Manchester goes for gold

The eyes of the world will be on Manchester when we host the Commonwealth GamesÉ and the world will be impressed." The confident words of Howard Bernstein, Manchester City Coucil chief executive. And he has every reason to be confident.

For in Manchester - grey, rainy Manchester of those dark satanic mills - a transformation has been taking place in its built environment.

In the six years since an IRA bomb destroyed much of the city centre, more than half a billion pounds of public money has gone into regeneration schemes around Manchester, not to mention a further £200m into the venues that will host the XVII Commonwealth Games later this month.

Many impressive new civic structures have sprung up, including Urbis - the 'experience of the city' museum, the refurbished Manchester Art Gallery, plus of course the sweeping City of Manchester stadium.

Private finance has also contributed to the transformation. From Crosby Homes' No.1 Deansgate, a swanky 18-storey residential tower in the heart of the city where penthouse apartments fetch £1m-plus, to Taylor Woodrow's burgeoning Mackintosh Village development near the university, private developers have been quick to climb aboard the Manchester bandwagon. Since the bomb, the city centre alone has benefited from a staggering £1.5bn of private investment.

"The city council has a very progressive approach to regeneration, and believes in getting things moving on the ground as quickly as possible," says Doug Weston, director of Taylor Woodrow Construction.

But in a country where urban regeneration programmes have been famed not so much for progress as for a distinct lack of it - what is it about Manchester's formula that has worked so well?

The story begins about a decade ago.

The post-war era had not been a happy one for Manchester, which was hard hit by the decline in manufacturing industry. In addition, a series of poor planning decisions in the 1950s and 1960s left a legacy of grey modernist architecture sandwiched between concrete flyovers, disused canals, and derelict industrial sites. By the end of the 1980s, the city was increasingly beset by economic and social problems.

Then things began to change. Led by men such as present chief executive Howard Bernstein, and Martin Kelly, head of the central policy unit, the council began to develop a framework for the regeneration of the city.

"It all started with the Olympic Games bid in the early 1990s," recalls Kelly. "A few people probably laughed about Manchester bidding for the Olympics but, to be honest, we knew we were unlikely to win it. The real aim was to bring together a number of key, like-minded people from both public and private sector who would be energised to come up with ideas for a future vision of Manchester."

The thinking from the aborted Olympic bid was consolidated into a document called the City Pride Prospectus, which was published in 1994 (it was revised in 1997 to incorporate new thinking resulting from the 1996 IRA bomb). It would be the basis for the city's regeneration strategy over the next eight years.

"What we did was to look at the experiences of other cities during the 1980s, and learn lessons from them," explains Kelly. "Sheffield and Liverpool were run by socialist councils with socialist agendas, but the national government at the time was Conservative. It was never going to accept the kind of policies Sheffield and Liverpool were promoting, so inevitably there was conflict between the two [local and national government].

"Our chief executive Howard Bernstein is very pragmatic. He saw what was happening in terms of the national political context and realised we would have to work with the Tories if we were to realise our vision for Manchester.

"So, while trying to not to lose sight of the social agenda, we sought to promote private enterprise, inward investment, wealth creation, and get a 'virtuous circle' going within Manchester."

Putting in place the infrastructure to support this strategy was "fundamental", according to Kelly. "The airport expansion was very important. We always regarded it as a generator of wealth and jobs, a motor for the city's economy. If you talk to overseas investors, particularly North Americans, a good, well-connected airport is something they regard as critical."

A further £1bn of improvements for Manchester Airport are planned over the next decade to deliver extra capacity, in anticipation of a doubling in traffic by 2015. This should ensure Manchester retains its position, at least in international eyes, as commercial centre for the North West, if not the whole of northern England.

Another important plank in the infrastructure was the tram, built in partnership with neighbouring boroughs in the Greater Manchester area. Metrolink has proved a huge success, easing congestion in the city centre, where it connects Piccadilly and Victoria stations, Piccadilly Gardens and the main shopping areas, and providing better access for some of the most deprived areas of the city. In this respect, it is helping underpin the council's regeneration strategy and the new lines that will be built in Metrolink's next extension will open up other such areas, particularly east Manchester.

Road improvements have had a similar impact. The M60 extension will mean better connections for the run-down areas of north and east Manchester, and the rapid take-up of spaces in the new North Manchester Business Park has been partly attributed to the new motorway.

New arterial routes within the city are also opening up areas targeted for regeneration, such as the area known as the 'Left Bank' around the Granada TV complex to the south of the city centre, which will benefit from the new inner relief road, due to be completed later this year.

Another key feature of Manchester's strategy is the holistic approach it has taken to regeneration. A key factor of City Pride was that private, public and other community-based bodies work together to create area-based regeneration strategies. In other words, all of the stakeholders of an area would be involved in devising a regeneration framework.

"The classic example of this is probably Moss Side/Hulme," says Kelly. "It's a locally-based regeneration body, and it's basically the same model as the government is using for its urban regeneration companies, like New East Manchester."

Hulme and Moss Side contained some of the worst sink estates in Britain. Over five years from 1992, Hulme Regeneration Limited, a partnership between Amec and the city council, plus other public, private and community interests, succeeded in clearing and replacing much of the area's housing stock.

Since 1997, the area's regeneration programme has been continued by the Moss Side and Hulme Partnership, which has levered in some £400m of private investment. The recently-completed, 30,000m2 Birley Fields Business Park - just half-an-hour's drive from the airport - should bring further economic activity to the area.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Manchester's regeneration has been the revitalised city centre - not just as a place to work and shop, but as a place to live too.



The IRA bomb, horrific though it was, has actually proved to be a cloud with a silver lining. City planners sensibly saw it as a blank sheet of paper - a chance to redesign the city centre almost from scratch. As a result, monstrosities from the 1960s - such as the Arndale Centre - have been, or are in the process of being, replaced by new, better designed buildings. The street lay out is much improved and, thanks in part to the trams, more pedestrian-friendly.

New retailers (in addition to those who were there prior to 1996) have been attracted, including Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, while Marks & Spencer is building its biggest store worldwide in the new Shambles West development.

Aside from the shops, the council has sought to improve other aspects of the built environment in the city centre. The shabby Piccadilly Gardens, the only green 'lung' in central Manchester, has been revamped, and is now a continental-style plaza with fountains. Buildings like Urbis and the extended art gallery have broadened the centre's cultural appeal, offering more than just the retail experience.

The effect of all this on the city centre's population has been dramatic. A decade ago, just 2,500 people lived in the centre of Manchester. Now, with developments like No.1 Deansgate and the Mackintosh Village, that number has grown to 10,000. The council believes it will be nearer 25,000 in another 10 years. And according to Kelly: "Manchester's city centre boundaries are starting to expand for the first time since the industrial revolution."

However, not everyone agrees with the council's policies.

Manchester Gorton's veteran MP, Gerald Kaufmann, believes mistakes were made in rebuilding the city centre area, particularly in terms of pandering to the retail chains - which he describes as "not exactly ground-breaking evidence of new ideas in urban planning". He feels that, on the part of the council: "There was insufficient understanding that a vibrant city centre offers a different kind of attractionÉ compared with a collection of chain store branches."

The council's open door policy to developers of luxury apartments has also been criticised as promoting an atmosphere of exclusivity in a city where income levels are still well below the national average.

"We are very mindful of the social dimension to regeneration," offers Kelly in defence. "Housing, education, health - they all have to be provided for. But the private and public go hand in hand, and our chief executive knows that. He's very skilful at showing the private sector where the opportunities are, but getting a spin off for the rest of the city too.

"That's where we've been most successful. Private investors want certainty - and we can give them that. We can say, if you're going to build a multi-million pound development here, we can offer you a new Metrolink station close by."

So, can Manchester be the model for urban regeneration elsewhere in the country?

Kelly is unsure. "I think the trend of city centres becoming fashionable places to live again is a nationwide one," he says. "But it does help if you have that critical mass of activities in the centre - and in that respect, Manchester probably has the edge. We've got the bar culture, the music culture, that air of bohemia which people want to buy into."

He could have added the big higher education population, much of it close to the city centre, the presence of one of the world's most famous football teams (there's also a team out in Trafford apparently!), and its status as the largest city in the north of England.

All of these factors have certainly given Manchester a headstart in getting its regeneration programmes moving.

Visitors to the Commonwealth Games will be impressed.