Podcast: the state of the art in urban economics and economic geography

Max Nathan
1 min readSep 15, 2024

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I have a new City Talks podcast with Helen Simpson (University of Bristol), Neil Lee (LSE) and Centre for Cities CEO Andrew Carter.

We take on a big question: what is the state of research about urban economies? We talk about the huge growth of urban economics and quantitative economic geography as academic fields over the past two decades, and what’s behind this. Among other things, we highlight which new topics are emerging, the enduring relevance of some core urban questions, and how new sources of data — and innovative tools for processing it — are are helping researchers push forward the frontier. We also discuss the increasing demand for evidence from policymakers, and how effectively academics are taking their ideas out into the world.

The podcast is about 70 mins long — there’s a lot to talk about, and we had a lot of fun doing it. Happy listening!

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Max Nathan
Max Nathan

Written by Max Nathan

UCL & CEP. Co-founder @centreforcities & @whatworksgrowth. Urbanism, economics, innovation, migration and public policy. My views. I’m at max-nathan.github.io.