The Great British Housing Crisis: Is a Brand New Mega-City the Answer? (Shiv Malik)

**Amol Rajan** (0:00)
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 Ashin 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 recognisable 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 2026, two pubs are closing every single day?
Two pubs closing every single day. If they keep closing at the current rate, all pubs in this country will be gone by 2050 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 Aisin 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 WhatsApp us on 33 123 9480, 33 123 9480 Please do leave a voice note. We love those. Or you can email radical at bbc.co.uk. Love to get your questions for Aisin Rogers. Now, on to this week's episode.
Okay, so you say you want radical ideas, how is this for a radical idea? A massive new city in 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, we're 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 Shiv 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. The last time it was that high wasn't the 1980s, but the 1880s. We have massive projects like the Lower Thames Gateway, or HS2, which get lost in a kind of bog of planning. 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, but the fact is that house building and planning have been a thorn in the side of successive governments for decades.
Shiv Malik co-wrote a book about 16 years ago now called The Jilted Generation. He argued that every generation born since 1979 has been failed by successive political parties in power because they just haven't built enough homes. Now he wants to do something very radical. He wants to build Britain's first city for 50 years. The first city in this country since Milton Keynes. It's called Forest City. It would have 400,000 new affordable homes, that's homes around 350,000. 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 Fiscal Studies, Steve McAdam, who designed the 2012 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 from local residents who stand to lose. There'll 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 Anglia, 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, that Shiv Malik's idea is pretty radical.
When they said Shiv Malik's coming in, I was like, not only is he the author of a book called The Jilted Generation, which I read in about 1986 when it came out, no 2010 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.