Professor Tony Travers is the Director of LSE London, the London School of Economics' research centre. There are very few people more intimately acquainted with the capital.
In this Lecture, part of the Long Finance Symposium 'Measuring Up Cities', Professor Travers looks at the history of competition between cities. He also introduces the forms of data that can be collected to compare cities, as well as the intangibles that might be essential for success in competitive cities.
Professor Tony Travers explores how Cities compete against each other in the global marketplace. He discusses what measures Cities have taken for greater economic, political and cultural influence, and how economists track the levels of change.

Professor Tony Travers is director of LSE London, a research centre at the London School of Economics. He is also a professor in the LSE’s Government Department. His key research interests include public finance, local/regional government and London government. He is currently an advisor to the House of Commons Education Select Committee and also the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. He is a research board member of the Centre for Cities and a board member of the New Local Government Network. He is an Honorary Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy. He was a Senior Associate of the Kings Fund from 1999 to 2004, and also a member of the Arts Council’s Touring Panel during the late 1990s. From 1992 to 1997, he was a member of the Audit Commission. He was a member of the Urban Task Force Working Group on Finance.