Skylines, The Citymetric Podcast

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 –... &

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...

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... &#

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...

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...

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... &

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...

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...

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, Jonn 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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.