Manchester is not a runaway success. But that is precisely why it is important. If Britain is to see growth, it needs to do better
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskIts economy is strong—but, again, only by comparison with other northern English cities. Productivity in Greater Manchester, a cluster of ten boroughs centred on the City of Manchester, is nine-tenths of the British average, which is boosted greatly by London. International yardsticks are even less flattering. Whereas London is about as rich as Paris, Manchester is poorer than most secondary cities in France and Germany .
The city exploded in the 19th century, as its cotton mills sucked in workers from the rest of Britain and Ireland. The chaotic, disease-ridden metropolis shocked observers like Alexis de Tocqueville and Friedrich Engels, the scion of a German cotton family who was sent there in a failed attempt to shake his radical views.
Because the post-industrial city centre was so thinly populated, there has been little to stop an eruption of high-rise housing and offices. The collective population of the two most central boroughs, Manchester and Salford, has risen from 640,000 to 822,000 over the past two decades, with the fastest growth in the urban core.
The gradually expanding tram network connects outlying boroughs to the city centre, which has helped persuade people that their fortunes are tied to it. “Rochdale wants the city centre to boom,” says John Blundell, a councillor there. Its success causes people to “climb up the railway line” to his patch, where houses are cheaper. Officials across the metropolis are now trying to push people and jobs to the generally poorer northern boroughs.
This pattern, of Greater Manchester furiously innovating and trying to change its fortunes but continuing to depend on Westminster, is evident in other areas. The metropolis has set a target of 2038 to reach net-zero carbon emissions, which is improbable. More realistically, Mr Burnham hopes that a scheme to build tens of thousands of new zero-carbon affordable homes and retrofit others could provide decent jobs for Mancunians and give them expertise that they could then sell to other cities.
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