Towards a smart ecological urban corridor for Manchester Ship Canal

This paper examines the possibilities to develop a smart ecological urban corridor straddling the 36 miles long Manchester Ship Canal (MSC). The site is set in the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire where the first planned industrial estate exist. The area is characterized by the river and Canal settlements and centuries-old agricultural patterns that persist today. The MSC was the inception of the industrial revolution that could provide a contemporary catalyst for a new smart urban corridor. The proposed development could bring together different communities, industries and government authorities. The paper aims to develop an innovative strategy that connect and integrate people, technology and the environment whilst potentiate smart urban and rural sustainable growth. The development of Media City UK at one end of the site provides a smart typology that could expand across the canal. The paper proposed a number of scenarios that could create smart networks between different parts of the canal with its overlapping industrial estates, farms, villages, business parks, and ports. The proposal would create a more contemporary healthy environment, while becoming part of a larger coordinated smart system of sites, services and ecologies. The goal is to design architecture and infrastructure that support the evolving smart networks of the region while integrating the roles of industries, cultures, and commercial activities that would continue to co-exist around the Manchester Ship Canal. The paper investigates and analyses the existing urban/rural settlement structures and provide insight into the possible future patterns of living and working and possible development of a smart networked corridor that integrate the urban and rural socio-economic and physical infrastructures. Through the application of the Delphi Technique process a series of cross boundaries multidisciplinary meetings and workshops with key experts, partners at City Councils, key developers, industry partners and landowners have been designed to identify consensus for potential future scenarios for the MSC. The paper utilises a new multi disciplinary participatory workshop approach to develop a number of ecologically based scenarios. Through working cross-disciplinary partnerships the project engaged academics, different local authorities and industry partners to find potential environmental, liveability and economic drivers and enablers to establish a set of principles that guide the development of a smart urban corridor for MSC. A blue-sky approach was used in the workshop combined with data analysis of a number of pre-determined catalysts for MSC