Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham came to this year’s Mipim property conference in a confident mood. The elected combined authority boss will already have known about a £675m fillip, announced the following week, from government and the National Wealth Fund, which nearly doubled the city region’s regeneration resourcing pot, the Good Growth Fund, to £2bn.

He also may have been aware chancellor Rachel Reeves would at the same time announce plans for “fiscal devolution” to city regions – something that could have a huge impact on its ability to invest in big ticket projects over the long term.

“Every year, I think we’re that little bit more confident, that little bit stronger,” he said. “The next decade in Greater Manchester will be the best in our city region since the Victorian period. That’s not an idle boast.”

Other cities may weary of the Mancunian swagger, but it has its roots in reality. While the huge economic performance gap between London and other UK cities remains true, less well known is that Manchester has been closing it. A report  released by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in January this year showed that the city region was the fastest growing part of the UK between 2015 to 2023, growing at twice the rate (3.1%) of the rest of the economy (1.5%). In 2023, for the first time, provisional data show the city region economy topped £100bn in GVA.

For Manchester, the challenge now is how to keep this growth going while spreading the benefits of it to all parts – particularly the relatively more deprived northern authorities such as Oldham, Rochdale, and Bolton. The Good Growth Fund, a largely recyclable fund allied to a pipeline of priority projects, is the vehicle for getting this done. So how has Manchester achieved all this – and how does it plan to use this new growth fund, and potentially fiscal devolution beyond that – to take growth to the next level.