There are two regeneration plans which could potentially affect Harpurhey at this moment. The first is the Northern Gateway proposal which was released by the city council in July 2018. It aims to connect Manchester’s northern districts with the town centre by funding 15,000 homes over the next 15-20 years. According to the document, 20% of these will be ‘affordable’. The project should now just have now completed a process of public consultation and, subject to ratification and amendment, it will begin in Collyhurst and seems to cover areas right up to the borders of Harpurhey so could affect the area. As well as the homes, it aims to ‘urbanise’ Rochdale Road and develop a series of community hubs of healthcare and retail as well as talk of ‘expanding’ existing primary schools and the possibility of a new secondary school. In the document they also talk about creating neighbourhoods which have distinctive characteristics and building on the industrial legacy and existing green spaces of north Manchester. It is vague on what this process will look like, however. The document also once refers to offering direct employment opportunities but again, doesn’t specify how this will be actualised.
Harpurhey is also included in a Strategic Regeneration Framework for North Manchester. Again, the document is vague on implementation but seems to suggest an overall regeneration of several areas in the North, including Harpurhey, based on the establishment of sustainable communities. The focus on: strengthening existing, diverse communities; plans for educational improvements which are poor in the area which include a 6th form college in Harpurhey; improvements to health various prevention strategies targeted at the younger generation (the document suggests that Harpurhey residents are 86% more likely to die of cancer than others in Manchester); culture, which looks to promote sports and arts in the area; an approach to crime which seems to focus largely on visibility (PCSOs) and prevention strategies which target known offenders etc.; their employment strategy mentions direct links to jobs, not just job opportunities and training which they say includes the creation of an intermediate labour market (ILM) on various construction projects to link training to opportunities; creating stability within the housing market in which negative equity and dilapidated pre-1919 stock is identified as a problem and where they state the importance of creating stability in the market to attract private sector investment (again Harpurhey and Lightbowne are identified as particularly problematic areas due to high levels of void property and a large private rented sector in which ‘unscrupulous landlords’ often fail to care for their properties; transport and the regeneration of unused/derelict open spaces are also seen as important as is the improvement of retail as the area’s shops are seen to have declined and given way to a series of discount stores and takeaways. Like the Northern gateway plans, the fundamental concept seems to be the improvement of the area, its sense of community (where it is seen to have broken down), diversity and a ‘sense of place’. This comes alongside ideas of making the area attractive for private sector investment in terms of housing and business.