IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

How can cities rewrite their futures and simultaneously contribute to planetary health? A regenerative city is one that gives back – restoring social equity, ecological integrity and long-term economic resilience. Building on insights from the Expert Commission on Cities and Climate Change, and particularly the concept of urban metabolism, this paper examines the potential for regenerative urbanism to reshape policy in the UK. Six northern English cities – Manchester, Salford, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and Hull – form case studies, selected for their shared post-industrial histories and divergent trajectories of growth, inequality and ecological risk. Their contrasting socioeconomic baselines and investment pipelines create a meaningful comparative spectrum for assessing the feasibility and ambition of current urban strategies. Collectively, the cities represent critical testbeds for exploring how regenerative principles could be embedded within their ongoing transformation. A theoretical framework for regenerative cities is constructed through a synthesis of existing, associated regenerative literature. This framework is applied to each city to address five questions: baseline performance and likelihood of meeting stated goals; the sufficiency of current plans to tackle social, environmental and economic challenges – identifying any additional measures required; potential for generating regenerative impacts; and the broader feasibility of integrating regenerative approaches within contemporary UK policy. The paper aims to clarify what a regenerative future could look like for northern cities – to assess whether current development trajectories support, constrain or contradict that possibility – and the potential for wider adoption of regenerative principles.