Manchester city centre has been undergoing rapid change for years – and now its extent could be redefined.

As the Manchester Evening News reports, the Ancoats area on the eastern edge of the city centre is the subject of a campaign to treat it as being as much a part of the core as Piccadilly, the Northern Quarter or Castlefield.

While the traditional centre is seeing a plethora of skyscrapers shooting up as its residential population soars, Ancoats has itself been transformed from a former area of mills and narrow terraces into a popular place to live, with the New Islington project adding a number of large apartment blocks to the many old industrial buildings repurposed as offices or flats.

The fact is that structural glazing contractors have been almost as busy in Ancoats as they have in the traditional city centre, currently defined as the area inside the inner ring road.

According to the paper, the de facto expansion of the city centre has raised a number of issues that have led campaigners in Ancoats and the police to argue it should be officially reclassified.

These include calls for the increased police resourcing requirements a city centre area needs and fierce debates about the future of open spaces, such as ‘New Islington Green’, an unofficial park next to the area’s Metrolink stop. The stop itself is classed as being in the Metrolink Zone 1, the only one on the network outside the official centre.

Similar considerations may soon apply to other areas as the centre expands, such as Hulme, Cheetham Hill and Ardwick.

However, there is one difference; so far all the tallest buildings are continuing to be built on or planned for sites inside the inner ring road.

The most recent proposal was for two 56-storey residential towers at Deansgate Square, already home to several skyscrapers, including the tallest building in the city.

Great Jackson Street Estates submitted the planning application at the end of March.