Why is Britain’s economy so lopsided? In most developed countries, you don’t have to move to the capital to find the best jobs, yet in the UK, that’s still the reality for many. London dominates, while our second-tier cities (Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, etc) underperform compared to their European counterparts.

Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for Cities, has spent his career unpicking this puzzle. In this episode, we explore why Britain’s economic geography looks the way it does, what’s holding back regional growth, and what role transport plays in fixing it. Paul explains what agglomeration means and why it matters, why productivity isn’t just about skills and why intra-city transport is more important than rail links between cities.

We also dive into how post-pandemic work trends are reshaping transport economics, why the UK systematically underinvests in urban connectivity and why solving the North-South divide isn’t just about fairness—it’s about unlocking national economic potential.

Given we have a Government obsessed with growth, I really hope Rachel Reeves hears this one…

Most politicians either follow public opinion or get trapped in the orthodoxy of the established approach.

Lee Waters took a different route. As both Minister for Transport and Minster for Climate Change in Wales, he led some of the most radical shifts in UK transport policy: drastically curtailing road-building, introducing a national 20mph speed limit and putting in place the foundations of a European-style integrated public transport system.

But change is hard, and in this discussion, he lays bare the political resistance, entrenched car dependency and cultural battles that make sustainable transport such a tough sell. We explore why transport is often ignored in politics, how it’s the paperwork of design manuals and Treasury rules that quietly shape our world - and why politicians need to stop treating mobility like an economic formula and start seeing it as a social justice issue.

Lee also reflects on the personal toll of political leadership, the lessons he learned about winning public support for difficult changes and why even the most radical policies can become accepted norms - if you stick with them.

If you care about transport, politics or just how to get big changes over the line, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

Frank Elter may be a part-time Professor, but he’s a very real-world professor.

As Chief Scientist and Vice President at Telenor Research, he’s responsible for innovation and planning for one of Norway’s telecoms giants.

He has thought deeply about how corporations can stay innovative. He’s thought about it concerning his work, and he’s researched at his university. He’s even written a book.

On this edition of The Freewheeling Podcast we talk about how modularity can help organisations be “ambidextrous” (i.e. able to focus on operations and innovation), and the fact that every approach creates new problems to solve.

He also tells a pretty remarkable story about how Telenor started its most innovative project to date!

The UK public sector spends somewhere between £300 billion and a trillion. A lot of that goes through public procurement processes.

That creates enormous innovation potential.

Yet, being honest, the words “public sector procurement” aren’t seen as synonyms for innovation.

This week, the new Procurement Act 2023 comes into force, so it seems a good time to stop and look at why public sector procurement is a challenge and what can be done about it.

My guest is a former colleague. I knew Rikesh Shah when he was a colleague as Head of Open Innovation at Transport for London, but now he heads up the Government’s Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre.

In this conversation, we discuss how cultural barriers, such as fear of failure, hinder innovation in procurement and the barriers startups face in selling to the public sector.

Rikesh talks me through how the new Procurement Act introduces pre-market engagement as a requirement and he emphasises the benefits of a process called the Competitive Flexible Procedure.

Above all, though, it’s about the need for public sector organisations to embrace experimentation and iteration.

Why don’t we build homes people wish to live in? Terraced streets are popular and sustainable and support shops, services and transport, so why do we keep building low-density, car-dependent suburbs? And what needs to be done to create a nationwide tram renaissance?

These are just some of the questions I get into in discussion with David Milner, the MD of Create Streets.

Create Streets is a curious outfit: officially, it’s a design consultancy. But it has a policy and lobbying arm, and is highly influential with the current Government. Not bad for just 10 people…

If, like me, you would love to see some big changes in how we design and build towns, this is an episode you’ll enjoy.

Everyone agrees we need more sustainable transport but no-one has enough money to pay for it.

Could ‘land value capture’ be the answer? This is the approach where by transport lines are funded through the increases in the land value that the stations stimulate.

Well, George Hazel thinks so. In fact, he knows so, because he developed the land value capture method used for the recently-reopened Northumberland line.

In today’s episode he tells me how it works; but only after a fascinating discussion on the “Seven Deadly Wins” for making a city succeed.

Jarrett Walker has been designing bus networks for thirty years. From his consulting practice in Portland, Oregon, he’s built a specialism in helping cash-strapped local authorities optimise their networks through his business Jarrett Walker Associates.

And you can’t optimise if you don’t know what public transport is actually for and how you’re measuring whether or not it’s achieving those goals.

Eventually he’d done so much thinking on this topic that he wrote it all down in his book Human Transit.

In our conversation, he talks me through why it’s important to understand whether a transport network is seeking to optimise for coverage or patronage and how ‘access analysis’ can provide everyone with their own personal measure of public transport freedom.

Birmingham was the first city I lived in as a proper ‘grown-up’ and it was metamorphosing before my eyes.

Previously famous as Britain’s ‘car city’, it ripped up its inner ring road the year I arrived.

Today, the city centre is unrecognisable: spacious, walkable and with a brand new tram route snaking past brand new buildings.

Anne Shaw has been involved in this transformation since she first moved to Birmingham in 1991 to take up a job as a drainage engineer.

Today she’s Executive Director of Transport for the West Midlands, and she tells me just how this extraordinary change has been achieved.

Politics tends to focus on what is to be done, but none of it matters if it doesn't actually happen.

We've been living through a crisis of governance recently. Government has become centralised, micro-managing and subject to constant, wild oscillations of policy.

Is this as good as it gets? The Future Governance Forum was set up to make sure it isn't.

Grace Wyld is Head of Policy and Programmes and she joins me to talk about Missions, Devolution and how good Government needs to mean a transformation in how Government works.

Karen Vancluysen has an infectious passion for sustainable transport and urban mobility. As Secretary General of POLIS, she runs a network of over 100 European cities and regions, all innovating to accelerate the transition to more sustainable mobility.

In today’s episode, we chat about the places that are leading the charge, and the challenges of the growth of populism. She gives advice to political leaders aspiring to make change happen and is inspirational on what has been done - and what more needs to happen.

We end with her recommended mobility ‘grand tour’ of Europe, to see what’s already been achieved on the ground.

It’s a great start to Season 3!

Welcome back to The Freewheeling Podcast, everyone.