“Why do we want to be like London?”: Mancs hit back at report's recommendations on city's future

A new report advocating for the growth of Manchester city centre and improving transport links so it can grow like London has drawn an impassioned response from M.E.N. readers.

The report, from thinktank The Resolution Foundation, says Greater Manchester has outperformed every other major city-region bar Glasgow on productivity since 2002. However, our city-region is still very far behind London in terms of productivity, which is a measure of how much money each worker generates in the economy.

It’s such a wide gap between the capital and England’s second city that it will take nearly a century to close the productivity gap with London to a 'reasonable point'. The Tale of Two Cities report has made a series of recommendations to get the gap down from 35 percent to 20 percent.

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It calls for a larger city centre to attract 'knowledge-intensive' businesses with more offices to attract highly-skilled workers. More than 126,000 new homes also need to be built in ‘well-connected’ areas, it adds.

And it’s led to an impassioned, defiant response from M.E.N. readers who have delivered a strong message that they do not want to see Manchester become a clone of the capital.

“Why do we want to be like London?”, asked Joanne Byrne. “Manchester should be able to keep its own identity and still thrive, rather than becoming a mini London.”

Rob Chilton added: “Why do we have to be the new London? Is it not sufficient merely to be punching above our weight and being a nice city region to live in?”

Lee Coughlin succinctly said: “If we wanted London we’d move to London.”

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