Manchester must not lose sight of what makes it unique

COMMENT Beyond the impact of the pandemic, Manchester has evolved stealthily but dramatically over the past five years and today we see a more diverse real estate landscape than ever before. The city has pushed its traditional boundaries across all points of the compass to deliver a collection of commercial and residential communities that have their own personalities, sectoral appeal and ecosystem of amenities. Manchester’s ongoing pull on people and innovative approach brings the opportunity to regenerate parts of the city that may otherwise be considered unviable in a commercial context. Hard-wired resilience in the office sector and sustained residential rental and capital values are bringing forward meaningful mixed-use schemes supported by intelligent, user-friendly public realm. Great schemes coming out of Manchester include the 14-acre Mayfield Park site, which will feature the city’s first urban park in more than 100 years; Victoria North, where old meets new in a really intelligent way; and Manchester City Council’s 10.5-acre Cotton Field Square, which is earmarked to become a new zero-carbon community. We now have a city that is entering the next stage in its life cycle – gone is the reliance on a single retail or office core and the clear boundaries that defined the centre of the city. Manchester now more than ever resembles other tier-one European cities, providing a collection of diverse quarters that combine to deliver an overarching city personality. However, careful curation is required at this point to make sure core values are not diluted and that the evolving landscape remains uniquely Mancunian in everything it does. There is a possibility that building back better may be sidelined by very real financial pressures, but short-term gains should not trump considered and meaningful development. Beyond Manchester’s intrinsic cultural and creative heritage, a key component that will ensure growth with purpose rests on the city’s platform for sustainability and digital technology. Progressive local public leaders are across this – the ink is dry on carbon reduction commitments, with the city committed to becoming zero carbon by 2038, and Manchester’s digital footprint is planted firmly enough to have earned it the title of the fastest-growing digital and tech hub in Europe. This focus will continue to fill office buildings with occupiers doing brilliant innovative things, as well as providing a sectorally diverse employment platform for graduates and the wider skilled labour pool hailing from across the city region. We also mustn’t forget that exponential growth presents some very real social problems that transcend the shiny world of top-end office and residential development, as the scale of that development outpaces social infrastructure. New communities can sometimes sit uncomfortably alongside existing ones, bringing a feeling of a wealth divide and a limitation on everyone being able to enjoy all aspects of the city they live in equally. The pandemic has illuminated a lot of inequalities across the UK and these problems will need to be front and centre for shaping the city. It will take the public and private sector to come together to promote and deliver a culture which looks beyond outputs captured by the planning system and makes it clear that social value in all its forms is absolutely central to doing business in the city. Manchester is already a long-time leader of social value across the UK because we do public-private collaboration well. We have a strong-spirited business and advisory community that has pulled together and local leadership that is committed to embedding social value, grounded in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, into its procurement systems. This collaborative, inclusive, roll-your-sleeves up approach has to be the Mancunian spirit that we have to weave directly into the evolving personality of the city and show the world that it is place for everyone. Chris Cheap is managing director of UK regions at Avison Young