Manchester Offshored: A Public Interest Report on the Manchester Life Partnership Between Manchester City Council and The Abu Dhabi United Group

Post‐pandemic cities: An urban lexicon of accelerations/decelerations

“…A huge task, for sure, and one that demands new alliances that foreground different ways of understanding the value of density in the city. The embedded nature of vested interests—from developers and real estate actors to complicit municipalities—and structural momentum, means that even in the face of a global pandemic, it is all too easy to return to business‐as‐usual (Goulding et al, 2022). For critical urbanists, foregrounding a new politic of value rooted in alternative imaginaries, knowledges and politics of density is a vital part of the challenge ahead.…”

From homes to assets: Transcalar territorial networks and the financialization of build to rent in Greater Manchester

“…From this a wealth of studies have emphasised the importance of understanding the embedding of financialised practice in local processes, specifically the role of local government as a site of financialised policy formation, and their role in harnessing global capital to achieve their policy objectives (Ashton et al, 2016; Fields and Uffer, 2016; Peck and Whiteside, 2016; Weber, 2010). Housing financialization, it is argued, is promoted by local governments through the privatisation of land (Christophers, 2017), the dismantling of rent regulation (Fields, 2013) and the pursuit of property-led urban regeneration schemes which, through generous land deals and planning concessions, encourage the rapid growth of house- and flat-building (Folkman et al, 2016; Rutland, 2010).…”

“…The Conservative government of the 70s and 80s cut local government funding whilst centralising the policy levers that would enable local authorities to address industrial decline on their own terms (Harding and Nevin, 2015; While et al, 2004). During that period, property developers in Greater Manchester levered their already strong local political networks with individual local authorities following the disbanding of the metropolitan-scale Greater Manchester Country Council in 1986 (Folkman et al, 2016). Ideologically, Manchester's local political leaders in the city's ruling Labour Party rejected the municipal socialism to pursue a form of ‘municipal entrepreneurialism’, inspired by the ideas of agglomeration economics (Peck and Ward, 2002), which prioritised attracting inward investment into property assets (While et al, 2004).…”

“…4 Branded as ‘Manchester Life’, under the terms of the joint venture the council leased public land in Ancoats to ADUG for projects, which to date have seen the construction of 1434 private housing units divided across eight schemes, 74.8% of which are BTR, and the remainder for private sale. 5 Senior councillors and officers sit on the boards of UK-registered companies under the partnership and the local authority holds a profit-sharing agreement with ADUG, the details of which have not been publicly disclosed (Collins, 2019). However, all rents and sales revenues are routed offshore through a company named Loom Holdings ultimately owned by ADUG registered in the secrecy jurisdiction of Jersey, obscuring the finances of the deal from public scrutiny.…”

“…Ideologically, Manchester's local political leaders in the city's ruling Labour Party rejected the municipal socialism to pursue a form of ‘municipal entrepreneurialism’, inspired by the ideas of agglomeration economics (Peck and Ward, 2002), which prioritised attracting inward investment into property assets (While et al, 2004). The geographical benefits as a logistics and commercial centre for the north of England, combined with cheap brownfield land, a relatively flat topography and a city centre of warehouses and mills that hollowed out by de-industrialisation, formed the basis for a residential boom in central Manchester that took hold from the early 1990s (Folkman et al, 2016).…”