The Covid-19 pandemic has completely altered urban life. From San Francisco to Seoul hundreds of millions of city dwellers have faced restrictions to their day-to-day lives, with huge economic and social consequences.

In this episode of City Talks Andrew Carter is joined by Professor Richard Florida of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management to discuss what the future holds for cities after the immediate effects of Coronavirus have passed, including:

How will professional and social life in cities change in the near future?

Will the virus exacerbate existing socioeconomic divides?

What are the prospects for more devolution now central government has grown significantly in many countries?

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Although the housing crisis has spurred great efforts from central and local government to end the shortage and build more homes, housing remains unaffordable in many cities and large towns. While there is now a good understanding of which cities and towns build the most – and the fewest – homes, much less attention is given to exactly where in cities new homes are being built, and why.

Andrew Carter is joined by Anthony Breach, Analyst at Centre for Cities, and Ivan Tennant, Associate Planning Director at GL Hearn, to discuss a new report looking at the role of suburbs in solving the housing crisis.

As cities across the world struggle to respond to the the coronavirus outbreak, how might they strengthen their resilience in the face of this deadly pandemic, and other long-term social and economic disruptions?

Lina Liakou is Managing Director for EMEA for Global Resilient Cities Network and a former Deputy Mayor of Thessaloniki – Greece’s second largest city. She joins Chief Executive Andrew Carter to discuss the concept of urban resilience and shares expert insights into how cities are beginning to respond to Covid-19.

The underperformance of big cities is at the heart of the North-South divide. If the Government is to ‘level up’ the economy then it needs to tackle this major economic problem.

Director of Policy and Research Paul Swinney joins Andrew Carter to discuss findings from Centre for Cities research into productivity in UK cities and the role that they should play in levelling up the UK.

After years of speculation and debate, the Government has given the go-ahead to HS2 — Britain’s biggest infrastructure project for a generation that promises to drive economic growth, redistribute opportunity and level up towns and cities across the UK.

Professor Tony Travers, Director of LSE London was a member of the influential Oakervee Review that advised the Government on whether to proceed with the project or scrap it.

He joins Andrew Carter to discuss his experience on the panel and the challenge of conducting an objective cost-benefit analysis for such a controversial project.

Clusters such as Silicon Valley are liked by policymakers for many reasons. They are visible, often prestigious, and are effectively cities in miniature. They take the things that make urban economies work and amplify and concentrate them in a particular place.

London's Tech City programme was launched in 2010 to accelerate its tech cluster in Shoreditch and, by 2014, the then Mayor of London Boris Johnson was hailing it a huge success.

But did the policy have any effect? And how might you approach evaluation when there are no like-for-like comparators?

For this episode of City Talks, Dr Max Nathan joins Andrew Carter to discuss his recent paper 'Does light touch cluster policy work? Evaluating the Tech City programme'.

Cities Outlook 2020 takes an in-depth look at air pollution. Our research finds that poor air quality tends to be worse in urban areas, affecting the health of residents and workers and killing thousands each year. Senior Analyst Kathrin Enenkel and Researcher Valentine Quinio join Andrew Carter to discuss the main findings and recommendations from the report and to call for urgent action from local and national government to clean up the air we breathe.

Since the UK general election, there has been much discussion about using R&D as an instrument to level-up the country. But policymakers are grappling with exactly how to support more innovation-led growth in the North and Midlands.

Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Mark Muro, Senior Fellow and Policy Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution and co-author of a recent paper, The case for growth centers: How to spread tech innovation across America. Mark and Andrew discuss the proposals to transform a handful of places in the US into self-sustaining ‘growth centres’, and how this might be replicated in the UK context.

Sao Paulo University’s Professor Raquel Rolnik joins Andrew Carter to discuss her book, Urban Warfare: Housing Under the Empire of Finance. Using examples from across the globe, she argues that our cities have been commercialised and charts how the financial crisis and wider urban politics have left millions homeless and in financial desperation across the world.

Professor Rolnik’s work has been informed by her appointment as the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing in 2008, just as the financial crisis hit. Prior to this, inadequate housing was largely limited to developing countries but the crash provoked situations of precarious housing conditions in many richer countries, including the UK.

In a sign that the ‘Greta Effect’ is cutting through the political agenda, the 2019 Urban Voices City Leaders' Survey found that half of city council leaders and directly elected mayors now rank the environment as a top priority.

But are they getting enough to support to address the challenge from central government?

To discuss this issue and more, Centre for Cities' Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by the think tank's Policy Officer Simon Jeffrey and Arup's Chief Economist Alexander Jan.