MIPIM | Gensler eyes Northern growth amid cities boom
A fundamental shift in what it means to be a city is prompting the global consultancy to consider the potential for a third UK office – in the North of England.
Gensler, the firm behind designs for massive projects such as the 632-metre Shanghai Tower and the Centennial Yards entertainment district in Atlanta, has carried out a piece of research called City Pulse, which collates the opinions on what cities of the future should look like.
Speaking to Place North West at MIPIM, Duncan Swinhoe, Gensler’s co-managing principal for Europe, and Ian Mulcahey, the firm’s cities and urban design leader, said the seismic shift in working patterns post pandemic is now shaking out and cities and their residents are now alive to the redevelopment opportunities emerging.
“The city centre is now being viewed very differently than it used to be,” said Swinhoe.
“It used to be a central business district but the actual business element of the city centre, the office piece, is quite down the rankings of what makes a great city centre from the surveys of the actual citizens in these cities.”
Social spaces and culture are now much more important, he added.
“We are talking about this notion of the CBD becoming the CSD – the central social district,” said Mulcahey.
“It’s the place where everyone comes together, everyone converges. It’s people saying ‘hey, let’s, reclaim [it]’, it’s not just for the banks and insurance companies anymore.”
The key to vibrant cities is people, both Swinhoe and Mulcahey agree, so the drive to increase density across Northern cities is welcome.
“The two densest cities in Europe are Paris and Barcelona. So you can live at density and have a really good quality of life,” Mulcahey said.
A shift in housing preference is also driving the push towards high density development.
“This notion that you commute from a long way away every single day of your life into the city and home again, that your work and your job are somehow divorced from where you live, doesn’t need to be the case,” Mulchahey said.
“It wasn’t the case for hundreds of years. And it actually wasn’t the case at all Northern [UK} cities where people lived cheek by jowl by the factory, by the football ground, right in the heart of the city.”
This realisation is manifesting itself in certain demographics, he added.
“I think you see a whole younger generation not wanting to live in suburbia anymore, but actually wanting to live right back in the centre of the city.”
In 2012, Gensler opened its second UK office and first outside the capital, in Birmingham, having seriously considered the North West as an option.
The thinking at the time was that the North West development market was more mature, thus limiting scope for the kinds of large-scale projects Gensler deals in.
At that time, Birmingham was home to “very few firms that were competitors”, Mulchahey said. That, coupled with its proximity to London and a relative abundance of opportunities compared to Manchester, swung it in favour of the West Midlands city.
“Unlike Manchester, [Birmingham] hadn’t done very much. It had a lot of unbuilt development sites,” he said.
Thirteen years on, the allure of Manchester and Salford, which both Swinhoe and Mulcahey view from their London base as thriving cities, is forcing Gensler to consider reopening the conversation around a Northern office.
“We both look back at the growth now in the North West [and ask] did we make the right choice?” Mulchahey laughs.
In Manchester, it is the “amazing alignment” between the business and political community, that appeals most, according to Swinhoe.
“I think there’s a sense of momentum,” he said. “It feels like it will be very unusual for us not to try and be part of that.”
Seen it all before….they come when there’s rich pickings then disappear when things slow down; zero affinity with Manchester
By anonymous
Maybe good at architecture etc (don’t know) but if you were opening a second office in the UK in 2012 you would not have picked Birmingham. The only place that had a clear vision of where it wanted to go, had the Executive and Non Executive
By Anonymous
Its a mark of a acceptance and legitimacy of the huge fundamental shift in the UKs thinking towards Manchester as a thriving metropolis that these firms are now refocusing their sightlines towards Manchester, a LOT has changed in the last fifteen years. Manchester is certainly now viewed and widely regarded by a lot of people as the UKs second city ..while it may not yet be ready to fully take that title away from Birmingham the very real momentum that they talk about is of Manchester standing out as a leader of regeneration in our cities. Manchester has come a long way. There has been a huge shift in people’s thinking towards cities and city centre regen in the UK since the the millennium and Manchester has capitalised on that more than any other city outside London. Politically and economically it’s shifted quite seismically.
By Cristoforo
Northshoring pretty much means Manchester now. Spectacular how times have changed. A lot more to do yet though as long as the Government and civil service largely squats in one small part of the country.
By Anonymous
I think it was Tony Wilson who said ‘I’m not interested in the second city tag, we’ll let Birmingham and London fight it out between themselves ‘ !
By ETC