This article evaluates the cultural politics of waterfront heritage in regenerating Manchester, UK, in order to understand why the benefits envisaged for local communities have not been fully realised. Analysing a database of texts produced for an EU cultural heritage project (2015–2017) we find there is no lack of rich and diverse cultural heritage in Manchester, produced by a broad range of people. Using Lefebvre's ideas about the social production of space we explore how, nonetheless, waterfronts as heritage spaces are produced in ways that exclude that variety, and thus place and displace people, socially as well as bodily. We propose a role for geolocated mobile apps for spatialised heritage storytelling to enable communities to make their mark on official, imposed representations of space. Our analysis has relevance for cities across the globe, as governments, investors, redevelopment quangos and others seek to use urban waterways as heritage assets to reinvigorate former industrial areas, without adequate appreciation of their full range of cultural meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]