New Trafford

New Trafford is Manchester United's proposed 100,000-seat stadium, which would be the largest football ground in the United Kingdom, rising on a roughly 10-hectare site in Trafford Wharfside about 350 metres north-west of Old Trafford, bounded by Wharfside Way, Europa Way and John Gilbert Way. Designed by Foster + Partners at an estimated cost of around 2 billion pounds, the bowl is wrapped by a lightweight umbrella-like canopy slung from three 200-metre masts nicknamed the trident, which harvest rainwater and shelter a public plaza roughly twice the size of Trafalgar Square. The stadium anchors a far larger scheme: Allies and Morrison's masterplan for 150 hectares of the Trafford Wharfside area sets out about 15,000 new homes in blocks of six to twenty-five storeys, with taller elements permitted where viability allows, alongside commercial and cultural space, waterfront regeneration along the Manchester Ship Canal and Salford Quays, upgraded transport infrastructure and a city-scale park linking the ground to Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North. Manchester United put the wider regeneration's value at some 7.3 billion pounds a year to the UK economy and tens of thousands of jobs, with Old Trafford itself expected to be retained and downsized rather than demolished.