Skylines, The Citymetric Podcast

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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 ar

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 econom

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 cit

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

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out info

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

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 y

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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 Rockefel

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informa

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

“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 Resilie

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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