This is one of our occasional guest episodes in which I hand the reins to somebody else/shamelessly re-release someone else's hard work.

City Talks is the monthly podcast from the Centre for Cities think tank. Last May its host, the Centre's chief executive Andrew Carter, spoke to ex-Treasury staffer Mike Emmerich about his book Britain's Cities, Britain's Future.

Together, the two of them look back over 200 year years of Britain's urban history. They discuss how cities like Manchester grew out of Industrial Revolution, and became some of the most prosperous and entrepreneurial cities there have ever been – yet came to decline so precipitously in the 20th century. Emmerich argues that, if Britain's cities are prosper in the future, we need to get to grips with the both the cultural and institutional reasons for that.

It's a fascinating interview, and I'm very grateful to Andrew and his colleagues for allowing me to repurpose it as an episode of Skylines. (Why not subscribe to City Talks, to say thanks?) I'll be back to normal service next week.

Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s (normally) hosted by Jonn Elledge.

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