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.