Next Steps and Future Outlook

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK Ohdoo provroviding tools for businesses across industries into one fully integrated platform, whatever your business needs, Odu is committed to providing it. Learn more at OdWo d. com self directed invvesting trrading Full service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning. few And to think That's just a small taste of what Schwab offers The Geschwab knows that when it comes to your finances Choice matters No matter your goals, investing style, life stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place So you can invest your way Visit Schwab d. com to learn more Hello radical listeners. Let me tell you about a very, very very exciting guest that we've got coming on soon. I'm going to be speaking to Ashen Rogers. he is a legendary landlord. He's been running some of the UK's most celebrated pubs for over a decade, doing it rather well, according to most of his customers. But why am I talking to a pub landlord on this podcast. Well Radical is a place where we talk about the radical changes and trends shaping our lives. And if you imagine In your mind's eye, a few of the most recognizable touchstones of British identity, it wouldn't be long until you arrive at a pub, a public house. They have played a huge part. In our lives for hundreds, hundreds of years And yet they are disappearing at a truly staggering rate. Did you know that in twenty twenty six, two closing Every single two pubs closing every single day. if they keep closing current rate All pubs in this country will be gone by twenty fifty. Yes, that's a bit of a hypothetical. Yes, it's a big assumption. but do you want to live in a country without pubs? We might be only a quarter of a century away from such a fate. What can be done? Should anything be done at all These are the questions I'm going to be putting to Ashine Rogers. He knows a thing or two about saving pubs and transforming them. He's an Irishman himself, but he's very very committed to the British public house. And as always I want your radical questions for me to put to him. You can whats up us onz three three one, two three nine four eightzo three three zero, one two three nine four eight z Please do leave a voice note. we love those or you can email radical bbc. co. uk. Love to get your questions for Oshine Rogers. Now ono this week's episode Okay, so you say you want radical ideas. How is this for a radical idea? A massive new city East Anglia, home to a million people with affordable homes, fantastic public transport and lots and lots of trees. If that sounds mad, if it sounds radical, well we're about to interrogate the idea because today talking about one of the biggest, boldest ideas to solve the housing, planning and generational injustice issues of this country that we've heard for a long time The idea is called Forest City It has a champion in S of Malik and he is today's guest just before we hear from him. Let me give you the context. The price of the average UK home is now eight times the average UK annual salary last time it was that high, wasn't the nineteen eighties, but the eighteen eighties. We have massive projects like the Lower Thames Gateway or HS two, which get lost in a kind of bog of planning. And the solution in the eyes of lots of people is very simple. You build faster and you build better. If you increase the supply of homes, you lower demand, you bring down prices. it sounds easy. The fact is that house building and planning have been a thorn in the side of successive governments for decades or Siv matic. Co wrote a book about sixteen years ago now called The Jilted Generation. He argued that every generation born since nineteen seventy nine has been failed by successive political parties in power because they just haven't built enough homes And now he wants to do something very radical He wants to build Britain's first city for fifty years, the first city in this country since Milton Keynes. called Forest City It would have four hundred thousand new affordable homes, its homes around three hundred fifty thousand, it would house a million people and it would be built on farmland outside Cambridge in East Anglia. For some people, this is an incredibly exciting idea. He's got big backers like Paul Johnson, the former boss of the Institute of Fiscical Studies, Steve McCaddam, who designed the twenty twelve Olympic and Paralympic Games development and also King's cross But it's fair to say there's also a lot of opposition. and a lot of it comes local residents who stand to lose There' be lots of questions about the logistics, about the funding, about the practicality, and about the justice frankly of asking lots of people who, for instance, have retired in beautiful villages in East Angia to move out of their homes or be built on. We're going to get into all of that But whether you agree or disagree with the idea of Forest City, I'm sure you'll agree based on what you're about to hear Schiff Malik idea He's pretty bad When they said Schiv Man' coming in, I was like, not only is he the author of a book called The Jilted Generation, which I read in about nineteen eighty six when it came out. No, twenty ten. I remember that very well, but also I have taken a very great interest in this very radical idea which you have which we're going to talk about today And I just think she it'll be really nice If we just started out shamelessly and we'll come back and talk about you. with the most crazy idea that we've had on this podcast, which you're trying to turn into reality. What's your radical idea It's to build Britain's first city in over fifty years. It's called Forest City. That's at least the name of the project thus far It'll be located just to the east of Cambridge, a place of huge amounts of growth, but strategically hasn't really come together until now. It's located over kind of forty five thousand acres crossing both Cambridgesire and Suffolk It'll contain one of England's largest nature reserves, in fact, the largest on land So twelve thousand acres and also about almost twenty percent, twenty five percent of the entire city will just be trees and woodland in a medieval forest and a new central business district, a new transport, about forty five billion worth of investment into hard infrastructure. So really it's about bringing all these things together Britain back on the map in terms of what we can actually do and reminding ourselves that we are people who do stuff, amazing things. It is just straightforwardy amazing isn't it that we haven't built a city in this country for fifty years. What was the last one we built? Milton Kenes Wow. Why have we not built cities for fifty years That's a really good question. It is one I kind of asked after I' written the book I went and spent a couple of years just asking architects, whyy don't we do this in the West, right? So it's not Britain, obviously who hasn't done this And the answers are kind of various, o, it's just kind of passe, you know, the failures of kind of the nineteen fifties and sixties L Coisiers failures of kind of grand planning And so it just fell out of almost fashion, which seemed to be a kind of ridiculous notion that we could sort of not want to imbue new places with a sense of purpose and a sense of a better future There is no good explanation, except for I guess, you know, it goes with everything else. We haven't really just done much in this country in the way of building. physical kind of infrastructure and homes for decades now Let's be honest. There is a prevailing albut of softly anxiety Prime Minister Sakir Starama has given speeches where he said that we need to escape the warm bath of decline One of the things that's striking about your idea, I willll get into the idea in some detail and then we obviously do some the pushback against it of which there hass been plenty, not least from people who might be directly affected. and in fact already are being directly affected. But one of the striking things is You must be conscious that what you're doing is casting yourself as something of a an antidote or kind of, you know, an escape from prevailing atmosphere in this country, which is the feeling that this is a country that just can't get things done at the moment I think as a people, we're quite skeptical of the kind of, I mean, it's a French word, the sort of grand p, right? That goes horribly wrong, inevitably White elephants, as they call them ye. Yeah. Or even if they do go right' a sense that exactly as it kind of said, you know, it's imbued with someone's ego, et cetera, et cetera You know, we've had in recent memory we've had HS two, right? You know, huge overruns and what the hell are we doing? can't even seem to build a railway. But not long before that, we had the Olympics, right? compleomted on time. Somewhat on budget. It was I think twice the budget as expected, but certainly a huge success on the world stage. I think it surprised us as a people. Timation of East London where you live? I mean, I lived in East London when it was announced. They said, but hang on there's a big river. It's called the River Leee. This is London's second river. How you going to build this on the Lee Valley? You go to the Lee Valley now, it's an extraordinary place. Lots of young families live there. It's And a lot of people feel, I think that the Olympics of twenty twelve and the Paralympics of twenty twelve was really the last time the kind of nation felt good about itself. And I remember talking to the late great Tessa Chaal, who tried to she was the Olympics minister, a centrial figure in the winning of the bid, So of made the case that you know you needed Olympic or economic gold in a time of economic need. And there is just a kind of psychological value to a people of aiming big isn't there? There is a sort of it's an energizing and lifting thing where you kind of lift up your horizon and say, let's do something crazy People completely forget that it used to be 's largest kind of fridge mountain, right? That's what we built the Olympics out of a huge garbage dump in many respects, right And I live there. And I remember thinking to myself, God, this place it's so amazing. I had a four year old and you know, you'll know this from having children. You get huge amounts of anxiety because they like to run around And of course, they run into the road, you don't know where they're going to be end up and you're forever kind of anxious But I remember she could run for fifteen minutes straight to the park without ever crossing a main road or any road, in fact, with cars on it And I thought, wow, someone's thought about this, someomeone's really thought about how my child cross this place, navigate and way find a way through this. because someone's thought about this rationally, whyy don't we do this more often? Surely we can because we've just done it Let's outline the problems to which forest city is an answer or a solution. and I will do this with s three big buckets. One is just young people. will come this gets us into your daughter and the dauer generation. The other is housing and the other is just planning more broadly. These things are very related. Why do why is Forest City necessary in the context of Britain's young people who in twenty ten you described as the jilted generation and who I think most people would say all of the evidence suggests become somewhat more jilted since. What does jilted mean Well I mean, you know, we use it kind of jilted at the altar right, lefte behind, forgotten dismissed and almost betrayed, right? So it means a kind of a variance of all those things kind of put together And the title was taken from a prodigy album, which I'm sure you know incredibly well.y two actually. Yeah, ninety two But that working title was also supposed to kind of say, to kind of as a generation of millennials. and now obviously Gen Z as well overthrow the kind of cultural and economic dominance of an older generation, which is still very much with us, right? We're still talking about ultimately most of politics, most of economics is about what boomers want And that is kind of left now where you've got, you know millennials the oldest millennials now forty five, forty six So it's more than half the country, demographically speaking, they've been left behind their needs aren't catered for, which is deeply problematic because the country's economy is now suffering because of that So in the context of how young people are being screwed over, what's going wrong with housing in this country? whichich just simply haven't built enough That's it. and it's way too expensive So I mean, if you want the kind of technocratic way of putting it, price to earnings ratio, right? How much do you earn versus how much does a house cost Well, that historically for decades and decades and decades, certainly since the Second World War has been about three and a half times your income to about five. And it hovers and it goes kind of up and down and that's basically where it's been. And people used to complaining, oh how' are very expensive, and that was when it was five Well, now it's eight And in London, Oxford, Cambridge, the people places that are very economically successful, it's eleven So you know, you've got millions of young adults living at home with their parents. It's absolutely astonishing. Yeah the number of young men and women, by which I don't actually mean young. I mean under thirty five. Yeah It's not young which is which used to be kind of, you know, ull a decade into what we think of adult life. The proportion of them living with their adults still is genuinely astonishing. It's a third in some cases. And when you say the price of earnings ratio nationally, the average is eight, it's worth people just be reminded that the last time houses were that expensive as a multiple of average by which I think we mean median annual salaries wasn't nineteen eighty, it was eighteen eighty. Yeah the Victorian a. Vict So we're basically kind of a hundred and fifty year low, almost a century and a half since it's been this hard. to afford a house Is that simply a case of supply? Is it simply that we just haven't built enough houses in your view? Yeah, you can tinker around the edges and do some kind of fiscal kind of maneuverings and chuck extra money at people to give them a bit of an extra deposit. But at the end of the day, yeah, that's what it comes down to, right? We just simply haven't built enough homes for decades. And would you accept that that's partly because the population has grown so much, which in turn is because of large scale immigration So immigration, yeah has added more people to the country. They tend to live in houses of multiple occupation. So actually what you're doing is taking the same housing stock and just stuffing more people in, which isn't great for them and it certainly isn't great for everyone else. But no, it isn't the substance of the problem still we're short about on the kind of more conservative account, about four and a half million homes Put put it this way, what's the worst that could happen if we build more homes We end up with second homes. But there is this idea a lot of people have, which is that Britain is a crowded country. It's got a very high population density. There is this kind of question as why we haven't built enough houses. And this gets us into another thing, which is planning Broadly speaking, What's going wrong with planning in this country It's actually fairly simple to diagnose in many senses. know most of people listening who don't live in the centre of a city will have had some terrible experience with planning in their local area So they see homes being built on the edges of towns or in villages And their complaints are basically threefold Houses are ugly There's never any infrastructure that comes with them. so they don't get the kind of doctor surgeries or roads or schools that kind of know to meteliorate the extra population And then the last bit is that when the houses are built they're just as expensive as anything else in the local area. So what problems, affordable housing problems are you solving And the reason for that The reason for all of that and why is because of what we call the kind of local plan system What is that? Basically your local government area District cououncil, wherever it might be. goes every five years they go look, let's have a call for sites. What does that mean? They go ask a bunch of private developers, professionals who land bank You know, whereere do you think you could build some houses? What does landback mean Yeah, it means you hold onto pcels of land which you think, you know, maybe in five years, ten years, maybe even fifteen years, that could be useful. We could build some houses on it, But right now maybe we' we don't have the permission, right So you kind of hold onto that land. It's not per se a bad thing And that's their job, right? It's their job is to kind of keep that pipeline of development going. So the local council calls out for sites. The private developers come back and say, we could build here And then of course there's this thing in the middle, infructure, which never gets thought about strategically. That's up to someone else, right? It's up to the roads, people to do the roads, It's up to the utilities companies to build the kind of infrastructure for electricity and water, etcetera. But it's not part of that local plan, basically. So for certainly for fifteen years, even longer, really, several decades We've had this system and it's delivered Terrible, terrible outcomes Ultimately people the developers just want to build the homes. That's where the money is. And of course they don't want to build the infructure. So you have this long process called you know seectction one hundred six agreements, which get kind of negotiated and battle over. and local people go, o, this is terrible. We're not getting our park and this was supposed to be built then and it's not. It's just a terrible system. We are actually moving away from it, but Forest City in a sense, this idea is supposed to say, look Stop with all this stupid, low grade, low ambition mess and start thinking about these things strategically. We've got to do all these things, whyy don't we just do them in one place at one point in one time for one region W wouldouldn't that make more sense? Just on the planning and the infrastructure, first just saying, I'm mildly obsessed with the subject. It is quite astonishing for people to understand the thicket of bureaucracy and pain and misery you have to go through in order to do big things. is Why is Britain in this mess over planning. There's a guy called, I'm going to load this question by saying there's guy, I think his name's Dan Wang wrote a book recently about China. And he said that if you look at the the kind of Pit bureau of the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, it's mostly engineers They love building stuff. We do have in this country and in America an extraordinary bunch of lawyers People say we've gone from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers Why is planning So Damn slow and messy and laborious and expensive in this country because we're afraid That's basically what it comes down to. We're afraid We don't have confidence in ourselves And it's a real damn shame because if you look at our history, our recent history We gave the world the modern world, modern industrial world. Everything from the kind of spinning jenny to the jet engine and the steam engine and penicillin and DNA and even arguably the AI revolution began with if you want Deep mind, which was bought by Google, granted, but it was from here. I think we're just afraid and we become Glorotic And why I say afraid? it means that You want to be able to gold plate everything And sometimes gold plating really works, right? Take the humble British plug It is a marvel of design. It is built by in a sense paranoia that someone somewhere might get electrocuted at some point. No one else in the world has this system, but it works fine, and it's a brilliant design at the end of the day But If you put that into practice sort of everywhere all at once and then imbue yourself as a nation with the sense that we can't get anything done, well, you basically defer responsibility from anyone I just say you're going to do it and have a force of will to be able to go, we're just going to do it. We don't need to mess around consulting any longer. I' give you an example, Milton Keynes, right? the last city that we built. You know how long the consultation period was for Milton Keynes? six weeks. 'a that was all you needed statutorily. That's all you needed. Six weeks. and that's it. That''s fine. We've consulted. We're going to just do it. And sometometimes you just have to have that will confidence. and I think some of that is down to a lack of political economy Well, two things, lack of political economy, so an understanding how politics and economics function in the built environment And also a generation of politicians. We're only beginning to see those MPs who can't afford their own homes, who can't afford rent become ministers, if.ew Pennyook, who I think is a planning minister He's forty odd. I mean, you know that sort that kind of generation is is coming through. I think there's two really important bits of context. The first is History in this country. As you say, this is a country that has built extraordinary things in extraordinary places at great speed. The Garden City movement of Lechworth and Well and Garden City, which is connected to what happens in North London with Hampson Garden Suburb. The way that Birkenhead Park in Liverpool was a model for central Park in New York. Most people don't know that. The way that Bourneville, a village like Bourneville near Birmingam, ports sunlight neariverpool Milton Keeenes, Basled, and Run called East Kill Brad. This is a country that consistently for decades, if not centuries built absolutely amazing carurbations. And I actually want to do something else which is the bit that' get me inrouble and I very hope I can persuade Rutfus to lead in to leave in I said something on another podcast, arilliant podcast by Jarge Brandreth the other day, which was hilariously misreported. fast, I'm not complaining about that because know'm longer than the two, takes a lot to make me cry I tried to point out some of the ambition that's going on in other parts of the world. And I just think that most people in this country, unless they've been very lucky to travel may not have the faintest idea about the rate at which other parts of the world are building And I'm not talking here about the rocket factory that Elon Musk has got, where he's building a hundred skyscraper sizeed reusable rockets in the next few years I'm talking about places like the Middle East, UAE to Bi T like places like Singapore Talk about places like India. Talking about places like China Did you know China has built Can I' giveess this a quiz? this's unfair becausecause you're man in command F facts. and I'm going to do a little quiz. I'm big f of. Can you guess how many new cities China has built Since the Communist Party came to power in nineteen forty nine. I think it's about six hundred. Big win. J manic nose this up. It is about six hundred. fantastic. Can you guess o I'm going to keep going with this c R? Can you guess How many cities there are in the UK with more than a million people I think it's about six, butball part. I'll give you the next answer. In the EU, so six in the UK, eleven in the USA, fifteen in the EU How many cities Listeners and Shiv Malik In China have more than a million people be load. I mean, they have a population of obviously one point three billion and they do agglomeration like this really well. so they know that they need to get to a million people. I would say I'm stalling for time probablyrobably about one hundred fifty Fantastic.es. It says the latestigures weve got is one hundred and thirty six. There we go. Right. And actually if you calculate it differently, veryery, very good get very impressive. you've passed the quiz test Around the world there is just a The honishing, astonishing development Often in places that aren' democracies, which we'll come back to, but I want to ask you to what extent you've actually been inspired, not only by becoming a father and thinkking about where your d children might grow up and live, but by kind of going around the world and seeing the rate of development In our lifetimes, Dubai didn't exist about know forty plus years ago, really? basasically. sixty yearso, Dubai was sand. Yeah. And it's hard to conceive now. In places like if you want Tel Aviv and also all the way, you know, most of the cities in China that were part of that six hundred, again, didn't exist forty years ago in any kind of noticeable way that they do, certainly now, right? Whereas we've had Milton Keeennes, which is a wonderful place in lots of ways,ast. Well, actually, you know you kind of had that list, right eople have been visiting Britain to understand how we do it because they think we do it best, right? So Milton Kenes, you'll find these kind of little designs repeated around the world when you go to other places, right? For better or or worse, people have visited Britain continuously to learn and understand how we do what. It's not build buildings, it's actually how we placeem, right? That's a kind of technical term It's how we build yeah, it's how we build places, how we do political economy if you want in all these kind of very sort of weird and curious ways that we think are kind of semi sort of inventive, but the other the rest of the world finds fascinating. They Oh wow, you can do this, you can do that, right? We forget who we are in ourselves and you only really understand that I think when you do in fact travel. But look, Amal, there's another part, I wouldn't be honest if I was saying, look this You know, the notions of forest city are all about kind of being inspired by what's in the rest of the world. That is actually is not true It's almost partly being embarrassed by how slow we are. so I'll give you another story. Some very rich people from Malaysia are part of the kind of Malaysian sort of their of sovereign wealth funds. They said, lookook, you know we'd love to invest in a project like this for our city, but we just don't believe in Britain. We had a project where I think we had They said it took nine years to build nine bungalows. They were being slightly derisory of the whole thing. They said us to you. But they said why you guys just don't know how to build? You can't build. Why would we invest? It would take us ages to build and get nowhere? Whatere did you so I mean, I was embarrassed and I didn't know what to say because they're right, right? And obbviously I sort of also said, look, well we have these special tools called development corporations. and look, we built the Olympics You know, we got into an RG by about that, but there's always a sense of confidence that just isn't there about the built environment in Britain at the moment. So you speak to anyone abroad, they want us to succeed. they really want us to succeed. We have You know, partly because of our language, our history, and yes, all the things that we've given to the modern world, we have so many annglophiles either you by sort of distant relation or just because they love our culture. And so they want us to succeed, but they realize, well, look, you can't do it. The professionals realize that you just can't do. what are you doing? Can you get your act together? So why is a city for a million people in East Aangley the answer Well here's the other part to that thing. So it's not just inspiration and it's not just kind of slight depression or embarrassment of the rest of the world. But it's at the heart of this project is really this, which is the social contract and repairing the social contract, right? So what does that mean? It simply means you have to have a country where people can work hard Buy or rent a home and raise a family If you can't do that, your country is broken And that is basically what the heart of that book was in twenty ten the jilty generation And so that's been my motivation. And it's actually imbued with a lot of, you know, I seem very positive and happy. and I am and a incredibly optimistic person, but there is a sadness,s a welter of sadness Inside of me, having watched this for fifteen years, nothing get better, but more than that losing my friends and family to ab broad America to Germany to Norway, You know, I've lost my community of people. you know, I thought our children would grow up together, they have not I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Shif Manik. If you are, please do subscribe to this podcast on BC sounds And that way you will not miss future episodes. And if you do subscribe Just make sure you've got your push notifications turned on That way you will get an alert whenever we publish a new episode and you'll never miss out. How good would that be? Thank you so much and now back to Shiv Malik I remember just to put a kind of timestamp on this. I remember working in newspapers in about twenty thirteen, fourteen and getting a phone call from a very senior member of the government, a coalition government the time saying you're going to love this, a young guy. I think from a very senior minister, probablyably a member of the cabinet saying,'ve a big announcement tomorrow I think to be all over the front of the independent, a paper I worked at the time, we're going to have a raft of garden cities We're going to have a massive new raft of Garden cities. They're going to be like, Well in Garden City, Lechw withth Garden City, you're going to love it You should go town. I can't remember what The independent coverage was at the time, but I remember thinking This would be so cool I hope one day, twelve years from now where maybe I'm lucky enough to be blessed with children. Maybe a garden city would be a cool place to grow up, you know I've been to Welling and Lechworth. These are cool places They've got parks and schools and transport links and nice houses What happens it then? Absolutely dididdlely squa. which is where Shiv Malik and Forest City comes in Why are you going to succeed when others have failed? So I was in the midst of writing another book, a third book called The Mutual Future And in it was the showcase of this idea was that you could build actually ten cities if you want preremised on some interesting lines, right that you could have genuinely affordable housing, people where we're taking it back to the historic rate of about three and a half to five kind of price to earnings ratio beautiful housing and you could place make at scale and you could so it was sort of this disgrantit and I thought, you know what? I'm just going just Go and do it stop writing this book because I'm going to spend another couple of years talking about it rather than actually just getting stuck in and involved. And I think at the heart of this is this campaign And I realized look getting this done is actually politics The vast proportion of this stuff. there is nothing in the laws of engineering or finance or economics or whatever it might be. It's just politics. W it politics or it democracy? Would it be' the same thing. I mean, I can you know use it its these are problems of our own making in our own mind. It's about whether to take planning permission, right? sounds like quite a dry technical term The word is permission. in that. A actuallyctually the plans are easy enough to devise, right? But it's the permission.ill you get willill we permit ourselves to do this, right for ourselves, right? That's basically what it comes down to tell you who doesn't It's politics. I tell you who doesn't always seek planning permission. I imagine I don't across aspersions. Sus us, but is Xinping. Thiss astonishing statffish Junior who works in this programe pulled out. In the first decade of Xi Xinping's rule Builders in China poured more concrete than America did in all of the twentieth century. Now Xi Jinping can do that. China is building cities at an extraordinary rate. Uurban areas expanded by forty percent. twow thirds of its population now live in one. Extraordinary things happening in China China' is an autocracy. and we'll get into in a moment some of the objections to Foreign City, but have you found that essentially You know, some of the great schemes, if you think about, you know, your Forest city is near another city called Cambridge. Cambridge is my favorite place in the world. It's I think the most beautiful city in the world. Cambridge was born of a time A long time ago, before you had to consult people before you built beautiful colleges on a gorgeous river with lovely kind of bends in it. Do you think that fundamentally? Democracy and this kind of ambition cannot be reconciled Uh Yeah yes and no. I think look, that doesn't make it easy, right? So on the ground, it means persuading people And that is hard. but if you're doing something that's big enough, suddenly you can talk at a regional level, right? So for example, make it more practical. If we were talking about two thousand homes, well, we know we'd be some private developer at the end of the day that no one would care about And we certainly wouldn't be able to break the economic model to deliver genuinely affordable housing. And we'd still fight the same battle on the ground, right? withith people who'd go, lookook, we just can't stand another two thousand homes If you suddenly make this a lot bigger in terms of a project, you can actually talk about delivering all sorts of things in terms of infrastructure, new hospitals, right? people go, o, but we you know Where's the hospital going to be? Well, where's the GP surgery? It's not just a GP surgery. It's a hospital, right? You kind of have to move beyond their broken trust relationship with private development and actually kind of expand horizons. And you can say to a place as we are town of Haverhill Well actually you haven't had a train station. you're thirty thousand people, one of England's largest towns without a train station It's a nightmare for them to commute to Cambridge It takes forty five minutes. It's a few miles down the road. It shouldn't take that long, it's nuts build a train station because it makes sense, right? We don't have to go begging the treasury for extra funds or whacking up taxes till everyone bleeds dry, actually you'll create value. So people get it because the scheme is big enough, right? So if you actually think big enough, you can talkal big enough and you can sell big enough and you can actually bring enough people into the tent. Why this spot? Why East Angly? Why here It's actually as quit as's no brainer, right? If you're going to pick anywhere in the country, Cambridge is at the top of everyone's list, both economically and politically for getting things done. Let's get into the specifics. The big dream is you know, people can look at the pictures online. this thing doesn't exist yet, they might feel inspired. Let's get into the the nitss and grits. God I want to enjoyittyitty gritty Yeah. How much is this going to cost So the infrastructure we've costed at about forty five billion Now it should be a lot cheaper to build in this area because it's what is known as greenfield development, right? So you haven't unlike if you wanted to put a tram into Gainbridge it would cost a lot more because you' got to dig up a lot of medval streets and it'll take know a decade longer if you want. So that is the benefit of doing in a place like this, But that's what roughly we've costed at. That doesn't include the cost of the homes, but you sell those and obviously the commercial buildings and the commercial land. againain, you sell that, you lease that and you reap that money back. your argument is that this will be a net contributor within how many years to the British economy? Well you spend you have a out lay to begin with, but in time know, obviously nice place for people to live, but in time there' will be a net contribution abbsolutely. I mean,, and it's not always the case. So Milton Keyes was known as Millstone Kenes to Buckinghamshire Council, I think for a very long time. because it does suck up resources. But with this again, you have to do it at scale, right? So all economists know, look, if you build a place and it's fifty thousand, right? It's a big town then people are basically still commuting to somewhere else. emmployers don't really regard you as a kind of in a hot ambitious place to find extra talent, right? So you need to say this is going to be big where you're going to find talent and you can you know locate here strategically over the long term, right? So then the land is valuable to them, right? If not the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, who's going to provide the Dsh So actually, we know I've had those conversations with loads of funders, people who do debt financing at huge scales, billions, trillions of trillions. Well they got you know these people have got you, kind of a trillion of assets under management, right in some cases. but certainly tens of billions, hundreds of billions. So they do this. I've had those conversations. are they would love to invest in something like this. And really it's just about bottoming out the kind of case for have we got the politics, right Right? Have we got the development corporation that can actually make this happen And then have we got the ultimate business model, right? Do the finances stack up at the end of the day? we've got AUM assets under management people will be familiar. If there are people who are managing over a trillion dollars, you're talking about some of the biggest institutions of modern capitalism, people who basasically massive, massive, massive funds that manage money all around the world. And you're saying that those people would come on board They're key and they're interested. They are all investors are always looking for places that with low amounts of risk with high returns, right? the kind of magic sort of thing. But now we never it Yeah, so the return would be standard returns, but the question is for them, it's about political risk. That's constantly what you, I talked to several billionaires, talked to lots of people with lots of money and their number one concern is political risk, right? We don't think this particular government is ambitious enough and would back it. So put it to me this way it was put to me this way. If this was the Trump government saying it, and I'm no Trump supporter per se, right? That's not where my politics areigned But this is what was said to me. If it was the Trump government, we know that it would get done and we'd feel comfortable backing it, right? But we just don't trust this particular administration. And they wouldn't have trusted the last administration either, the conservative one. So it's about Britain again, right and our political system. Is this British billionaires or foreign billionaires you're talking to? They are British based billionaires in this case for this particular story. So they want to put their money into forest City Yeah, ye, they do. I mean they would love Britain, I put it this way, to be really precise, they would of course love Britain to be doing ambitious things because they already have their money invested here. They already have businesses that make them hundreds of millions. Of course they want Britain to be on the front foot on the global stage and not a kind of sort of semi embarrassment in that way Of course they would want to see Britain build a city. Why is what the goovernment is doing not sufficient? So the Ministry of Housing Community's local government told us three hundred forty two thousand one hundred net additional homes have been delivered in England between the start of Parliament, july ninth, twenty twenty four and the fifteenth of march twenty twenty six. They're doing what they need to. They're building homes, hundreds of thousands. I mean, everyone knows that they had a target, which is one point five million homes by the end of this parliament. They're not going to make it. They know that. E everyveryone knows that. And one point five million homes is simply not enough. They say Well, they say they start slow and then you accelerate. they're going to hit that. Sure one point five million homes in the parliament wouldn't be bad if they got there. The new towns program was kind of is a flagship of theirs and that will deliver something like two hundred thousand at most homes It's not enough in your view. It's not enough. I mean, everyone knows it's not enough. That's not just my view. The question is what more can you do and how can you do it better? So it's not just about homes. Th The new toowns program, again, is very simple. It has no political economy to it, right? The idea is you get a bunch of private developers to build a homes to sell them off and that's it, jobs are good and everyone goes home at the end of the day These aren't places, right? These aren't new places certainly. and they are't where we're thinking kind of ambitiously, look, how do we strategically not just deliver homes, but infrastructure and of course commercial land and space. so you can actually treat these as whole places, right? How would you characterize the reception you've had from local residents It I't mis reppent it I don't know what you it's really, really difficult turning up to a place where people have very so so just so people kind of know This it's a huge forty five thousand acres is not small. peopleeoplen't going to know what that means, I guess. So if you live, for example, if you live in London, it's from Hamstead to Dullwich, right O which sort of two million people live in that spot. It's four and a half times the size of Cambridge So big massive city. Yeah big. It's It needs to be big in a sense It incorporates at the moment there's about eight thousand people who live there currently And there's about twenty four villages. And some of those villages are really, really quite beautiful. They would be totally chocolate box in the way that they wouldd be classified. Do they survive Yes, in terms of the houses and the villages, of course, they remain exactly that. but I can't get around the fact that as soon as you step outside of that village and you can placeemake in all sorts of interesting ways, you can you use those twelve thousand acres of forest to kind of envelop and kind of protect the village itself from the rest of the city, but they will step out and eventually they'll drive a minute and a half and it will be a city There's no getting around that, right? Why you know I'm not going going to lie and say it's otherwise. And of course there thiss compensation you could pay. But I've had those conversations and people who've said, look, someone said to me I am seventy years old. I have deliberately retired in this is my choice to retire in a village in the choir of the beauty and beauty of the English countryside, and I will live in a building site until I die h if you if this goes ahead and When you hear stuff like that firsthand and you sit with people and you talk to them in their gardens and they're serving you tea and telling you this, it's really hard to hear And this isn't an easy trade off in that sense. It's just it needs to be done for the sake of not just the country but a million people who need They need a hope that this country and them and their own lives can actually be better, right? It's a hard trade to make. A these homes going to beautiful one of the best architects in the country. Imin Taha, we just kicked off our project actually build a demonstrator house for a four bedroom terrace home And I think Again, people have a reference point for new build and it's ugly. they're awful. I would never want to live in basically any of those builds. So glad you said that because it's quite hard. I've tried to survey public opinion or look into kind of public opinion about this. You know there's a lot of fashionable opinion about architecture which kind of really put some people off. I've got a very I think unfashionable opinion, which is a huge amount of new build homes are absolutely horrific to look at What are they going to say when they see your buildings in Forest City I hope they say this is one of the most beautiful places they've ever lived in. Is that beauty affordable? Of course, yeah, it is. It really is. And look why it's affordable is because you actually look agricultural land costs nine thousand an acre As soon as you get planning permission, it costs four hundred thousandars an acre. As soon as you build anyway in London, it's going to cost you upwards of ten million an acre Right Soee people they're not even comparable in terms of costs, right? So that's the basic beginnings of how you start to get affordable housing isn't the only thing that you need But yes, they will beautiful. And actually, here's the intellectual problem. which is how do you then not do pastiche right? whichich is much derided and people can also argue the other way and go, Hey, look, you're just taking the best of the past and re emulating it But for me there's a problem, which is to say, look, if the whole point of forestity or many one of the major points is to say the future is better than the past. R If you don if you simply just adopt the aesthetics of the past wholesale, right? without any kind of modulation or reformation of it thenen you know, kind of what are you saying about the future? You're like, oh, no, they did it better in the golden age was yester year, right? When you say affordable, what you kind of obviously you can't put a price on a house that has to be built in a city that doesn't ex? So we can, we can actually. We've said stated for not It it's a city. it'll contain all kinds of housing from you know, mansion blocks and big apartments in tall towers, all the way to kind of, you know, two bedroom sort of houses. But the four bedroom home is what we focused on to start with. Be I think that's a kind of It's ambitious and it's not bigger than the three bedroom Victorian terracist house I think that lots of people in the country kind of live in. and think that that's the best thing since slice breread. And it's not, it could be better. it could be bigger. But the price we've set is three hundred fifty thousand pounds, right? For the south In Cambridge, new homes that you're kind of mentioning, they go for six hundred to six hundred fifty thousand pounds now right now. One of the reasons I askking about opposition is because we were struck by the proactess of people who took against your view. And I really, by the way, I don't want to misrepresent this. I don't want to cast this as kind of you know Siv's got this idea and people can hear the extraordinary passion with which you speak and they might even sort of laud your ambition. I don't want to misrepresent the opposition because there might be people who you know live locally who think this is fantastic because it gives them hope for their children. But it's worth saying there are a lot of people who are pretty cheesed off. Nick Timothy, who's the local MP consonservative MP he thinks you would Laad But Nick toity aside, When you went on BBC radio Suffolk and Winterfiewed, some of the responses were strong. So Cheryl said, and I quote, I am absolutely liivid. I cannot believe somebody has the temerity to say that he spent lockdown here for the peace and the quest to get away from it all, and he now wants to destroy the very place he came to for peace and quiet. He wants to come here, build a city, make his millions, and disappear back to London and leave us with the aftermath. Well no He's also building on prime agricultural land. How are we going to feed people? We've already got solar farms going up everywhere in ten years' time. People say we've not got enough food, we've not got enough land. Just go back to London, do whatever you do there and leave us alone That's not an atypical response. I get that on Facebook. I get that. And actually this is why I like to talk to people in person. Yeah, and it's difficult. It's really hard and difficult and the best outcome I ever get from people who reallyerent inherently kind of object to what we're doing is I get why you're doing it I think it's actually a pretty good idea, but I just don't want to hear And phrase not in my backyard Nimbiism. And I don't want to divide people who praise. I think nimbism is often not very helpful. But can I tell to Cheryl's look, there's a lot of passion what Cheryl says, but there's some specific points here, which is, first of all, are you going to stand to make millions Myself Yes. So I've already said very publicly that I'm happy to give up absolutely everything. I don't care about the money. Did you go to this area during lockdown and enjoy the peace of quiet there I've written I've lived probably a year and a half of my life in Suffolk over both the pandemic for writing books and sorts of things. That's true. Okay, arere you building on prime agricultural land I'm just going to say yes, it's true At the same time, it turns out can when you really try of drill down into, it turns out we can give water to vegetable farmers elsewhere in suuffolk and start to increase productivity. Farmers don't need more land. be more productive, right? If people are worried about food security, the answer isn't never build over any agricultural land. You've got to be more inventive than and it can be. Jerry in Stowmarket on this phone and echoed the point about farmland but added For a City is a property developers's dream. They'll buy up the farmland at low prices, get a change of use. Once they've got that, the prices will rocket Also, how many of these places are going to be built are to be for social housing? I don't see any benefit at all. Again, let's take his point and turn is it a property developer' dream? It would be if it was a private development, but it's not.s we're asking the government to actually build this. There's no way youine the forty five billion Ultimately, our job is as this private company ACDC, right to kind of you know by the way, there's a bunch of other people also doing infrastructure projects in this way. They're justC is the name of the compananyays the Albion City Development Corporation. Um is we set it up in back in sort of September time. A a pun on the ACDC. Yeah you know a bit of kind of rock and roll, I guess too. It's the best name we could come up with for what we would do, I guess. There's a bunch of other people also wanting desperate to see Britain build infrastructure, right? And they can't get planning or the civil serervice or, you know, the kind of national infrastructure board to kind of do anything, right? And so they're getting frustrated like me So Our job is a bit like SbcoO to create all of the necessary conditions for this to happen, including all of the planning etcetera etc. we don't actually build the city. That's down to ultimately the development corporation, which might be a joint venture with maybe us, but a bunch of other actual proper builders, right? That's how we've structured it. So of course, what you're reading out is not They can have a long set of rational arguments about why this is wrong and that's wrong People feel basically two things They want to live in villages because that's what they've chosen or that's and it's not just like what they know. It's what they deliberately, in many cases chosen They understand what cities are they don't want tove one And the second thing is a huge deficit of trust, rightly so around the development that's already happened where they live and again, what they know. and their right to not trust private developers. Yeah. And I I to be's going on.ure. And I want to be really clear in reading out this opposition, I want to be really clear that I just think this gets us into the trade offffs of kind of what is involved in living in modern Britain We approached Jeff Wilkinson, who's a charted at surveyor for years experience and he said, There is no way we can build this as we have a huge construction skills gap Loads of professionals and especially the ones who can build and sign off something like this are all heading into retirement. We need another thousand building control officers just to sign off what's been built or fixed post Grenfell However, fifteen percent of the UK's three thousand building control officers will retire in the next two years. Now I don't imagine ie that when you We're first getting excited about Forestity and first decided to make this kind of your life's work as it is now. You thought to yourself I wonder about the percentage of building control officers that retiring in I did actually. Yeah. you've got to have ahead for the detail, right? And youve got to understand what the fine grain problems are. You can't just be wishy washy about this, right? Because you're going to get huled up instantly. So on that note, the question is, do you have the right attitude to solve problems,? So people say Oh, where are you going to find the doctors and the nurses, right? For all these hospitals you want to build? Well, okay, look, that's another set of problems. We'll solve them. On this specifically, I had a conversation with one of the big four kind of skills providers for the construction industry. What do they want? They want to expand. Great. So they rang me up. They go, here you're building a city. We could train three thousand people each year. That's what we can definitely do. And you can solve these problems They are eminently solvable, but you've got to have the will to want to do it. And in a spirit again of fairness, Jeff Wilkinson went on, However, there are ways SHiv can succeed, but it will come at a cost to projects elsewhere. He will need a consortium of three large contractors. goes on to say however, given the massive people and skills shortages in construction, it would mean similar but smaller projects like Ebbsfleet, Garden City will grind to a halt E I mean, by the way, Ebbsfleet is already kind of basically ground to a halt. It's had fifteen years and it hasn't built you know anything near what it was supposed to. And again, you have to think out of the box. So you have to do, I think three things. you need to go in with the requisite kind of right attitude, right? to go, I'm going to solve these problems because they're emminently solvable at the end of the day. We built cities, we live in cities. we know how to do this. It must be possible, right? It can't preima face it must possible. And then you've also realize you've got to have an eye for that detail because there are a multitude of things you need to resolve. Building a cities. Yeah incorporates everything. And you've got to want to also then horse trade with people, right? Lots of people this is politics. in the kind of way that in my mind it goes back to kind of When you read those kind of long journalistic tomes of kind of nineteen sixties seventies America and mayors, right? They're all horse trading and trying to bargain stuff or on the Senate floor, right? So it feels like that. we don't have a British example of it in a sense because we're all you know, it's public procurement. it's going to take a long time, but actually just need to get stuck in in horse trade, right? And that's my job has mainly been between trying to realize actually there are huge interests at play here They all actually want some of the same things. They don't know it yet. My job is to communicate that to them And actually you can unlock a huge thing from this idea by doing this because it's a city. It contains lots of things. Can I put to you an email completely out of the blue to me from Andrew Colly in Suffol. I don't know if you know the name. Andrew do I know Andrew ye. do. OkayK Andrew I'd tom So Andrew, obviously alerted to the fact you're coming on this podcast because we' pnted for questions and you're kind of going to stick around and answer some listener questions. Andrew got in touch me I don't know mister Colly I'm going to call you, Andrew, and I want to say thank you very much indeed for being in touch with me. Sent me a message saying I understand you might be making a podcast about Forest City One If so I hope you willll reflect the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the one hundred seventy thousand residents of West Suffolk ose this project and that you and your research team will make every effort to explain the reasons why this project is not feasible, needed or wanted. That's a sort of spirit of Anangel. I'm not going to do this whole email because it's relatively long for a podcast of this length. Goes on to say at a meeting in Haverhill, which you mentioned on march second, we were told by Shiv Malik that our homes, land and businesses would be compulsily purchased if this project went ahead This was, as you can imagine, deeply troubling. There is a sense in the area that the current residents are being treated as disposable by Shiv and his team as aging retired, middle class nimbies. This is not the case. The area in question is home to many thousands of people who by necessity or choice are building their lives. So NHS staff from Adam Brooks and West Suffolk Hospital teachers and other key staff from many schools. Now he goes on to say again in sppirit of fairness, Shiv Malk is someone who has very valid concerns about the economy about the housing crisis, about the prospects for young people in the UK. But Forest City Forest City O in and of itself is not going to solve these. I trust we willll interrogate Mr. Malik and his project forensically I want to put to you as a final form of opposition, the fact that a lot of people are really cheesed off not about the impact you might have on the future, but about the impact you're having now. And there are lots of people from Nick Timothy to the people are probably on your Facebook page right now. because look you said as you walked into the studio that you'd had another se another thing on Facebook A lot of people actually say that even just your talk of this project is making their lives harder rightight now, selling houses stress Thoughts of planning for the future. What do you say to them So maybe a couple of things, but just particularly on that, look, it is you're right, I acknowledge that it's causing people anxiety. U and The my retort is, well, look, what do you what How are you solving problems of my generation because I watched Huge amounts of anxiety, distress, depression just a complete lack of prospects, right These things are trade offs unfortunately and we don't want to be living in a zero sum game whichich is again, that lack of trust. People think, if you're getting something, I must be losing. That's not the case. It doesn't need to be the case And more than that We're all depressed about the state of the country and the economy, right? What can we do that to make it better Everyone has to engage. The inverse of people saying I get a right to say no because I live here. And by the way, Andrew's wrong, one hundred seventy thousand people in West Suffolk, lots of them actually support this. For a variety of reasons. and he's right, they don't live in that particular area, but as soon as you step outside, they realize what the benefits are for homes, for jobs, for affordable housing, for the prospects for their children, for the transport, for the general I mean, for just making an interesting place that they can actually realize that they've got a future in, right for all those reasons that we have plenty of supporters, but you're right, it's It's hard at the end of the day to deal with people's emotions It's on me And the other hundreds of people who support forst City can actually have worked on this pro bono in many ways. So of the big names people like Paul Johnson and forormmally from the IFS, people like Stephen Mc McAaddam, the architect who built King' Cross in the Olympics. Yeah we've got some amazing amazing supporters. So Tim Smith, who did the Eden project, we've got cross party support from lords and baronesses, etcetera, etceter. you know we've got lots of supporters for sure But it look, all of this is difficult. It's not, as I said earlier, its not it's not easy If it was easier, you're going to maybe be doing it all the time because it makes economic and rational sense But it is difficult. and Andrew's not wrong. there is Um, It's a trade offff, and as I said, it's not an easy one to make. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be made. Is it called Forest City One because you intend to build others I think other people could use it as a model, yeah, to again hopefully to emulate around the country, around the world? Why not? Would you live there Yeah one hundred percent. I absolutely want to live there. I need I want a place to live where my if you want in a very selfish way, my friends and family can also live there. and we'dt have to be stressed about having to move or whether we've gotough space for kids or you know whether we can afford the mortgage or the rent in a community which can just be stable. It' actually many of the things with people who object to other housing have already and they feel that they would lose it, right We're talking not long after Elon Musk became a nomenal trillionaire and SpaceX went public as a company. SpaceX is a very complicated company. It's not really mostly about space exploration I've had the privilege of chatting to his kind of probably best met guy called Adeo Resi on the Today prorogramm. And Adeo Resi talked about this moment more than twenty five years ago now when the two of them him and Elon Musk was sat on a kind of I think the long Express highighway somewhere looking at stars and think about what to do next. They'd already had a billion dollar exit, I think from PayPal And Musk goes, well, what about space? Sroduce space, and the Dress is like Let's not do that. And A Desi is Musk's close friend organizes this kind of intervention where he got with the space scientists say, you're completely nutly mad Musk has done it and the rest is I would say it's history but actually what he's planning is only just starting Elon Musk had to answer back then a question that I'm going to ask you Now P put it in the context of your mth to try and beort nice to you because it feels like a rude question. And the question is, Who the hell are you Who the hell are you? this guardian journalist, ex Guardian journalist you left about a decade ago, author of the Jiltter Generation from East London to Turn up in West Suffolk and say to thousands of people We're going to build I you had just someone who desperate to solve problems of my generation and I have been for fifteen years and I'm tired of talking about it. I'm tired of being some Cassandra like figure you know, kind of right but that ultimately kind of, you know, the problems that we talk about just aren't getting resolved. This can't go on any longer. It can't. It just we have to repair the social contract in this country. We have to get this country back on its feet So that's the guy that I am. that's the guy who, by the way, my, you know, there are again, hundreds of supporters on this, but also a co founder who has his own story and doing exactly the same thing So that's who ultimately we are. and we're going to get it done. Look, I think this will happen and that will cause anxiety. It will continue to do so, but There are going to be necessary trade offffs, but also ways in which you do politics on the ground And we haven't always succeeded at this, but we will continue to do so try and do it as properly as possible. I just want to put two final thoughts to you. The final one is going to be about what happens next and how this is going to turn into reality, but just the penultimate one is We had a remarkable human being called Matt Clifford on this podcast a few episodes ago. Matt Clifford is a huge figure in mod of Britain because he's really at the forefront of British AI. He wrote the AI strategy for Kirstarma, which has been adopted in full He said something which lots and lots of other people who haveve contacted me were very persuaded by and picked up on, which is the idea that we've got a veocracy. And the reason we've got a veitocracy in this country and he said that on the basis of his time in number ten. He said it on this podcast is that you hear from the people who object to something For instance, the residents of part of East Anglia. who don't want for a city to happen, but you tend not to hear from the people who are going to lose out What would you say in the spirit of a podcast called Radical addressing the problems of today keen on big ideas and ambitition about the need to be radical. Over tendencies of democracies to slide into vetocracies. I would almost wholesale agree with Matt and his' analysis. And I think the politics then becomes saying, you know what? we know We need to do this and we're just going to push through And it's the right thing to do ultimately for the sake of a million young adults in Britain, right? Again, the people who like to veto stuff don't have to take on the personal responsibility or any responsibility for the next generation, right? They don't have to sit there going how we're going to solve housing. It's not their problem, right? They just don't want the thing in their area. So that's how and it's not wrong of them to think like that But it's the boundary of their in a sense political engagement. It's not good enough, right? It's just not good enough if we're actually I'm not a official, right? And yet. so in a sense, the weirdness of what I'm doing is, why am I taking this on in my way? Because I just need it to be solved and the country needs it to be solved at large. That's really my retort. When I sit in people's homes and they give me tea and they tell me how hideous this scheme is. I tell them all, what's your solution, right? Becauseuse if you're simply saying, I just don't want it in my area, you're not engaging really with politics at large. What happ next Youve got I've look at a lovely document saying, Let's build a city by Shiv Malik and Joseph Reeve Beautiful pictures of this future world. I've seen articles in the FT a couple of weekends ago. What's actually happening? how do you turn this into reality now It's I mean, we're moving a real pace. So this isn't pie in the sky. this is happening. is real people employed to make this happen. No the next thing I think that people actually see is this demonstrator house. So it's a four bedroom terracace house, one hundred sixty square meters. so it's big Hopefully it'll be situated then in Cambridge. We're already talking to the landowners in the area And people will be able to go vis, visit it and it should be beautiful. If it's not, we'll fail, right? And then we want to sign up hundreds of thousands of people to say, Okay, come and live in Fore a city. Now you know what this house might look like. It won't be the only house, sure But you know, you get an impression of what it will be like. And then I think that's how you also get the people in the room who will be affected engaged, right? So that is basically, in a sense, one of the big next steps. off course behind all of that, requires lots of, as I mentioned, horse trading, but talking to the regional powers that B and obviously MHCLG, the Ministry for Housing Um and then ultimately whoever the kind of next prime minister is or if it remains K Stama that that getting them involved because this is such a big project that it needs prime mininisterial backing So all those discussions are continuing right now and they're progressing. People get it. peopleople get it, right? Something needs to change. How long would it take to build It will take But well, overall, it'll take probably twenty five to thirty years. pretty quick by British standard, certainly even by Chinese standards. you can get to a population of kind of one million, ultimately. but it could start within Within five years over three or four years from now, we should have a ceremonial spade in the ground The first people might be moving in by twenty thirty four, twenty thirty five. Emel, could you could come and live there Well Wh not? T you what I was just thinking about what You love Cambridge? Great. I do. Well I tell you what, it' be interesting to come back and interview you, you know, even Sooner than that in a couple of years and see how progress works or hasn't worked. Let me add one last thing And again, as I said, I come off as kind of and I am very optimistic and kind of push through. But some things my other elements of that motivation is this sort of well of sadness But then it sometimes it's also just sort of a bit of anger So one of the very first conversations we had about this was one of the most senior people in infrastructure in the civil serervice right at the top of government. And that person had a CV as long as your arm in terms of actually getting things built And he said, lookook, it's a fabulous idea. And of course, from an engineering perspective, you could totally do this. The problem is is that this isn't the kind of thing and I'm quoting This isn't the kind of thing that twenty first century Britain can do anymore And I thought, that can't stand. just can't stand. I can't live in a country where that is true has to change Well, Ill tell you what, Shiv, you are nothing, if not radical. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast It's been a real privilege and hon us. Thankk you Amo I don't think that you're going to hear on this podcast a better illustration of the trade offffs and the realities involved in trying to address some of the problems of modern Britain. We've talked a lot on this podcast in previous episodes about young people, about housing, about planning reform And we've also talked and I mentioned it there, we've also talked about this idea that in Britain, if you want to do hard things, there are trade offs and the people who object are often heard loudly, but the people who stand to gain from doing those hard things aren't always heard as loudly. This was Matt Clifford's idea that democracy slips into a vetocracy. Well Forestity, whether you think it's a great idea or completely balmy, just crystallizes