City Talks: World Cities and Nation States

In this month’s episode, Andrew is joined by Alexandra Jones and Paul Swinney to discuss what's in store for 2017.

In the main part of this episode, Andrew talks to Greg Clark and Tim Moonen from strategy firm The Business of Cities about two books they have written: World Cities and Nation States and Global Cities. The first book explores the changing relationship between nation states and the increasingly dominant cities they are home to, and the second provides a historical perspective on this development. Greg and Tim outline the different national contexts world cities find themselves in – centralised states, federal states and states that grant cities special status – and then go on to discuss how these affect approaches to cities policy.

The conversation touches on how the degree of urbanisation might impact thinking on cities in different countries, which country gets it most right when it comes to managing their cities, and whether London's dominance makes the UK an outlier internationally. The discussion ends with a look to what the future of urbanisation might look like, both around the world and in the UK.