Many of our planet's most successful cities have grown and developed as industrial hubs,
then continually reinvented themselves to survive.
But not all cities have kept pace, and some former industrial centres have struggled in recent years.
Manchester impressively bucks this trend. Emerging as a stronghold during the Industrial Revolution,
the city has now reinvented itself into a major creative centre,
attracting skills, talent and investment from around the world.
Poised to cement its status by evolving an entire district into a new technology and creative hub
while arguably repositioning itself as the UK's second city, the success of Manchester
stands as a powerful example for countless other urban centres looking to reverse their declines.
This is how a former industrial powerhouse became one of Europe's top creative capitals.
Recent decades have been challenging for many of our former industrial heartlands.
In a time of rampant technological progress,
mass mobility of talent and rising global competition, these once prosperous centres
of trade have been forced to adapt - and many have struggled to do so.
Manchester was one of several UK cities to find itself in this position.
Recognised as the world’s first truly industrialised urban area,
it developed at the heart of the global cotton trade in the 19th century,
moving from specialising in manufacturing and production to exporting finished goods.
Manchester was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. If we try to
explore why that was - Manchester happened to be a place of trade and commerce and
production of textiles before the Industrial Revolution really took hold.
It's situated on navigable rivers.
Rivers were important at that point in time, not just as a source of connectivity,
allowing people to move their goods to market, but also as a source of power.
When the Industrial Revolution came along,
Manchester already had some critical mass. During the 19th century, about a third of the world's
cotton production was here in Manchester or in the towns immediately surrounding it.
However, the peak of what became known as ‘Cottonopolis’ was soon followed by a sharp
decline, as demand for British cotton plummeted with the outbreak of the First World War.
The UK cotton industry collapsed in the mid 20th century as production
ramped up in countries closer to where the raw material was grown.
Overall, employment declined by 22% between 1951 and 1981. Jobs in engineering and
electrical goods almost halved, but textile industry jobs fell by a startling 86%.
By the 1980s and ‘90s, this was a place in urgent need of change and a new direction.
Now, Manchester has risen once again.
The rebuilding of a large part of the city centre in the wake of an IRA bombing in 1996
catalysed development, and the region has prospered since refocusing onto
the technology and creative sectors in the early 2000s.
The rebirth of Manchester really started in the mid to late 1990s.
And that reflected the fact that the roles of cities had changed over time.
I think the City Council sort of changed from a view of protecting the old industries which were
in decline to being a lot more forward-thinking and progressive in trying to attract new
business and new technologies to come in. And they've been very successful at doing that.
People call it the ‘Manchester Miracle’ of changing a city which was really in
decline to something which is really booming and is progressive today.
In the industrial era, coal might have been your most important resource. Today
it's talent, and Manchester has a lot of that,
thanks to its four universities and the fact that there are 100,000 students in the city.
It has great connectivity. It has great scale outside
central London. It really does have a lot going for it.
Manchester is now the fastest growing tech hub in Europe,
and one of the most rapidly expanding cities on the continent.
Around 100,000 more residents are expected to relocate to the city centre by 2025,
while another 65,000 jobs are expected by 2036.
Transport links are also being improved - a £1BN overhaul of the airport is underway
and Manchester Piccadilly will play a key role in the HS2 high-speed rail project
and the proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme.
The £3.5BN recently invested into the city’s media and digital industries is higher than
anywhere else on the continent - but this is just the start of the city’s creative reformation.
An entire new district is now being reimagined as a global creative cluster.
Here, Manchester’s burgeoning tech and media movement can gather,
share ideas and develop as a like-minded community.
Enterprise City is a new quarter for Manchester based around media,
tech and creative industries. It's a place where people are going to work, they're going to live,
and there is going to be a cultural element to Enterprise City as well.
It will include a new venue called The Factory - the new home for the Manchester International
Festival and a venue for 7,000 visitors. So that together with great placemaking
within the public realm will provide a new cultural base for Manchester.
Based in the heart of the St John’s neighbourhood and rising on a site with a long history of
media production, Enterprise City is the business element of the new development.
The scheme is being conceived and led by Allied London, with long-term funding
and ownership of the first commercial buildings provided by Aviva Investors.
The evolution of this district will see state-of-the-art new structures rise alongside
rehabilitated heritage buildings, including the former Granada Studios - an iconic TV set that was
once home to the world’s longest-running serial TV drama, Coronation Street.
The £60 million Old Granada Studios project will include nine floors of bespoke workplaces,
a 200-room hotel, retail units, a 370-square-metre rooftop extension
and a series of readapted TV and film studios.
Enterprise City has already confirmed technology giant Booking.com as a key tenant of Manchester
Goods Yard, with media conglomerate WPP set to occupy the adjacent Globe & Simpson building.
Consisting of four interlinked blocks connected by a series of bridges
to encourage connectivity between companies, the Goods Yard is a New
York-inspired warehouse concept that will set a new standard in flexible workspace.
Another key component is the ABC Buildings.
Featuring a contemporary take on 1960s brutalist architecture - and embodying
the revolutionary design ethos of that time - this complex provides over 9,000 square metres
of workspace for media and tech businesses, alongside a boutique cinema and retail units.
First constructed in the 19th century, the Bonded Warehouse was once a busy terminus
that connected Manchester with nearby Liverpool.
Today, the structure is being carefully reborn as an enterprise hub for small to
medium-sized businesses, offering six levels of work, studio, retail and event space.
Enterprise City can play a role in the next stage of Manchester's economic development.
It will help the city foster those clusters in the creative media and tech sectors, and the larger
those clusters get, the more productive they will be and the more employment they will create.
And those employment benefits will penetrate outside of the city to the wider northwest,
helping to reinforce Manchester's position as the capital of the north.
I think it will help the region on a variety of bases
in terms of city employment, city wealth, etc. Creating a district that can really
house those people and be really tailored towards that industry will only encourage more occupiers
to either start or even to come to Manchester, or new start-ups to choose Manchester as their base.
It's a big-scale project, and if you work in real estate, being involved in a project such as this
is what gets you out of bed in the morning. So, I'm incredibly proud of where we've got to today.
Now that we have created this infrastructure to bring people together in a productive way,
what kind of innovations are going to take place there?
What kind of new ideas are going to be born in this area?
I'm very excited to see what plays out in that respect.
The pain of de-industrialisation is still being acutely felt in
cities around the world - destroying livelihoods and shattering communities
while having a profound impact on global politics and economic policy decisions.
But with developments like Enterprise City, Manchester is bucking the trend, emerging
as a powerful case study for other centres and proving the importance of adaptability.
What was once a leading industrial powerhouse has now been reinvented
into a dominant creative hub - a city whose prominence on the world stage has endured,
and that arguably carries more weight today than at any time before.
This video was powered by Aviva Investors. Learn more at the link below.
And as always, if you enjoyed this video and would like to get more
from the definitive video channel for construction, subscribe to The B1M.