Author: Rachel Morton

Walk through Leeds city centre on any weekday morning and the momentum is impossible to miss. Cranes punctuate the skyline. New apartment blocks rise beside long established streets. Coffee shops are full before nine, with professionals, students, freelancers and founders all moving at pace. This is a city in transformation, and for those who know Leeds well, the growth feels earned rather than forced. Leeds has become one of the fastest growing major cities in the UK because it offers something many places struggle to balance: opportunity without unaffordability, ambition without exhaustion, and a quality of life that still feels…

When you’re paying £1.74 more every week just to keep your bins collected and potholes filled, and your energy bill has crept up another 28 pence a month, the cost of living in leeds starts to feel less like a northern bargain and more like a slow, grinding squeeze. Walk down Kirkstall Road on a cold January morning in 2026 and you will hear the same conversations outside Costa and in the Aldi queue. Rents may have steadied, but wages have not caught up. Leeds is still cheaper than Manchester overall, but not by much and not for everyone. The…

Leeds in 2026 feels like a city that has finally turned intention into delivery — and that shift is changing the best areas to live in Leeds in real, visible ways. Walk through the South Bank and you’ll see thousands of new homes rising from former industrial land. Stand outside Leeds City Station and the pedestrianisation of New Station Street is no longer a promise but part of daily life. These changes aren’t abstract regeneration headlines; they’re reshaping how neighbourhoods function, how people commute, and where families, renters, and buyers genuinely want to put down roots. This is the backdrop…

If you’ve spent any time walking through Headingley, Chapel Allerton, or the steep streets of Armley lately, you’ll have seen it. A quiet revolution called Interior DesignMode24 is fundamentally changing how Leeds residents renovate, shifting the focus from “show-home” aesthetics to designs that actually work for Northern housing. While London designers are busy styling mansions we’ll never own, a new movement Interior DesignMode24 has quietly taken over West Yorkshire. Why? Because it’s the first design language that actually understands what it’s like to live in a Leeds back-to-back or a drafty Victorian terrace during a damp January. 1. The Death…

Walk down Armley Road on a busy night and you feel it before you properly clock where it’s coming from. Bass vibrating through old warehouse walls, small groups gathered outside with pints, that low hum of anticipation that only exists when something has landed culturally. This is project house leeds, and it has become part of how the city now experiences live music. I have watched this former tile warehouse evolve since it opened in July 2023. At 16,000 square feet, it could easily have gone the way of many large spaces, over-designed, over-branded, detached from the people meant to…