more soldiers and police officers arrive in valencia today after the 10,000 promised by the prime minister on friday. it is their worst flood in decades and have left neighbourhoods caked in mud and strewn cars and debris. now on bbc news, talking business. hello and welcome to talking business with me, mark lobel. let's have a look at what's on the show. they've been called humankind's greatest invention — big cities. are we in the midst of one of the biggest building booms the world has ever seen? as populations explode around the world, more than 90 cities are being built from scratch. billions are being pumped into providing new urban homes and all the services they need to a new generation of city dwellers. we'll be taking a look at the scope of these new mega developments and talking

to the builders of the cities of the future. stephenjennings is the founder of rendeavour, building seven cities across africa. and jerry inzerillo is heading up the $63 billion diriyah gate development, transforming one of saudi arabia's most historic cities into a tourist destination for the 21st century. can these cities of the future get off the ground and become a reality? and can they meet the expectations of a new generation and the needs of a warming planet? wherever you'rejoining us from, a big hello and a warm welcome to the programme. in the last 18 months alone, more than 15 brand—new cities

have been announced, and in the last ten years, it's been more than 90. it's an unprecedented boom time for urban development in the modern era. given the trajectory of the global population, it's not surprising that the demand for new homes and entirely new cities should be met by these developments. in 1950, there were 2.5 billion people in the world. that grew to 6 billion by 1998. and today, the world's population stands at 8.2 billion people. that's according to the united nations, which predicts the global population will peak at 10.3 billion in the 2080s. all those people are going to need places to live, and cities are where most people now want to be. from indonesia to egypt, california to saudi arabia, millions of new homes — and the services which the new population need — are at various stages, from planning to welcoming their new occupants.

but cities are not simple affairs. lucy barnard is following the projects for the journal construction briefing, and told us about some of the obstacles that stand in the way of the cities of the future. the challenges that some of these developers face are that it's very, very expensive to build a city from scratch. no—one�*s going to be able to do that with their own pocket change. this is serious money. the logistical challenges that developers face when trying to build a new city is, well, for a start, they're usually building in the middle of, um, a wilderness, or they're building somewhere where there isn't very much to start off with. so they've got to create a water supply from often very little. that can be very challenging in a desert. they've got to build roads, they've got to supply the city with electricity, they've got

to supply waste water. they've got to make sure that there is good sanitation. and as always, these can be very, very damaging to the environment. an example of where this sort of development has gone really well can be considered to be in the gulf countries. um, in dubai, in particular, across the uae, you have a whole load of cities that were very, very small settlementsjust a few years ago and, suddenly, these are cities with millions of people living in them. and often, the people who are living in these cities say that they're a lot more satisfied than people living they have access to super—fast metro service. their roads are big and you can get around easily. the water supply is, well, obviously, it's sometimes a bit tricky, but they have the ability to create, um, fantastic infrastructure.

so you have a very good water supply, a lot better than other cities in the middle east. and generally, the town planning means that, um, developments are master—planned, so you get a high standard of building. there are lots of examples where this sort of thing has gone horribly wrong. one example that a lot of people mention is china, where there are a number of large developments that were built in the 2010s, or thereabouts, when the market was booming, and developers built thousands of beautiful flats, a lot of them, but they were in places where people didn't want to live. and when the market collapsed, they got stuck with a lot of empty flats. people want to live in cities because there are better services, in general, and it's easier to get to places. so you can get to work much more easily, in general,

there are more choices of work, and there's often a better standard of education, and it's easier to get to school for your kids. so the demand is high because cities offer a mixture of convenience and opportunity. helping developers deal with the complexity of the challenge of envisaging and building the cities is a range of new technology, some of which is based on popular computer games. elliot hartley runs a british company which models designs using 3d technology, so developers can quickly see what their plans will look like and quickly figure out the logistics, like the number of bricks they will need. managing the complexity of designing a city is an incredible challenge for professionals. at each stage, you're creating a huge wealth of data that is passed on, often, to the next stage in the design process. so whether it's understanding

how much energy you need for an area, or water, or construction materials, all of that information needs to be passed along. and then at each particular stage, you have the challenges of, what if something changes on the ground? what if new information comes in, and how do you reflect that information downstream, if you will? uh, how do you pass it to the next profession? um, it's an incredible challenge, but one that we're really able to cope with now. there's a lot of software tools that help us move that data down, down to each part of that design process. um, and there's a lot of convergence within those professions, uh, with the software tools to make it happen. so some of the software we use is actually, surprisingly, also used in the entertainment industry, whether that be in movies or video games, effectively. uh, one of the tools that, certainly, we use a lot of in the office and talk

to others about how to use is a product called unreal engine, which is a game engine, which has been used to make tv shows and movies, as well as popular video games like fortnite. um, it seems a strange world, where my profession is listening in to a gaming conference to see what the new technology is and how that will affect the games industry. we often will sit there now, um, wondering, what will that mean for us planning lighting or showing our clients how it will look, how their urban areas will look in the future? one big centre for new cities is africa. the un says many african countries will see their populations double in the next 30 years. i've been speaking to my first guest, who is building seven new cities on the continent. he's the founder of the company rendeavour, and the cities are in nigeria, the democratic republic of congo, ghana, zambia, as well as tatu — just outside of nairobi, kenya — which is a flagship 5,000—acre site being built for more than 150,000

residents. stephenjennings, welcome to the programme. you're building seven cities across africa. how difficult is it to fund those projects, with such long timelines and high amounts of risk? funding, as you can imagine, is an absolutely fundamental, um, success factor. so, you know, we started with a lot of very, very long—term capital. and we took the view — somewhat controversially, at the start — that we didn't want any leverage. um, and that absolutely proved to be the right decision. it meant it took a little bit longer to get momentum and to get to critical mass, but it meant that financially, we've been very robust.

so it's investors who are in it for the long term? yeah, very wealthy private investors and family investors, who can actually take a 50—year view on the projects. so people who are really committed to go the distance and build a very big, long—term pan—african platform. how excited are you about tatu? you can probably tell from my face, extremely. yeah, i think our whole team and our shareholders are extremely excited about the whole platform, because we can see the impact we're having. when i go to work and i see tens of thousands of people marching into their formal jobs, properly paying jobs, skilled, semi—skilled, highly—skilled, and i see those numbers going up month by month, it's hugely gratifying. how many businesses do you need to make tatu sustainable? yeah, i probably don't think of it in terms of number of businesses, but at tatu city, we have close to 100

large businesses, many leading regional, local and large multinationals. um, tatu city is probably the largest project of any kind in kenya now. so about 3 billion of investment, 50,000 newjobs. so it's been self—sustaining for a long time, highly cash generative. that project, we have 5,000 students come into our schools every day, thousands of apartments, we have events where we have tens of thousands of visitors. and i think what tatu proves is if you can create a normal operating environment in africa, in terms of governance and infrastructure and amenities, you very quickly capitalise a large amount of investment and a very large amount ofjob creation. so it kind of demonstrates africa's full potential. what are the unexpected challenges you've faced with a project like tatu? you know, when we started doing this, as you can imagine, there was no existing road map

for building cities in africa. so, you know, a lot of the details in terms of how we operate have evolved through trial and error and our own mistakes. i think one of the bigger challenges that we didn't anticipate was how long it would take to build really high—performance teams and a really high—performance culture, in an environment where governance is weak and the surrounding business ecosystem is far from internationally competitive. so we've focussed hugely on building those teams and that culture, and as we've achieved that, it's really had an amazing result, in terms of our cities flourishing and our people flourishing. so now we have young africans across the continent running complex functions and businesses. and i couldn't have imagined, a few years ago, that we would have a very young kenyan, in his early 30s, running a whole country for us. you know, in this case, ghana. what was the key ingredient you found that was able to draw in the talent that you were searching for?

obviously, as always, painting the vision that we were doing something transformational, um, and then working really hard to find people with the requisite commitment. it's not easy to build a city in africa. so you need very skilled people, who are very committed to getting on the journey with you. so, yeah, they've been key building blocks, really important building blocks. what model works best, in which cities, between public and private cooperation? cities always involve this complex and dynamic interaction between government and private sector. normally, because governments have the ability to tax and write rules and regulations, governments run cities. but in africa, we have huge government failure around lack of planning, very poor quality

controls, and infrastructure that's completely overwhelmed and increasingly overwhelmed. and that creates the space for private city operators such as ourselves to play a bigger role than they might do in other environments. how do you ensure there is one key ingredient when you're building your city's water supply? how do you go about ensuring that exists? you've obviously got some africa background, asking that question. yeah, as you know, mark, many african cities have regular disruption in water supply, water quality is an issue. in fact, many water municipalities are actually water cartels. so we decided, a long time ago, that we would build and operate our own vertically integrated, regulated water utilities. so that entails water supply, water treatment, water reticulation and waste water treatment. um, so in kenya today, we are one of the very few places that we have high—quality, reliable water 21w, as we do in our other cities, in nigeria and ghana. and the interesting thing is our water treatment plant was built by our in—house kenyan team in under six months, and within budget. and itjust shows that once

you have good governance and good management, issues that sometimes seem quite intractable can be solved relatively quickly. how do you avoid making your cities too tech—smart for their own good? you know, it's another very good question, because you can imagine when you're building a greenfield, large new city, it's easy to be tempted to become utopian or to follow, you know, the latest tech fads. and as self—funding, private cities, we have to be very careful that the technology we deploy and the development concepts we use are the ones that our clients and our residents want and that they are prepared to pay for. so in some areas, like environmental regeneration, walkability, liveability,

we're very radical. in other areas, like transport systems, we're definitely not going to experiment with transport robotics or self—driving cars. instead, we'll have a more human—centric planning model, with a transport hierarchy that focuses on people, walkability, greenways, making the cycleways accessible, getting people off the road, decongesting. so, yeah, it's definitely a trap that you need to be aware of. are you glad you've chosen africa as a site for your cities? again, i can't fake it, yeah, yeah, we're delighted. um, yeah, we're in some of the fastest—growing countries in the world. um, africa's experiencing the fastest urbanisation in human history, and there's a huge demand for high—quality, large—scale urban infrastructure. so, yeah, delighted. stephenjennings, thanks very much for coming on the show. thank you, mark. earlier in the programme, we looked at the challenge of building new cities

from scratch for the world's booming population. but existing cities are also expanding, changing and developing. in saudi arabia, both are happening. the country's vision — to be achieved by the end of the decade — is of cutting—edge new cities, as well as a $63 billion project, making an historical site outside of riyadh into what is hoped to be a major new tourist destination. joining me now is the man in charge of the diriyah gate project. jerry inzerillo, welcome to talking business. i want to begin by asking you, what are the complexities of building a city from scratch, and six years in, what are the challenges that you have faced? when you're a ceo, everybody knows this, because you've covered the best, and congratulations on such a great show. but, you know, that old saying that there's not a day that goes by where you don't have what my mother calls a "hot potato", there's not a day that goes by. because also, when you theoretically conceptualise something, you have

to implement it, in keeping it on time. so now, uh, i came in �*18 and we decided to diversify the saudi, um, gdp that we would emphasise tourism. so we wanted to take tourism from 3% of gdp to 10% of gdp by 2030. i'm very pleased to report that we're already above 5%, and we will make that 10%. jerry, there is so much construction in what you're trying to do. one hot potato must be global supply chain issues for you. it must be one of your greatest challenges, with high material costs, quality control challenges, and just keeping contractors�* prices competitive. so we knew that our brothers and sisters in the emirates were going to do a bang—up job on the world expo, so we saw, who built the expo, who were your contractors,

what was it? because there was going to come a point where we will exhaust all of the kingdom of saudi arabia's capability, contracting, engineering, subcontracting. so today is using all of the saudi contractors, but now we've went ahead and said, when the emiratis have finished with the world expo, let's use their resources, because they have to wind it down. this is the same thing that happened with our great brothers and sisters in qatar, because they did a fabulous job, as you know, on the world cup. so we went before the world cup and analysed their resources, so we could contract them to help us. so that's how we mitigated a lot of the supply chain, um, dilemmas. this is all part of vision 2030, supported by crown prince mohammed bin salman. but the crown prince and saudi arabia have faced criticism for past decisions around human rights. so as an american expat, how can you influence reforms

that western companies and investors would require, in order to support the project? we hear the question a lot. but, you know, obviously, we're not naive. now, i'm very lucky, because i've been very fortunate in my tourism career. so, you know, a lot of people look for opportunities all over the world. obviously, the kingdom is very dynamic now. and, you know, in vision 2030, it says, we will use all the resources of the kingdom to develop our own people. but an expertise we currently do not have, we will ask the help from the best and brightest expats from all over the world to help us on our mission, until the industries we have not excelled in — design, marketing, tourism, entertainment — until we come up to speed. now, with me, i've always had great saudi friends, but i'm in a very privileged situation because i don't have to be here. i chose to be here

because i love vision 2030. now, i'll give you... my staff now is 3,000. uh, we have 40,000 construction workers. but up to 3,000 staff, 82% are saudi, 39% of them are saudi women superstars, 16% of them are in management. and the thing i'm most proud, 14% of my staff are from my community of today. now, here's the thing. the average age of my entire staff is 31. you take me out, it probably goes to 2a, but i don't have to be here. so now, you know, you can't change things just with the best of intentions in six months of the year. so the kingdom is moving rapidly. the society is happy now. it's healthy. it's being entertained. riyadh is growing now

about 200,000 people a year. you know what's the largest part of that segment? young saudis coming home, especially the girls and women, because they know they have a very bright future. but how much do you worry about controversies surrounding human rights in the kingdom may put people off coming, may put tourists off visiting? that would be worrying for any nation, right? but i'll tell you why i'm concerned, but not worried, because i know two things that are a fact. and i wouldn't be able to say this to you if i was here periodically, you know, a few times a month. i've lived here for six—and—a—half years. and the reason why i'm less concerned is because i was frustrated, prior to coming, that the kingdom was not open to tourism. listen, you're a beautiful country, but if you don't open to tourism, how can people see a beautiful country?

you're perpetuating stereotypes that the kingdom isjust deserts and camels, right? i have had saudi friends my whole life. they are warm, generous, hospitable people. but if you don't open to tourism, how can people engage them to see? now, i have the privilege of sitting on the saudi tourism authority, so i see all the data of what people expect before they come to saudi arabia, and we see some of these concerns. but the thing that makes me very encouraging is that over 93% of our post—visit interviews, the number—one and number—two things — i had no idea that the society was so warm and generous, we were treated so nice. i had no idea that the kingdom was 300 years old. i had no idea there were so many fun things to do. so i'm patient, because i know that tourism will be one

of the great ambassadorial aspects to accelerate the image of the kingdom, which is happening quickly. and in praise of his royal highness, we have two gigantic master plans now to expand the two holy cities of mecca and medina. so pre—covid, we welcomed 16 million, um, muslims to come and do a life's fulfilment, to have a holy pilgrimage to the two holy cities. his royal highness�*s plan now, which is being implemented very quickly, will allow us to welcome 30 million pilgrimages, to do a fulfilment of a life dream. so when you did a pilgrimage a few years ago, you had to do the pilgrimage and leave. now, anybody that wants to come to the kingdom with an electronic visa, which you can get in a matter

of minutes, can stay in the kingdom for 90 days and see the beautiful kingdom. jerry inzerillo, thank you so much for your time today. fabulous. thanks for everything. really appreciate it. and my best to all your viewers. well, that's it for this week. i hope you enjoyed the show. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or the smartphone app. you can also follow me. i'm on x, i'm @marklobel. thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello.

fireworks displays on saturday evening at least added a little bit of colour into what was otherwise a pretty grey day. if we look at the satellite imagery from saturday afternoon, there's the uk. lots of cloud in place so, with winds coming in from a south or southeasterly direction, look what's coming, still to come our way. where we do see a few breaks north sea but more particularly to the northeast of scotland, where temperatures drop the furthest to take us into sunday morning. it's around the northeast where we could see temperatures aberdeen four, lower than that in the countryside. a touch of frost around. most mild enough, though — 8—12 degrees. little change as far as the weather setup is concerned for sunday. high pressure still with us. not a huge amount of wind, so the cloud sits in place. where we have a bit more breeze northern scotland, an enhanced chance of a few more sunny breaks extending into the highlands. still, the northeast of the mainland best favoured. one or two breaks maybe in the west but the cloud thick enough for some patchy rain or drizzle. and later in the day, we could see some sunnier spells towards east anglia and the southeast.

temperatures on sunday very similar to saturday. into sunday night we go and again, where we've got the clearer breaks in northern scotland, temperatures will drop the furthest. a mild night. patchy light rain or drizzle. misty over the hills to take us into monday morning. and once again, for most, temperatures not dropping a huge amount to start the day. so, as we go into the start of the new week, not a massive amount will change. a lot of dry weather around. high pressure still dominant. there should be a few more sunny spells as the breeze picks up every now and again but morning fog patches could be an issue. and the other thing — as our area of high pressure just drifts a little bit further eastwards, we get more of a southerly flow and that, with low pressure out in the west, will help to draw in even warmer air, so temperatures will be back well above normal, particularly across parts of scotland and northern ireland. for monday, though, we start off with that grey scene. a few brighter breaks here and there in the west but there will be a greater chance down towards the english channel coast, the southeast, of seeing some clearer skies move in off the near continent, so an enhanced chance of some sunshine but temperatures

still around 12—14 degrees at this stage. with some clearer skies, then, in the southern uk to take us into tuesday morning and light winds, fog patches could be an issue for the commute and where they do form, they could linger for much of the morning, even into early afternoon. elsewhere, lots of cloud to begin with. a few breaks appearing here and there with a bit more breeze in northern scotland. here's probably where we'll see the best of the chances. temperatures again around 12—14 degrees. take care.

good morning. welcome to breakfast with ben thompson and luxmy gopal. 0ur headlines today: the new conservative leader kemi badenoch prepares to appoint her shadow cabinet after promising to bring change to the party. the spanish prime minister sends thousands more troops and police officers to valencia as many remain missing after the devastating floods which have killed at least 200 people. in the us, the two presidential candidates race across the key swing states as the campaign reaches its final days.

in sport, it's heartbreak for england as a failed drop goal attempt from george ford means they're edged out by new zealand at twickenham. and good morning. it's another largely dry and mild and rather cloudy day out there. there will be some glimpses of sunshine around. i will bring you all of the details, coming up shortly. it's sunday the 3rd of november. our main story: the new conservative leader kemi badenoch has promised to win back voters and renew the party after securing an historic victory in the leadership contest. the 43—year—old former business secretary, who becomes the first black woman to lead a major uk party, beat the former immigration minister robertjenrick by 12,000 votes and will now begin forming her shadow cabinet. 0ur political correspondent iain watson reports.