Investors with their fingers on the pulse understand that the best cities to invest in are built upon regeneration and urban renewal.

Europe’s fastest-growing tech city and most popular property investment destination—Manchester—has been nothing short of spectacular. This Northern city has built a reputation for creating more than its fair share of world firsts, including the first IVF baby, first split atom and graphene isolation, and where the first stored programme computer was built.

Manchester’s growth from a market town of some 10,000 people, and its rise from industrial decline to the heaving, bustling metropolis that it is today, was founded on the back of regeneration and urban renewal. Some of Europe’s most successful regenerations took place here.

Manchester has become the latest buzzword in property investor circles because of its huge property boom in recent years.

From a small town of 10,000 people, Manchester is, today, the most densely populated of the UK Northwest’s 39 local authority areas with over 550,000 people and, along with Salford, one of the fastest-growing cities in the country.

The UK’s Most Liveable City owes its urban renaissance to the mammoth regeneration plans that have been crucial in creating jobs, driving the economy and population, and improving facilities and amenities within its borders.

Europe’s Most Successful Regeneration Projects

One of Europe’s most successful urban regeneration projects to date is Spinningfields, located in Manchester’s central business district.

Named in 1968 after a narrow back street, the transformation of this £1.5 billion regeneration project from a run-down college campus to a leading regional business quarter has been astonishing. It all began when Allied London struck a deal with the Manchester City Council in 1997 to develop the area following the IRA bombing that decimated the surroundings in the previous year which finally took place in the 2000s. The regeneration has resulted in an estimated 20,000 jobs, double what it used to be in 2008. The transformation has been so impressive that locals find it hard to remember or imagine what existed before renewal works began!

Spinningfields celebrates its 54th anniversary this year. It is now home to 165 world-class financial and commercial organisations, haute couture brands, F&B and even Manchester’s Courts of Law!