Skylines, the CityMetric podcast

150. So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

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

149. No Exit

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

148. Graphs of doom

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 Frimsto

147. Lockdown

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 t

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

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 Londo

145. The Great Manchester Mayoral Election

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 m

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

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 a

143. Curtain raiser

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 e

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

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

141. Commonwealth voices in Kingston, Jamaica

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 p

140. So This Is Christmas, with Jay Foreman

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 explai

139: 2019 Election Special

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 dr

138. The real Middle Earth

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 Well

137. Into the Woods

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 m

136: Health and efficiency

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 t

135. The battle for number two

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 chatt

134. The Power of Yes

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. In

133. The ancient regime

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

132. A summer holiday with Map Corner

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 podca

131. Trapped

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 s