Centre for Cities

City Talks: Jonathan Rodden on the deep roots of the urban-rural political divide

In 2016 Donald Trump became US President despite winning almost 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.

In this episode of City Talks we talk to award-winning academic Jonathan Rodden, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and author of the book Why Cities Lose.

He explores the origins of America’s urban-rural political divide and explains how economic geography shapes elections – both in the USA and beyond.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

 

City Talks: Dr Julie Grail, Chris Brown and Rebecca McDonald on the future of the British high street

Many British high streets face a bleak future as policymakers are failing to identify a clear economic focus to city centre regeneration strategies. But contrary to popular belief, our research has shown that not all city centres are failing.

While cities such as Newport and Wigan struggle, others thrive.  

To discuss why this is, Andrew Carter is joined by Dr Julie Grail – Founder of The BIDs Business and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Place Management; Chris Brown – Founder and Executive Chair of Igloo, and Rebecca McDonald – Analyst at the Centre for Cities. 

The panel discusses why retail became such a dominant feature of the high street and compares the role of online retail today with the out-of-town shopping centres of the past.

They look at examples from high streets across the UK, and the latest research by the Centre for Cities into the health of high streets, to develop a sustainable future for the British high street. 

City Talks: Otto Saumarez-Smith on the politics of 1960s radical urban renewal

In this episode of City Talks, Andrew Carter is joined by Otto Saumarez Smith, Assistant Professor in Architectural History at the University of Warwick, to discuss his book Boom Cities: Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain.

Otto discusses the rapid rise and fall of modernist urban planning in 1960s Britain and charts the transformation of many historic city centres.

He explains the philosophical, political and cultural post-war debates that underpinned these transformations and how they shaped Britain’s cities for years to come.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

City Horizons: Britain beyond Brexit with Gavin Kelly and Nick Pearce

What shape will the UK’s economy, constitution and politics take once the Brexit storm clears? Listen to a recap of our July 2019 City Horizons event, where the Resolution Trust's Gavin Kelly and the University of Bath's Nick Pearce, discussed their major new book, Britain Beyond Brexit.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Horizons series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

City Talks: Michael Parkinson on bringing Liverpool back from the brink

Thirty years ago Liverpool was a city teetering on the brink. Years of economic decline were breaking of the former imperial city’s social and political fabric. The scale of the challenge facing Liverpool was so great that many commentators predicted that it would never recover.

They were wrong.   

To discuss Liverpool’s remarkable social and economic recovery, Andrew Carter is joined by Professor Michael Parkinson, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Civic Engagement University of Liverpool and author of Liverpool Beyond the Brink: The Remaking of a Post Imperial City.

Professor Parkinson charts the journey that Liverpool has made since its mid-1980s nadir, explains the measures taken to pull it back from the brink and offers his thoughts on what lessons Liverpool’s regeneration has for other cities.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

 

City Talks: Neil O’Brien MP on building a strong national economy from the bottom up

In this episode of City Talks, Andrew Carter is joined by Neil O’Brien, who is MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston in Leicestershire, and former special advisor to Prime Minister Theresa May as well as to the erstwhile chancellor George Osborne. He is also the author of many reports, the latest one being Firing on all cylinders: Building a strong economy from the bottom up, which was published by Onward, the advisory board of which he is a member.

This report, which forms the basis of this episode, examines the actions that need to be taken to make all parts of the country and all groups in society share in the benefits of the growing economy – in short, a ‘trickle-up’ plan. It also proposes an approach to spurring growth which is pro-business, but in a way which aims to help the neediest places help themselves to move forward.

The discussion looks at what has and hasn’t worked historically in terms of stimulating growth, particularly in places outside London, as well as rebalancing the economy.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

City Talks: The rising threat of air pollution in cities – and how to fight back

More than 90% of the world's population is exposed to air pollutant concentrations exceeding World Health Organisation guideline levels, while globally four-and-a-half million people died prematurely from particle and ozone pollution in 2015.  While air pollution is a problem in both rural and urban areas, particular types of pollutants tend to be more concentrated in cities. And as more and more of the population shifts to living in cities, an ever greater proportion of people are living closer to pollution sources.

Why don’t we understand air pollution better? And how have we allowed it to build to the crisis we have today?

To answer these questions, Andrew Carter is joined by Gary Fuller who is Senior Lecturer in Air Pollution Measurement at Kings College London, a leader of the London Air Quality Network and the author of a brilliant, if somewhat scary, book entitled The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution - and How We Can Fight Back

Dr. Fuller challenges common misconceptions around what creates air pollution and how it's measured and argues that to change the future of our planet and collective global health, both city-level and national government action are essential.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

 

City Talks: Where have all the good jobs gone? With David Blanchflower

In this episode of City Talks, Andrew Carter is joined by David Blanchflower, a well-known British-American economist, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (his time there coinciding with the Great Recession) and economics professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. His new book, entitled Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?, is the subject of this podcast.

Policymakers, central banks and some economists around the world assume that the current low unemployment figures are proof that the labour market is doing well. However, in this discussion, Professor Blanchflower points out that, despite the rosy employment indicators, many workers are in fact under-employed or have simply given up trying to find a well-paying job. He notes that wage growth has not returned to pre-recession levels and links the unchecked rise of right-wing populism in both Europe and America to the fact that many people have not been able to get the quality of jobs that their fathers and grandfathers did before them.

‘Good jobs’ is a very live issue in Britain in particular, where low-quality employment has risen but real earnings haven’t climbed, and, as Professor Blanchflower highlights, are in fact 6% lower than they were in 2008.

Among potential policy solutions, he demonstrates that raising the minimum wage (another topical issue in Britain) has positive effects on both employment and productivity.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

City Talks: Why cities look the way they do

A basic assumption about cities is that they look the way they do because of intentional design decisions made by people or bodies, such as planners and architects. But what if the appearance of cities had less to do with design and more to do with social, cultural, financial and political processes – as well as the way ordinary citizens interact with them?

To debate this question, Andrew Carter is joined by Richard Williams, Professor of Contemporary Visual Culture at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Why Cities Look the Way They Do, which is the subject of this episode of City Talks.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

City Talks: Cities – the first 6,000 years

Why did cities start to develop around 6,000 years ago? How have they evolved? And why do so many of us choose to live in them?

To answer these questions, Andrew Carter is joined by Monica L Smith, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of Cities: the First 6,000 Years, which is the subject of this episode.

Some of Professor Smith’s most striking arguments in this podcast include the following:

• - Other than the accelerated rate of population growth (cities are now doubling in size every 10 or 20 years as opposed to every century), modern cities have a great deal in common with their ancient counterparts.
• - Many of the drawcards of cities in modern times – such as educational and economic opportunities, social mobility and culture – are the same things that attracted people to cities when they first appeared 6,000 years ago.
• - The tendency towards hyper-consumption and the accumulation of ‘stuff’ in cities is not modern in origin – every excavated city is full of discarded items. This is down to the producer-consumer dynamic found in cities, which increases the rate of both innovation and consumption.
• - What makes cities sustainable and resilient, and what makes them keep growing in size, is their ability to draw on a vast hinterland of resources, which means they’re not dependent on any one source to provide city residents with the things they need.

This episode is part of the Centre for Cities City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.