Regeneration people can see, is not always regeneration people can feel

Stand in the right parts of Greater Manchester and the evidence of regeneration is difficult to miss. New buildings reshape the skyline, transport investment changes how places connect, and neighbourhoods that looked very different a decade ago continue to evolve. 

But one comment during the roundtable we held alongside the launch of our Community Perspectives on Regeneration report captured a more difficult question: 

“You can see the results of regeneration, but it’s over there and you’re here.” 

It gets to the heart of an important distinction between visible regeneration and experienced regeneration. 

Our research showed that people are not instinctively opposed to change. Quite the opposite: 77% of the 1,500 Greater Manchester residents we surveyed felt positively about regeneration.  

The discussion around the table reinforced a simple point: successful regeneration is not only about whether investment arrives or development gets built. It is also about whether people understand the change taking place, believe the process is fair and can see how they benefit from it. 

Consultation needs a purpose 

One of the clearest areas of agreement was that consultation should start with clarity about what people can genuinely influence where too often, engagement begins with ‘what do you want?’. 

On the surface, that can feel inclusive but, without an honest explanation of financial, technical, or planning constraints, it can create expectations that were never realistic in the first place. The result is not greater trust, but frustration when ideas cannot be taken forward. 

Better engagement is more precise. It explains what is fixed, what remains open and where community input can materially shape the outcome. That also means recognising that consultation and communication are not the same thing. 

Long regeneration programmes can run for years or decades and communities do not need to be formally consulted at every stage. Too much consultation can become counterproductive, particularly where people are repeatedly asked for views but see little visible progress. 

What they do need is regular, credible information and engagement. 

Continuous communication, with formal consultation at the points where there is something meaningful to influence, is a more useful model than repeated bursts of engagement followed by silence. 

There is no single community view 

The industry also needs to be more careful about the way it talks about “the community”. 

There rarely is one community view. 

Some residents may fundamentally oppose development. Others may support the principle but want to influence the detail. Others may broadly welcome investment but never attend a consultation event at all. 

Age, length of residence, income, geography, and lived experience can all shape attitudes towards change. Even neighbouring streets can respond very differently to the same proposal. 

That creates a challenge for anyone designing an engagement strategy. The loudest voice in the room is not automatically the most representative one. 

This is where digital engagement can add real value. Online platforms, interactive mapping, visualisation tools, VR, and emerging AI applications can make proposals easier to understand and create routes into the conversation for people who may never attend a traditional consultation event. But digital should widen the conversation, not replace it. 

Face-to-face engagement still allows people to ask follow-up questions, challenge assumptions, and hear directly from those responsible for making decisions. The strongest model is likely to be hybrid by design, using different tools at different stages rather than treating digital, and in-person engagement as competing choices. 

Trust cannot be outsourced 

Direct contact matters. Developers, planners, local authorities, and project leads cannot delegate the entire relationship with affected communities to communications or engagement teams. 

There are practical reasons for that. Someone close to the detail of a project can often explain immediately why an option is possible, why another is not or where there may be room to adapt. 

But there is also a more basic issue of accountability. 

People are more likely to trust a process when they can see and question the people responsible for the decisions affecting them. Those making decisions also benefit from hearing directly from the people who will live with the consequences. 

Several roundtable participants raised concerns about online narratives filling the gaps where project teams or public bodies are not communicating consistently. If credible information is absent, somebody else will provide an explanation instead. 

Trust therefore cannot be treated as something built during a statutory consultation and then banked for the remainder of a programme. It is cumulative and fragile, shaped by visibility, responsiveness and whether commitments are followed through. 

Social value starts with the value of what is delivered 

The discussion on social value exposed another tension. With increasing pressure on projects to demonstrate wider benefits, there is also a risk that the industry focuses so heavily on additional initiatives, commitments, and measurement frameworks that it overlooks the social value inherent in the development itself. 

Affordable homes create social value. Employment creates social value. Better transport, public realm and sustainable buildings create social value. 

The point is not that additional commitments are unnecessary, but that they should strengthen the core purpose of a scheme rather than distract from it. 

One of the most useful principles raised during the discussion was to identify the principal public benefits of a project at the outset, then return to them later and ask, ‘did they actually materialise?’. 

Many of the schemes requiring the most extensive engagement and social intervention are also among the least commercially viable. Consultation, evidence gathering, and measurement are essential, but every additional layer adds cost, time, and complexity. 

The answer is to be proportionate and purposeful, not to do less. 

Who benefits matters as much as what gets built 

Affordability brought some of the hardest questions into the discussion. Regeneration inevitably changes places. It can attract investment, create new housing, and improve services. It can also increase property values, alter the commercial, and social character of an area.  

There is a balance to be struck where change may begin to exclude the people who were already there. 

That does not necessarily mean every resident should always be able to remain in the same street or neighbourhood. Cities change and housing markets are complex. 

But there is a legitimate concern when people remain physically within an area while the shops, services, housing choices and everyday life around them become unaffordable. 

That is the point at which regeneration risks becoming gentrification rather than inclusive growth and a broader view of place can help. 

Mixed tenure, a wider range of housing options and better connectivity between neighbourhoods all create the possibility that the benefits of regeneration travel further than the immediate development boundary. 

Transport is particularly important here. Better connections can expand housing choice, open access to employment and attract investment into places that might previously have been overlooked. 

Greater Manchester’s lesson is not a single model 

Greater Manchester provides an obvious case study because regeneration has been happening at scale across the city-region for decades. 

The discussion pointed less towards any single scheme or programme and more towards a broader lesson about leadership, collaboration, and prioritisation. 

Participants pointed to Greater Manchester’s ability to bring public and private sectors together, focus on a manageable number of priorities, and connect individual interventions into a broader city-regional story. There was an overwhelming sentiment across the group that the themes and lessons identified in the report would be the same in other locations across the UK, with cities including Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow all referenced.  

It’s our view that the most significant regeneration decisions cannot always be resolved at the level of an individual neighbourhood. New settlements, major infrastructure, and strategic growth require a wider view of how places connect and how opportunity moves across a region. 

Hyper-local engagement still matters, but it needs to sit within a clear strategic direction. 

The real measure of regeneration 

Our research found strong support for regeneration across Greater Manchester, with 77% of respondents viewing it positively. But it also found that half felt they had little or no influence over regeneration decisions, while trust in developers remained lower than trust in local councils. 

People are not rejecting regeneration. They are asking tougher questions about how it is delivered, who shapes it and who ultimately benefits. 

The industry will always need to balance competing pressures: viability and ambition, professional expertise and community input, speed and engagement, immediate disruption and long-term gain. 

There is no single engagement technique or policy intervention that resolves those tensions but there is a clearer test of success. 

Regeneration should not only be visible in a skyline, a masterplan or an investment figure. People should be able to understand what is changing, see where they can influence it, and recognise how the benefits connect back to their own lives. 

If regeneration is only something people can see happening somewhere else and for someone else, it is difficult to argue that it has fully succeeded. 

About the Roundtable 

Ardent welcomed industry representatives to Manchester to discuss the findings of the report on 8 September. The group was made up of representatives from Housing Associations, Planning Consultants, Developers, Architects, Council and Local Government organisations who we thank for their valuable contribution and insight.