CapX talks about housing a lot – most often to scream 'build more houses!' into a void – yet politicians appear stuck in a doom loop when it comes to this urgent topic.

Conservative MPs talk a good game about the need for housing, as long as it's anywhere but in their constituency, while Labour talk up discredited socialist ideas like rent controls.

But last week, drama returned to the housing discourse, as Secretary of State Michael Gove announced plans for dramatic expansion in Cambridge, Leeds and London. So is the housing shortage, which is the source of so many of this country’s problems, from low productivity to population decline, about to be solved? And how credible is the idea of a brand new neighbourhood on the outskirts of a centuries-old university town, albeit one that's at the cutting edge of the UK's tech sector?

Few people are better placed to answer these questions than Samuel Hughes, Head of Housing at the Centre for Policy Studies, who the CapX Podcast was delighted to welcome this week.

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