#68: Are We About To Repeat Sussex's Planning Mistakes At A Bigger Scale?

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[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_04] You're listening to Sussex And The City with Richard Freeman.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_03] Hello, welcome to the Sussex and the City podcast. Should I say that slower? Hello, and welcome to the Sussex and the City podcast. I never know if I'm too fast or too slow. I'm Richard Freeman, and my guest in this episode is Chris Todd, someone I've wanted to get on the podcast for quite a long time. Chris has spent more than 30 years working around transport, planning, environmental campaigning and community action.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_03] He first became involved through Friends of the Earth in the early 90s, going on to help coordinate the South Coast Against Road Building campaign, and later became a central figure in the campaign to create the South Downs National Park, something that involved more than 160 organisations coming together and eventually was successful in 2010. Chris also chaired the partnership, which successfully secured UNESCO Biosphere status for the Brighton and Lewes Downs in 2014,

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_03] spent five years with the campaign for better transport, supporting communities around the country. And in 2019, he founded the Transport Action Network to campaign for more sustainable transport and to support local groups challenging damaging road schemes. So I think it's fair to say we know where he stands on more motorways or dual carriageways in Sussex. And he brings a really interesting perspective to the devolution debate. He has seen major structural change before.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_03] He has seen ideas dismissed as unrealistic then go on to become policy. He has seen communities organising around planning and infrastructure. And he has seen what happens when institutions listen to the people on the ground who are talking about everyday lives. And he's seen what happens when they don't. In this chat, we talk about whether the new Sussex and Brighton Strategic Authority represents an opportunity to do things differently,

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_03] or whether it's a big risk of reproducing business as usual, but at a bigger scale. Well, Chris is concerned about how we're defining prosperity. Like many other guests on this podcast, he thinks if success is still primarily measured through GDP, GVA and investment, we ignore what happens to health, resilience, nature, inequality and quality of place. And we talk about housing as well. Why simply building more homes is not enough? Why location matters?

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_03] And why new development needs to be much more closely connected to public transport services and existing communities? And of course, we get on to his specialist area, which is transport. Chris argues that if devolution is about inclusive growth, which is the term that we are hearing, it has to think differently about who transport is actually for. For people on lower incomes, younger people, older people, people without access to a car, and simply building another road doesn't improve connectivity. But a reliable bus might.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_03] And we can see from the millions being invested that bus networks in Sussex is going to be a priority. A safer cycle route might. A transport network might be quite different and quite radical if it makes it possible to move around Sussex in many ways, where owning a car isn't necessarily the default. And that leads to Chris's vision of what success can look like. Thriving Sussex towns and cities that have rediscovered what makes them distinctive.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_03] And a transport network where people can get almost anywhere without being forced to own a car. So Chris is fairly critical of what's happening, as you'd expect. But his career is also a reminder that systems are not fixed. Things like the South Downs National Park exist because people spent years arguing that something different was possible. And Chris talks in the interview about that journey from campaigning to something being established.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_03] So this is a conversation with a radical about planning, about power, about roads, about buses, about housing, about devolution, and whether Sussex can use this moment to make genuinely different choices, rather than simply reorganising the old ones. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Chris Todd.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_03] So this is the Sussex And The City Podcast. I'm Richard Freeman, and I'm joined today by Chris Todd. I've wanted to get on the pod for a while. I think is a really, really important voice in Sussex. So I'm really delighted to finally get a chance to have a chat. Chris is a specialist in all things planning and transport, and has some very strident views, I think, on the process underway in terms of developing a regional authority

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_03] and how devolution is happening, local government reorganisation, all the implications of that. And I think it's a really important perspective. So, Chris, how the devil are you? We're speaking on a sunny Friday morning. Is it sunny where you are? Yeah, where are you calling in from today, Chris?

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_00] It is. Thank you. I'm in Brighton. Sunny Brighton.

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_03] What's your Sussex story? Tell me a little bit about how you arrived at where you are at the moment.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00] Well, I mean, I largely grew up in Sussex, mainly in the shadow of the Downs to the north. Went to school, Chaley, Hayward Seath Sixth Form College. But then I went elsewhere, came back and, you know, got a job in business and then started to shift away from that. And then in the early 90s, I got involved with a variety of different organisations, including Friends of the Earth. And that is when I started to get active with planning and transport issues.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_00] It was around the time there was a lot of stuff in the news to do with, you know, trifled down, new group by-parts. And I didn't know anything about those sorts of things then. I was driving to work, cursing the driver in front of me for being in my way and then realising actually, well, the person behind me is probably cursing me. I'm actually part of the problem. And I think that was the start of my journey, really.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_00] And then I got involved with, you know, groups fighting this sort of South Coast superhighway, as it was labelled, from folks to Honiton. And then got involved with the South Downs. So I was very much involved with the campaign for the South Downs National Park, which was successfully achieved in 2010. I've also been involved with the community voluntary sector. I was an environmental rep for, it felt like, about a decade.

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_00] And I've also chaired the partnership that led to the biosphere, the Brighton and Lewis Downs, which has now expanded, which is great news. And then more recently, I've been, you know, worked for a national transport charity campaign for better transport. And then I set up Transport Action Network in 2019 to provide that sort of ongoing support for communities wanting to press for more sustainable transport or fighting the worst impacts of road schemes.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_03] An activist heart there, but clearly also very skilled at convening and turning sort of the ideas or the opposition or the alternative into things that can be actually adopted or workable. You know, and I think that's always the hard bit, right?

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I think it's really important that sometimes people do say no to things, but it's equally important to offer constructive alternatives. As hard as it may seem sometimes to sort of get those messages across to people that there is a different way. People have become so entrenched sometimes in they've only done things this way. It's the only way it can be done. And that's not true.

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_00] You know, I think that people are more powerful, both as the public, but also potentially as officers and councillors in terms of what they can achieve.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_03] And how, I was going to say effective, that's the wrong word, but how part of the Sussex spirit and DNA do you think that that is? That, you know, we won't have things done to us. We are active participants. Thank you very much. And that comes with quite a direct kind of tone, but it's meant as one of not accepting sort of subservience or directives from above, if that's not in the best interest of communities and people.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_03] To me, that always has felt like a really big part of how Sussex works. You know, what's that kind of relationship like in somewhere in Sussex? Essentially, do the people that are driving things forward, maybe not always for the right reasons or in the right way, do they listen? Do they listen when communities and people speak up on the whole? What's been your experience?

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, very mixed, very different. I mean, I don't think you can give a straight answer to that in the sense of there is a single answer. It very much depends on personalities. It depends on personalities. It depends on pressures that they may be getting, which might be, say, through social media nowadays. It can be sort of their peers as well. You know, whether they listen can depend whether they feel threatened,

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_00] or it can be whether they are personally motivated and align with your views. And there could be a whole range in between. It's never straightforward. And you have to, in a sense, understand where people are coming from, you know, to be able to relate to them on their level. But then sometimes you have to sometimes set that aside and just try and bypass them in some senses. I mean, if you look at what happened with the South Downs as a classic example, you know,

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_00] we tried a lot of engagement with different communities across the South. And there was a lot of huge public support for a national park. But the local authorities, who themselves would risk losing hour, had a huge range of views. Some were ambivalent because they recognized the public desire for it. But personally, they were perhaps a bit nervous about losing their planning.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_00] Others, like Brighton, to some extent East Hampshire, and one or two others were positive and supportive. And then you had Chichester District and West Sussex, who were ardently against it. And then nothing that you could say or do would change otherwise. Even when most of their parishes had turned against them, they were still trying to stop the whole thing. And in that instance, you just have to try and work around. There's no point trying to change somebody who's not going to change.

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_00] But they weren't the power broker in that instance. But they were a blockage to achieving that change, which the majority of the people wanted.

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_03] And the work to get things like that agreed is huge. But it's really important that we remember that process. It's complex and it's messy. And actually, there's some compromise. And as you say, there's some times you just have to go past the ardent entrenched. If you can't win over hearts and minds. If the tide turns with a majority. Yeah, that's the messy bit of democracy. So I kind of try and remind people of that at the moment.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_03] Looking at things like local government reorganisation and evolution, some of the big structural change that's happening in Sussex. There's a lot of people saying it can't be done because those people are always going to think like that. And so it will just get in the way. It's like, well, maybe.

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_00] There's a huge opportunity with local government reorganisation. But there are also threats. My concern is that we don't make the most of the opportunities. And it's really sort of business as usual. And I really don't think we can be doing that. And then there's the threats that you've got around the sort of lack of oversight with devolution. Because as we've seen on Teesside, where hundreds of millions of pounds have gone into private pockets from huge public subsidy.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_00] And there seems to be nothing being done about it. There was a sort of a very meek and mild oversight by Gove, which found wrongdoing or issues of concern. And nothing has been done about it since. And then the situation has got worse. So if that's allowed to happen there, then potentially can happen anywhere around the country.

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_00] And we need to make sure that, or the national government needs to make sure, but equally local, the local governance around the new authority needs to be much more engaging and inclusive. So it's harder for things to go off the rails. You know, to me, we seem to be going down that. We seem to be sort of being trapped into that already.

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_00] If you look at the six sort of leads that have been established, three of the sort of six leads or committees, I think, that are going to be set up are all economic folks. They all seem to be saying the same thing to me. But maybe that's my understanding of economics. But there's nothing on health.

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_00] There's nothing on sort of environment, nature and some of those big areas where we're having real issues and problems and which are responsibilities of the new strategic authority.

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[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_03] Only to be devil's advocate because that's often the role I play in these conversations. I have no, I do not work for the strategic authority. I do not sit on any of those committees or boards. So I don't have skin in the game in that sense. But just from noises I've heard and conversations I've had, what they're saying is things like health, things like inclusive growth, things like prosperity, and we can come to that, you know, what does that mean?

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_03] Things like a polycentric approach. They're saying that cuts through all of it, you know, that these aren't standalone areas of inquiry because everything needs to kind of be driven by this kind of quite a new approach. It's the first inclusive growth lead of any strategic authority I'm aware of. And they've been quite deliberate in kind of naming things like that.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_03] They've looked at what some of the stuff that's been developed in the East Midlands, I think, with the RSA, looking at how you have lateral as well as vertical growth and that well-being and public health and all that sort of stuff is embedded. Now, I'm not saying that's exactly what they're doing. I'm not saying they're doing it well. I'm not saying they're communicating it well. But I'm hearing more of that in the Sussex setup than I have in others. That's just my reflection. And I wonder if there's maybe work to do to explore that a bit more.

[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_00] It's interesting you say that. I mean, inclusive is not a word mentioned in any of the titles, for example. It just says economic growth. It says business growth and development as a separate thing, which you think, well, surely that's the same thing. And then you've got investment in finance. There's nothing there that mentions health or there's nothing there that sort of tackles about resilience, which is going to be a huge issue now.

[00:17:17] [SPEAKER_00] You know, we talked about earlier and the grass that has turned yellow and the farmers who haven't got any water for their crops, et cetera. And to me, it's very easy to say those sorts of things. But if you don't have somebody with a clear responsibility for them, these sort of golden threads, as they can be called, quite often wither on the vine and can be forgotten.

[00:17:41] [SPEAKER_00] And I think there's a danger if your sort of headline is always GDP or GBA, then you lose sight of the things that are important because that is just one measure that is important. But if you focus on that, you miss so many other things out and can be making wrong decisions to pursue that. They shouldn't feel that they can just do it and not have to try and convince the public that this is the right thing to do.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_03] In Sussex particularly, not just Brighton, across Sussex, the privilege of my work is I get to be in a number of rooms and have a number of meetings with people at lots and lots of different levels, working with one man band, social enterprises and Lewis, and then being able to present to a big business board of CEOs the next day, et cetera, et cetera. I think 90% of what you've just said is shared. I think GDP, GBA are really inadequate values for measuring growth.

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_03] And I think even the biggest businesses in the region sort of recognise that. They can grow those things till the cows come home, but that doesn't mean creating affordable and inclusive places for their staff to live. It doesn't mean that it's supporting broad social mobility across Sussex. The inequality in a place that should be one of the, on paper, wealthiest in the country is insane.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_03] And it is hard to get things off the ground because everything is quite small and competitive and districts are competing with districts and places are competing with places because the resources is not distributed well enough. However, your point about structures and sort of business as usual, and maybe the kind of processes tend to not allow some of that stuff to, to happen.

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_03] You know, maybe there's not a lot of innovation in service design or governance structures in a way that there could be.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_00] That is fair to some extent, but I also think there's an orthodoxy of thinking to tackle some of those issues. Housing is key, obviously. I grew up in Newark and literally almost next door to where my mum lives, there's a whole load of new housing gone in.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_03] And that's just north of Lewis, right?

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, north of Lewis on the A272. Yeah. And, you know, these are million pound homes. They're million pound homes that aren't even set up to, you know, cope with future resilience, let alone what you think is housing that is needed. None of them have got south-facing roofs full of solar panels, for example, to be, you know, this is how the construction should be happening in the future. But no.

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_00] So you've got six, eight millionaire homes, which is serving, as far as I'm aware, millionaires are not short homes. People who cannot afford a home are shorter homes, and those are the homes we ought to be building. So there needs to be a real sea change in approach. And I hope a more strategic planning authority can get that. But also the housing needs to go in the right places and not just be plonked down in the middle of the countryside.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_00] The so-called CalPAC developments, which is all too often what we're seeing at the moment. Or where, you know, Horsham shoves it to the extremes of its boundary, because Crawley's going to have to pick up all of the service issues. But it gets no benefit from the council tax. I mean, hopefully with the bigger unitaries, that will improve. But also with the strategic authority, it will get rid of some of those inconsistencies. It won't entirely, I suspect.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_00] It needs to be thinking in a far more strategic way. We don't just put housing anywhere. It has to go where there are good services already. So it's largely focused on your bigger centres of population. And it needs to go where there are good transport links, good public transport links, not just a big road where you're allowed to a tonne more traffic, which would then spread out across the region. And that would tend to sort of focus you in a number of spots around Sussex,

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_00] where the majority of the development should be happening. And then we should get away from these huge developments in the middle of the countryside.

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_03] So how do we do densification then that is smart and future resilient in the bigger places? How do we plan for that sensibly so that there is a kind of strategic view, an aerial view of the whole of Sussex, and we can do it more smartly, but in a way that still does crack this housing need?

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_00] It's not simple. I wouldn't pretend it's entirely simple, but there are ways of doing things differently, particularly Brighton and Hove is quite a special case because it is, you know, physically constrained by the National Park. We need to think about how can we do things differently to bring communities with us? You know, what will those communities benefit from through this process? And there could be a number of things. There could be more local services.

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_00] There could be better transport links, for example, as trade-offs and all benefits that they get in terms of maybe the trade-off of having more people involved. But equally, if you're looking outside of the constraints of the coastal strip, you know, there's some very good work that Create Streets did. This is a national charity organisation. They looked at Chippenham, 7,500 homes, master plan, based on a £75 million road.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_00] And they completely reimagined it. And they contained those 7,500 homes on a third of the land. So that's a third, as two thirds of the countryside wasn't going to be built on, two thirds of that countryside was still left to nature or farming. They proposed that you could invest in the public transport, active travel links. They did work with the local businesses. So it was grounded in reality and not just some sort of theoretical wonderful idea.

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_00] And the benefits to those local businesses is that those people in the new development would be much closer. They would be using walking and cycling and public transport. They would be using those local businesses rather than what tends to happen is out-of-town car-based developments then spring up, which those sprawling developments then use. So it was a better way of delivering economic growth, housing and all of the services and infrastructure

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_00] with a far smaller footprint. And that's the sort of vision that we need to be embracing in the new Sussex Authority. How do we do things differently? Not just do the same things, but badge differently. And maybe connect up so that if you're standing in Horsham District and Crawley's taking the brunt, then there's a bit more coordination there. We've got to do it better than that even.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_00] And at the moment, I mean, I know it's early days, but I'm not sure what I'm hearing and seeing reassures me that we will do. And one of the reasons is, you know, they've got these working assumptions, which is going to guide investment. And one of those is connectivity. And the statement, I think, is connectivity is the fastest way to good growth or something along those lines. I might have been slightly wrong. I think a lot of people would argue with that.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_00] I have no doubt that connectivity is important. But connectivity means an awful lot of things to different people.

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_03] Well, this is the thing. I think they've been very careful. I think they've chosen that word carefully in order for it to almost mean nothing.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, but the problem is, if you're trying to give guidelines as to how you're making decisions, then having such a broad term that could be used to justify anything isn't very reassuring that we're actually going to be investing in the right things. The concern is that we default to road building, where the evidence is very thin in a mature economy, the investment in road building actually delivers huge economic benefits.

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_00] It tends to shift economic activity around rather than generating new stuff. The evidence is pretty weak in terms of its benefits. But the big issue in my mind, if you're talking about trying to uplift people and those left behind, those who are less well off, less well connected, then you've got to be looking at issues like severance. You've got to be looking at issues around how do you give them access to jobs.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_00] Now, building a road to someone who doesn't drive because they can't afford it, they're not going to give them access to a job. They're going to need the public transport connectivity. They're going to need the active travel connectivity, where they can relatively cheaply or without that major investment, access those jobs and benefits. At the same time, if you're looking to improve productivity, we don't say build more motorways into the centre of a city, especially with Andy Burnham now,

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_00] and the emphasis on things like trams for some of the bigger cities.

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00] To improve productivity, you've got to get more investment in public transport. That's the big thing that cities in the UK are missing compared to the European counterpart.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_03] So I want to come on to the transport thing in a minute, because I think it's really important. And it feels at the moment that that's going to be an earlier priority for the strategic authority than house building is going to be, because I don't think much of that can happen until there's a mayor, but it feels like transport can happen sooner. So I want to come to that in a second. But just to go back to those assumptions that you referenced, I think a lot of listeners won't necessarily have spent time reading the preliminary strategic framework for the prosperity plan,

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_03] you know, as their bedtime reading yet. So probably important that we get the wording right on that and not misrepresent it. So the five assumptions that I think have been floated is improved connectivity is the fastest route to shared prosperity in Sussex and Brighton. I think that's the one that you referenced. It doesn't use the word growth, it uses prosperity. And yeah, connectivity could mean a number of things. So I'll take your point that maybe it's meaningless because it sort of could be anything,

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_03] but that is the one that they're leading with. Another is, and so just to frame these assumptions are almost challenges, blockers or barriers that they feel everybody recognises and should probably drive some of the investment to sort of counter them. So connectivity, housing affordability is weakening the foundations of the Sussex and Brighton economy. That's the second one. Third one is water and energy capacity increasingly dictate where growth can happen.

[00:28:18] [SPEAKER_03] Fourth is participation in good work is the area's most important inclusive growth test. And the fifth one is private investment is what will bring further prosperity to Sussex and Brighton. So don't go through each of them in huge amounts of detail, but I just thought worth sharing with listeners that that seems to be the working assumptions that a lot of the planning is going to speak to. But you're saying, and I think, again, understandably,

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_03] that these assumptions in the first place are not right. Who wrote them? How have we arrived at these? Where was the consultation, et cetera, et cetera. So just wanted to give that context, I think, to listeners.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, the fourth one that you read out, I really do not understand at all.

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_03] The good work one?

[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_00] Yes.

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_03] I think what that's trying to do is kind of saying we've got to get away from the language that just more jobs is necessarily good. So I think what they're trying to do there is say, well, if jobs is a metric, let's ensure that they are well-paid, highly skilled, have progression routes, and are driven by social mobility. I think that's what's trying to be hidden in there. But you raise a point that's like, how will people know that?

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_00] Well, I personally didn't understand it. Yeah. I accept what you're saying, and it's probably a correct interpretation, but it's not very clear.

[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_03] It's not clear now. Sure. So I do want to come to the transport question, because I know that's an area of your specialism as well. Where are the quick wins with transport improvement across the region, and what are the longer-term things that you think the authority really should be trying to get right?

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_00] I think anything with transport is difficult to go for a quick win. Anything does take time, but I think certainly things where you're talking about less costs, smaller schemes, less impact, things like active travel, things like bus priority measures, those are, in a sense, the quick wins, because they are relatively quicker to get through the decision-making process and then actually build on the ground, whereas a major construction, you know, is like hugely expensive,

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_00] probably outside of the budget of the authority at the moment anyway, and can take years to deliver, not just in terms of the decision-making, but also the construction. I think what needs to be happening is a stock take of what we've got and where the gaps are, and we know this already, you know, people in the sort of lowest 20% of earnings have the smallest access to cars. If you're going to be helping them,

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_00] you need to be focusing on, you know, active travel and public transport, and every pound you put into a bigger road for private vehicles is a pound less that you're putting towards helping them. But the thing is, it's not just about helping them, because it also helps the whole economy. You know, we've got a serious issue with road maintenance because of the huge number of vehicles on the roads, as well as central government funding. We've got a huge issue of congestion

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_00] and lost economic opportunities, again, because moving individuals in a vehicle half the size of a living room in a city it does not make sense.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_03] The numbers back that up in a surprising way. So I found out something called the Sussex Intelligence Unit, and we're trying to better understand some of the data on this. The Brighton & Hove, for example, has much lower car ownership figures than almost any other comparative city of its size. You know, there's less than one car per house, that was about 0.8. Other than London, you know, that's low. So already, I guess, residents are sort of choosing not to rely on cars as much. Maybe they're just forced to, maybe it's impossible.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_03] But even other parts of Sussex that even do rely on cars a lot more, it's still lower than sort of South East comparators, which for me feels amazing considering just how difficult it is to get around Sussex.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, part of that is an accident of geography or the luck of geography, you could argue, in terms of the South Downs, which has meant that Brighton & Hove hasn't just been able to sprawl out. The early sprawls, if you like, like Peacehaven, led to the Town and Country Planning Act. But since then, you haven't got the ability for Brighton just to keep on using land in a very inefficient way. And so that means people are closer together to some extent. You know, in the suburbs,

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_00] they could still be fairly spread out. But it has enabled, you know, the bus operator to operate commercial services that aren't relying on huge public subsidies. Because if they were, then the bus services would be a lot worse. Also by being compact, it means a lot of people can walk everywhere. And that was one of the great attractions that when I came to Brighton, if you went out for a night out in London, you're having to go all over the place to go to these venues. In a sense,

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_00] you can argue they've been forced not to drive. But equally, they haven't been forced to drive. You can look at it in two ways. And if you think about it, turning up in a huge car park is not a very attractive environment. You know, actually, a pedestrianised street is a much nicer place to be moving around. You know, with all the intricacies and the interest that that, you know, involves compared to a sort of bland,

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_00] out-of-town retail hub.

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_03] Well, I think that's the conundrum with a lot of the seaside towns. You get off the train and you're immediately in a massive car park. I mean, none of this is how you would have designed it if you had a blank canvas, right? Everything here is sort of a hodgepodge of centuries of strange ethnographic decisions. I could talk to you fascinating, but the time has flown, I'm aware. So I do have one final question, if that's okay. What are you excited about? You know, if I want to draw on the optimist in you,

[00:34:20] [SPEAKER_03] because I think it's there and you have hinted at it. But, you know, if this does work, if Sussex is done a little bit differently, if they talk about inclusive, they talk about holistic and they mean it and they deliver on it, what would good look like in 10 years' time, 15 years' time?

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_00] Thriving towns and cities within Sussex that are looking back and rejoicing on what makes them special in their hearts rather than, you know, being traffic corridors. And I think having a transport network that is properly inclusive and enables people to get just about anywhere without having to use a car or having to own a car, put it that way, because you could be that you maybe you hire it or you, you know,

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_00] use a car club or shared, you know, some sort of shared way of getting around. And I think having some certainty and an improved rural network feeding in, connecting the rural to urban.

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_03] The multiplier of that from anyone that doesn't live near a train station or a good bus route, which is probably about 75% of Sussex. Yeah, it's a real problem. Such a pleasure to talk to you, Chris. Thank you so much for your time and expertise. I'm sure there'll be many people listening that will want to delve into your your work more. So I'll put various links and things in the show notes. But yes, thank you for being my guest on the Sussex and the City podcast.

[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_00] Thank you for having me.

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_04] Thank you very much to this episode's guest and to you for tuning in. Sussex and the City is an independent and non-political project about devolution as it happens, explained in human. It is led by Always Possible. You can find other episodes, resources, events and blogs about change in Sussex and Brighton by visiting sussexandthecity.info That's

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_04] sussexandthecity.info This episode was written and presented by Richard Freeman for Always Possible. The editor was me, Chris Thorpe-Tracey for Lo-Fi Arts. I did the music too. Production management was by Letitia McConnellogue for Always Possible. Talk to you next time.

[00:36:51] [SPEAKER_01] Always Possible.co.uk