The canal water was dotted with debris but that did not put off Scott Lord and his boyhood friends splashing in the shadows of the derelict cotton mills of east Manchester.
The Mancunian youths had become accustomed to the greasy oil smell and strange, purple-coloured soil, where the UK city’s once great industrial might had given way to wasteland. The factory landscapes famously depicted by the English artist LS Lowry were in ruins.
Oasis
In the span of Mr Lord’s lifetime – he is now 35 – a barren land of polluted canals, disused buildings and smog-filled skies has been transformed into an oasis of smart rentals, a gleaming football stadium, sports, health and education facilities, alongside a concert venue with acoustics devised so cleverly that Stevie Wonder decided to sing Ebony and Ivory for the first time in a decade.
Manchester is a city thriving, with annualised GDP growth running at 3 per cent, outstripping the rest of the country, even London. Once, only one in 10 graduates decided to remain but that figure is now one in two. And of course, there is the footballing success of Manchester City, a club that had won nothing in decades before it came under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed, UAE Vice President, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Presidential Court, and has now won all the trophies there are to lift.
How did that happen?
Its success is built squarely on the shoulders of a local government that puts city before politics, a single outstanding chief executive, Manchester’s unique ethos and, in 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis, a vote of confidence by City Football Group (CFG), the new ownership that precipitated major investments.
“Manchester is easily, without question, now the coolest city in England,” Noel Gallagher, founder of multi award-winning group Oasis, told The National. “It’s got beautiful places to live, great shopping and the music scene is unquestionably the greatest in England. It's got the football. Even its mayor Andy Burnham is cool.”
Howard’s way
Manchester was the 19th century powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution, becoming the world’s leading producer of cotton textiles, but by the late 20th century it was in deep economic decline, its population plummeting from 750,000 in 1951 to below 400,000 in the 1990s.
Being out of a job was more common than having one, fervent Manchester City fan Gallagher recalled. “Me, my older brother and my dad, one of my dad’s mates and his two sons all used to go and sign on together and there's nothing more depressing than that.”
The long journey of resurrection was led by Sir Howard Bernstein, who as Manchester City Council's chief executive was key to Manchester’s development and has been described as “one of the most extraordinary urban leaders ever”.
Sir Howard joined the council aged 18 and his work ethic was quickly noticed, but his genius, too, including an ability to put politics aside, with a diplomacy that charmed both Conservative political opponents and championed close partnerships with investors who were committed for the long term.
After his death in 2024, he was hailed as the man who led the city on its journey from grime to glory. He was, said former UK chancellor George Osborne, speaking at his memorial service, “the single most important and influential civil servant of the modern era”.
“Howard is the model of what the modern public servant should be: entrepreneurial, creative, diplomatic, an artist in the art of administration.”
For a city to thrive, the lesson from Manchester shows that leaders have to put their politics aside and collaborate with central government. This Sir Howard did, originally with Tory grandee Michael Heseltine, securing funding to rebuild after an IRA bomb devastated parts of the city and two decades later with Mr Osborne, who then held the country’s purse strings.
“There was artistry in the way Howard Bernstein saw a future that few others could when they stared at that grey canvas of industrial Manchester 40 years ago,” said Mr Osborne.
For City and city
There were sniggers in Westminster when Sir Howard trumpeted Manchester’s bids to host the 1996 and then 2000 Olympic Games. But behind those campaigns was a strategy to elevate the city that resulted in it successfully hosting the 2002 Commonwealth Games and the genesis for east Manchester's football-led regeneration.
Sir Howard never hid the fact he was a big City fan, which eased the club’s takeover of the City of Manchester Stadium after the Games, leading to east Manchester’s revival from land sodden with the toxic petrochemical waste locals called “Gally goo”, and gave rise to its peculiar colour. Long removed, the landscape is now a thriving 30-odd hectares of arguably the world’s best training grounds and the 53,400-seat Etihad Stadium.
For that to happen, what many called the “Manchester magic” saw the city council build a trusting relationship with a private investor from a 5,000km distance.
The transformation began in September 2008 when Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour acquired Manchester City with an appetite not only to develop the football but also the other opportunities the city presented.
The club was bought for £210 million, including debt, the start of an investment of an estimated £3 billion in both football and urban regeneration, with Sheikh Mansour making his long-term intentions clear in an open letter to City fans.
“We are aware that the club has a significant role in the community going back years,” he wrote. “I am also a long-term investor and that is probably more important to the club and to you because it means we are here for the long haul.”
The words were backed by action, creating a board with significant strategic, investment and sports business expertise alongside the resources to put transformational plans in place.
Champions of quality
Years earlier, City fans had tolerated relegation to the third tier of English football for the only time in their history in 1998 and again from the top flight in 2001, near-exit from the Premier League in 2006 and performances that rendered the club unable to climb beyond mid-table.
Vita Group
Sheikh Mansour insisted on quality from the outset. Brian Marwood, a sharp-footed winger who helped Arsenal to championship success in 1989, was asked to meet Khaldoon Al Mubarak – who in the UAE chairs the Executive Affairs Authority and is managing director and chief executive of Mubadala Investment Company – the club’s new chairman, with a view to becoming sporting director, a post he had turned down with the previous owners.
“I'm a big believer in people,” Marwood said, speaking at City's training headquarters. “I'd never met Khaldoon before and what was supposed to be an hour's conversation turned into five hours, just chatting football, what his philosophy was and what he was looking for from the club.”
He was someone Marwood felt he could trust. Both understood the need to “accelerate the quality of the squad”, knowing that they had to convince star players “that the owners had a vision” to prevent them joining other stellar clubs.
Gareth Barry was a “great example”, who despite being offered more money by Liverpool, “bought into what we were going to do here”, said Marwood.
Success came fast. The 2011 FA Cup became City’s first trophy in 35 years and the following season they won the Premiership for the first time in 44 years with Sergio Aguero’s last-gasp goal securing the title on a dramatic final day.
“The story then starts to become real, interesting, [with] bigger, better players,” said Marwood.
The club continuously added to its off-field capabilities and since 2008, City have won eight Premier League titles, three FA Cups, seven League Cups and the cherished UEFA Champions League in 2023.
As Mr Al Mubarak told fans in 2014: “The very first task Sheikh Mansour and I discussed was the need to create for the club an engine for the development and enhancement of talent.” It was, he added, something that would “truly differentiate the club as a leader in the world of football”.
The investment in a thriving youth academy has produced more than 240 professional footballers, including 48 who have played in City's first team.
Industrial conversion
The downtrodden Ancoats area began its transformation into quality flats. Old, vast Victorian mills, some burnt-out and others on the point of collapse, were carefully restored by the Manchester Life development company, via a partnership between the council and City’s owners, with an ambition for regeneration at a time when there was no market confidence.
Developers were given planning decisions within 13 weeks, lightning speed by English local government standards.
New York construction lawyer Marty Edelman, who was on the board of City and had been instrumental in the Etihad Campus development, was another crucial factor. He and chairman Mr Al Mubarak understood that housing needed to go the US way, with the “build-to-rent” concept featuring concierges and gyms at reasonable prices.
“We brought in top-quality architects we had used from our relationships in Abu Dhabi,” he said. “Our mandate was to work in this community to make it better.”
It was also a new experience for a man with global experience to find a council that was pro-development. “The leadership in Manchester … it's just incredibly well run and that continues today, it is a positive force and an inspiration,” Mr Edelman added.
Pete Bradshaw, City's director of sustainability, also spoke of the partnership. “It was this idea of collaboration and authenticity,” he said. “We knew if we worked like that, we'd have a chance of doing something really special.”
Young and thriving
Another important player was then council director of growth Eddie Smith, who realised quickly that the owners were “not buying City … they're buying into the city and that's the opportunity we've got to leverage”.
One of those opportunities was reversing the exodus of graduates who left Manchester to build their careers, usually in London. “Before, only one in 10 remained but now it’s over half and we’re attracting graduates from other universities.”
The Ancoats area, now a destination of cleverly designed rentals overlooking the once fetid canals, is regarded as one of “the hippest and most desirable places to live”, said Mr Edelman. “It’s a real regeneration success story.”
And it has retained its Mancunian spirit. “It was a close-knit community before the regeneration but I think it’s even closer now,” Mr Lord said.
The virtuous cycle continues, said Giles Beswick of Vita Group, Manchester’s largest developers of student accommodation, repositioning it as a “very business-driven city that’s transformed the population to being very young and diverse”.
He pointed to the upstairs area of Vita’s bustling House of Social. “There's people on dates, having drinks after work, on Teams meetings, students collaborating on projects on desks next to each other. Young people can now build a career in Manchester rather than going to London.”
That has led to Manchester creating 100,000 jobs in the past decade, said Bev Craig, now city council leader. “We've invested in culture and sport, and all the ingredients that give you a good life, because that's what the big firms tell us if you want business to thrive, you have to have a good place to live.” This is one reason why The New York Times recently put Manchester among its top 10 cities to visit.
Ms Craig also provided an insight into the council’s canny planning skills. At the start of the pandemic, it processed as many planning applications as it could “to ensure people were ready to go when it restarted, so we came out of the blocks very quickly after Covid because we knew our recovery would be economic”.
Wonder venue
The regeneration has not stopped. A sign of Manchester’s growing standing was its newly built Co-op Live arena hosting the prestigious Brit Awards in March.
The standards, quality and acoustics are of such high order that Stevie Wonder played two extra songs last year, general manager Guy Duncan said, “and he was outstanding”.
The net-zero venue, a stone’s throw from the Etihad, was built by CFG in partnership with Oak View Group (OVG) with the pop star Harry Styles as an investor for around £400 million, opening in 2024.
Since then it has hosted major acts such as Lady Gaga, Drake and Bruce Springsteen, each playing to a crowd of 24,000, many of them flying in from Europe and beyond.
Co-op Live was, said Mark Donnelly of OVG, designed to a high specification to provide more of the US-style experience. “We saw an opportunity to really shift the dial and create the best music venue in Europe.”
He spoke, too, of the ripple effect across Manchester attracting major events that have “a massive, positive and multiplier impact”.
That is also another reason why Manchester International Airport has recorded a doubling of passengers in the past decade, with Etihad providing many of the flights and 32 million passengers passing through last year.
Rain parade
If there is a template for struggling cities, then Manchester is it. CFG has already expanded to 12 other countries, from Brazil to Australia and the eastern US, where Jon Stemp, chief infrastructure officer, is overseeing the construction of New York City FC's new home, a 25,000-seater stadium, which will be ready for the 2027-2028 season.
The Manchester model, he contended, “becomes a honeypot for attracting talent” because its attention to quality “is designed to make the human being feel the most important person in the building”.
“Whether it's [Manchester City striker] Erling Haaland or [manager] Pep Guardiola, they're coming into these buildings every day and we want them to feel inspired, lifted and confident they can be better than they were yesterday,” Mr Stemp said.
Manchester, he argued, has been a great story whose ingredients could be replicated in other cities, especially the long-term view taken by the owners in a football world that “is notoriously short term”.
A major endorsement of the strategy came when private equity firm Silver Lake, led by the prominent investor Egon Durban, became a significant investor in CFG in 2019. CFG was created in 2013 to become Manchester City’s parent company, as well as a multibillion-pound global football organisation, with clubs across 12 countries, headquartered in east Manchester.
Manchester has undoubtedly turned a corner, with even its persistent rain appearing less grim, Mr Gallagher suggested. “Oasis played up there last summer and the weather was glorious and my kids came up. They were walking around the city going, ‘why did you leave, dad?’ And I was like, ‘well, it wasn’t always like this, you know’.”
