Manchester At Breaking Point: Academics Blame Property Developers For Looming Infrastructure Crisis

Manchester's apartment and office building boom is placing an unbearable strain on the city's infrastructure, and the city faces a looming crisis.

So says a report from the Alliance Manchester Business School, which blames a  “misguided” developer-led regeneration strategy.

The Business School, part of Manchester University, is one of the most respected in the U.K.

The report says that investment in prestige projects like trams does not make up for a lack of basic infrastructure. This is a complaint that is now resurfacing in the city after two decades during which the dominant presence of city council chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein largely silenced debate. His retirement, and a refocussing of Labour politics in the city toward Corbyn-supporting Momentum, has reopened old disputes from the 1990s.

The claims — which have met with some sympathy from the city's indigenous property industry — come days after independent research showed the extent of Manchester's building boom, with a record 64 tower cranes recorded looming over the city centre.

The study’s authors argue that private property developers, which have led Manchester’s renaissance, fail to consider the transport and social infrastructure — such as schools, libraries and broadband — that communities need to thrive.

“Nobody can argue that major progress has been made in regenerating Manchester’s city centre in the two decades since the IRA bomb, much to the city council’s credit," research team leader and Professor of Accounting and Political Economy Karel Williams said. "But transport and housing is failing communities in the outer boroughs. This is a direct result of the misguided approach of developer-led regeneration."

The report also argues that plans to build a further 50,000 similar homes could create spill-over problems as central Manchester expands. Planned developments in areas such as Angel Meadow and Collyhurst in North Manchester could create tensions as regeneration intrudes on existing communities, many of them in areas of social deprivation, potentially resulting in “social clearances” it claims.

“Current regeneration plans and frameworks aren’t fit for the purposes of controlling and limiting development in the interests of communities," Williams said. “For all Greater Manchester’s boroughs to thrive, we’re calling for a rethink in policy expertise at local government level. We need policymakers who have the granular knowledge of local circumstances and social needs to deliver what citizens truly need."

Whilst not blaming property developers, some in Manchester's property sector are prepared to give the report's wider planning and infrastructure criticisms a hearing.

"I can sympathise with those arguments because the sheer scale of Manchester city centre development is scary and its unchecked," Canning O'Neill partner Conrad O'Neill said.

"The trouble with bubbles is that eventually they burst. We've seen office space converted into residential, but I wonder how long before we see the opposite? And the congestion in Manchester is awful. The trams are useful if you happen to live close to a line, but not everybody does, and you only have to travel down one of the main routes into Manchester and the problems are staring you in the face. You do not need to do academic research to know that the city's infrastructure has not kept pace.

"The south gets new infrastructure, whilst we don't, and the idea of the Northern Powerhouse as something that will deliver it to us is now an expression you whisper, because it's basically dead in the water."

The report's authors also criticise central government for failing to hand councils and new metro mayors greater powers and funding for transport improvements, housing and other infrastructure improvements.

The report is authored by Julie Froud, Mike Hodson, Andy McMeekin, Anne Stafford, Pam Stapleton, Hua Wei and Karel Williams, all from Alliance Manchester Business School.