Centre for Cities

City Minutes Trilogy: A lost year of levelling up

This special City Minutes trilogy examines the findings of Cities Outlook 2023 – Centre for Cities’ flagship economic health check of the UK’s urban areas. For Part One of this series, Andrew Carter is joined by Director of Policy and Research Paul Swinney to discuss Chapter One of the report, reviewing the progress of UK policy in 2022 and examining its future in the coming year.

City Talks: Reviving England’s seaside towns

Andrew is joined by urban economic development expert John Houghton to discuss his Solving the riddle of the sands blog series, which examines how we can revive England's struggling seaside towns.

City Minutes: Kickstarting the new economy

Andrew Carter is joined by Centre for Cities' Director of Policy and Research, Paul Swinney, to discuss the findings of our new report: At the Frontier: The geography of the UK's new economy. The report explores how new economy advanced tech industries are created in urban areas and what the Government should do to seize these opportunities.

 

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

City Talks: What does the future look like for local government?

Andrew is joined by Professor Tony Travers from the London School of Economics to reflect on the current place of local government in the UK. This episode examines what impacts last week's Autumn Statement could have on local authorities and what the future holds for them throughout this Parliament and beyond.

City Talks: Examining the CHIPS and Science Act

Andrew is joined by Mark Muro, Senior Fellow at Brookings Metro, to discuss the US Government’s Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act (the CHIPS Act), recently signed into law by President Joe Biden. This episode examines how the new $280bn programme can drive growth and innovation across US cities and what lessons could be learned for the UK’s levelling up agenda.

City Talks: How creative industries drive urban economies

Andrew is joined by Dr Max Nathan, from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, and Eliza Easton, Deputy Director of Policy and Communications at Nesta’s Policy and Evidence Centre. Together they analyse the role of creative industries in driving the economic performance of urban areas, highlighting observations from Creative Clusters and Creative Multipliers: Evidence from UK Cities - a paper co-authored by Dr Nathan and published by Economic Geography.

City Minutes: King’s Cross and the role of regeneration

Back in February, as part of the Levelling Up White Paper, the Government announced that 20 transformative regeneration projects would be rolled out across the UK.

Centre for Cities’ latest report published in partnership with Aviva, Making places: The role of regeneration in levelling up, highlights how these zones sit at the heart of the Government's ambitions to deliver swift, economic growth by attracting private sector investment.

For this episode of City Minutes, Researcher Stuart Bridgett and Senior Analyst Anthony Breach join Chief Executive Andrew Carter to debate some of the key findings of the report.

Together, they discuss how the Government can make regeneration schemes viable and explore the learnings, lessons, and exceptions from the King's Cross redevelopment. 

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

City Talks: Managing our urban transport networks

For the latest episode of City Talks, Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Transport Commissioner for Greater Manchester, and former managing director at Transport for London, Vernon Everitt.

Together, they discuss the issues in funding public transport networks in the UK and what needs to be done to boost ridership and provide the services cities need.

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

City Minutes: How the cost of living crisis is playing out across the UK

The cost of living crisis is dominating headlines, with the debate so far largely focusing on the burden felt by households, individuals and socio-economic groups.

Centre for Cities’ latest report, Out of pocket: the places at the sharp end of the UK’s cost of living crisis examines the crisis using a place-based approach for the very first time, to determine how the current squeeze on incomes is likely to be felt across the UK’s cities and largest towns.

For this episode of City Minutes, Senior Analyst Valentine Quinio and Analyst Guilherme Rodrigues join Chief Executive Andrew Carter to unpack the key findings of the report.

Together, they discuss, the drivers behind the geography of the cost of living crisis, whether the support provided by the Government is enough, and what short term and long term interventions can be put in place to ensure people and places are supported now and in the years to come.

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

City Talks: Fixing the intangible economy

Andrew Carter speaks to Chief Executive of the Royal Statistical Society and former government advisor Stian Westlake about his new book, Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy, which he co-authored alongside Jonathan Haskel.

This episode explores how there has been an incomplete transition from an economy based on physical capital to one based on intangible capital - such as ideas, brands, and knowledge. Westlake argues that this has left our economic institutions geared to an outmoded way of doing business, and that an institutional refresh is needed to drive growth and address inequalities.

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