Bernstein: Tall towers pose ‘huge challenge’

The outgoing chief executive of Manchester City Council has admitted architects face a “huge challenge” in creating towers that complement rather than jar with city landscapes.

Howard Bernstein, who became council boss in 1998, has spearheaded the regeneration of swathes of Manchester and been a leading supporter of former chancellor George Osborne’s northern powerhouse initiative.

Bernstein said people who objected to tall towers on design grounds needed to be “respected” and added: “There’s a little bit of nimbyism […] but there are some very serious points that need to be totally respected over what people believe constitutes quality and it’s really a huge, huge challenge for the design community.”

He was speaking as Manchester United footballers-turned-developers Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs admitted that their plans for a brace of towers in a Manchester city centre conservation area needed to be changed.

It follows a welter of criticism from heritage groups for the scheme, which has been designed by Make but was attacked by Historic England for the “substantial harm” it would inflict on Manchester if it was allowed to go ahead.

The £140m city centre site, once known as Jackson’s Row but now called St Michael’s, has the support of the council – Neville interviewed Bernstein at last week’s Mipim property fair at a session celebrating his career – and Bernstein said he was “totally in favour of tall buildings” providing they were of the right quality and in the right locations.

He told Building: “Unless we build high density in tall buildings in our town centres and regional centres there’s going to be a lot more green belt that’s needed because you’re creating the urban sprawl.”

He said tall buildings needed to be managed in such a way that a balanced city landscape is created.

“Other cities in the world manage to create this balance beautifully – America is obviously one example of that. I don’t see why we can’t create this balance.”

Bernstein, who steps down later this spring, said more devolution is needed particularly around skills and education, and called for a plan for fiscal devolution.

The government’s current funding models such as PF2 are “bust,” Bernstein said, adding that new ways of funding public transport had to be found – a concern which had prompted the council to go overseas to court international financiers.