Scott Cain

Greg Clark 

We were so delighted to discover that the amazing man and friend who we all love, Scott Cain, is also a listener to The DNA of Cities podcast. Scott has agreed to come and be part of our listeners episode. Scott, it's great to see you.

Scott Cain 

A delight to be here with you.

Greg Clark 

Scott, tell us immediately, what have you enjoyed or found meaningful about The DNA of Cities podcasts so far?

Scott Cain 

I think listening to The DNA of Cities is akin to sitting at a good bar in a city that you don't-- you're not super familiar with and different people come and pull up a stool next to you and they just have brilliant nuggets and sort of insights. One of them might be a professor, the other one might, you know, do something entirely different and they give you a sort of glimpse into the reality of a place, you know, it's flaws and all, but they love it anyway and they share it with you critically but with much love. I find those kinds of insights fascinating. I do also love because clearly, we all have a typology or an index, I sort of see behind what you and Caitlin are doing. I kind of feel like there's a sort of structure and an organisation that sits behind it in the way that you think about things. That comes through consistently. So, if somebody like me, you like to make sense of things and you like to kind of decode and translate and put it back together again, it's that sort of brilliantly human way of doing that. But there's a there's a sort of system, a bit of scaffolding, if you will, that sits behind it and I love that.

Greg Clark 

Great, I'm so pleased to hear that, Scott. I love the fact that you can tell that we're attempting to build a system of thinking behind it. We're benefiting a lot from all of the interactions. So, tell us so far, then what does The DNA of Cities mean to you as an idea? How would you use it in your work and in your daily life?

Scott Cain 

I'm going to start with daily life. So this very week, my niece is in Vienna with her girlfriend and it is, they tell me, in full due to the fact that I advocated for Vienna so fulsomely using essentially the joys that I picked up from your very podcast. So, they're there right now. We spent the evening before they went, when they came to stay, teasing out little factoids. They had indeed listened to your podcast directly, I said, 'don't take my sort of inexpert kind of retelling of it. Why don't you dive in and sort of swim around and it yourself and see what you enjoy?' I think it's then directly informed both their kind of perceptions but also what they've chosen to do whilst there. In some ways we could have a very expansive conversation but I think it will be a joy to double down on that, in some ways, just that very first episode on Vienna. I just loved it so much. I've revisited it a number of times, almost with the view so that I can then continue to be that slightly pub boorish person, where whenever anyone says to you, you know, 'what would some of your favourite places be Scott? Why that particular place and not another?' I'd love to double down on Vienna and all sorts of aspects of its history and its current kind of form, shape, the happenstances and it's kind of intentional decisions to make it such a wonderful place.

Greg Clark 

It's so funny, isn't it, Scott, that a city that today that we often think of as a rather nice, perhaps quaint, historical city, a small city of less than two million people, was, in fact for about 300 years, possibly the most important city in the world and did invent modern philosophy, modern psychology, modern political science and all sorts of other things. As somebody said rather brilliantly Vienna is the city that actually invented Europe. I think that's such an interesting way to think about it. Scott, if I was to ask you now to talk about one city, where you think that the DNA is sort of visible or tangible to you, a city that you feel an affinity with? Which one would it be?

Scott Cain 

So I think the only place that I've really deeply I mean, genuinely deeply and enduringly spend time in is London. And so I don't know whether too many of your guests will talk to London. I grew up in rural Shropshire. I'm a Salopian, a Shropshire lad. So, you know, clearly, any city probably would have done but the lure of London, you know, great capital city, a world city, it has been truly wonderful over the last 30 years. I think it's a joy to live in. It's a joy to bring up your children in and it's a joy to have friends from all over the world visit. It's a place which if you care to do so you can, you know, you could experience so much rich, diverse openness, you know, welcoming in a culturally vibrant place, whilst also being really aware of it being such an unequal city, and a city that we can learn from, for example, Vienna and other places, where, you know, there's so much we can learn from other places to do better. London for me is, you know, it's a wonderful place.

Greg Clark 

Yes and, I mean, the funny thing is, of course, about London's relationship to anyone who's brought up in the UK is that so much of our national myth involves a story about London and its relationship with the rest of the country. We tried to bring that out in the two episodes about the DNA of London that somehow you know, the streets are paved with gold, but somehow London has also got an unfair advantage. But somehow, London indicates to all British people that, that, you know, you have the opportunity to make the most of yourself and that if you go to London, the city will shape you as well as you will shape it. There's so many aspects of our national myth that is that are kind of focused somehow on being either in London or not in London, or on your way to London or escaping from London. I'm really pleased to hear what you say. Are you living in London now, Scott? And if so, what keeps you here?

Scott Cain 

Yes, absolutely. So after a sixteen year stint in the Elephant and Castle, which I could advocate for at length, through its own sort of massive regeneration period but where it really kept us in soul we now live in the highest of High Barnet. So really, I'm right on the very edge of London. That was in part because I've got sort of elderly parents. So, it was sort of useful for my wife and I to be able to escape quickly when needed. But actually, it's been a real blessing. I'd never lived, I guess, in the outer reaches of the city. It's like experiencing a whole new place. It's a sort of different rhythm, different kind of wandering circle, you know, different sort of local theatres and kind of-- I went to Ally Pally to see Little Simz. So, a brilliant sort of young rapper from the local area. And it's like, you know, you sort of do if you just delve in a little bit. Clearly, I'm a 51 year old, white man. So, you know, our cultural experiences of London are rather different. But it's still, you could kind of pick up on all of these wonderful things.

Greg Clark 

Now, it's absolutely wonderful to hear that and you've mentioned some of my favourite places there. But I know, but our listeners may not know that you are one of the world's great advocates of active travel. In particular, you're a man who runs all around the city where he lives, and almost any city, where running is allowed, you're there and you're running and you're trying to enable millions of other people to run in their cities too. Is there anything about the idea of The DNA of Cities and the idea of running in a city that you think collide that our listeners will need to know about?

Scott Cain 

I love the idea of experiencing places at a sort of human scale at a human pace. So, whether that's walking, which I love, running - brilliant, cycling, a little bit of e-assist, you know, all of those things I think are truly wonderful. I think how a city approaches that, both for transport but also just for helping people make local journeys and how goods and services are delivered, I think, is really, it's a big choice about the kind of place that you want your children to grow up in or you want to grow old in. So I tend to have a preference in truth for kind of cities that are trying to put active mobility, active travel, you know, at the heart of their transport policy. I'll be honest with you, in the Elephant and Castle, it felt like that was being realised in real time. It's been somewhat of a different experience, having moved to High Barnet where the drivers of outer London seem to be rather less keen on me on my Brompton going to and from various places. So I've sort of-- I found alternative ways of getting from A to B, which don't always involve the busier roads. So I would say it's a job of work to be done. And I'm very much enjoying doing that, whilst working also with the Bicycle Association. So how do we produce the sort of the vehicles, the light electric vehicles, these bikes and so forth here in the UK such that we can export them to the world? That's one of my great passions too.

Greg Clark 

We want to hear much more about that on another occasion and we'll have to get you onto the podcast to talk about, you know, navigating the city and how you do that using human power. But let's go to our final question and say so in our next series of The DNA of Cities, which cities or places would you like us to address and why?

Scott Cain 

I always had three categories and I couldn't quite decide between them. So the first one was cities that I have recently been to very much enjoyed, and thought, if only I'd had Caitlin and Greg's, you know, and they're sort of expert friends insights into that place ahead of going. So, Athens, for example, Seville, Cadiz, I loved. I mean, these are places that I've been to very recently, I just loved them. Then there were places I've been to in the past that I think will be fascinating. So, La Paz, Rio. And then there are places I suspect closer to home, which may be slightly left field, but you know, everything from sort of, Welwyn Garden City, a very different type of city, but you're a part of a sort of, you know, an interesting sort of planned view of cities, through to all kind of other great cities that have, you know, I guess a history as well as a presence: Glasgow, Liverpool, even Birmingham, where I had my very first job, a place that I think it's got its tail up, if a city can have a tail. I think Birmingham has got its tail up. So, you know, all of those places I think closer to home would also be fascinating. So it'd be brilliant to hear where you choose to go and where you choose to take us as the listeners, as we sit on in tandem with you on, you know, on our bike, and you take us through the past and the present, and the various kind of places within those wonderful cities.

Greg Clark 

Well, that's a gorgeous menu. Scott, and I'm not promising we'll do all of them. But I like the way you're thinking. We certainly must do Athens at some point for sure. This is almost the city that invented cities, right? So we're going to have to do that. La Paz – the highest city in the world. That could be very interesting to do. We've had several of our listeners suggest that we do some new towns so Welwyn Garden City could fit into that. Of course, these brilliant British cities from Liverpool to Birmingham. We've done Glasgow, but we're getting a lot of people rooting for Manchester to be in the next series. So we may do that too. But Scott, it's such a pleasure to see you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for being one of our esteemed listeners.