SERIOUS NEW CHALLENGES ARE NOW AFFECTING THE CITY AND ITS COMMUNITIES. HOW CAN MANCHESTER THRIVE IN AN URBANIZING WORLD?

In a rapidly urbanizing world, the way in which cities are planned, built, operated and redefined has a huge social, environmental and economic impact. City leaders need to find ways to balance the demands of generating strong financial returns, being an attractive place for people to live and work in, whilst also limiting their damage to the environment. The Chancellor, George Osborne, outlined how he saw the devolution picture developing and he announced that he would give more power to those English regions who want to take the bold step into the future.

The Mancunian qualities of innovation, hard work and enterprise made Manchester the first modern city and placed it at the heart of the industrial world. Now, the originality and creative heart and soul of Manchester have inspired a successful reinvention over the past 20 years. World-class sports facilities, expanding service industries and thriving universities brought new money and new jobs to Manchester. This economic growth has been led by one of the highest rates of private sector growth over the past 15 years and the creation of over 50,000 jobs across the city. Serious new challenges are now affecting the city and its communities; the banking crisis, credit crunch and recession are still affecting our ability to continue to grow the economy and deliver vital services for Manchester people.

PEOPLE• LONDON #3• BIRMINGHAM #17

MANCHESTER #12

PROFIT• LONDON #2• BIRMINGHAM #29

MANCHESTER #21

PLANET• LONDON #12• BIRMINGHAM #10

MANCHESTER #14

RANKING ON INDEX

This drive for excellence is reaffirmed in the vision of Manchester as a world class city as competitive as the best international cities;• that stands out as enterprising, creative and industrious • with highly skilled and motivated people • living in successful neighbourhoods where prosperity is environmentally sustainable • where all our residents can meet their full potential, are valued and secure.

The refreshed strategy sets out how this vision will be achieved by focusing on three areas: growth, people and place;

GROWTHManchester is an engine of growth with enormous potential to grow further and continue to create jobs and economic wealth. It will continue to build on our economic assets and strengths in financial and professional services; creative, digital and new media; advanced manufacturing and life sciences. It will also continue to support Manchester residents to develop the productivity and educational basis for economic growth.

PEOPLE Priorities around growth will be linked to the ambitions to support and invest in people through the reform of public services. Manchester will deliver services that foster aspiration, independence and resilience, and that open up pathways into employment through education and skills. This will help to reduce the demand on expensive, reactive services.

PLACEManchester will continue to create and maintain neighbourhoods that attract, support and retain working people and offer a good quality of life for residents. It will have a focus on the needs of different communities, ensuring that across the city that residents have access to clean, safe neighbourhoods with an attractive housing offer and the high quality range of services and facilities which are critical to the fabric of successful neighbourhoods.By 2020, the Manchester city region is aiming to have pioneered a new model for sustainable economic growth based around a more connected, talented and greener city region where all residents are able to contribute to and benefit from sustained prosperity and enjoy a good quality of life.

SO, HOW SUSTAINABLE IS MANCHESTER? Across the world, cities are performing better for being sustainable for profit and planet but are failing to sufficiently meet the needs of their people. No utopian city exists, rather, city leaders face a difficult task balancing the three pillars of sustainability; people, planet and profit. The people sub-index rates transport infrastructure, health, education, income inequality, work-life balance, the dependency ratio and green spaces within cities. These indicators can be broadly thought of as capturing ‘quality of life’ for the populace in the respective cities.The planet sub-index looks at city energy consumption and renewable energy share, recycling rates, greenhouse gas emissions, natural catastrophe risk, drinking water, sanitation and air pollution.The profit sub-index examines performance from a business perspective, combining measures of transport infrastructure (rail, air, other public transport and commuting time), ease of doing business, the city’s importance in global economic networks, property and living costs, GDP per capita and energy efficiency.

HOW DOES MANCHESTER RANK?In our Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index, Manchester scores exceptionally well, ranking 14th out of 50 leading global cities beating the likes of New York (20th), Los Angeles (28th), Tokyo (23rd), Paris (16th) and Birmingham (18th). But closer analysis of the index identifies areas for improvement that if addressed could easily lead to a top 10 position in the future. What is also relevant is how the areas for improvement align with the opportunity that devolution offers. Manchester ranks at 14th for planet and the plan to ensure that energy, water, waste and digital infrastructure in place to support growth and focus on the natural environment in

Manchester is key. This brings great benefits to protect and enhance blue and green infrastructure to improve quality of life for residents contributing significantly to economic growth and creating attractive places where people want to invest and work. Regarding people, Manchester ranks at 12th, which again is excellent; the focus on Manchester’s unparalleled expertise in academic research and development in key enabling technologies to position the city region as a world class centre. We must also bridge the gap between knowledge and production to ensure that more of the innovations developed here are taken to the market place within Manchester, enabling us to retain jobs and growth resulting from those developments. Where Manchester lags behind is on the profit rating at 21st. This reinforces the needs for a greater focus on internationalisation – developing and strengthening our links with new and growing markets such as China, India and the Middle East, whilst maintaining our links with established markets in Europe and North America, to increase exports and encourage greater inward investment.

IMPROVING CONNECTIVITY LOCALLY, NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLYManchester has consistently placed connectivity and transport investment at the heart of its economic strategy. Manchester will continue to focus investment on the city region’s strategic transport network to further enhance local, national and international connectivity. This investment strengthens and widens the labour market, which is critical to future success and enables businesses to reduce costs by moving people and goods more quickly, easily and reliably. There is already significant investment in transport networks, both underway and planned, which will deliver a transformational step-change in connectivity.

STIMULATING AND RESHAPING OUR HOUSING MARKETManchester has seen a dramatic decrease in new housing completions since the peak of the housing market in 2007 – new supply is running at around 3,000 per annum rather than the 9,000-10,000 needed. A lack of available mortgage finance and difficulties in accessing development funding (problems common across the country) are the key barriers to overcome. Each passing year of underdelivery adds to the pressure on the existing housing supply, making it more difficult for new and existing households to find and afford homes that fit their needs and aspirations. Transforming existing stock and using new housing development as a catalyst for low carbon infrastructure will be key to providing healthy, safe, warm and affordable homes. Manchester and its Regions has committed to a target of 9,200 new homes per year by 2015, and retrofitting 25,000 each year. Manchester will promote housing growth through three interelated work programmes, overseen by the innovative Housing Investment Board, which brings together key decision makers from Manchester and the Homes and Communities Agency: • New business models based on building new

homes for market rent • Alternatives to the traditional mortgage as routes

to home ownership and land supply continues to offer deliverable opportunities, including on public sector land

• Seek alternative sources of investment in new housing, including institutions such as pension funds, whilst improving the quality of existing and new housing stock.

CONTACTJonathan Moore Manchester City ExecutiveT +44 (0)7818 526 060E jonathan.moore@arcadis.com

@JMoore_63

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www.arcadis.com

CRAFTING A PLAN FOR GROWTH AND INFRASTRUCTUREIt has long been recognised that infrastructure drives competitiveness and economic growth by increasing productivity, reducing costs and extending the reach of business. However, infrastructure planning has traditionally been carried out on a site-by-site basis and the UK’s financial, political and planning systems have no experience or expectation of a place-based co-ordinated programme of capital investment. Different parts of Manchester will experience different pressures according to their geography, history and population. Within Manchester, strategic economic priorities and infrastructure ‘pinch points’ are frequently found together. By recognising the interconnectivity and interdependency of different forms of infrastructure and targeting interventions, Manchester will ensure that ongoing growth and the priorities outlined are delivered sustainably.The challenges cities face are large and varied since sustainable development requires a wide range of outcomes to be achieved. Moreover, nearly all of the cities studied are growing all the time – creating constantly evolving demands and pressure. According to UN analysis, only two of the world’s largest 71 cities will experience a decline in population between 2010 and 2015. Indeed, some city populations are growing at rates of 4%, 5%, or even 6% per year over the same period, making it incredibly difficult for urban planners and policymakers to keep up. The population expansion between 2010 and 2015 demonstrates the short-term stress that cities are facing as they strive to achieve sustainable development. A notable feature here is the difference between developed world cities, which are experiencing more moderate population growth, and developing world cities, which are experiencing rapid increases. Large population growth combined with rapid rural-to-urban migration has tended to accompany economic development everywhere, and currently poses huge challenges for planners in developing countries.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTSThe pattern of learning from others makes the Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index a very interesting tool that can be used to gauge how cities are seeking to strike the balance between people, planet and profit and the interdependencies between them. For example, the planet indicators show that cities that perform well economically often do so at a high environmental cost. The breakdown into sub-indices demonstrates where cities need to make investment to improve their overall performance. Cities like New York, Hong Kong, London and Singapore are victims of their own success in some ways with very high land costs. For long-term economic and social sustainability, this requires a heavy programme of investment in housing and office space. Similarly, the findings demonstrate that European cities need to refocus their attention on the business environment and achieving stronger economic performance. On various components of the profit sub-index the European cities perform weakly as the Eurozone financial and sovereign debt crisis continues to drag on. The findings highlight the major competitiveness challenges faced by the continent.