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 yea

149. No Exit

May 10th, 2020 37m 49s

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-flavou

148. Graphs of doom

Apr 22nd, 2020 37m 51s

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 Unde

147. Lockdown

Mar 31st, 2020 30m 29s

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, inclu

146. London mayoral walks #3: Rory Stewart has his porridge

Mar 12th, 2020 31m 50s

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

145. The Great Manchester Mayoral Election

Feb 27th, 2020 34m 54s

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 wee

144. London mayoral walks #2, with Green Sian Berry

Feb 13th, 2020 29m 16s

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

143. Curtain raiser

Jan 30th, 2020 40m 50s

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 othe

142. London mayoral walks, #1: with LibDem Siobhan Benita

Jan 16th, 2020 29m 49s

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 tim

141. Commonwealth voices in Kingston, Jamaica

Jan 3rd, 2020 31m 27s

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 e

140. So This Is Christmas, with Jay Foreman

Dec 20th, 2019 37m 53s

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 a

139: 2019 Election Special

Dec 5th, 2019 28m 32s

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 h

138. The real Middle Earth

Nov 20th, 2019 21m 9s

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

137. Into the Woods

Nov 6th, 2019 42m 50s

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 thi

136: Health and efficiency

Oct 24th, 2019 22m 7s

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 p

135. The battle for number two

Oct 11th, 2019 25m 43s

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

134. The Power of Yes

Sep 27th, 2019 21m 59s

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

133. The ancient regime

Sep 12th, 2019 31m 7s

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 Y

132. A summer holiday with Map Corner

Aug 28th, 2019 1h 50m

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 thi

131. Trapped

Aug 15th, 2019 30m 42s

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

130. Public enterprise

Aug 1st, 2019 37m 7s

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

129. The regeneration game

Jul 18th, 2019 35m 47s

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 ques

128. The country where I want to be

Jul 4th, 2019 30m 15s

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 proje

127. A short history of council housing

Jun 21st, 2019 45m 17s

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 th

126. After Grenfell and advanced Sheffield

Jun 6th, 2019 36m 8s

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 t