A mass Mancunian exodus towards Wembley, The first all-Manchester FA Cup final

The first all-Manchester FA Cup final will see a mass Mancunian exodus towards Wembley. Meantime, in Manchester’s booming centre, reds and blues will fill bars from Deansgate to Piccadilly. In a city en fête, they will be joined by tens of thousands of music fans in town to see Elton John at the AO Arena, Coldplay at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium and the Arctic Monkeys at the Old Trafford cricket stadium.

Disraeli, of course, was paying literary homage to Manchester’s developing role in the Industrial Revolution. now days the city is flaming  a trail again, one of two metro-mayoral authorities to be offered special devolution deals. A fete Saturday, featuring two globally famous football clubs and three musical giants, sums up the post-industrial vibrancy of a city viewed as a model for regeneration. In Manchester Unspun, a new book on the city centre’s renaissance, Andy Spinoza observes that its revamped economy pivots around culture and entertainment for an increasingly youthful population. That reinvention has been underpinned by an internationally financed property development boom, which has changed the city’s skyline at breakneck speed.

An economic gulf has emerged between the thriving centre and far poorer outlying districts such as Wythenshawe. Rents have gone up at a dizzying rate, amid a serious dearth of affordable and social housing. Expectations that city centre growth would deliver greater prosperity across Greater Manchester have proved unfounded. As this paper’s columnist Aditya Chakrabortty has written, extravagant profits have been siphoned out of the city by private investors allowed to seek huge rewards with few strings attached.

Changes have been remarkable. In 2010, just over 11,000 people lived in Manchester city centre. By 2024 that number is expected to have topped 100,000, many of them young professionals  students. The Abu Dhabi United Group investment fund, which owns Manchester City, has reconfigured swaths of the east of the city, building 1,500 new homes.

However, another extent  to the Manchester miracle that should not be ignored. Previous Labour and Conservative governments have hailed the city’s recclamation as an exemplary success story. But even leaving aside the issue of sportswashing on behalf of an autocratic state with a poor human rights record, there has been a downside to Manchester’s property-led boom.

With tens of thousands of fans descending on the capital and with rail strikes expected, the unique final will pose a logistical challenge, with the Met Police saying on Thursday that 1,000 officers will be on duty.

.Sarah H

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