As a center of industry, Manchester, New Hampshire, was spun into existence from cotton in the 1800s. Its future may be woven by the strands of human life.

Textiles elevated the Queen City into a global powerhouse for nearly a century. By the early 1900s, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company operated a textile mill complex along the Merrimack River that employed 17,000 people, encompassed 30 buildings and was the biggest in the world.

After Amoskeag shut down in 1936 — bankrupted by the Great Depression, labor strikes and competition — manufacturing continued in the Millyard, but the city never reclaimed its glory. Giant buildings sat vacant until they began filling up again in the 1980s with a new wave of high-tech, business services and education tenants.

Is Manchester ready to rise again? We’re not talking about bettering Boston. We’re talking about conquering the world.