Smarter funding for better growth October 2026October 2026 The UK needs to get a lot smarter in the way it uses public finance if the government’s ambitions are to be realised. Back in 2019, John Healey asked me to prepare a report for him on Land for Housing, drawing lessons from German and Dutch experience. I wrote up seven case studies that offered replicable lessons, especially regarding how the public and private sectors could collaborate.
Video: Good Cities, Better Lives with Nicholas Falk September 2026 In this episode of Urban Forecast, Oli Lowrie and Jon Ackroyd sit down with Nicholas Falk, Founder Director of URBED, for a wide ranging conversation spanning five decades of urban regeneration.
Switching direction at King’s Cross April 2026July 2026 Esther Caplin and I have lived just South of Kings Cross for over 25 years in a block of flats owned by Camden Council in an area once described as a hellhole. We have experienced the area's transformation first hand. Regeneration stories are often mistakenly credited to iconic architecture, public expenditure or inspired developers whereas the truth is usually much more complex. It involves a series of interests collaborating for a common cause over a long period of time.
POSTCARD FROM SWANSEA AND TIRCOED FOREST VILLAGE: Building new settlements and sustainable urban neighbourhoods August 2025August 2025 Revisiting Tircoed Forest Village, just outside Swansea, reminded me how powerful the “urban village” idea can be when done well. Homes are woven into the landscape rather than imposed upon it. The layout prioritises walking, sociability and stewardship, with a Village Trust set up to manage shared spaces. Decades later, Tircoed still feels vibrant and desirable - a testament to long-term thinking.
POSTCARD FROM UTRECHT: Healthier living and the AoU Congress July 2025August 2025 Spending six days in the Netherlands to attend the Academy of Urbanism Congress in the Dutch city of Utrecht in June brought home the huge benefits from sustained public investment in creating connected cities and healthy neighbourhoods. With such a relaxed way of life in a Northern European city, many of the visitors to the AoU Congress must have wondered whether Dutch cities offered a replicable model for the UK.
POSTCARD FROM KERALA AND TAMIL NADU: What future for mid-sized cities? May 2025July 2025 Travelling around Southern India in February 2025, which was a pleasant break from gloomy England, I was struck by the visible transformation since our previous Indian Urban Futures conference in Tirunelveli and Chennai back in 2019. Streets were cleaner, rural road surfaces have been upgraded, and new intercity highways have opened with imposing flyovers. Forests…
Postcard From Reggio Emilia: Wellbeing and economic growth through cooperation February 2025July 2025 Reggio Emilia stands out as a city with institutions that secure high levels of cooperation and wellbeing. Along with other cities in Emilia Romagna it provides inspiration for how to transform a city to meet the needs of all.
POSTCARD FROM BOLOGNA, ITALY: learning from a modern renaissance June 2023July 2025 Returning to Northern Italy by rail in early April 2023 for a ten day stay in Bologna, my partner Esther and I were struck by how well everything now seemed to work. Whereas both our governments appear out of touch, Italian cities have had enough autonomy to create great places to live and work, while…
Postcard from Trieste, Italy November 2022July 2025 Visiting the peripheral Italian city of Trieste for the first time to assess it for the Academy of Urbanism’s Great City Award, I was glad to come across travel writer Jan Morris’s final book, which she titled memorably Trieste and the meaning of nowhere. Located on a spit which juts out into the Adriatic on…
Postcard from the West Coast of the US: Providing housing (5/5) March 2020July 2025 Providing housing In our travels from Vancouver to Palo Alto we were appalled by the shortages of affordable housing, and the number of people sleeping on the streets. Despite, and possible because of, higher salaries along the West Coast, housing is generally as unaffordable as in London. But the extremes are even more noticeable, as…
Postcard from the West Coast of the US: Connecting places (4/5) January 2020July 2025 Connecting places In our three weeks of travelling between Vancouver in Canada and Palo Alto in Northern California we set out to experience a range of types of transport. Transport systems not only shape the character of cities, and affect how well communities work together, but they also have measurable impacts on pollution and…
Postcard from the West Coast of the US: Growing intelligent/smarter cities (3/5) January 2020July 2025 Growing intelligent or smarter cities One city that offers a glimpse of a better future is Portland Oregon, which is widely known among urbanists for pioneering the principles of ‘Smart Growth’. I was particularly keen to return to Portland to see how it had developed since I visited it fifteen years earlier, since when…
Postcard from the West Coast of the US: Fostering innovation (2/5) January 2020July 2025 Fostering innovation and new work This is the second set of impressions from a three week return visit to California and the North American West Coast in which my partner Esther and I travelled from Vancouver in British Columbia to Palo Alto in Northern California, a distance of a thousand miles. This one deals…
Postcard from the West Coast of the US: Growing good cities (1/5) December 2019July 2025 Growing good cities The latest in my Postcards From the Future, which now number over 40, deal with the links between technological change, urban growth, and human wellbeing. My journey from Vancouver in British Columbia on the West of Canada to Palo Alto South of San Francisco in California took in some of the…
Postcard from Sarajevo August 2019July 2025 Moving to a market economy and sharing land value uplift Returning to Sarajevo for a research conference almost fifty years after I had worked there as a management consultant for McKinsey and Company raised some fundamental questions over how the countries of Central and Eastern Europe should use their recently won ‘freedoms’ to build […]
