New consultation on the future of Manchester’s city centre

Manchester City Council is opening up a consultation about the future of the Piccadilly area.

The consultation covers discussions of an area centred around Piccadilly Gardens but also including Piccadilly, Mosley Street, Parker Street and Market Street.

This is the busiest part of Manchester — with more than 150,000 people a day passing through Piccadilly Gardens alone in a typical day.

The Council has been working with landscape architects LDA to look at the different functions which the area serves – as a route through the city, an interchange for tram and bus passengers arriving in the city centre, a retail and business area, a space for events and more – and understand the opportunities, challenges and limitations.

Now the Council wants to hear people’s experiences and aspirations for the area to help shape the design brief which will be used when architects are sought to come up with proposals. Wherever possible it wants to design out some of the issues, such as crime and anti-social behaviour, and design in more of the elements which people want.

The survey is open for eight weeks, until March 21.

Before taking part in the survey, residents are being invited to take visit a virtual exhibition which gives more information and sets out themes for discussion.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: ‘The Piccadilly area is an important part of the city which has enormous potential and attracts strong opinions. We know it can be better and we are committed to bringing forward improvements. But before we come up with proposals, we need to understand what people want from the space.

‘The plans we ultimately bring forward will be about creating a modern Piccadilly area which includes a friendly, lively and welcoming public space designed to balance the different functions it serves. We don’t want to turn back the clock to a time when there were far fewer people using the city centre. We need to look to the future, not the past. Nor do we have a completely blank canvas — there are things such as tram lines and statues, and the Pavilion building which we do not own, which we have to workaround.

‘But we can and will be imaginative and seek to deliver a public space set in a vastly improved streetscape.’

Photo Credit – Pixabay