Manchester's TikTok Effect: How Influencers Are Reshaping the City's Image

Walk through Deansgate-Castlefield on a warm afternoon and you'll see why the young people filming on their phones think they've found something special. The waterside bars fill with crowds. The luxury towers catch the light. Ruwaydah, who moved into one of those high-rises six years ago, started making TikTok videos about the places she discovered—a cafe here, a bakery there—and found an audience waiting. She was 33, walking everywhere, never more than 30 minutes from anywhere that mattered. The city felt compact enough to explore constantly, generous enough to reward that exploration with content worth sharing. What began as a personal habit became a business. Others noticed. They started filming too.

Manchester's moment, as it's being called, rests on something older than TikTok. In the 1990s, under Sir Howard Bernstein's leadership, the council began systematically clearing and converting old buildings, constructing new office space, and laying down a tram network. The aim was straightforward: attract money and white-collar jobs. It worked. National and international businesses opened outposts. Finance firms, law practices, creative industries—the city shifted from making things to managing them, from manufacturing to services. To house the workers who came, developers built towers of apartments. To entertain them, restaurants and bars multiplied. The infrastructure that emerged—walkable, connected, dense with options—became the stage on which a new generation would perform for the internet.

Harry, 23, arrived as a graduate trainee at a solicitors' firm after university. He lived in a new complex near Piccadilly and started posting about his revision routines, his fitness, his nutrition. He'd watched others film in gyms and dismissed them as vain until he realized he was judging them because he felt insecure himself. His first video came in October. His flatmate began posting around the same time. The 2021 census showed that Manchester's largest age group was 20-to-24-year-olds, a cohort that had grown 9.7 percent since 2011. About 70,000 students lived in the city. An analysis by the consultancy ING found Manchester was the joint fastest-rising city in Europe for online mentions last year. Harry says the atmosphere here gave him permission to be seen. "It's a swagger," he told me. "It's so distinctly Mancunian... people here are just different."

That confidence has genealogy. Andy Spinoza, who wrote a book called Manchester Unspun about the city's transformation, moved here as a student in the 1970s and recognized what he calls Mancunian exceptionalism—a belief that this is the best city in the world and everyone else can do one. The roots run to the Industrial Revolution, when Manchester became an economic powerhouse. The city was heavily bombed in World War Two because of its manufacturing capacity. From the 1980s onward, it became a creative hub. New Order, Oasis—bands that achieved global fame. That feeling of being exceptional, of being the place where things happened, was central to the creative rebirth 40 years ago. It made Manchester feel exciting long before the office workers and content creators arrived. "I call it a social experiment of, mainly young, people living in the sky," Spinoza says.

Sufia moved from New Zealand three years ago, planning to stay temporarily while she traveled Europe. She posted videos of her dance classes on TikTok as a hobby. The videos took off. Within months, her classes were sold out for seven months straight, with as many as 40 people in each session. She left her full-time marketing job in February to run the business exclusively. "Northerners are so friendly," she said over matcha in a cafe in Ancoats. "I've felt so welcomed." Ruwaydah's TikTok success led her to launch a social events business, which she plans to expand. Lamar, 29, moved from Milton Keynes three years ago to work at an IT firm. He sold his car because the public transport was so good—four tram stops within a 15-minute walk. He makes videos about personal finance and investing. When he interviewed for his job, his hiring manager mentioned having watched his TikTok videos, even though they weren't on his CV. A stranger recognized him outside Trafford town hall and said his videos had prompted him to start saving into an ISA two months earlier.

But the narrative of Manchester's economic miracle has been overstated, according to Paul Swinney, chief economist at The Data City. There hasn't been a huge explosion of productivity. Median wages in Greater Manchester have risen just 1 percent since 2019 when adjusted for inflation. The high-rise apartments that define the city's new skyline have required repairs for safety problems. One developer was taken to court by the government in April for using taxpayers' money for remedial works. The Bee Network—buses, trams, and bicycles operating together—connects the city centre with surrounding areas like Salford, Bury, and Rochdale. But trains remain inadequate, some tram routes are slow, and the £2 cap on bus fares raises questions about long-term sustainability. Away from the gleaming towers, Swinney sees potential for growth in the surrounding areas, though the promise remains unfinished. What's clear is that Manchester has become a place where young people feel permitted to build something, whether that's a career, a business, or simply a version of themselves worth sharing. Whether that permission extends beyond the city centre, and whether it can be sustained as wages stagnate and infrastructure strains, remains to be seen.