Living Cities: Manchester bets on homebuilding

A conversation on what makes a livable city.
By GIOVANNA COI
With AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES
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Happy Thursday, city lovers, and welcome back to another edition of Living Cities. This is data journalist Gio, usually found in the “Stats & the City” section or buried under a pile of Excel spreadsheets.
This week, we speak to Manchester City Council leader Bev Craig about her administration’s ambitious plan to build new homes and defeat gentrification while at it.
Later, we’ll look at World War II’s legacy in Polish cities, 85 years on.
HALF THE WORLD AWAY: In honor of the long-awaited (and possibly short-lived) Oasis reunion, I (virtually) hopped across the English Channel to catch up with Bev Craig, councilor for Burnage and leader of Manchester City Council. Her administration is advancing its plan to build 36,000 new homes — including 10,000 council, social and affordable homes — by 2032.
Mo’ money, mo’ problems: Manchester’s housing shortage is a byproduct of its economic renaissance. In the 1990s, the city was a deprived post-industrial relic with a shrinking population and “an oversupply of poor-quality housing,” explained Craig. Three decades later, Manchester has become an economic and cultural hotspot; its population grew from about 420,000 in 2000 to nearly 600,000 in 2022.
New course of action: When Craig was elected city council leader in 2021, she inherited a thriving city — alongside a 10,000-strong waiting list for social housing and one of the highest homelessness rates in the country. She chose to continue her predecessor’s policy of building more homes to meet growing demand — but with a new focus on affordability.
Mix it up: “I don’t see the presence of people earning good wages and capital as automatically leading to gentrification — if you build the right homes in the right places,” said Craig. By applying constraints on developers, the administration actively encourages the development of “mixed communities” — neighborhoods integrating people from a variety of social and economic backgrounds.
The visible hand of the market: “We need to accept that the private housing market has its own interests and agendas … You don’t just rely on the market to [build profitable housing] and use what’s left over for social good,” Craig said. She argued that local administrations must be “forceful through planning, engagement, and partnership” to compel private developers to build affordable homes across the city.
The results: In its two-year update on the Housing Strategy, published in July, the city government reported that it had built 4,925 homes. Of these, 1,018 were affordable or social housing. A further 13,800 homes are under construction, with planning permission for another 8,300, putting the administration on track to achieve almost half of its target by the mid-way point of 2027.
Reuse and recycle: Not every city has the luxury of hectares of unused land — but in this respect, Manchester’s industrial history was an asset. “We have a lot of spare land … derelict, empty lots, former factories that shut down, so you can build at scale quickly,” said Craig. However, she noted, building on post-industrial sites incurs additional costs to remediate contaminated soil.
A glimmer of hope: Craig pointed out that Manchester launched its housing strategy in a “challenging” political landscape — without support from the national government — but acknowledged the new Labour government’s commitment to addressing the United Kingdom’s housing emergency by setting homebuilding targets “gives us some excitement that we’ll be able to deliver on our own commitments.”
Wish list: Craig emphasized that local governments needed further “devolution of power and control” to deliver on their housing plans, and relaxing legislation around fiscal borrowing could help the public sector raise funds to build affordable homes.
Glass half full: In a way, Craig reflected, the need for new housing “is a really nice problem to have … Our housing challenges come as a product of Manchester’s success, and we won’t lose sight of that.”
URBAN DISINFO: Cities are increasingly exposed to the threat of coordinated disinformation campaigns that begin on social media but can quickly turn physical and very violent, as the recent far-right-linked riots in the U.K. demonstrate. The Melbourne Centre for Cities at the University of Melbourne and the German Marshall Fund published a handy playbook listing concrete steps to help cities understand, and respond to, disinformation.
Prevent, contain, debunk: Local leaders’ efforts should focus on addressing the root causes of disinformation by engaging with communities and addressing existing social fault lines: prejudice, resentment, racism and misogynistic stereotypes. The guidance says cities should also act early to nip disinformation efforts in the bud, by reporting them to social media platforms and teaching residents how to recognize false information, especially demographics likelier to believe it. Once a disinformation campaign takes hold, local governments should focus on building counter-narratives, repairing the damage and rebuilding the communities affected to make them more resilient to harmful messages.
NEW HOMES IN LONDON: Some 350 new homes — 40 percent of which will be affordable — will be built near the Cockfosters Underground station in London after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh reversed a block on the development passed by her Conservative predecessors.
Who, where, how: Connected Living London — a long-term partnership between Transport for London and property developer Grainger plc — will redevelop a 1.36-hectare parking lot to include a residential area, shops and green spaces.
THE BEST LAID PLANS … Portugal lies within a seismic risk zone that makes major earthquakes a very real possibility, but this week the country’s National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority revealed that only the small city of Mafra has a formal Seismic Risk Emergency Plan laying out evacuation protocols for locals. Lisbon, in contrast, has only a generic municipal guide that states where residents should gather in case of an emergency, as well as two sirens and a couple of signs revealing the riverfront to be a potential tsunami zone. (Given the city was literally laid to ruin by an earthquake in 1755, it should perhaps do a bit more to prepare for the next one.)
SOUNDS OF THE CITY: “Oh Manchester, so much to answer for,” goes the song “Suffer Little Children” by one of the city’s (or any city’s) greatest bands, the Smiths.
It’s impossible to talk about impactful music since the advent of punk without talking about Manchester. One of the first-ever “independent” records — as in, “Let’s not bother with a record company but go straight to the pressing plant ourselves” — was the Spiral Scratch EP by Buzzcocks.
And that same band opened for the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976, a gig that had a seismic influence on music, both in the city and beyond.
Tickets for that show cost the princely sum of 50 pence. When two of Manchester’s more recent musical sons — Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis — put tickets on sale for their reunion tour, they cost hundreds (if not thousands).
Few places have become so synonymous with their music scene as to have a genre named after them, and the dawn of “Madchester” out of the Haçienda — one of Britain’s most iconic nightclubs — took the industrial tones of Factory’s post-punk roots and collided them with dance beats to shape an era of acid house, rave and eventually Britpop, as Britain’s Second Summer of Love saw the country flock to the city. But long plagued by issues, the venue unsurprisingly met its end in the late ’90s, unceremoniously replaced with luxury apartments.
So, as with the return of the joys and frustrations of being an Oasis fan, here’s our small salute to one of the most musical cities around.
REMEMBERING WWII: On Sunday, Poland commemorated the 85th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion, which sparked World War II. Polish President Andrzej Duda laid a wreath in Wieluń, the first town to be bombed by the German air force — at 4:40 a.m. on September 1, 1939. The bombing destroyed 70 percent of the city’s buildings, including most of the historic city center; death toll estimates vary from a few hundred to over a thousand. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited the Westerplatte peninsula in Gdańsk, where the first shots between the armies were fired; a small contingent of Polish soldiers resisted repeated attacks for more than a week before surrendering the city.
Counting the losses: Poland’s cities and towns suffered enormous damage, with Warsaw razed to the ground in 1944 in retaliation for the uprising of the Polish resistance. The city lost more than 10,500 buildings along with most of its historical landmarks; Nazi forces targeted universities, libraries and centers of arts and culture. By 1945, 90-95 percent of the city had been reduced to rubble. More than 1 million people lost all of their possessions, 200,000 civilians were killed, 700,000 were expelled from the city, and 55,000 people were deported to concentration camps.
Warsaw’s renaissance: Warsaw’s leaders chose to rebuild the old town center instead of preserving the mementos of the damage inflicted by the war, to reaffirm the individuality and history of the city that Nazi forces had tried to obliterate. The post-war reconstruction of the capital’s old town lasted well into the 1960s, with the pre-war urban layout largely retained, although some buildings were replaced with open communal spaces. Using archival documents, conservation inventories and the undamaged infrastructure, authorities restored Warsaw’s 18th-century appearance, along with many of its historical landmarks such as the Old Town Market, the Royal Castle and the circuit of the city walls. Warsaw’s Old Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011.
Sad vibes only: Not all of the Polish capital’s landmarks were rebuilt. Here’s a write-up of the wonderful Warsaw sites you’ll never get to visit.
We’re back with our weekly cities-related trivia challenge! André Félix of Algés was the quickest reader to name Cluj-Napoca as the city that has repeatedly given residents free public transport access in exchange for doing exercise.
Since 2020, Cluj has periodically rolled out a “Health Ticket” that locals can earn by doing 20 squats. During the first year of the scheme, which aims to get the general public to introduce sports and movement into their daily routine, more than 14,500 free tickets were given to participants.
This week’s challenge: We all know the modern Olympic Games began in Athens, but can you name the small borough where the Paralympic movement originated? The first reader to identify it — preferably without using a search engine — gets a shout-out in next week’s newsletter.
— A compact, high-density city offers shorter commutes, more concentrated services, less car traffic and a stronger sense of community. But Europe’s compact cities still record worse air quality and higher temperatures than their sprawling counterparts, according to this pan-European study published in the Lancet.
— The Economist has a deep dive into Americans’ long-standing — and pretty toxic — love affair with big cars.
— Breaking news: Ditching the car for your commute makes you happier, greener and healthier. It’s science!
THANKS TO: Leyla Aksu, Paul Dallison, my editors Kelsey Hayes and Stephan Faris, and producer Giulia Poloni.
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POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab is a collaborative journalism project seeking solutions to challenges faced by modern societies in an age of rapid change. Over the coming months we will host a conversation on how to make cities more livable and sustainable.