Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Alex Niven, Lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle University and author of several books including The North will Rise Again: In Search of the Future in Northern Heartlands (Bloomsbury, 2023). They discuss attempts to revive the economic fortunes and empower the people of the North of England after deindustrialisation, questions of Northern identity and Alex’s immersion in the poetry and culture of the Northeast. This episode is part of Centre...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Cllr Jane Mudd, Labour Leader of Newport City Council since 2019. They discuss her stance on working with business to improve the city-region, the changes the city is making to improve transport sustainability, and what Newport’s status as the ‘Gateway to Wales’ means for her as leader. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Leaders series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Andrew Carter, Chief Executive of Centre for Cities, is joined by John Stevenson, who is the MP for Carlisle, Chair of the Northern Research Group of MPs and Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Key Cities. The two discuss the role Carlisle plays in its regional economy, why the Northern Research Group of MPs is pressing for more devolution of powers from Westminster to the North of England, and what John has learned about leadership during his time in the House of Commons. This...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Caitlin Rollison, External Affairs Manager at Centre for Cities, to discuss the new report Gear shift: International lessons for increasing public transport ridership in UK cities. They discuss whether Covid really was a meaningful turning point in how we travel around UK cities, how public transport usage in UK cities compares with European counterparts, and the policy initiatives around the world that have made a big difference to public transport...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Mayor Marvin Rees, who has been Mayor of Bristol since 2016 and has given city leaders and city networks a voice on a national and international level as Chair of Core Cities UK and Co-Chair of the UK Future Cities Commission. They discuss Mayors’ political roles in UK cities, the need for more housing, and the role of cities to tackle the climate crisis, which Marvin made the subject of his TED talk a year ago. This episode is part of Centre for...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Mayor Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, for a discussion about what the role of a Metro Mayor means for people in the North of England, how local government is funded, and plans to bring transport in Liverpool back into public control. This episode is the first episode of Centre for Cities’ City Leaders series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it. Subscribe to Centre for Cities’ newsletter to hear about new...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Ant Breach, Senior Analyst, to discuss which powers should be devolved to UK cities. Their discussion focuses on the proposals put forward in a new report, In place of centralisation: Devolution for London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, commissioned for The Economy 2030 Enquiry funded by the Nuffield Foundation. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Researcher Matthew Coombes, author of Miles better: Improving public transport in the Glasgow City Region, to discuss the potential for bus franchising to help Glasgow reach its economic potential. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research, Ant Breach, Senior Analyst, and Jess Tulasiewicz, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, to review key moments at two action-packed party conferences in Manchester and Liverpool. They discuss a Conservative party conference dominated by the decision to cancel HS2’s northern leg, Labour’s bold ambitions on housebuilding, and more. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate,...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research at Centre for Cities to discuss Paul’s new briefing, Do city centres really benefit their wider areas?. They discuss how improving and expanding Manchester and Birmingham city centres can bring benefits to places like Oldham and West Bromwich, and the role this plays in levelling up. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Director of Policy and Research Paul Swinney is joined by James Evans, Research Fellow at Centre for Cities and author of the new report, Innovation hotspots: Clustering the New Economy, which identifies 344 hotspots of ‘new economy’ activity where promising businesses are clustering together. Paul and James discuss the findings and why new economy hotspots are an urban phenomenon. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research at Centre for Cities to discuss Paul’s new briefing, Trickle Out: How cities help their surrounding towns. They discuss the relationship that big cities have with their surrounding areas, how this impacts on quality of life in nearby places, and how we can help towns take advantage of having a big city nearby. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Christian Wolmar, the writer and broadcaster and specialist in British transport. He is the author of several books, including Fire & Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain, Are Trams Socialist? Why Britain Has No Transport Policy, and most recently British Rail: A New History, published by Michael Joseph in 2022. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Researcher Stuart Bridgett, author of Pot Luck: What government needs to do to streamline local government funding, to discuss the Government’s long-anticipated plan to simplify the funding landscape for local authorities, first promised in the 2022 Levelling Up White Paper. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined in this episode by Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford, and Tom Lee-Devlin, Global Business Correspondent at The Economist. They are the co-authors of The Age of the City: Why our Future will be Won or Lost Together. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Henry Overman, Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics, Research Director at the Centre for Economic Performance and Director of the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth, which marks its tenth anniversary this year. They discuss how to measure the scale of the underperformance of cities in the UK and search for evidence that could point us towards the right solutions. The discussion follows on from Henry’s recent post...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Daniel Knowles, Chicago-based journalist at The Economist, about his new book, Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It. Carmageddon is published in the UK as a Kindle e-book on Friday 16 June 2023 and can be pre-ordered online: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C6RHS9YC. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Senior Analyst Anthony Breach and Researcher Matthew Coombes to discuss Centre for Cities’ recent report, All Cylinders: the Role of the Midlands Engine in the UK Economy, which shows that the Midlands economy is largely urban and explores the kinds of economic activity happening in the region. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Minutes series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Dan Graham, Professor of Statistical Modelling at Imperial College London, and Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research at Centre for Cities, who are both co-authors of a new Centre for Cities report, Office Politics: London and the rise of home working. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Joining Chief Executive Andrew Carter is James Plunkett, Group Chief Practices Officer at Nesta and author of End State: 9 Ways Society is Broken and How We Fix It and the Future State blog on Substack. They discuss James’ recent article, Unequality: When inequality changes, our strategies must too, which is the third in a three-part series of essays for a project with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Social justice in a digital age. This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Talks...

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Anna Stansbury, Assistant Professor in Work and Organization Studies at MIT Sloan and co-author (with Ed Balls and Dan Turner) of a working paper titled Tackling the UK’s regional economic inequality: Binding constraints and avenues for policy intervention.   This episode is part of Centre for Cities’ City Talks series. Please rate, review and share the episode if you enjoyed it.

Andrew is joined by Analyst Guilherme Rodrigues and Researcher Stuart Bridgett to discuss the findings of Centre for Cities' new report, entitled Capital Losses: The role of London in the UK's productivity puzzle.

Andrew is joined by Senior Analyst Anthony Breach and Research Assistant Samuel Watling to discuss Centre for Cities' new report, The Housebuilding Crisis, which examines how the UK's outdated planning laws have created a backlog of 4.3 million homes since 1955.  

Andrew is joined by Dr Felix Rösel, from the University of Braunschweig, and former Centre for Cities Senior Analyst Kathrin Enenkel to discuss the findings of their paper entitled: German Reunification: Lessons from the German approach to closing regional economic divides. 

Andrew is joined by economist and former civil servant David Higham. This episode focuses on David’s time working under Michael Heseltine in the 1990s and how the approach to regional economic growth has developed in recent decades.