Manchester City has become a template for using a sporting venue as a springboard for the regeneration of one of the city’s poorest areas. Construction work around that ground has been in progress for years. At present, the club is building a new 400-room hotel next door, alongside new retail and restaurant space.
It is the latest part
of the club’s local investment, which began a few years after a member of Abu
Dhabi’s ruling family bought the team in 2008. The area now houses City’s
training centre, a stadium for its women’s team, and more recently the Co-op
Live arena, a music venue co-owned by the club that can host 23,500 people.
Ultimately, local leaders and the club are planning for new
development to spread from Eastlands two miles along the canal to the city
centre, through a series of derelict and unregenerated areas.
Eastlands has since become “the poster child” for sports-led
urban regeneration, according to Jason Prior of infrastructure consultancy
Aecom. But it was not straightforward. The next phase of the transformation between
the stadium and the city centre must have been looked at by regeneration teams
“every day for the last 25 years”, he told the Financial Times.
Regeneration around Manchester City’s Etihad stadium has
transformed the area’s Eastlands district.
Such work requires careful sequencing to unlock each challenge in the
right order. “It’s a constant process of reflection,” he told the Pink ‘Un,
“measuring what you’ve done, reviewing and keeping pace with the community and
stepping in when things aren’t working — and not taking the easy route.” He
adds: “Manchester always stuck to its plan.”
Nonetheless, the partnership between the club’s owners and
the city council has, at times, proved controversial. One housing joint venture
between the local authority and Abu Dhabi United Group, Manchester Life, has
been criticised for a lack of financial transparency — a claim which the
council denies.
Abu Dhabi’s human rights record has been a source of
contention for Manchester’s Labour-led council. Paul Michael Brannagan, an
expert on sport and politics at Manchester Metropolitan University, says that
if clubs want to receive government funding, they need to present “these
developments as essential to city planning”. But he adds that the projects
reflect the changing social role of large clubs and their stadiums. “They are
no longer just places to watch football, but are now rather positioned as
central features of contemporary urban planning.”
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