Can Britain Change Its Ways on Housing? (Your Radical Questions with Shiv Malik)
6/22/202625 min
This week, Shiv Malik, the man behind the proposals for ‘Forest City 1’, takes your questions. He’s a former investigative journalist turned campaigner: instead of writing another book about Britain’s housing crisis, he’s trying to build his way out of it.
Forest City is his ambitious pitch for Britain’s first new city in more than 50 years: a million-person settlement east of Cambridge, with around 400,000 homes, new rail links and thousands of acres of new woodland.
We hear Shiv talk about his own background and credentials, whether ‘Forest City’ is actually affordable, and if people can shift their mindset in favour of a new kind of city living. Plus, what will Shiv’s “beautiful” new homes actually look like?
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Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Monday and Thursday.
Amol Rajan presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He also hosts University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was the BBC’s media editor and editor of The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Rufus Gray, Oscar Pearson, and Julian Paszkiewicz. Digital production was by Jonathan Greer. Technical production was by Leona Gasper. The series producer is Rufus Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
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First 90 secondsAmol Rajan· Host0:00
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Speaker 20:03
[upbeat music] Every story is a technology story in one way or another. And on The Interface, we decode the tech that's rewiring your week and your world. On this week's episode, we look at the UK's teen social media ban and ask what happens next? Why are AI companies so interested in nuclear fusion energy? And will the new iPhone AI update mean that Siri will finally be good? Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Amol Rajan· Host0:35
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your questions to one of our magnificent radical guests. It's a chance for you to engage very directly with the people we have on this podcast and really interrogate them, or I'll try and interrogate them on your behalf, about their big and radical ideas for the future. Siobhan Malik's got a few of those. In fact, one in particular. It's a very big city in East Anglia. Shiv believes that successive governments in this country have not given anyone born after 1979 a fair chance. In fact, they've had a rotten deal. He first started writing about this well over 15 or 20 years ago with a book called The Jilted Generation in 2010. He argued that too many people are paying expensive rents, too few own their homes,