Re-imagining and reshaping the city
Michael Bradford
University of
Manchester
AQA sponsored lecture
GA Manchester 2012
‘Auda-city’ to dare you to think of positive
and negative words ending in city
Positive
Authenti city, perspica city
domesti city, ethni city
feli city, iconi city
histori city, saga city
preco city, publi city
recipro city, vera city
viva city, synchroni city
Negative
fero city, dupli city
atro city, compli city
incapa city,
inauthenti city,
menda city, sala city,
toxi city
Positive
and
BEETHAM
TOWER
Negative
views
HILTON HOTEL
AQA specification: specifically relating
to
• Option 4. World Cities: urban decline and
regeneration within urban areas
• Option 6. Contemporary Conflicts and
Challenges: Conflict over the use of a local
resource
(e.g. land, buildings, space)
outline
• The state of play pre-1988
• How the city has been re-imagined and reshaped
since 1988 CMDC, recovery from IRA Bomb
(1996)
• Issues and problems with that re-imagining the
neo-liberal city
• The neo-liberal city continues beyond financial
crisis.
• The need for new thinking and subsequent
reshaping
In a nutshell: Beetham Tower
• Icon of change
• High rise (completed
2006)
• Power, confidence in the
future
• Leisure, tourism and
residences
• Business, high income,
prestige, private
investment
• Part of geographical
extension of city centre
Arndale
Town Hall
New
offices
View from Beetham Tower towards city centre
Spinningfields
Great Northern Warehouse
St John’s Gardens
1970s Wimpey housing
The city
• Where many live, work and play.
• People’s context: identity, heritage
• The central city especially significant for:
iconic buildings, feelings of belonging, pride,
social cohesion
types of crisis of cities 60s onwards
• economic
• social
• political
• built
• place
disinvestment, closure, long
term unemployment,
deindustrialisation
net out-migration, riots,
high crime
legitimation, fiscal
dereliction, decay
identity - what are large
cities for?
types of intervention
• consumption: leisure
and tourism;
spectacle
• skills, welfare to
• social: human capital
work; community
social capital
involvement (NDC)
• new forms of
• political
governance (UDCs),
deregulation, coordination (URCos)
• property-led, urban
• built
design
• economic
The re-imagining late 80s
• Bring back some residents to the city centre
• Attract private investment again in housing
(restore a market), offices, leisure and tourism
and retail.
• Compete amongst global cities (market)
• In short, city to go from
mainly oriented to production to
mainly oriented to consumption,
especially individually based.
National Government input
•
•
•
•
•
Central Manchester Development Corporation
A later UDC 1988-96.
‘Property-led regeneration’
Market the property and market the city
Use public monies to lever in private
investment
• Built-form change and environmental
improvement
• Underlying Idea: ‘trickle down’ from rich to
poor
Central Manchester Development
Corporation 1988-1996
• Goals: extend the city centre both functionally
and geographically
• Leisure (pubs, clubs, hotels)
• Housing
• Offices
• Retailing
• Industry
• Environment
• So if they succeeded they would change the type
and area of land use for the city centre.
Leisure: pubs
Duke’s 92, Rochdale Canal, Castlefield
Clubs
Malmaison Hotel, the old Joshua Hoyle (Dept Store)
building, diagonally opposite Piccadilly Station
Housing
Conversion.
Affordable
housing
Whitworth
Corridor.
e.g.India
House.
Housing
Assoc.
New build by water: intended to be mixed land use
Piccadilly Village, behind Piccadilly
Station. Early housing development on
the Ashton Canal.
Views from apartments varied
Piccadilly Village [1990] and occupied
warehouse knitwear
Castle Quay a mixed development, Castlefield.
An eg of enveloping.
Castle Quay from road: transforming a gateway
first non-subsidised housing in city centre
Slate Wharf new build, Castlefield
Offices: conversion
Eastgate offices, Castlefield.
Roman wall alignment of entrance.
Castlefield: Eastgate and Bass offices
Bridgewater Canal
Conflict I. CMDC v British Gas
New offices: British Council
west of Oxford Rd Station
Costed at top of
the market
Old British Council
Offices 2007
Now City Council
Offices but ….
Barbirolli Square, 21st century offices,
Bridgewater Hall
Accountancy and
Legal firms move
out from old core
New build, extending
city centre
Environment: canals and towpaths
Bridgewater Canal, Castlefield
CMDC outcomes: successful on own terms
• Housing and people back in city centre –
mostly richer people, varied ages; a market.
• Much hotel, clubs and office development
(leisure, tourism and commerce)
• Environmental success with canal towpaths
• Not successful for retail or hi-tech industry
(but some creative industry)
• Marketing of property and place > Olympic
• bids >City Pride and Commonwealth Games
• 24 hour city – the young
Conflict II: development v conservation
Conflict II
Deansgate Victorian terrace, now
includes city centre estate agents
Conservation v Development (built env.)
• E.g. The Great Northern Warehouse
• Conserve elements of ‘First Industrial City’ or
develop for now?
• Civic Society set up to oppose initial plans
• Other changes to old buildings: eg Printworks,
the Triangle (Corn Exchange);
• other warehouses (loss of cheap space for crafts)
• under viaducts of railway lines.
Great Northern Warehouse (2007)
Note multi-storey car park
1996 IRA Bomb
• What and where? No loss of life.
• Structural damage. Loss of many retail outlets
• But an opportunity
• New design of part of the older city centre
• Re-focused on imminent competition of
Trafford Centre
• But independents replaced by multiples;
discount stores by up-market retailing.
Now
The location of the IRA bomb.
now
The late 1970s Arndale: ‘the biggest
gentlemen’s loo in Europe’ Bill Bryson
The new Arndale
Shops opening onto street rather than having a wall of tiling.
Urban Design
Exchange Square: some controlled public space.
The Triangle (Corn Exchange ) discount to up-market retailing.
Leisure and tourism
new Exchange Square
The Shambles: the inn
has been moved twice.
Overall outcomes by 2001
• Plaudits for the City: exemplar of regeneration
• 14,000 people living in the city centre
• Although lost Olympic bids, acquired the
Commonwealth Games for 2002 – catalyst
for regeneration in East Manchester
• Attracting more
investment: Harvey Nics,
Spinningfields, and
areas beyond the
Inner Ring Road
eg New Islington
Harvey Nichols
Spinningfields: retail, offices and apartments
Since 2001
New Islington, Manchester
Methodist Housing Association
East of Inner Ring Road
Pomona (Castlefield): more apartments
West of Inner Ring Road
Developments: within, beyond the Inner Ring Road
No 1 Deansgate
Apartments
within Old Core
View along
Market St.
near Exchange
Square
Howard Jacobson from this week’s
Newsweek
‘Hotels, clubs, apartment blocks now,
the old mills and warehouses have made the
change well from temples of
ceaseless industriousness to
palaces of pleasure’
From production to consumption
BUT
• Property based – CMDC no link to Ancoats (east);
City Challenge in Hulme (south) or to Training
and Enterprise Council (TEC). People?
• Too easy for City Council to be seduced by its own
marketing
• Increased inequalities in Manchester
• 47% (118) of its areal units are amongst the 10%
most deprived in the country 2010
• Only Liverpool (51% 148) and Middlesbrough
(47% 41) have greater proportion .
Eg Harpurhey, 3 miles north of city centre
• Second most deprived ward in England (MDI)
2010
• Very poor on health (4th), income (5th,
employment (7th), crime (7th).
• Lack of skills (People aged 16-74 who have no
qualifications. Harpurhey: 51% England: 29%)
Many on incapacity benefit
• City centre very close but do not feel part of
its boom
• “Trickling down” idea does not work – a myth
Has urban regeneration reduced social
exclusion? poorer residents of East M
• economic
• social
• political
• spatial/ access
• cannot afford new city centre
services; loss of discount
stores. Jobs not for them.
• Not comfortable with café
lifestyle; for young and
commuters
• not involved in regeneration
• since privatisation of buses:
dearer and poorer service
• Result: separated from CC.
2000 Impact of future regeneration
• Velodrome already in East Manchester – local
people never used – not for them
• Feared regeneration for Commonwealth
Games would just be corridors along which
visitors would travel. ‘legacy for them?’
Michael Young, ‘The rise of the
Meritocracy’ 1958
• The rise of the meritocracy 1958 predicted that as a
new powerful meritocratic elite arose so an underclass
would emerge as it is increasingly disenfranchised.
• The elite controls what merit constituted. The
underclass would take to the streets.
• Educational inequality and income inequality reinforce
each other in a generational feedback loop.
• Privilege accrues wealth and they devote more
resources to the educational achievement of their
children by paying fees or private tuition or moving to
postcodes in order to attend the best schools.
• Access to best universities for entry into professional
elites.
Deprivation and resistance.
One third of the people convicted in connection with the
looting in Manchester summer 2011 came from the
most deprived wards.
Poverty
'decile‘
1
2
3
4
5
Total
sentenced
0
2
3
1
8
Poverty
'decile‘
6
7
8
9
10
Total
sentenced
11
6
11
13
26
Some have written recently of an overclass,
a toxic part of the elite
The ‘neo-liberal city’
• Profit motive above all else. Not people.
• Private investment and development. The market
• ‘About properties, not the public spaces between
them’.
• In early 2000s boom in apartments over half
were said to have never been occupied – just
investment for resale. Exchange not use value.
• Later, the buy-to-let culture rather than buy-tolive e.g. Jackson’s Wharf.
• Even where public spaces often temporary
buildings for profit e.g. ice-rink; restaurant
Jackson’s Wharf, Castlefield : unsuccessful pub
Conflict III
‘Buy to live, not buy to let’
‘Cities for people, not profit’
The Christmas Market, Town Hall Square
Temporary use of public space
Temporary
land uses:
ice rink
Spinningfields: the screen and temporary restaurant
Boom to crash (2007/8): reactions
• Skyline full of cranes to none
• Difficulty with apartments for sale, but still
good market for renting
• Financial crisis: institutions sell off office
blocks in Spinningfields, at a big loss, for cash
flow
• slowing down schemes eg Spinningfields and
New Islington And moth-balling
• BUT still the Neo-Liberal City
Hardman Square: credit crunch sale of offices
The delayed Avenue in Spinningfields upmarket retail
Ancoats and New Islington
New Islington
New Canal built linking Ashton and Rochdale Canals for CHIPS
Mothballing 2008, north of Mancunian Way
View looking north from mothballing
Potato Wharf 2008: left block developed, right mothballed
Near Castlefield ‘A devt with soul in a city with attitude’
Potato Wharf 2010: one developed,
one mothballed with fake sides
Re-imagining: hope for the future
• All kinds of movements: ‘Occupy’ Wall St.
• ‘Cities for people,
not for profit’.
Book Ed Neil Brenner,
Peter Marcuse, Margaret
Mayer 2012 Routledge
• Will they succeed?
Co-operative Group – new HQ
Rochdale origins, ethical and sustainable ethos
Corporate identity with city
New Co-op Group HQ outside inner ring road
Re-imagining: hope for the future
• The Neo-Liberal city – city is viewed as a product
or commodity to be marketed and re-branded
not as a ‘process’ or ‘a gathering of lives’
• Need greater diversity of residents in city centre?
• They will attract other types of services
• Reduced inequalities – better for richer as well as
poorer – message of book title
• Book ‘The Spirit Level’
Key ideas and Spirit Level
• Fairness
• Social justice
• Inequality
worse
better
low
• The Spirit Level: Why
More Equal Societies
Almost Always Do Better
Richard Wilkinson and
Kate Pickett 2009.
• US Dec 2009 new subtitle: "why greater
equality makes societies
stronger“
• Ppb 2nd edition UK Feb
2010 sub-title, “Why
Equality is Better for
high
Everyone”
Income Inequality
Health and social problems are more
common in more unequal countries.
Recent research headlines
• ‘Pursuit of materialistic values is linked to
lower wellbeing e.g. quality of life, less
positive sense of self, poorer mental and
physical health, and dysfunctional consumer
behaviour.’
• ‘Strong materialistic values are linked with
feeling less satisfied with life, experiencing
more negative emotions and feeling greater
anxiety and depression – across age groups’
Will Self, Guardian 22.2.12
• ‘How can we move from a divisive,
inegalitarian and stultifying neo-liberalism
towards a more equitable and nurturing
society?’
• ‘Seems an unasked question, let alone an
answered one’.
• I am asking this about cities.
Ways of thinking
• Theories and approaches to thinking and
policies are useful ways of structuring our
ideas
but they also limit and constrain our thinking
which in turn means we live our lives in more
limited, constrained ways
often without being aware that that is
happening to us.
E.g. ‘re-branding the city’ even on an A level
spec.
Military urbanism
• Not just the excessive concentration on the
market as a solution
• Paralleled by Stephen Graham’s military urbanism
in ‘Cities Under Siege’ 2010 – exposes the hidden
corporate and military structures behind
everyday life
• Eg tracking, surveillance and targeting – cities
centres for war on drugs, crime and terror.
• Eg CCTV cameras to make shoppers feel safe
become anti-terrorist surveillance systems
Recent research headline
• Anti terrorism measures - policy ‘is seen to be
targeting wide swathes of its own citizens
producing forms of disengagement which
have potentially serious long term
consequences relating to social cohesion,
equality and citizenship’ (my italics)
• Recipro-city, ‘brotherhood of man’
community.
challenges
• How your students re-imagine the city and enact
that thinking will create new geographies –
reshaping future cities
• One challenge you face is how to facilitate some
creative thinking and stimulate a re-imagining –
and not just an acceptance of the Neo-Liberal and
militaristic status quo.
• Thank you for listening and creating
and thank you to AQA as sponsor.
references
• ‘Cities for people, not for profit’
Ed Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse, Margaret
Mayer 2012 Routledge
‘Cities Under Siege’ by Stephen Graham 2010
Verso
‘The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies
Almost Always Do Better’. By Richard
Wilkinson and Kate Pickett 2009 Penguin
1 St Peter’s
Square: to be
New Office
Block as part of
regeneration of
square
KMPG
Studentcastle
33 storeys
Gaythorn
GMEX, Manchester International Convention Centre,
Great Northern Tower apartments, Radisson Edwardian
Hotel (old Free Trade Hall site) after CMDC
Hacienda
apartments
replaces
basement club