Skylines, the CityMetric podcast

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 years – it’s been a great opportunity to chat to interesting people about everything from transport and housing to smart cities and regional identities, with the odd argument about the tube or episode about ancient history thrown in for flavour. But for all sorts of reasons – not least of which is that I’ve stepped down as editor of CityMetric – this felt like the right time to stop.I wanted to go out with a bang, though, and to hell with worrying about self-indulgence. So in this final, feature-length episode of Skylines you will hear:Barbara Speed, my first co-host and the opinion editor of the I Paper, on her enduring love of baked goods chain Greggs;Our founding producer Roifield Brown, on the podcast’s origins, his native Birmingham and his love of San Francisco;New Statesman political correspondent Patrick Maguire on the rise of the metro mayor, and a movie about both zombies AND public transport;The Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson, one of our more frequent guests, on why Britain’s transport network is quite good, actually;New Statesman political editor Stephen Bush on the best and worst cities for party conferences;The New Statesman’s former environmental writer India Bourke on the joy of nature;The Centre for Cities’ Paul Swinney on the town/city divide;Our current producer Nick Hilton on the fun he’s had turning my rubbish into a podcast;An interview with myself, about my favourite things about doing the show, conducted Agnes Frimston (who, when not being my wonderful and tolerant partner co-hosts the Chatham House podcast, Undercurrents);And last, but very definitely not least, Sommer Mathis, CityMetric’s new editor in chief, on how she got into urbanism and her plans for the site.All that, plus some clips from listeners, and some previously unreleased bits of my entirely excellent former co-host Stephanie Boland.Thanks for tuning into Skylines these last few years. I’m gonna miss you guys.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site. It’s presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-flavour, looks like – is already a little out of date. Italy, unlike the UK, has begun lifting its lockdown. But it’s still a fascinating insight into both what a stricter lockdown looks like, and also into how great Palermo would be if she were allowed to see it at all – so I’ve kept the interview, but added a brief update from Claire about what the situation there is like now.Our second interview is with Hala El Akl, a senior associate at PLP Architecture and chair of the ULI’s UK Urban Art Forum. She tells us exactly why cities should be paying more attention to the role of arts and culture, and what she hopes to do with the role.Before I go – the explanation for the lax schedule I mentioned. In case you’ve missed the announcements on social media: Skylines is coming to an end. I’ve handed over the reins at CityMetric to the new editorial team, led by the outstanding Sommer Mathis, and the next episode will be number 150. For those and a host of other reasons, this felt like the right time to stop.But don’t worry, because our final episode is going to be an absolute monster, in which I speak to all sorts of people who’ve been involved in the show in some capacity over the last four and a bit years years, about their favourite episodes, what they would have liked to have spoken about but didn’t, and also, inevitably, the tube. It’s the messy self-indulgent send off this podcast deserves, and I hope the final product is as much fun to listen to as it was to record.Incidentally – as part of that I’m going to include some clips from listeners, being nice and/or mocking me in an amusing fashion. If you’d like to be one of them, email me your clip to jonnelledge at gmail dot com under the subject line “Final Skylines”.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site. It’s presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Undercurrents – about how much fun she’s having being shut in a one-bedroom flat with me with no end in sight. We also talk about the various coping strategies the world at large is developing to help it get through lockdown; how public services are faring; and how the crisis might change the world and its politics.We also put on mousturising face masks. While recording. It was that kind of day.After that, an interview, from the before times. Back in March, I spoke with Donna Hall, the former chief executive of Wigan council and chair of the New Local Government Network. We talked about the interlocking crises – budgets, social care, and so forth – that were afflicting England’s councils even before the pandemic arrived. Once we’re out of this mess, such issues are, I fear, only going to get worse.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site. It’s presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, including Skylines’ little corner of it. So on the assumption that she didn’t have anywhere more fun to be right now, this seemed a good moment to invite my former co-host Stephanie Boland to Skype back into the podcast for the first time in about a year and a half. We discuss the strangeness of London, and its entirely empty transport system, in lockdown; how the UK government is doing at handling the crisis; and how it may, or may not, change the world and its politics.If you enjoyed this one and are a relatively recent subscriber to Skylines, then why not check out some episodes from Stephanie’s era as co-host? You can hear more of her in episodes 15-38, plus 51, 63, 100, and probably some more that I’ve forgotten because it was ages ago.On a different matter – the pandemic has meant a year’s delay to all this year’s English mayoral elections. That sadly means that the mayoral walks series is almost certainly finished, for the moment. But I nonetheless hope to persuade Sadiq Khan and Shaun Bailey to go for a walk with me at some point in the future. It’s good to have goals, isn’t it?Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 over London and tweeting about it; Twitter at large suggested we combine forces, and maybe turn it into a podcast. And, once a couple of other candidates had helpfully put the pressure on by offering to go for a walk with me too, Stewart agreed. And suddenly what had started by taking the mick on Twitter because I was bored had become an actual thing.Alas, when the day finally came we were defeated by London’s famous weather: on the appointed morning, Friday 28 February, it was bucketing down, which isn’t really a good match with the Skylines recording equipment, also known as “my phone”. So instead this podcast was recorded in a cafe in South Kensington.During its course, I asked Rory why he felt London was crying out for a former Tory Cabinet minister as its independent mayor; why he had chosen to campaign by walking and, more recently, asking to sleep one night a week in other Londoners’ houses; and whether he thinks he really has a hope of defeating Sadiq Khan. All that, and we also chatted about his proposals to sort out the capital’’s housing and transport systems, and Rory ate some porridge, too.Incidentally, there’s a moment in this one when the candidate is unexpectedly enthusiastic about my proposals that we start giving the Overground network different line names and we have to stop talking about it before it takes over the entire podcast. Though we did discuss it for ten minutes after recording.This may be the last of my mayoral “walks”. I’m talking to the staffs of both Khan and his Tory rival Shaun Bailey, and am open to approaches from other candidates desperate for coverage... But at time of writing nothing else has been agreed. We shall see. If you happen to see someone running for mayor, send them my way, would you?Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 week’s podcast, we're looking at one of those. The last time Skylines spoke to Jen Williams, politics and investigations editor of the Manchester Evening News, it was to talk about exactly what had gone wrong with the northern rail network. Since that's still going wrong (lol), that’s our starting point this week, too. But we swiftly move on to talking about our real topic: Greater Manchester’s upcoming mayoral election and Andy Burnham’s record as mayor, as well as homelessness, policing and, my personal favourite, bus regulation. If you’re on Twitter and you don't follow Jen already, by the way, you’re doing it wrong: she’s on @JenWilliamsMEN. Next time, all being well, I’m off for a walk with independent London mayoral candidate Rory Stewart.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 weeks before Christmas, we spent a gloriously crisp winter afternoon together walking from Manor House station to Dalston together, a route chosen mostly because it took us along Green Lanes (geddit?). Along the way we talked about, among other things, air pollution, and how to fix it; how London can reform regeneration schemes so that they don’t screw over existing residents; and, something which Sian still has personal experience of, the capital’s private rental sector. We also ended our walk at a community “parklet” – a parking space, converted into a teeny, tiny park – and talked about how to take back space from cars.My next walk, all being well, will take place later this month, and will be with the man who inspired the whole project, Rory Stewart.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's recorded and presented by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 other cities and city regions.To find out what to expect, I invited the New Statesman politics editor Stephen Bush back to Skylines to tell us what to look out for. At one point he genuinely argues that the exciting thing about these elections is that all the incumbents might win. Seriously.Also, while we’re here, we use our chat as an opportunity to trail our new podcast, Prime Ministerial, which looks back over 40 years of recent British political history.Lastly, a PSA for those who may have missed it: this is my last week on staff at the New Statesman. I’m off to freelance and work on some personal projects for a bit. I’ll be contributing to both the NS and CityMetric for a while yet, however, and Skylines will continue, at least for the moment... Stay tuned for further announcements.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 time I've been out and about with a number of the other candidates to be mayor of London.So this is the first of a mini-series. My companion on this walk, which took place last November, is the Liberal Democrat candidate Siobhan Benita. She took me to the Latin American market in Seven Sisters, which is currently under threat from developers, to talk about gentrification, housing, and all the things she'd hope to achieve as the mayor of this fine city.The next walk – though not necessarily the next episode – will see me wander through a different stretch of North London with the Green candidate and that party's co-leader, Sian Berry.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 episode on the air pollution crisis currently afflicting Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. Here's Roifield's blurb:What happens when air quality is so dangerous, it brings businesses, schools and other services to a close and hundreds of people to the doors of public health clinics? The Jamaica Environment Trust were already calling on the government to tackle the public health risks of contaminated air and water. In 2018, when the decades old problem of fires at the Riverton city Dump resurfaced, their calls got louder.It's a lovely story – if you enjoy it please do check out the rest of Commonwealth Voices and Roifield's other podcasts. I'll be back with a normal episode of Skylines soon.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman's cities site. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 again. Anyway. On this week's show, we're not going to talk about the election result – partly because I'm too depressed, partly because we've now got about four and a half years to think about that, but mostly because this episode was recorded 10 hours before the exit poll came out so we had no idea what the result was even going to be. (If you've just joined us: the left lost.)Instead, we're going to have a lovely conversation with Jay Foreman, distinguished host of such YouTube series as Unfinished London, Map Men and other things that frankly I wish I'd thought to do before he got there first. Jay tells me how he came to make a career making videos about London; how he and his co-host Mark Cooper-Jones had a blazing row about their favourite map projections; and why he's now six months into an online argument with a man who wrongly believes that Woking is in Greater London. It was, frankly, tremendous fun to record, so I can only hope it’s as fun to listen to. Not least because I realised afterwards I’d screwed up the recording and am nervous about how it sounds.Anyway. Happy Christmas, everybody – we’ll see you in 2020.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 his role as the New Statesman’s politics correspondent, back to the podcast to offer some reassurance. He couldn’t offer any.Anyway - we did have a fascinating chat about regional differences in voting patterns; how parts of Wales and the North East have never been the anti-Tory heartlands which they’re sometimes portrayed as; whether housing, transport and other similarly wonk-ish concerns are coming up on the doorstep; and how Napoleon III’s stay in Southport helped it win the title of “the Paris of the North”.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 to work. We chat about the cities of his homeland, how one might travel between them, and how they came to have the sort of housing crisis that can almost make London look good. We also talk about New Zealand's politics and history more broadly - as well as its relationship with its bigger, better known neighbour Australia.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 thing.So last week, I did, with a man who's just written the book on the subject. Luke Turner, with whom I worked briefly a depressingly long time ago, is the co-founder of the culture website The Quietus. He's also the author of Out Of The Woods, which he modestly describes as “a critically-acclaimed memoir of sexuality and nature”. He kindly agreed to spend an autumn day walking with me from Manor Park to Epping, all the while telling me about his book, the history of the forest and its place in the psyche of the city, and how it came to be owned by the City of London Corporation. We also talk, variously, about hermits, hallucinations, cows and our former boss Jeremy Hunt.Some excellent production work courtesy of our producer Nick on this one incidentally – while the podcast was recorded on location, the woodland sound effects are sadly a later addition.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 public services and the state of the public realm. She also earlier this year replaced Helen Lewis as co-host of the main NS podcast, on which she is doing an excellent job.Anoosh joins me to talk about a subject very dear to her heart: outdoor gyms, which offer free community classes, and many of which are now under threat. While she's around we also chat about austerity, London's best parks, and why west London is not frankly very good.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Shaun Bailey gave a speech to the party's conference, and is refusing to chat to pretty much anyone. (No change there: during the selection race last year, he was the only shortlisted candidate to refuse to talk to us, forcing us to replace him with some music.)To discuss what all this means for the race, and whether it threatens Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan in next May's contest, I'm joined by New Statesman political correspondent Patrick Maguire, who, it's fair to say, has views. Also this week, the sort of Liverpudlian Patrick and sort of Londoner myself debate a question for the ages: which is better, Birmingham or Manchester?Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 show politicians that there's support for policies that would get more housing built.They also, on occasion, write for CityMetric – so I invited two of them on to tell us about their work. John Myers is leader of the London Yimby group, while Sam Watling is director of Brighton Yimby. They tell me about the movement’s origins, its policy goals and how exactly they're going to solve the housing crisis.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Years.In it she investigates why cities first emerged, how they have evolved, and why people are drawn to them. She was kind enough to pop by New Statesman towers to give us a flavour, and tell me why cities first emerged, where you can find their ruins and what they have to teach us today.If you like this one, by the way, you might want to check out episode 19, from way back in September 2016, when I spoke to the US history podcaster Rob Monaco about how it was we came to invent cities in the first place.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 things that Skylines listeners are into.They were kind enough to invite me on to talk about maps, Spain and Helsinki the other day, so this is that episode. It isn’t just me though - there’s also an extensive discussion of the British road number system, along with much, much more. If you like Skylines, you’ll like this, and you should subscribe immediately.All being well I’ll be back in two weeks.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 the doors in question would open again, freeing him again. He ended up at the end of the line in Edgware.This struck me as very funny, and since Samir is a housing campaigner and the author of The Rent Trap, I thought that a fun thing to do for the podcast would be to recreate the incident and then interview him about rent controls while trapped in a tube train’s doors. The result was… well, you’ll find out.I’m about to go on my holidays, by the way, so the next one will be a guest episode from friend of the podcast Roifield Brown. I'll be back with your next regular episode of Skylines in early September.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.