Our northern city has topped the list of Britain’s favourite cities, overtaking the capital
Manchester has taken the top spot as the UK’s most desirable city(Image: Getty Images)
Manchester has taken the top spot as the ‘most desirable place to live in the UK’, according to a new survey. Our ‘booming’ northern city was crowned Britain’s favourite by thousands of respondents, narrowly beating London by 0.2 percent.
Mindshare UK surveyed 10,000 people across the country and asked them to pick which UK city they would choose to live in outside of where they currently reside.
Overall, 11.9 percent of those surveyed chose Manchester, which came just ahead of London, having been picked by 11.7 per cent of respondents.
The capital city has long been the top choice for people moving away from home to further their careers.
Manchester is Britain’s ‘favourite city’ (Image: Getty Images)
But the rapid growth of Manchester in the last 25 years has seen the city emerge as the main competitor to London.
Both cities were clear favourites in the survey, placed well ahead of Edinburgh, which came in third, and was chosen by 7.6 per cent of respondents.
York was named in fourth place after being picked by 7.4 percent of those surveyed.
In fifth place was Liverpool, which was chosen by 5.7 percent of respondents.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the list, only 2.5 percent picked Glasgow as the place they would choose to live, and 3.6 per cent selected Birmingham.
The research was conducted by Mindshare UK, who found Manchester is hugely popular among Brits.
Just under half of those surveyed in the North West and Cumbria think it should replace London as the capital.
11.9 percent of people surveyed named Manchester as the city they would choose to live (Image: Mindshare UK)
If Londoners were to pick another city to live in, their top choice is Manchester as voted for by 19 percent of respondents.
One person surveyed said: “Everybody’s moving back to Manchester. The youngsters love it.”
Nationally, around 22 percent of Gen Z’s and 21 percent of Millennials want Manchester to be the new capital, rather thankeeping it as London.
Julia Ayling, Head of Research at Mindshare UK, who led the report, commented on the findings: “Manchester has positioned itself across the UK as a popular alternative to London as a capital.”
The research was conducted by Mindshare UK for media company WPP Media, and its report, Shaping the Nation, in partnership with Reach, Blis, Mobsta, Captify, Channel 5, JCDecaux and Sky.