Stockport
It started with a car park
The story of my first visit to Stockport starts the same way as the story of the town’s regeneration — with a car park.
During a week away on a farm-stay in the Peak District, I broke my stretch of solitude to explore with Place Collective UK (PCUK) and Future of Greater Manchester, with our hosts from the Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) and Stockport Council.
It was whilst planning my journey that I began to orient the remoteness of where I was staying with the great constellation of towns and cities to the north — where Stockport sits beneath Manchester, almost a footnote to it, its name printed smaller even than Manchester Airport.
Driving from the breathtaking expanse and rollercoaster topography of the Peaks, my descent into the sprawl of Greater Manchester was disorientating; I wasn’t quite sure what I was entering — suburb, town, or city.
Initially routed to a car park a little way from the meeting point with a plan to walk and situate myself, a glitchy parking app and no change for a paper ticket meant a reroute to a shiny-looking NCP. Flustered and finally parked, I dashed out into an expanse of new public realm.
Fittingly, this was the very place where Stockport’s regeneration began. The Stockport Exchange sits on the site of the old surface-level station car park — now replaced by the multi-storey NCP to free-up land for new public space, offices and a hotel. Paul Richards, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Place at Stockport Council, explained how this move kickstarted a £1 billion programme of investment into the town’s future — one of the most ambitious regeneration programmes of its kind in the UK, with up to 8,000 new homes planned over the next 15 years.
Big numbers. And with little time to personally orient myself, we were soon standing by what appeared to be an enormous oval void framed by more new development and fresh, bustling public realm. It turned out we were standing on the roof of the new Stockport Interchange — a multi-award-winning transport hub.
Stockport doesn’t escape the topography of the region. We descended a corten-steel stairway that framed a Victorian viaduct towering above us. Around it rose smart new residential blocks and warehouse conversions, and below, lush green landscaping followed the river. Reaching ground level revealed a pristine, Scandinavian-looking bus terminus — the scale and ambition of the place suddenly clear. There’s some seriously chunky urbanism going on here: big moves, big sites, and a visible sense of momentum and aspiration.
From the Interchange we made our way towards The Underbanks, where the town shifts in scale from large development sites and infrastructure to something finer-grained. The ambition didn’t lessen though, nor the energy being put into shaping this part of town. The full playbook of high street regeneration was on display — collaborative partnerships, public art and creative programming, heritage restoration, and targeted property acquisition by the Council to help curate a mix of independents, food, and culture.
Our final stop was to the main shopping precincts that cross the town, and a visit to Stockroom — former disused retail units transformed by the Council into a wonderfully appointed multi-use library, cultural and community space. Opened only months ago, it’s already drawing big crowds and, I’d predict, will be another award winner for the town.
As I wrote this up, I kept thinking about how I first arrived — slightly ignorant, seeing Stockport as a subset of Manchester — and the scale of investment being described: the billions, the awards, the big regeneration language that could easily sound like bravado.
Stockport is neither of those things. It’s certainly not a footnote, and it’s not brash either. The people stewarding its growth are doing so with enthusiasm, care, and an assertive, strategic hand — delivering change piece by piece, in a way that feels distinctly Stockport.
As the barrier of the NCP lifted and flashed me out into rush hour, I left the sprawl behind — ascending back into the now darkening Peaks and to a cabin where I was soon to have only Storm Amy for company. I felt lucky to have spent time with such a great group of urbanists, and glad to have gained a sense of what ‘distinctly Stockport’ means.
