Placecast Episode 24: Manchesterism, Devolution and the Future of Place-Based Leadership

I've got kind of personal experience of the shift in devolution, if you like, the rewiring of the state, in that I had the chance yesterday to go and visit Number 10 in the North, so in Manchester.

On a very purely practical basis, it was really refreshing to be able to just take a 15-minute stroll across Manchester from our offices and rock

up at Number 10, so to speak.

There's something I think interesting symbolically and psychologically about bringing one of the most powerful offices in the land to another city.

And you can already tell from that area of Manchester, you've obviously got more of a security presence, but I am very certain that the restaurants, the cafes, the shops in that area are already kind of see some of the benefits of having lots of extra civil servants wandering around the street.

So there's something, I think, psychological and symbolic about bringing that most powerful office in the land into another part of the UK, into Britain's second city,

maybe? Do you know? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?

Calm down, calm down.

I mean, they want to get the town hall open, don't they, to really make that area.

Obviously, that's been a long going project.

For those of you who are not Manchester based, the number 10 north area is kind of around the back of the Bridgewater Designed Historic Town Hall in Manchester, which has been closed for five years with lots of work going on.

So once they've kind of got that whole area regenerated, it's going to be absolutely fantastic.

Where are you this morning, Professor Riley?

Physically, I'm actually in Manchester.

And I was thinking before, of the three of us, I'm the Manc, which is quite interesting, isn't it? And I suppose from my point of view, what's interesting is because we've been doing so much work over such a long time, my entire career has been around devolution and putting decision-making at the local level.

And all my research is aligned to that, and particularly in the last 10 years at City Ready.

The great thing about it is to see the work that you've been plugging on about and thinking about and demonstrating the value of all of a sudden has a grip.

And it does feel, as Sarah said, I think there is a big step change.

And certainly my inbox is getting very full of people wanting to know about our research and across a whole range of areas as well.

And I think one of sort of my reflections, and I think, as you said before, I was in the Regional Development Agency.

And you get used to all of that.

That was a way of working, wasn't it? There was large budgets.

You had the opportunity to make a real difference.

And then everything changed more or less overnight.

And I went into the private sector and then came back to University of Birmingham to set City Ready up.