Just over two years ago we were commissioned to do a piece of work on the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. Our brief was to pull together all the really good stuff in the plan, the bits that most people never looked at, and to weave them together into an elevator pitch – a coherent narrative that could be explained in five minutes (it was either a slow elevator or a very tall building).

One of our early ideas was the “octopus of accessibility”. Greater Manchester is made up of two cities and eight towns and most of the new housing is proposed within a 10-minute walk of the transit corridors to the eight towns. The idea never quite gained traction, not least because the octopus is generally regarded quite negatively when used in cartography. It’s just as well, because the octopus would have lost a leg with the withdrawal of Stockport from the process just before Christmas.

…