Wars, Welsh devolution and the collapse of construction giant Carillion. This elevated him to the status of one of the world’s leading bollardologists, and he has since given a talk on the subject. So he joins us to summarise his findings.Before that, the New Statesman’s India Bourke points me towards some interesting facts on nature’s bollards, better known as trees – a subject currently proving to be a surprisingly contentious topic in Sheffield. All that, and the readers tell us about their favourite bits of street furniture, too.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year here in the UK: we’re just four weeks away from this year’s local elections! Celebrate good times, come on.Councils holding elections on Thursday 3 May include the great cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds; another 29 metropolitan boroughs in the orbit of one of those cities; as well as assorted county, district or unitary councils around the country.As if that wasn’t enough excitement there will also be five elections for borough mayors, and a new metro mayor for Sheffield and South Yorkshire. The most exciting battles though, is likely to be in the 32 boroughs of Greater London, where the governing party might plausibly lose control of such reliably Tory councils as Wandsworth.As the short campaign kicks off, I thought it seemed like a good moment to drag New Statesman correspondent Stephen Bush back into the podcast dungeon to talk about what to watch out for over the next few weeks. What would constitute a good night for each of the major parties? And could Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party really be on course to win Westminster?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirty episodes ago, I put out what I presented as the first of a two-part crossover. In it, I interviewed Jeff Wood, presenter of the Talking Headways podcast and owner of the San Francisco-based transport consultancy the Overhead Wire, about public transport in the US.The plan was always to switch sides in part two, so that Jeff would this time interview me. We recorded that a few months ago - but because of some sound quality issues (you’ll see) I’ve only just got around to editing it.Anyway: here it is. This time, Jeff bombards me with questions about urban government, devolution, housing, transport policy, and, inevitably, Brexit. As I said, some of the quality is, er, not great, for which I can only blame myself. But I hope, if you can make out my words, you enjoy at least some of them.Happy Easter, everyone.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My dad died, in January. Which sucks. Since then, I've found finding myself cataloguing the various things I got from him, from my love of Only Fools & Horses and the work of Douglas Adams, to being slightly too fond of a drink. It's strange, in its way, the things we get from our parents that we take for granted – so much so that we stop thinking about where they came from at all. Anyway – one of the things I did get from Dad, I think, is my interest in infrastructure and how places physically work. He was a water engineer, rather than a train nerd, but nonetheless, I think it was his own infrastructure geekiness that led my father to add the Buzzfeed (previously) and Guardian (soon) journalist Jim Waterson on Facebook, just so that he could occasionally argue with him about major works projects somewhere. I've got a column about my dad in this week's issue of New Statesman. So I thought this was a good time to invite Jim back to the podcast, to talk, briefly, about my Dad, and at rather greater length about trains, as Jim walks me through his top 10 British railway journeys. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're talking urban economics – or why people who support the Bristol Pound might as well be voting for Donald Trump.I'm joined, via a mildly crackly Skype connection, by Paul Swinney, mackem and head of policy at the Centre for Cities. He explains why local currencies like the Brixton Pound, which have been popping up of late, are basically just protectionism – and why the Preston Model of local procurement is no better.From that we move on to what cities actually need to do to boost their economies – and why so much of it comes down to skills.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re talking about a subject we obsess about on CityMetric, but one which has, remarkably, escaped the podcast treatment until now: how we name the districts of our cities.If you’ve got off the London Underground at Holborn recently you may have noticed the helpful people in bowler hats and orange scarfs, or the banners which inform you that you are, unexpectedly in “Midtown”. This label – covering Bloomsbury, Holborn and St. Giles – has only recently attached itself to the city’s landscape, courtesy of Bee London, which runs the Midtown Business Improvement District.It’s not altogether clear that the Midtown label is finding favours with Londoners. But I went to see Tass Mavrogordato, the chief executive of Bee London, to ask what the business improvement district is trying to do, and why it needed a whole new name to do it.Also this week, I persuaded my colleague India Bourke to return to the podcast, to chat about how city districts get their names, and discuss some of the best and worst names out there.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's podcast is a first: a live show, recorded, warts and all, at the New Local Government Network's (NLGN) conference on Thursday 22 February.That event took place in the events space at London's Guildhall - essentially, the town hall for the ancient City of London, which is pretty appropriate when discussing the future of local government. Slightly more confusingly, it was recorded in the West Crypt, which is, as the name implies, a crypt.Anyway. During the course of the discussion we covered the challenges facing local government; the radical steps this is forcing them to take to survive; and the prospects for devolution. My quite excellent panel for the event included Piali Das Gupta, head of policy at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace); Chris Naylor, chief executive of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham; Kathryn Rees, assistant director of Transformation at Wigan council; and Jessica Studdert, deputy director of our kind hosts, NLGN.Doing a live podcast was, despite some jitters, tremendous fun. So if this is the sort of thing you'd be interested in attending some time, possibly in a pub, drop me a line to let me know.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once upon a time, Philadelphia was the state capital of Pennsylvania. It was also briefly the capital of the early United States, the country’s financial capital, and its largest city.Today, it’s none of those things – even the state capital long since moved to Harrisburg, which I bet you’ve never even heard of. This no doubt has an impact on the psyche of a city that was once the most important in the US, but now struggles to make the top five.To talk about Philly, past, present and future, I’m joined by Nathaniel Popkin. He, along with Joseph E. B. Elliott and Peter Woodall, is the author of the beautifully illustrated book, “Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City” – and had all sorts of fascinating insights into one of the United States’ more historic but lesser known cities.Incidentally, this week, I’m recording the first ever live Skylines at the New Local Government Network conference in London’s Guildhall. If all goes to plan – If – you should be able to hear that next week. Wish us luck.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A couple of unexpectedly big bits of news have emanated from England’s local councils recently. An estate regeneration scheme in the London Borough of Haringey has become the latest front in Labour’s forever war; while Tory-run Northamptonshire council has literally run out of money.So, it’s time to get into the weeds and talk about what’s gone wrong. To do that I’m joined once again by the journalist and local government analyst Emma Burnell. We talk about the budgetary problems facing England’s councils; why the sector has lost so much of the expertise it once had; and why Northamptonshire almost certainly won’t be the last council to fall over.We also talk about the row in Haringey – and why it isn’t really about what everyone keeps saying it’s about.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s cold in London this week – but not even nearly as cold as it is in Korea, where the coldest Winter Olympics of all time are about to kick off; or Moscow, which just had record snowfall. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Cape Town is about to run out of water.So, it’s time to talk about the climate again. New Statesman environment writer India Bourke joins me to talk about this year’s bout of extreme weather, explain what’s causing it, and talk me through what cities are doing to mitigate the situation.Then, in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood, I quiz her on a few temperature records, in the UK and beyond.One other announcement: on 22 February, I’ll be joined by a great panel to record the first ever live Skylines, at the New Local Government Network conference in London’s Guildhall. It’s a ticketed event, but if you’re going to be there, why not swing by and say hi?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's another crossover episode. With a cast led by Daniel Craig and Christopher Eccleston, Our Friends in the North is one of the all-time great BBC dramas: a 31 year story of social housing policy, Labour infighting, police corruption and municipal decline.It's thus about as CityMetric-y a drama as you could ever hope to imagine – plus it's bloody good, not least because it begins with James Bond and Dr Who trying to start a rock n roll band in ‘60s Newcastle. I'd been toying with doing an episode on the subject when the writer Emma Burnell asked me to talk about it on The Zeitgeist Tapes, the podcast she'd just launched with Steve Fielding, a professor of politics at the University of Nottingham. So – this is that episode, originally released last autumn.This is also, incidentally, Skylines' 2nd birthday. We can almost walk. Thanks for listening to my nonsense.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re going overseas again to talk about one of the big themes of the 21st century: the development, or otherwise, of Africa.Daniel Knowles is the Economist’s sub-Saharan Africa correspondent. He’s based in Nairobi, Kenya, but has a beat covering nearly 50 countries.Dan outlines to me his theory that one of the big challenges is that Africa is “urbanising without globalising“. People are moving to cities like Lagos and Kinshasa, but aren’t not seeing the boost in living standards that earlier waves of urbanisation in Asia or the West created. The big question is why.Incidentally, if you listen carefully, you can hear the exact moment when I realised I was interviewing another white English bloke about Africa, and started to get very embarrassed about it. You can also hear Dan’s cat.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We apologise for the late arrival of this edition of Skylines. It's unlikely to be the last time, I'm afraid: some stuff happening in the non-work bit of my life has disrupted my schedule somewhat, but I still hope to get the next episode out by the end of next week.Anyway, enough about that: this week my guest is journalist and author Matthew Engel. In 2009, he published Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain – his history of the British railway system which, running pretty late myself, I didn't read until last year.Matthew gives me a quick tour of railway history, from the Victorians to Dr Beeching. He also explains why privatisation was a total disaster – but why he fears nationalisation won't help.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New Year’s resolution: this year, we’re going to be more international.To that end, on this week’s podcast, we’re talking about Africa. Nimko Ali is a Somali-born feminist activist and campaigner against female genital mutilation (FGM). She tells me about Somaliland, its history and why it’s definitely not part of Somalia; what life is like in the country’s capital Hargeisa; and her thoughts on Africa’s cultural prospects. Between us, we also come up with some novel ideas for some GPS-enabled goats. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why – because for one week only, Stephanie Boland is coming back to the CityMetric podcast.In Prospect magazine’s offices in Westminster (from where she does her own excellent podcast, How To Fix, which you should all check out), we have a surprisingly involved conversation about the proper, anti-imperialist name for the archipelago perched off the north-western coast of Europe which contains the UK and Ireland.But the main attraction this week is the CityMetric Christmas quiz. Last year, Stephanie asked me a series of increasingly impossible nerdy questions – so this year I got my own back. It goes about as well as you’d expect.Thank you for listening this year. Why not tell your friends, through the medium of a five star iTunes review? Go on, it is Christmas.We’ll be back in January. Enjoy the holidays – and god bless us, every one. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is another guest-presented episode, at least of sorts. Back when we started this thing in early 2016, we had a proper producer: a guy called Roifield Brown, who makes all sorts of lovely podcasts. One of them is a music and interview-themed one called Friday 15, and a few weeks ago he was kind enough to invite me on to talk about my lifelong obsession with maps.So, this is that episode. For once, someone is going to interview me – and you get to listen to some tunes, too.Incidentally, we apologise for the delay to the Christmas special. We hope it should be with you next week.(No, this episode is not about Nice.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve escaped London for a pre-Christmas minibreak, to visit the beautiful Austrian capital of Vienna. For some reason, visiting a liberal city that was once the centre of the world, but is now just the capital of a small and angry country, reminded me of an interview I did months ago about London getting the ‘ump about Brexit.So, here it is. James O’Malley is a journalist and occasional CityMetric contributor, who last appeared on Skylines episode 48. In a fit of rage in June 2016, he founded a petition calling for London to become an independent state. It was mostly a joke - but, as it turns out, a terrifyingly high number of people rather liked the idea, and he accidentally started a secessionist movement that he’s not entirely sure he agrees with.James tells me about his abortive political career, Brexit, city states - and whether he sold out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m very excited about this week’s guest – so excited that one point this was going to be the Christmas special, but I got too excited to wait. I’ve even pitched this guest’s identity as a mystery at the start of the show, so in an ideal world I wouldn’t even name them here at all. But that’d be terrible SEO, so I’m going to get on with it and just hope that nobody actually bothers to read this thing. So:This week’s guest is Sue Jeffrey, the leader of Redcar & Cleveland council, and Labour’s candidate to be mayor of the Tees Valley. Sue was, tragically, unsuccessful in that race, losing 49/51 in the final round to the Conservative Ben Houchen. This result caused much consternation in the New Statesman office, and on this podcast – so much so, that it’s still an election that people reference to Stephen Bush and myself.Anyway: having accidentally turned Sue into a meme, I decided it was time to actually interview her. From her office in Redcar, she explained to me why devolution matters to regions like her own; why heavy industry needs more attention from central government; and what can be done to boost the economy of regions like the Tees Valley.Incidentally, meeting Sue took me on a day out that involved six trains and visiting two cities I’d never been to before (Middlesbrough and York). This was fun, obviously, and I’m gradually trying to get to all of the cities in the Centre for Cities database, and have only done around half – so if you’re in one of the others, why not invite me to a thing? Can’t blame a boy for trying.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We can be a bit insular around these parts at times: banging on endlessly about transport in London or mayoral elections elsewhere in the UK.So, this week, we’re crossing the channel. Marie Le Conte is a London-based political journalist, originally from Nantes. Pauline Bock is the social media editor here at the New Statesman, and grew up somewhere in the vicinity of Strasbourg. I got them to tell me about French cities: how they’re run, what they do, and what they’re known for and, most importantly, why they all hate Paris. While we’re on the subject, we also speculate about why it is the French capital manages to so often smell quite so bad.That said, as I write, it’s Budget Day here in the UK. So before we get to France, I offer a quick run-down of what chancellor Philip Hammond offered to Britain’s cities – and exactly why his housing policies remain bloody terrible.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“That’s some section, that section 106.” “Best there is.”The British government defines “affordable housing” as housing which is priced at no more than 80 per cent of the average local market rent. The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted some problems with this definition.To discuss affordable housing, or rather it’s the near total lack of it, I went to see Rose Grayston, a senior policy officer at the housing charity Shelter. She tells me why affordable housing isn’t actually affordable, and what we really need to do to fix the housing market.We also, for the wonks among you, chat about the problem with viability assessments and why the dreaded Section 106, under which developers are supposed to build affordable housing, often doesn’t deliver.Incidentally, there’s a rather weird noise in the background of the last three minutes of the interview. I have no idea what that is either, but you aren’t imagining it, I promise.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a bit of a departure for Skylines: we’ve got a sort of guest host. Joshua Bryant, an environment engineering student at UCL, got in touch to offer me an interview with some experts on slums. And I had an annoying gap in the schedule and, more importantly, the interview was really, really interesting – so I said yes.As to who is being interviewed: Himanshu Parikh is an Indian engineer and the developer of “slum networking”, a holistic concept for upgrading the forgotten parts of developing world cities where over a billion people live; Priti Parikh is a professor at UCL, as well as Himanshu’s daughter. They tell Josh about how we can improve the world’s slums, the role played by foreign aid, and why toilets are not in fact everything.Because this is new territory for us, I’m particularly keen to hear what you think. If you have any strong feelings about the idea of more episodes with guest presenters – or anything else we do or don’t do, come to that – then please do get in touch on Twitter (@jonnelledge) or Facebook (Jonn Elledge Writes).Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve had a bit of a run of serious, thoughtful episodes of late, so this time we’re going to the opposite extreme.This week, Stephanie joins me to debate some very serious and important questions from the audience, including: What is the ontological origins of tube-iness? Bendy buses, good or bad? Does Yorkshire really deserve devolution?For reasons that are less clear we also step outside of the normal CityMetric brief to discuss university tuition fees and the feminism of Senator Bernie Sanders. It all made sense at the time. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the enduring questions in English cities policy these days is: what's gone wrong in Yorkshire? Earlier this year, after all, a number of metropolitan regions – those around Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool among them – all elected their first metro mayors. Yet neither of the conurbations in what was once the West Riding of Yorkshire – one centred on Leeds, the other centred on Sheffield – did the same. This is particularly surprising, since the Sheffield City Region deal was supposed to have been agreed ages ago.So: what went wrong – and is it likely to go right any time soon? To discuss this, I'm joined by a man who knows more about devolution policy in god's own country than anyone else on the planet, James Reed, the political editor of the Yorkshire Post. He tells a tale of power struggles, factionalism, back-stabbing and betrayal. It's like Game of Thrones, only with more transport funding.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We talk a lot – on this podcast, and on the website from which it spun off – about the practical side of cities: buildings and roads and railways and so on. But that's only half the story, of course.So this week, we're talking about the other half: shouldn't cities be fun, too? And what can we learn when we try to make them so?To discuss the joyful and spontaneous side of city life, I'm joined by Usman Haque, founding partner of the interactive architecture firm Umbrellium. He tells me about his experiences developing virtual pedestrian crossings, which can move about at will, and getting a thousand people to construct a temporary skyscraper in Singapore. We also discuss his favourite entries in this year's Playable Cities Awards, in which he was a judge. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, I'm talking to one of the stars of the cities world. Richard Florida is a professor of urban studies at the University of Toronto, as well as the co-founder and editor-at-large of CityMetric's esteemed American rival, CityLab. He was in London this week to promote his new book, The New Urban Crisis.I was lucky enough to grab half an hour with him, albeit in a fairly noisy hotel bar. (Ah well, at least you can tell it's real.) Richard tells me how "superstar cities" like London, New York and San Francisco can deal with the problems of their success, such as unaffordable housing; as well as what those cities which have been left behind can do to catch up.You can read my review of The New Urban Crisis here.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know, it’s easy to forget, after the coughing and the comedian with the P45 and the bit where the sign started disintegrating, that there was a far bigger problem with Theresa May’s speech: it was bad. To be specific, the housing policies the prime minister unveiled yesterday were in no way an adequate response to the housing crisis – which, you’ll recall, is disadvantaging the young, holding back our productivity, and (though I don’t care so much about this part) wrecking the Conservative party’s electoral chances. It is in some ways May’s good luck that nobody will have been paying the slightest attention to the actual content of her speech, or they might have noticed quite how completely bloody useless it was. Anyway: this seemed like a good moment to drag Stephen Bush back into the podcasting basement to discuss all this. We cover the Conservative party’s long-standing failure to tackle this issue; our suggested solutions; and how exactly we can get rid of buy-to-let. All that, and you can learn about “the incident”, too. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s been something of a spate of natural disasters recently, from hurricanes to wildfires to floods. So this week, the New Statesman’s environment writer India Bourke joins me to talk about the weather. We discuss whether things really are getting worse; what role climate change is playing in the situation; and what impact rolling news has had on our perception of the situation.India also interviewed the climate scientist Saleemul Huq, to hear his account of the recent devastating floods that left a third of his native Bangladesh under water. You can hear that conversation on the podcast, too.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, capitalism. You had a good run. But then Transport for London decided to ask Uber to take some responsibility for the safety of its passengers, and thus did what 75 years of Soviet Communism failed to do and overthrew the entire economic system of the Western world. Thanks, Sadiq, thanks a lot.In the unlikely event you've missed the news, the story so far: TfL has ruled that Uber is not a fit and proper company to operate cabs, and revoked its licence. Uber has three weeks to appeal before its cabs need to get off the road. To commemorate this sad day, I've dragged Stephen Bush back into the podcasting basement, so we can don black arm bands and debate what all this means – for London, for Uber, for the future (if it has one) of capitalism.May god have mercy on our souls.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, this is a bit anecdotal but I think it holds true nonetheless: walkable cities are more exciting cities. Not only do they tend to be healthier and less polluted than those built around the car: they’re also more likely to have what one can only describe as cool stuff.To talk about why we should all get walking, and what mayors and planners can do to encourage us, this week I’m joined by Steve Chambers, from the charity Living Streets. We talk about the planned pedestrianisation of London’s Oxford Street; what a ‘walking network’ might look like; and what we can all learn from Coventry. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m just back from my holidays, and generally having That Sort of Week, so I’m going to be honest: this is another of our more spurious episodes. It’s also one that’s almost literally designed to generate angry letters reading, “Not everyone lives in London you know!”Here’s the premise. Both my colleague Stephen Bush and I grew up in east London. But we didn’t grow up in the same east London. He grew up in the proper, undeniable East End of the city, in Tower Hamlets; I grew up 10 miles and three boroughs further out in Havering, the last place you come to before falling out of official bounds of the city altogether.So – did we really both grow up in London, or just Stephen? Where does the city end, and something else start, and what defines it? Is it transport, commuting patterns, culture, what? There’s only one way to settle this. Fight. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re asking a question for the ages: Why does York look like a chocolate box while nearby Wakefield looks like hell? In the early 1960s, at a time when visions of the future were all concrete and cars, and even York still thought of itself as a manufacturing centre, some British cities decided to smash up their heritage while others decided to preserve it. Jim Waterson, political editor of Buzzfeed UK and a York native himself, joins us to talk us through this forgotten moment in Britain’s architectural history. Then we ask the audience: what are the best and, especially, worst urban regeneration schemes?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I don't mean to worry you, but if you live in a city, the air you breathe is probably killing you. As many as 40,000 deaths a year in the UK have been linked to air pollution; the WHO reckons that, in 2012, it was a factor in one in every eight deaths around the globe. So, that's the cheery topic for this week's show: why the air is disgusting and what we can do about it. To discuss it, I'm joined by the New Statesman's environment correspondent India Bourke and our Wellcome scholar Sanjana Varghese. We also speak to Simon Alcock of ClientEarth, about the environmental law charity's ongoing efforts to hold the British government to account for its repeated breaches of European law on air pollution.Don’t have nightmares, now.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, this is new: our first crossover with another podcast. Exciting times.The podcast in question is Talking Headways which, in its own words, "explores the intersection of transportation, urban planning and city living". It’s hosted by Jeff Wood, who also runs the San Francisco-based transport consultancy the Overhead Wire, also produces the Direct Transfer daily newsletter.The plan is that we'll do two of these crossovers. This week, I'm asking Jeff some big questions about transport in the US: why some cities have it, why most don't, and whether that's likely to change. At some future date, if all goes to plan, we'll swap roles, and Jeff will interview me about the situation here in the UK. (Both episodes will be available in a slightly different version on the Talking Headways too.)Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is Leeds is better than Manchester? Where should Crossrail 3 go? Can cities escape their economic destiny? And why are British seaside towns so terrible? All these questions and more are answered, badly, in our slightly late 50th episode special, as Stephanie and Jonn answer a selection of reader questions about high speed trains, city status, and the Redcliffe-Maud report, all the while working their way through an unexpectedly acidic bottle of cava. It all seemed like a good idea at the time.No podcast next week, because Jonn is off on his holidays. We'll be back in a fortnight. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is, somehow, the 50th episode of Skylines. That seems quite a lot, doesn’t it? Well done to both you and I for making it this far. This is not, in all honesty, what I intended for this episode: originally, I had hoped Stephanie would come back and we could answer listener questions, possibly while getting slightly drunk. But best laid plans did what best laid plans do, and we couldn’t make our diaries work, so we’ll do that in some future show. This week, instead, I’ve got a very special guest: myself. On Wednesday night I gave a speech on the politics of housing following the general election to a group of people working in the sector (who, if I’m absolutely honest with myself, know far more about the subject than I do). In that speech I pulled together much of what I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while – why we have a crisis, why it’s hard to solve, what I think the government is likely to do about it.And so, since I found myself facing a gap in the podcast schedule, I thought you guys might like to hear it. In other words: this episode is 20 minutes of me talking about housing, bookended up a few more minutes of me talking about the podcast and then reading some tweets. If you’ve always enjoyed Skylines but don’t much like my voice, this is probably an episode you should skip.Next week, we’ll be back to regular service with some real people joining me to talk about things. I promise.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A hundred years ago, England’s municipal governments were the envy of the world. Every city ran its own trams, power and water systems, and the town hall was often the best looking building in town. Today, CityMetric’s excitement about the rise of the metro mayor notwithstanding, England is one of the most centralised countries in the western world. So what went wrong? To take us on a whistle stop history of municipal England, I’m joined by self-professed local government nerd Emma Burnell. Our conversation takes in everything from Joseph Chamberlain to Clement Attlee to Derek Hatton to the Grenfell fire.After that, we ask the audience: what’s the strangest local government name/boundary/job title you’ve come across? From the responses, incidentally, I am delighted to see that we’ve accidentally made the Tees Valley’s own Sue Jeffrey into a meme.PS: if you’d like to give us a nice review on iTunes, it'd help other people discover the show, which we'd, y'know, like. So, thanks.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re all about pushing the envelope and breaking new ground. So here's an entire podcast about the Tube. First up, the clever bit. One time CityMetric James O'Malley has since blossomed into the editor of Gizmodo UK. Earlier this year, he caused a bit of a splash with his scoop about how Transport for London has been using wifi data to track passengers – to find out how people actually move around London Underground.So – what are TfL playing at? How will this sort of thing help transport authorities redesign their networks? Should we be worried? And are all the signs at King’s Cross such lies?Then, the less clever bit: Jonn is joined by Stephen Bush so we can slug it out to debate the official CityMetric ranking of the London Underground lines. This was meant to be a short, jokey segment to end on. Reader, it did not turn out that way. Apart from anything else, it takes us a surprisingly long time to agree on what counts as a line.Before we go, a spot of housekeeping. This is our 48th... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know, on this podcast, we’ve talked a lot about the American Midwest considering it’s a place Jonn’s been twice, for a few days each time.So, we figured it was about time we got one of the locals on to tell us about the region, to argue with our diagnosis of its ills – and, most importantly, to explain what its obsession with weird public art is.Dayton native Sarah Manavis wrote an excellent piece for us with the memorable headline “Here are the six freak statues of Ohio”. She tells us the parable of Touchdown Jesus; explains how Arnold Schwarzenegger came to be in Columbus; and discusses how her home state came to vote for Trump. Oh, and also – why is somewhere very clearly in the eastern half of the United States known as the MidWest?After that, Patrick Maguire, the not-quite-Scouse wunderkind of the New Statesman politics desk joins us for this week’s audience participation bit, in which we ask: what’s everyone’s favourite weird tourist attraction? Alas, it’s Patrick’s last week at the New... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Election SpecialThis week, with apologies to international listeners, there is only one story in town. Mere weeks after we stopped banging on about our metro mayors, it's time for a general election.So I've dragged two of the New Statesman's political correspondents, Stephen Bush and Patrick Maguire, back into the podcast catacomb to discuss the lie of the land. We talk, in no particular order, about the provincial metropolitan split; why cities are more liberal; whether small towns can rediscover their purpose; why the north is less stuffed than Ohio; and then, to cheer ourselves up, whether Zac Goldsmith will cheer us all up by losing. Again.And, inevitably, we make our predictions. Oh, god.PS: if you’d like to give us a nice review on iTunes, we’d really like that very much. Thanks.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephanie’s been to Paris, and Jonn’s been to Montreal, so this week we’re chatting French-speaking cities.Where does the Parisian Metro stand in the pantheon of underground railways? Why does the whole of Paris smell of wee? Which country is Montreal actually in? All these and more questions are answered within.(Also, a genuine question: which is the largest French speaking city in the world? It isn’t Paris.)Then we ask the audience what weird phenomenon or tradition were they most surprised by when they moved to a new city.And painfully, inevitably, we discuss the UK’s looming general election.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s just Jonn this week, which is a problem, because there’s no one to stop him from indulging his sillier ideas. For example: an entire podcast about Ancient Rome. Our guest is Kevin Feeney, a historian of the late Roman Empire based at Yale University, Connecticut. He gives us a whistlestop tour of Imperial Rome, with occasional side trips to other ancient cities. We also discuss other important matters such as the nature of Roman emergency services; whether the Emperor Claudius was all that Robert Graves made him out to be; why ancient Britain sucked; and, inevitably, why the whole enterprise fell apart.Then we round off with the audience participation bit. This week we’re asking: which cities or places from history would you like to visit and why?Oh – and if you’d like to give us a nice review on iTunes, we’d really like that very much. Thanks.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well. We got that a bit wrong, didn’t we? Last week on this podcast, Stephen Bush, Patrick Maguire joined Jonn to make their predictions for last Thursday’s English mayoral elections. This week, we conduct the post-mortem, looking at the actual results and how they diverged from our predictions. (Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.)We talk about what the Tories’ success, the Liberal Democrats’ failure, how the supplementary vote gives us a headache, and why Manchester mayor Andy Burnham might just be the man to save us.That covers the politics. To talk about the more wonkish stuff, Jonn is joined by two very clever people from the Centre for Cities, director Andrew Carter and principal economist Paul Swinney. We discuss how the new mayors will establish themselves, what that Tory success means for the future of devolution policy – and what will happen to those cities that have been left behind.Advance warning: next week I’m off to Montreal for a conference (about trains!), so in all likelihood there won’t be a... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The big day is here at last: as we write, residents of six English city regions are finally going to the polls to elect their first metro mayors. If you're a regular listener, you've probably been looking forward to this day, either because you think it's a great step forward for British democracy – or because it means we'll finally shut up about it and talk about something else.Anyway: we won't get the results until Friday, but Jonn has dragged Stephen Bush and Patrick Maguire from the New Statesman's politics team back to the podcasting catacomb to make some brief predictions. Tune in to find out what the results will be; or, if you’re listening after Friday, to find out how wrong we were.Before that, though, let's talk about something completely different. The Guardian tech correspondent Alex Hern is back to answer one of the big questions in the world day: are driverless cars really going to happen?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephanie’s back! Well, technically she’s in her flat eating ice cream and proof-reading her PhD thesis, but she very kindly agreed to co-host this week’s episode.This week we are talking about de-industrialisation. From the north of England to the American rustbelt, there are many parts of the western world that were once economic powerhouses, but have since seen the factories and jobs that once drove them drain away. So why have some cities done so much better than others at making the transition to the service economy? And what can we do about those that remain?To dig into this issue further, we talk to two cities that have been through this transition, but now seem to be bouncing back. Grant Ervin is the chief resilience officer for the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Duncan Booker does the same job across the Atlantic in Glasgow, Scotland. They tell Jonn a little about their cities’ histories, and how they managed to turn things round.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site,... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In retrospect, I suppose it was inevitable that the entire UK wasn't going to spend the next two weeks on the edge of its seat about the outcome of the West Midlands mayoral election.Anyway. What does Theresa May's decision to call a snap general election on 8 June mean for the metro mayor contests scheduled for 4 May? Will focusing minds on national politics make Tory victories more likely? Is the LibDem fightback really a thing? What'll it do to turnout? To help answer these and other equally fascinating questions, Jonn is joined by two of his colleagues from the New Statesman's politics desk, Stephen Bush and Patrick Maguire. If you've ever wanted to know Stephen's views on which preferential voting system is the worst, then this is the podcast for you.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, CityMetric's tour of the upcoming mayoral elections takes us to the West Midlands: the annoying name for the multi-centred conurbation that takes in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry and points in between.The West Midlands is the most competitive of the major metropolitan regions that will pick their new mayors on 4 May. Indeed, it's the only one of the big three where we don't in effect already know the result: right now, according to the polling expert Professor John Curtice, Labour’s Siôn Simon and the Conservatives' Andy Street are neck and neck. And so I've been to Birmingham to interview them both. Simon tells me about the region's cultural and engineering heritage; Street talks about his plans to boost the local economy. And, obviously, I make both of them nerd out about trams for a bit.Before and after those interviews, I'm joined by my colleagues Stephen Bush and Helen Lewis, a Midlands native herself, to talk about the region, the election – and to make some foolhardy predictions... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Stephanie's last day on staff at the New Statesman, so that means it's Jonn’s last opportunity to do something he’s been threatening for a while: to explain to her exactly why Britain has a housing crisis. The reasons include a growing population, the end of council housing, and the north-south divide in the British economy. The big one, however, remains land – and the fact we place to many artificial restrictions on where we can build.To help explain that one, we’re joined by Catharine Banks, of the policy team at housing charity Shelter, who talks us through the reasons for the shocking fact that we don't know who owns nearly a fifth of the land in England & Wales.And finally, inevitably, you lot tell us your housing horror stories. Warning: involves slugs and kettles.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's another metro mayor special: this time, we're off to Liverpool.Officially, of course, it's the Liverpool City Region. Unofficially, it'll probably end up being called Merseyside. It was nearly called the Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton & Wirral Combined Authority; there but by the grace of god. Anyway. Whatever it is, on 4 May, it's getting a metro mayor. Specifically, it's almost certain going to be Labour's Steve Rotheram.To talk about this not-particularly-close election, Jonn has dragged in two colleagues from the New Statesman's politics desk: Patrick Maguire, who himself hails from the Sefton; and Stephen Bush, who's just returned from a trip to the Wirral.They talk about how Rotheram is campaigning more like it's a marginal than a sure thing; how the other parties are responding; and how, in British local government, one-party states inevitably throw up other forms of opposition. They discuss the May government's attitude towards these new metro mayor posts created by its... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here we go again. Not for the first time in its history, London has been the victim of a terrorist attack. This time there was no bomb - but there was car, driving into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, followed by a knife attack at the gates of Parliament.That story is still developing - and frankly we don't feel qualified to talk about matters of terrorism, crime and security, anyway.So instead we talk about London's history as a target for political violence; the city's stoicism, real and imagined, and the way, in times of trouble, people the world over do just tend to get up and go to work; and whether Manchester really was revived by an IRA bomb. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's citiessite, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yesterday, in Newton Heath, Labour's Andy Burnham launched his manifesto to be the first elected mayor of Greater Manchester. Obviously, nothing can be taken for granted in politics these days – but nonetheless, Manchester is a Labour city, and the bookies currently have him at 1/6. Andy Burnham seems highly likely to become the most important elected politician in the entire north of England.So – what does he actually want to do with the place? He was kind enough to speak with Jonn for a few minutes after the manifesto launch yesterday to tell him. And, by some miracle, the tape of that conversation is pretty much of broadcastable standard, so, you can hear it on this week’s episode.On this podcast, we've not always been as kind about Burnham as we could have been, of course. So to balance things out a bit, and make sure we’re not being too unfair, we invited our colleague Patrick Maguire – another Sefton-lad, and a self-described Burnhamite – to join us this week and to make the case for... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We don't want to lie to you, this is one of our sillier episodes. Things we discuss, in no particular order:-What embarrassing thing happened that means Jonn’s been limping for the past two days, and whether this is a sign the street furniture is turning against him;-How bad driving in the inner city brings out his road rage;-Whether it's okay to propose on public transport;-Whether it's okay to dump someone on public transport;-Whether it's okay to start a singalong on public transport;-Whether it is ever, in fact, okay to start a conversation on public transport;-Funerals.Oh, and Stephanie makes Jonn sing the Only Fools and Horses theme tune. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.Don't worry, next week I'm going to make her talk about the housing crisis. Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Is there a podcast this week?” Someone tweeted us yesterday. “Is itabout trains? I’d like it to be about trains.” Oh boy have we got good news foryou. The first half is very much about trains – or at least, the tracks theyrun on, as Jonn tells Stephanie what I learned when I accidentally wrote ahistory of the London Underground. (Honestly, he just meant to do the linenames but it kind of got out of control.) Quick precis: there’s a huge gap inthe 20th century, and the British state is obsessed with bloodyroyalty.Then Stephanie talks about her favourite crazy article of the week: apiece in the Daily Mail which imagines what London would look like had the Gunpowder plot succeeded in 1605, thus undoing the Reformation and turning these islands back intoa Catholic country. Never mind that the last 400 years of British, European and Worldhistory would have been different, the article says –... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Let’s do an extra podcast when I’m in the States,” she said. “It’ll be easy,” she said.Reader, it was not easy. At risk of demystifying ourselves it took us a surprisingly long time to get to a stage when we could actually hear each other, let alone be sure that our antiquated recording device could hear either one of us. Anyway, we got there in the end, even if the audio quality isn’t quite all we’d hope it would be. So: this week, Stephanie is in the great state of Illinois, splitting her time between an archive in Carbondale down state, and hanging out in Chicago. She tells Jonn about her adventures on Amtrak and how she’s fallen in love with Union Station, and we talk about the best skyscrapers to climb if you fancy a good view of the city. Less trivially, she also discusses signs of resistance to the Trump administration, including the ongoing protests, and the group of lawyers offering free legal advice to those trying to pass immigration at O’Hare Airport. The title of this episode... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the podcast we are talking about trains. You might think that we talked about trains a mere two episodes back. To which we respond – trains! Trains are great! Woohoo, trains!Okay, so one big reason why we’re back on public transport again is because it’s what this week’s guest really wanted to talk about. As well as being the political editor of Buzzfeed UK, Jim Waterson is a massive railway nerd, and is the only person ever to – we don’t use this word lightly – beg to appear on this podcast. He tells us the delightfully screwy story of regional Eurostars: how the British government spent hundreds of millions of pounds commissioning trains and building infrastructure so that you could get sleeper trains from Manchester, Wolverhampton or Swansea to the continent – yet never managed to run a single train. Before we hear from Jim, though, Jonn bores Stephanie to tears by enthusiastically recounting everything I’ve learnt about the history of the British railways from a book he’s just... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week marks our birthday: Skylines is a whole year old. To mark this momentous occasion, I decided to invite two people who've been key to the success of Skylines back, to talk about whatever weird stuff they wanted to. First up, one time co-host Barbara Speed is back, to tell us about her long-time obsession with Greggs. Yes, the “popular high street bakery chain”. No, really, that's what we're talk about. I mean, we talk a bit about what the success of the chain tells us about the British High Street, but for the most part, we're just talking about Greggs, and why Barbara is obsessed with it. Then, a man without whom we wouldn't be here at all – our erstwhile producer, Roifield Brown, who was responsible for giving me the push I needed to start a podcast in the first place – pops by to tell us about his own obsession. In his case, it's the failings and future of his home town, England's second city, Birmingham. (I wrote a lot about Birmingham, and the wider West Midlands, in this series last... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're not mucking about: we're going full-transport nerd. First up Jonn tells Stephanie about his abortive adventures inter-railing in the long hot summer of 1999 - an almost entirely appalling experience about which he briefly considered writing a very short memoir under the title "Belgian Boy Scouts and Psychosomatic Diarrhoea". The inspiration for this was the news that a German MEP has proposed free interrailing passes for every EU citizen on their 18th birthday. So we share our experiences of scary nuns and Soviet buses on Europe's transport network, and discuss whether better transport links really could create a European identity. Next up, the Guardian technology writer and New Statesman escapee Alex Hern pops by to talk us through the hyperloop: why it is a real thing, why it will nonetheless almost never happen, and why it typifies everything wrong with the entire Silicon Valley culture. To wrap up, the regulars talk about trolleybuses, suspended monorails, outdoor escalators and... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, it's cold, it's January, and everything's a bit depressing. So to cheer ourselves up, why don't we have a nice chat about municipal government structures?First up, Jonn talks Stephanie through what is arguably England's biggest local government shake up in 40 years: plans for "metro mayors" in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and selected other cities. We talk about why it is that, just four months before the elections, it's surprisingly unclear how many of these new mayors there are actually going to be; why some of the other big cities aren't getting mayors at all; and we're probably a bit gratuitously mean about yorkshire.After that, to lighten the mood, Stephanie shares some stories of weird local government initiatives from around the world, including "the guy who tried to ban death" and "the foot powder that got itself elected mayor". And finally we talk about Transport for London's tube bylaws for basically no reason at all.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's long been a tradition on British television of Christmas specials. Old characters come back, stories get bigger and more melodramatic, and the whole thing feels just a tiny bit self-indulgent.This is our Christmas special, so, well, you know what to expect. Things we talk about this week, in no particular order: The CityMetric Christmas playlist – that is, which Christmas songs are actually about cities/maps/geography/something;How Jonn started the year by wandering around London with a map and a film crew, pretending to be lost, because of this story about station names;How he ended it riding up front in a train (sorry, Jim);The CityMetric Christmas quiz, which Stephanie wrote specially to flummox him (you can see the questions on our website);How we'd like to hear more from those of you who listen to this thing who aren't in London, New York or another of the cities we bang on about all the time. If you're the person who's listening to this in Tirana or Tehran, please do write in.Lastly... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's podcast presented us with an unusual challenge: which album by 90s Britpop four-piece Blur should we name it after? Leisure would work. So would The Great Escape. (13 would be silly because this is episode 26, and the less said about The Magic Whip the better.)Anyway, we went with Parklife because, well, we're talking about parks, and all sorts of other ways of having fun in cities. We've been a bit gloomy of late, you see (and little wonder; have you seen the world recently?). So this week, we're talking about fun things.Fun thing number one: Christmas. Stephanie and Jonn discuss going home for the holidays, the sad fate of this year’s Gävle Goat, Manchester's long and noble tradition of terrifying giant Santas, and why it is I insist on going to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park every year even though it's obviously going to be hell.Fun thing number two: Parks. Peter Watts swings by, to talk about Britain's parks – their origins, social function, and the fact so many of them are now in... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, in keeping with the global mood, we’re talking about threats to civilisation, and the things we can do to combat them.First up, Stephanie and Jonn discuss Trump – yes, again – and fail to discuss the disappearance of the ice in the Arctic because one of us finds the whole thing far too depressing. Then, in an attempt to cheer ourselves up, we discuss the British government's ban on lettings agency fees, and various things we have done to troll estate agents.After that, it's onto more serious matters, as we hear from two people at the forefront of the efforts to protect us from our dangerous age. Dante Disparte, the founder of consultancy Risk Cooperative, tells us about the threats facing our cities; then Michael Berkowitz, president of the NGO 100 Resilient Cities, tells us what we can do to protect them. (If the name of the latter organisation looks a little bit familiar, that's because they've been kind enough to sponsor our fine podcast.)Then, to round off, we share our favourite... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is, like that Saved By the Bell where Jessie got addicted to drugs, another very special episode. Partly it's because it's, disappointingly, Stephanie-free. (For various boring travel-related reasons, I'm afraid it's been pretty much impossible to get us into the same room at the same time.) But mostly it's because of a sneaking suspicion that, in light of recent events, nobody much cares about things like metro maps and infrastructure right now. So instead, I'm joined by a pair of colleagues from the New Statesman politics desk, Stephan Bush and Julia Rampen, to discuss the big news of the week: President-elect Donald Trump. How is the rust belt like the north of England? Is it economics, culture, or simply racism that cause rural areas to vote differently from urban ones? And most importantly - are we all going to die? We'll be back soon, with our normal co-host, our normal producer and our normal sponsor. Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jonn is in America, chasing cool cities along the interstate and catching up with – gulp! – Trump voters.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and Stephanie Boland and produced by Roifield Brown. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's podcast is sort of the conclusion of a two-parter. On the last show, we talked about the history and economy of England's post-industrial northern cities. This week, we're north of the Watford Gap once again, but this time we're talking culture.(A note for overseas listeners: don't worry, we've not given up on the outside world, and we'll be back to a more international service soon enough. Also, a bunch of the stuff we talk about on this one does reflect on cities more broadly so you should listen to it anyway. So there.)First up, in what is clearly an attempt to troll me, Stephanie makes me talk about a subject that's absolutely central to life in Liverpool, Manchester, and many other northern cities, but remains absolutely baffling to me: football.To do that, we're joined by Neil Atkinson, the host of the ludicrously successful Anfield Wrap podcast, which chronicles Liverpool FC and Liverpool life through as many as 15 shows a week. He talks about the role football plays in the life of... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know there are people – bad, mean people – who've been known to accuse CityMetric of being a bit London-centric. As the world's leading purveyor of news about minor changes to the tube map, we can't understand this at all. Anyway. In an attempt to balance things out a bit, we're dedicating the whole of this week's episode to the world on the other side of the north/south divide. I talk about my recent trip to Liverpool, and what I made of that great city (which is, I'm sure, dying to know what another bloody Londoner thinks of it). Then Stephanie, an actual northerner, tells me about the relationship between Liverpool and her home town of Manchester. While we're at it, we also discuss why it is that, in Lancashire, local identity comes from cities while, across the Pennines, the Yorkshire identity still dominates Leeds and Sheffield.Next two staffers from the Centre for Cities – Newcastle's Ben Harrison and Sunderland's Paul Swinney – talk about their relationship between their two cities and why... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is, as they used to say of the installments of Saved By the Bell in which someone got addicted to drugs, a very special episode.In fact, it's special for two reasons. Firstly it's episode 20 (round numbers are cool). Secondly, it's the first to be supported by our new sponsor, 100 Resilient Cities: an NGO dedicated to helping cities prepare for the challenges of the 21st century.To celebrate, this week, we're talking about an issue very close to 100RC's heart: how coastal cities can deal with rising sea levels.To discuss this, Stephanie and I are joined by our colleague India Bourke, the office climate expert. She talks us through the latest science, and we debate why, when the Arctic ice sheet is in dramatic decline, we aren't more frightened.Then I talk to some of the chief resilience officers in port cities at the front line of the fight to keep cities above water: Arnoud Molenaar of Rotterdam in the Netherlands; and Christine Morris and her deputy Katerina Oskarsson, of Norfolk... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's podcast is a game of two halves. (Stephanie didn't manage to get a football reference onto the tape so I'm putting one here instead.)First of all, we talk about why it is people move to cities – or to be more specific, why people continue to move to London, when the experience of finding somewhere to live here is so completely bloody horrible. Stephanie relates her recent experiences with house-hunting and letting agents, while I look on with the serene sympathy of one who's insulated from this particular hellscape.That covers why people move to cities today – then we look at why people moved to cities in the past. To be more specific: several thousand years in the past.Rob Monaco is the US historian behind the frankly brilliant Podcast History of Our World. He runs me through the latest research on where the first cities could be found; discusses what motivated people to found them in the first place; and, most importantly, explains what sewers and street furniture would have looked like... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast, we're talking gender. Which of course is not actually the same as sex – the former is social, the latter biological – but until such time as HBO makes a hit sitcom called “Gender and the City”, this is our title and we're sticking to it. Anyway. This week's guests:Caroline Criado-Perez is the writer, journalist and feminist campaigner, who wrote a fantastic feature for us on why cities need to take women into account when planning. She gives us a whistlestop tour of her findings, from playgrounds in Vienna to toilets in Mumbai.Lauren Elkin is the author of "Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London", recently serialised on BBC Radio 4. She tells Stephanie about the origins of the book, and why walking can be a radical act. Sarah Coughlan and Marissa Santikarn are two-thirds of the Berlinials podcast. They tell us about the joys and hassles of ex-pat Berlin. Lastly, Stephanie and I discuss how her experiences of London differ from mine (most... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, Britain's Labour party announced the results of the internal party elections to determine its candidates for three of the new "metro mayor" posts being created next May. Former health secretary Andy Burnham will contest Greater Manchester; Liverpool Walton MP is the candidate for the greater Liverpool region; and Siôn Simon is to run in the West Midlands (Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry and the Black Country).The Labour party nationally is – and let's be nice about this – completely knackered. But it remains strong in Britain's cities, and won back the mayoralties in both London and Bristol earlier this year. It's highly probable that Burnham, Rotherham and Simon will all be elected as metro mayors next May.So this seems like a great moment to discuss who these new titans of the British political scene are. Stephanie and I are joined by our colleague Julia Rampen, who edits the New Statesman's politics blog, the Staggers, to talk about what new mayors can do for the Midlands and the North;... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So here’s a funny thing. We managed to do an entire podcast about the Olympics in cities, without saying the words “Rio de Janeiro” once. That’s weird, isn’t it? Anyway. In a shameless bid for news relevance and SEO, this week, we’re talking about whether hosting a massively over-priced sporting jamboree is really the best way of regenerating a city.Stephanie and I talk about why Barcelona ‘92 worked, but Athens ‘04 didn’t; discuss the various alternative models for hosting the Olympics that periodically come up for discussion; explore the long-forgotten time when town planning was an Olympic event (yes, really); and have a long and involved argument about whether dressage (“horse-dancing”) would be improved if the horses were drunk.Then, festival producer Sara Doctors, who’s been working on cultural events in east London for many years, gives us a guided tour of London’s Olympic Park, past, present and future, and explains the role the 2012 games played in speeding up the regeneration of... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, there are two different reasons why this episode is particularly exciting. One is that it's the first with new co-host Stephanie Boland. The other is that we're joined by an actual, literal rock star. Honestly: I write about maps for a living, and now this. My 17 year old self would be so impressed.Anyway. Neil Codling plays with Penguin Cafe, but his best known work has been as keyboard player and backing vocalist in Suede. (For boring legal reasons, the music used in the show is from neither band, I'm afraid.)Neil tells us about life on tour, and how you engage with a new city when you're seeing six of them every week. He also discusses the hollowing out of London’s music industry, and even reads from his tour diaries.Elsewhere in the show, journalist Steffan Storch tells us about Swansea, the second city of Wales - a fact for which it will never forgive its larger rival Cardiff. (You should check out Steffan's own podcast, Well Thanks, too.)Finally, Stephanie and I talk about the origins... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A disaster has befallen the good ship CityMetric: our staff writer Barbara Speed, who has been with us since before we even launched in July 2014, is leaving us. She’s moving on to take up an exciting new job as comment editor of the the i newspaper.This, then, is my last chance to make her talk about the various silly stories I've made her look into over the last two years: think of it as a sort of Barbara Speed greatest hits compilation. In it, we shall attempt to answer the following questions:Are there really alligators in the New York sewers?Is London really awash with bottles of discarded Uber piss? (Yes, really.)What's the world's smallest skyscraper?And, most importantly of all: what's Barbara's favourite map?Oh, and in case you were wondering: no, this isn't the last episode (you don't get off that easily). Nor am I going to have one of those inevitably disappointing solo careers. From the next episode, Skylines will be co-hosted by the entirely excellent Stephanie Boland.Skylines is the... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast, we're joined by arguably the biggest political theorist writing about cities today.In 2013, Benjamin Barber published If Mayors Ruled the World, a book in which he argued that nation states are increasingly powerless to deal with the challenges of the 21st century (climate change, migration, terrorism, and so forth). Instead, Barber suggests we should be looking to cities as the building blocks of the global government of the future.I was lucky enough to grab a few minutes with Barber after an event organised by the Centre for Cities last week. He told me more about his theories, and how he's putting them into practice by creating the Global Parliament of Mayors, which will hold its first meeting this September.But, with apologies to the 60 per cent of our readers who aren't based in these islands, but there's really only one topic any of us can focus on right now: the gradual collapse of our government, opposition, economy, global status, and very possibly the United Kingdom... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you live in Britain – and if you don't, I sort of envy you right now - you'll know that it's a pretty torrid time in politics right now. Next Thursday, there's a referendum to determine whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union.So, since migration to cities is this week's theme – and since it's, frankly, about all we can think about right now – Barbara and I begin this week's episode by talking about that referendum, and why cities so often have a more international outlook than their hinterlands.This week, you can also hear: Emmanuel Akinwotu on how Lagos has coped with ballooning from a city of 1m, to one of 20m, in under half a century;Olivia Cuthbert on her experiences visiting Za'atari, the refugee camp that's rapidly solidifying into Jordan's fourth largest city (this week's header pic was taken inside that camp);Lyman Stone, an agricultural economist for the US government, on life in the city Americans love to hate, Washington DC;And finally, our map of the week –... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A special BONUS episode, in that we've not had time to do a proper one yet. Sorry.Aaaanyway. Jonn's been out of the office for a couple of weeks, reading books by a pool, and gradually taking on a mixed red, white and brown colour scheme more usually associated with Neapolitan ice cream. Consequently, we haven't had time to prepare a full episode, with all the guests and bells and whistles that we'd normally include. We'll be back next week. To tide you over, we thought we'd do a mini-episode about the place where Jonn spent his holidays. Miami is a beautiful art-deco sub-tropical paradise that is, almost certainly, doomed. By the end of this century, a combination of rising sea levels and unhelpful geography will combine to make much of South Florida uninhabitable. There's something quite debilitatingly horrifying to realise that you are holidaying in a place that, in your own lifetime, is probably going to die. So, a form of therapy, Jonn talks to Barbara about exactly why Miami is under threat –... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know, there are some people – mean, cruel, wrong people – who might think our podcast gets a little bit, well, nerdy sometimes. Those people should stop whining and take more of an interest in public transport. Anyway. This week, to mix things up a bit, we're taking a different approach to things: we're looking at how cities and places are portrayed in literature film and TV. First up, Barbara talks about her discovery of the surprisingly not-made-up phenomenon of Paris syndrome, and we discuss how our perceptions of places are so often shaped by culture. Then we're joined by Stephanie Boland, a colleague from our New Statesman mothership, who in her other life is in the middle of a PhD in 20th century literature; together we discuss cities in the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Joyce and anyone else who comes to mind. Next, Helen Lewis and Stephen Bush – hosts of our sister show, the New Statesman Podcast – pop in to talk about how angry people (read: I) get about on-screen geographical cock... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, I am sorry to tell you, we aren't actually talking about cats. (Boo.) What we are talking about is the fraught matters of borders and boundaries, identity and institutions – whether the city is one entity or many, and who it is who gets to decide.Barbara and I begin by discussing one of our (my) favourite questions: where does London end? Or Southampton? Or New York, Shanghai or Paris, come to that? These questions aren't just of interest to map nerds: they have a real impact on how cities relate to their suburbs, and the authorities within them relate to each other. So Tim Fendley from Applied Wayfinding, who you might remember from episode 3, pops in to tell us about his adventures trying to get the various transport bodies to work together in Toronto.Next, our occasional Americas correspondent Drew Reed tells us about his city. Los Angeles was made by the car – but its long demolished streetcar network might yet save it from snarl ups. And finally, given our topic, what else could we... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A special BONUS episode!Last Thursday, as you'll probably know, if you haven't been living under a rock on the outskirts of Syria Planum, London held a mayoral election. After his 57:43 victory, Labour's Sadiq Khan has taken over at City Hall, in the process becoming the first Muslim to preside over a major western city. We decided we couldn't let this pass without comment. So in a special bonus edition of our podcast, Barbara and I are joined by the New Statesman's special correspondent Stephen Bush to talk about the politics of London's mayoral election, and what Khan's victory means for the city.We also talk about Marvin Rees' victory over George Ferguson in Bristol, and discuss what the arrival next year of mayors for England's city regions will mean for existing city mayors like Rees and Liverpool's Joe Anderson. All that, and Stephen treats us to a rousing chorus of his top 10 hit "Metro, metro mayor", too. It's a hell of a 15 minutes.Our regular podcast, in which we do our best not to obsess... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're talking about how, in a very real, no-honest-this-is-true sense, a city is the product of its transport network. We begin by discussing the relationship between boundaries, commuting patterns, perceptions and maps – and I get slightly over-excited when Barbara tells me something about London’s Tube that I didn’t previously know.Journalist Emmanuel Akinwotu tells us what it's like trying to get around Lagos, the Nigerian megacity where commuters rely on unofficial private minibus networks, and where heavy traffic and poor roads mean that a two hour journey can take you all night. Then I talk to transport researcher Nicole Badstuber, about megaprojects: those multi-billion dollar transport schemes, which are meant to sort everything out, and which, almost always, go horribly, horribly wrong. Next, Tim Oliver, a listener and university lecturer in Leeds, tells us why he loves his city – even if the British government doesn't seem to. And finally, for this week's map of the week, we... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of seeing cities as physical things – a matter of streets and buildings and transport infrastructure. But they’re about more than that: they’re also about the people inside them, and the things that they create. So this week, we’ve decided to get cultured. We talk to Shain Shapiro, director of the consultancy Sound Diplomacy, and founder of the Music Cities Convention. He tells us what makes a music city, and why live performance matters to city life. That’s “sound”. For “vision”, we talk to festival producer and arts professional Sara Doctors, about how the people who re-built Britain’s towns after the Second World War wanted to put public art at the heart of every community – and why it never quite came off. The segment includes discussion of “Madonna’s Tits”, the local name for a pair of Thomas Heatherwicks you can find in the unlikely location of a roundabout in Barking.In our new “your city” segment we hear from Canadian listener Victoria, who tells us what... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re talking about one of the biggest stories in the world today – the urbanisation of China. In 2006, American student Wade Shepard found himself lost in an entirely empty city somewhere in western China. When he told his professor about the experience, the response was a shrug and the words, “Yeah, those things are everywhere”. So Wade set about exploring these empty cities. Last year, he published a book, Ghost Cities of China, about his experiences, to explain where these cities come from – and why they’re not really ghost cities at all. Also this week, we’re introducing a new segment in which one of our listeners tells us about their own city. This week, the man behind the curtain, our producer Roifield Brown, tells us about his hometown Birmingham. If you’d like to contribute to this section in future, you can leave us a short message on Speakpipe – or, if you think that what you want to say will take more than 90 seconds, you can just email us an audio file. Skylines is the... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast, we're talking about why cities can save the world – and how they can ruin your life. In 2013, the American political theorist Benjamin Barber wrote a book arguing that mayors should rule the world, because they're better placed to solve the world's problems than national government. So why, we ask, does the job seem to attract flamboyant characters like London's Boris Johnson and Toronto's Rob Ford?We also discuss the way that, by both accident and design, cities can crush communities as well as create them. Barbara talks to anthropologist Diana Wall, who has been campaigning for a memorial to Seneca Village, the African American community destroyed in the 1850s to make way for Central Park. And I talk to Michael Bird, our occasional Bucharest correspondent, about a nightclub fire that brought down the Romanian government – and about how the city lives under the constant threat of an earthquake. Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman cities site. It's... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all knew this was going to happen eventually: this week's podcast is all about maps.On it, you can hear from Stewart Mader, the founder of the Subway NYNJ campaign to add New Jersey to the subway map, who argues that improved mapping can be a cheap way to improve a transport network. We also talk to Tim Fendley, the executive director of Applied Wayfind – the firm behind the Legible London signage – about how you go about mapping a city from scratch. All that, plus Barbara and I discuss how maps can affect our perceptions of a city, and why it is that I like maps more than she does.Enjoy,JonnSkylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and Barbara Speed, and is a Roifield Brown production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're talking about something fundamental to city life - something we take for granted so much, we tend to forget about it altogether. This week, we're talking about water.We talk Linda Tirado, the American writer and activist who spent much of January talking to the people occupying a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon. The siege, she tells us, is actually the harbinger of water wars that could one day grip the American West. We also talk to Karim Elgendy, an Egyptian-born architect and sustainability consultant, about the crisis looming in the Middle East, where the cities are burning oil to desalinate water to extract more oil. And we look at a map of a world where there is, if anything, too much water.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and Barbara Speed, and is a Roifield Brown production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For our first episode, we take on a question that's close to many a metropolitan liberal's heart: why does everyone seem to hate us? To be more specific, what is it about world cities like London that seems to inspire as much loathing as admiration?To help us answer this question, we talk to writer, consultant and professional Yorkshireman Tom Forth, to get a northern view on how London is screwing up the rest of the country.We also talk to Elizabeth Minkel to get a US perspective on both London and New York.All that, and we talk about a map, too.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and Barbara Speed, and is a Roifield Brown production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.