Next week’s edition of Making Manchester broadens the focus somewhat. In fact it’s as much about Salford, Trafford, Warrington and Liverpool as it is about Manchester. That’s because it’s about the Manchester Ship Canal and the Atlantic Gateway.

In The seaport 40 miles from the sea, we look at how the inland city of Manchester became Britain’s third busiest seaport.

And if the story starts with the intense rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool, it’s also a story of those cities’ interdependency as Lancashire’s two greatest economic centres. And in looking to the future, the story ends with how those two cities are becoming increasingly interdependent. In the era of globalisation, a region’s combined “offer” to the world is much more powerful than that of its individual component cities could be.

Of course there’s the Northern Powerhouse; but Atlantic Gateway pre-empted the Northern Powerhouse, insofar as Merseyside, Cheshire and Greater Manchester are concerned – the territory that straddles the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal – because Atlantic Gateway, as we’ll hear in next week’s Making Manchester, is bringing a joined-up, collaborative approach to the development of infrastructure in this part of the world.

And it should be quite a transformation, as we’re talking about infrastructure developments totalling £14 billion, associated with 250,000 jobs.

The programme features interviews with Carmel Booth of Atlantic Gateway (pictured), Mayor of Salford Ian Stewart, Leader of Warrington Borough Council Cllr Terry O’Neill, former head of the North West Development Agency Professor Steven Broomhead, plus Dr Julian Holder of Salford University, Professor Walter Menzies of the Manchester and Pennine Waterways Partnership and Mark Basnett of the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership.

First broadcast will be at 0900-1000 GMT on ALL FM 96.9 and www.allfm.org. The recording will be available later on Mixcloud.