Greater Manchester: A City-region reimagined

The theme of LREF this year is ‘Reimagine’ and no city-region encapsulates this more than Greater Manchester. Not long ago, we were regarded as a declining industrial powerhouse but after a period of regeneration and recovery, we’ve managed to transform our economy, built environment and lifestyle offering to become one of the world’s most exciting cities and one of the UK’s most important economic centres.

For the last 25 years, our region has benefitted from strong leadership and the long-term strategies put in place to drive economic growth. We’ve become a leader of English devolution, which has given us the power to rethink what our city-region can and should be, ensuring it delivers for our people. As a result, our economy has been growing faster than the UK’s in recent years and is showing no signs of slowing down as we enter a new era of growth.

Our city has laid strong economic foundations with a thriving urban core, but there’s still a lot of untapped potential across Greater Manchester to deliver a better region for our people, and our businesses and support the UK in its growth ambitions.

This year, LREF is focusing on devising innovative solutions to deliver more sustainable, equitable and prosperous cities under a refreshed national government. This is something that Greater Manchester has been working on for decades, and some of these solutions and strategies are starting to bear fruit.

With further devolved powers and a new Labour Government, it feels like now is an exciting time to drive change in our region. Our overarching ambition is to become a greener, fairer, and more prosperous city-region, and with this, Greater Manchester still has a huge amount of potential for investment, development and innovation that can help us to achieve our missions. Here are just a few ways that we’re working towards this:

Long-term vision for the future

Private sector partners will all agree that Greater Manchester’s long-term strategies and vision for the future make it a secure and confident investment. The region has identified a strategic framework for development over the next two decades that is helping to reimagine our future. The framework, ‘Places for Everyone’ identifies specific sites for new housing, commercial, green space and essential infrastructure improvements. With a commitment to build 75,000 homes in this parliamentary term, Greater Manchester is showing it already has strategies and vision in place to deliver for the new Government; and is in line with its missions.

The region has also identified six growth locations to drive inclusive economic growth through harnessing existing economic strengths, R&D assets and industrial sectors. Working to support our foundational and frontier sectors these growth locations will balance Greater Manchester’s economy, building on the success of the urban core.

Creating a city for everyone

The overarching vision for our region is for “Greater Manchester to be a place where everyone can live a good life, growing up, getting on and growing old in a greener, fairer, more prosperous city-region”. With this in mind, we are passionate about making sure that the growth of our city region benefits everyone.

Placemaking and regeneration are at the heart of Greater Manchester’s growth ambitions. By working across our towns and creating new neighbourhoods in our city centre and beyond, we’re reimaging what community and neighbourhood should be to help local economies thrive. Housing-led regeneration projects like Victoria North, Holt Town, Strangeways and Central Salford will support anticipated population growth and create new jobs and prosperity. Meanwhile, investment in town centres such as Stockport, Wythenshawe, Wigan, Bolton and Oldham will enhance life away from the city centre, creating a range of lifestyle offers for residents at all stages.

As part of this, we’ve invested heavily in public transport to create a London-style integrated public transport system; The Bee Network. By improving connectivity across the region and bringing together rail, trams, buses and active travel, we can ensure everyone in our region is connected to good employment opportunities as well as our city’s thriving leisure and cultural offerings.

We’re also investing in skills, intending to become the UK’s leading technical education city-region. Businesses across Greater Manchester are helping us to set the curriculum for the MBacc (The Manchester Baccalaureate) and create a pathway to good jobs through technical education, ensuring skills provisions match what employers in our high-value industries need. This will help us to extend our already vast talent pool of university graduates, giving everyone equal opportunities to find good employment and confirm Greater Manchester’s status as a great place to do business.