MANCHESTER / LIVERPOOL 	II.1-------------------------------------------------------STUDIES PART 1
March 2004-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------– Ein Initiativprojekt der Kulturstiftung des Bundes in Kooperation
mit dem Projektbüro Philipp Oswalt, der Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, der Stiftung Bauhaus
Dessau und der Zeitschrift archplus.
Büro Philipp Oswalt, Eisenacher Str. 74, 10823 Berlin, T: +49 (0)30 81 82 19-11, F: +49 (0)30 81 82 19-12,
mail@shrinkingcities.com, URL: www.shrinkingcities.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------INTRODUCTION
Philipp Misselwitz
6

STATISTICAL DATA: MANCHESTER / LIVERPOOL
Ed Ferrari, Anke Hagemann, Peter Lee, Nora Müller and Jonathan Roberts

M62 REGION
12ABANDONMENT AS OPPORTUNITY
Katherine Mumford and Anne Power

17

CHANGING HOUSING MARKETS AND URBAN REGENERATION:
THE CASE OF THE M62 CORRIDOR
Brendan Nevin, Peter Lee, Lisa Goodson, Alan Murie, Jenny Phillimore andJonathan Roberts

22

CHANGING EMPLOYMENT GEOGRAPHY IN ENGLAND’S NORTH WEST
Cecilia Wong, Mark Baker and Nick Gallent

MANCHESTER
32

MANCHESTER CITY PROFILE
Phil Misselwitz

35

TIMELINE: MANCHESTER 1750—2002
Alan Kidd

40

REGROWTH OF A SHRINKING CITY
Ed Ferrari and Jonathan Roberts

52

MANCHESTER: A BRIEF ECONOMIC HISTORY
Alan Kidd

65

MANCHESTER IN PROSPECT
Alan Kidd

75

HYPOCRITICAL CITY: CYCLES OF URBAN EXCLUSION
Rosemary Mellor

90

MANCHESTER ENGLAND
Dave Haslam

94

LOCAL MUSIC POLICIES WITHIN A GLOBAL MUSIC INDUSTRY: CULTURALQUARTERS IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD
Adam Brown, Justin O’Connor and Sara CohenLIVERPOOL
114

LIVERPOOL CITY PROFILE
Phil Misselwitz

118

TIMELINE: LIVERPOOL 1699—2004
Jon Murden

130

LIVERPOOL — CHANGING URBAN FORM
Ed Ferrari and Jonathan Roberts

137

HISTORY BROKE LIVERPOOL, AND IT BROKE MY HEART
Linda Grant

140

URBAN REGENERATION, POLITICS AND SOCIAL COHESION:
THE LIVERPOOL CASE
Richard Meegan

163

PORT STATISTICS
Patrick Keiller

168

ADDRESSES AND CONTACTS

170

BIBLIOGRAPHY173

AUTHORS175

COLOPHON

APPENDIX: MAP OF THE M62 REGION AND PHOTOGRAPHS MANCHESTER /LIVERPOOL--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTRODUCTION-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Manchester and Liverpool lie in the North-West of England, barely 35 miles apart. Bothcities have been pioneering cities, epitomising the beginning of the industrial age. In the
1930s, the population of both cities peaked at just under 900,000 inhabitants, and eachlost around half of its population when deindustrialisation led to a process of relentlessdecline. Manchester and Liverpool, earlier than other cities in the world, had to struggle
and, to some extent, succeeded in shaking off the image of decay. After a period of urban
renewal in the 1990s, today both cities share a sense of new optimism.
Despite these similarities, the relationship between the two cities is complex. Manchesterand Liverpool’s bitter rivalry extends to their football teams, music, cultural institutions
and obtaining funds from the European Union, the Central Government or the Lottery.
To a large extent, this antagonism is rooted in century-long differences in economy, social
constitution and urban culture, despite the fact that they were famously linked by the firstpassenger railway in the world: Manchester being a logistical centre for cotton and textile
industries while Liverpool’s growth was mostly generated by the power of its docks andglobal trade connections.The inherent difference between the two cities can be seen in
the way issues of decline and regeneration have been approached. The following selection of articles will explore the various manifestations of growth or shrinkage in bothcities. Far from providing a comprehensive or complete picture, they focus on particular
aspects and provide individual insights into the reality of the post-industrial city and therefore reflect the overall research approach of the Shrinking Cities project.
For Liverpool, the acclaimed Liverpool-born writer and journalist Linda Grant will give a
personal account of a life intimately intertwined with the changing fortunes of the city,while Jon Murden provides a more general chronology of key events in the city’s more
recent history.The sociologist Richard Meegan analyses the complex role of the Liverpool
municipality during the period of decline and renewal — focusing in particular on the
period in the 1980s when the local Council went into almost militant opposition to theThatcherite neo-liberal experiment, which left the city in a state of abandonment and free
fall. Meegan also shows how, in recent years, Liverpool has begun to catch up and optimism has been greatly boosted by its recent successful bid to become Europe’s Cultural
Capital in 2008. In a series of provocative statistics, the writer and film-maker Patrick
Keiller will explore the current position of the docks without dockers: handling more
tonnage than ever before, today, the docks employ a mere 800 people and embody the
successes and failures of new ‘jobless growth’ in post-industrial cities.
For Manchester, historian Alan Kidd provides a social-economic history of growth, decline
and regeneration, highlighting the fact that Manchester — much earlier than Liverpool,chose the path of coalition with Central Government in the late 1980s, shifting away frommunicipal socialism towards a new entrepreneurialism based on the concept of privatisation and public-private partnership, which put the city in a lead position in regional
renewal. The DJ David Haslam provides a very personal description of the role ofsubculture and the music scene in the urban and spiritual regeneration process ofManchester, which was, together with a change in municipal policies, the single mostimportant factor boosting growth in the city. A different perspective on the local musicscene is offered by Adam Brown, Justin O’Connor and Sara Cohen, who focus on policy
initiatives aiming to exploit its potential to stimulate urban regeneration. The sociologist
Rosemary Mellor takes a critical look at the urban inequalities and polarisations in
Manchester that form an important part of present-day reality despite being, at times,
suppressed by the rhetoric of successful regeneration.

Manchester and Liverpool faced processes of urban decline and renewal more than adecade before other regions like Ivanovo or East Germany — an experience that can
provide invaluable insights and inspiration to other urban regions worldwide.The specificurban conditions of shrinkage helped to generate a period of unique and unprecedented
cultural production in the field of popular music, visual arts and architecture, which arewidely admired and even copied. But the contributions of this working paper look beyond
these important — yet at times romanticised models — towards the polarised urban
reality of the beginning post-renewal period, characterised by the simultaneity of growthand ongoing deprivation, illustrated well by a detailed analysis of most recent trends andstatistical data compiled by Ed Ferrari and Jonathan Roberts, that continues to provide
challenges for both cities. A specific section of this publication is devoted to researchbeyond both cities.The acclaimed scholars Anne Power and Katherine Mumford (London
School of Economics) question in their contribution the traditional planning methods
such as tabula rasa demolition of deprived wards, arguing that neighbourhoods of acutedecline may become the urban centres of tomorrow. Cecilia Wong, Mark Baker andNick Gallent of the University of Liverpool speculates on the future of employment in theregion and CURS (Centre for Urban and Regional Studies of the University of Birmingham)
contributed an edited version of its recent M62 (authors: Brendan Nevin, Peter Lee,
Lisa Goodson, Alan Murie, Jenny Phillimore and Jonathan Roberts), report, which argues
for greater co-operation between the two rivalling cities, whose future depends on theirco-operation as two centres within one urban region.
Philipp Misselwitz----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 6--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------STATISTICAL DATA: MANCHESTER / LIVERPOOL
Statistics: Anke Hagemann, Nora Müller (Shrinking Cities, Office Philipp Oswalt)
Data Research: Ed Ferrari, Jonathan Roberts, Peter Lee (Center for Urban and Regional
Studies, Birmingham University)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------REGION AND CITIESThe Region
4,184,700* inh. (2002), -3.7% (1981–2001)
The Manchester-Liverpool region that we define as our research area is a part of the North West region. It
contains the metropolitan counties of Merseyside (including five districts) and Greater Manchester (including ten
districts) plus two districts of the county of Cheshire (Halton and Warrington). This Area covers the urban
agglomeration of the two cities and the densely populated zone in between (also refered to as the M62 corridor).
City and Suburbs
Liverpool and suburbs: Liverpool + Knowsley + Sefton, 872,900* inh. (2001), -9.2% (1981–2001)
Manchester and suburbs: Manchester, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside, Stockport, Trafford, Salford,
1,919,900* inh. (2001), -3.3% (1981–2001)
The Cities of Liverpool and Manchester, especially Manchester, remained in very tight administrative borders,
while the urban sprawl was expanding and small peripheral towns were becoming part of the suburban city.
To cover the entire city, including suburbs, one should refer to the cities plus surrounding districts. We referto the administrative city boundaries (districts of Manchester and Liverpool) in most cases, as this gives themost impressive image of shrinkage for the cities — and the highest contrast to other (growing) districts.
City of Liverpool, 441,500* inh. (2002), -11.6% (1981–2001)
City of Manchester, 422,300* inh. (2002), -9.1% (1981–2001)

The North West

Merseyside

Greater Manchester

Bury

Rochdale

BoltonOldhamWigan
SeftonSalford

Knowsley

Manchester

St HelensTameside

Liverpool
Trafford
Warrington

Stockport

WirralHalton1020 km* Population figures for 2001 and 2002 are revised on the basis of outcomes from the 'Manchester matching exercise' which aimed to improve population
estimates in the light of Manchester City Council's challenge to the Census authorities.

STATISTICAL DATA: Manchester / Liverpool

II | 7

INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONPOPULATION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------01 population development in 4 investigated cities
02 population development in the cities andagglomerations of Manchester and Liverpool
mill.inh.

mill. inh.

2

GreaterManchester

2
1

Detroit

Merseyside
Ivanovo
Leipzig
Manchester

1850

1900

1950

1
Liverpool

2000

Manchester

1900

1950

2000

INCOME ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------03 monthly average income per capita in the 4
04 annual average income per capita in the cities
locationsand region, compared to national average, 2001
in EURin pounds

1055

11.500

990
893

8.189

8.061

Man

Reg.

7.363

Det

Man

Lei

Iva

1999

2001

2000

2000

46

Liv

Engl.

[NB: average incomes are defined differently, cf. notes]

UNEMPLOYMENT --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06 development of unemployment rates in
05 unemployment rates, international comparison
Liverpool and Great Britain(2000/2001)
in %

in %

20,6

20
Liverpool
13,8

9,4

10,1*10,5*

6,3

Det

US

10

5,1

4,8

Liv

Hal

GB

D

reg.
Iva RuGreat
Britain*officially registerd: 1,4%

[NB: unemployment is defined differently, cf. notes]
1960

1970

1980

2000

1990

VACANCIES -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------07 estimated vacancy rates in housing, international
08 development of vacancy rates in Liverpool,comparison
Manchester and England
in %

in %
8,0
7,5

19,3

7,0
5,9
5,0

10,3

4,7
4,0

7,0

4,2

Hal

2000

2002

2001

2002

Man

1991

Det

1981

3,4

Liverpool

Manchester

EnglandSTATISTICAL DATA: Manchester / Liverpool

II | 8REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
DEINDUSTRIALISATION ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------09 employment by industries; Liverpool 1996, 2001
10 foreign and domestic port traffic 1965—2002
in mill. tonnes

in %
5,5

6,4

Construction

14,8

10,5

Manufacturing

67,2

65,7

Service

Liverpool
30

20

10

11,5

15,8

1996

2001

Manchester

Bank and Finance1965

11 total numbers of unemployed in Manchesterand Liverpool 1960—2000

1970

1990

1980

2002

12 share of benefit recipients in the cities andregion, 2000
in %in 1.000

18,19

100

18,83

11,80
60
8,15

Manchester

Liverpool

Man

20

1960

1970

1980

1990

Liv

Reg

Engl

2000

SUBURBANISATION ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------13 population development in Liverpool and the
14 Manchester and its surrounding disticts*,
surrounding districts*, 1931—1991
1931—1991
in 1.000 inh.

in 1.000 inh.

Liverpool
800

800

600

600

surrounding
districts

400

Manchester

surrounding
districts

400

200

200

1931

1991

*Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens, Halton

15 development of total properties in housing
and the share of vacancy, 1981, 1991, 2002
in 1.000
vacant80
totalpoperties

150

60

40

50
20

Warrington

Liverpool
1981

1991

2002

1981

1931

1991

*Salford, Trafford, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Tameside, Stockport

1991

2002

300

100

Rochdale

Manchester

OldhamTameside

Stockport

Trafford

Rochdale

Manchester

OldhamTameside

Stockport

Trafford

Rochdale

Manchester

OldhamTameside

Stockport

Rochdale

Manchester

OldhamTameside

Stockport

Trafford

Bury

Salford

BoltonWigan

Warrington

Trafford

BoltonWigan

Warrington

HaltonHaltonSt. Helens

Knowsley

Liverpool

SeftonWirral

Bury

500

Bury

in ha

Bury

19 derelict land and land occupied by vacant buildings, 2001
Salford80

Salford120

Salfordin 1.000 pounds
Bolton18 actual mean house prices, 2002

Bolton

8

Wigan

12

Wigan

16

Warrington

in %Warrington

St. Helens

Knowsley20

HaltonSt. Helens

Knowsley

Liverpool

17 benefit recipients, 2000

HaltonSt. Helens

Knowsley

Liverpool

40

Liverpool

SeftonWirral4

SeftonWirral1

SeftonWirralSTATISTICAL DATA: Manchester / Liverpool
II | 9

POLARISATION (spatial disparities on district level by specific indicators) ----------------------------------16 unemployment rates, 2001
in %

5

3

STATISTICAL DATA: Manchester / Liverpool

II | 10--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ABBREVIATIONS:
Det – Detroit, US – United States, Liv – Liverpool, Man – Manchester, GB – Great Britain, Hal – Halle,
Lei - Leipzig, D– Germany, Iva – Ivanovo, RU – Russia, Reg – region--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NOTES:
03 Definitions of average income: US: Total income for a defined geographic unit divided by the total
population. Income is defined as: total money income of persons 15 years and over. Potential sources:
wage or salary; selfemployment income; interest, dividend, net rental or royalty income; Social Security
or rail road retirement income; public assistance or welfare; retirement or disability income. GB: Income
data are only available for households--the data have been modeled to per capita values by applying apersons: house hold ratio for each district. D: The average monthly net income includes salaries andwages, self-employment income, pensions, public assistance, rents/tenures; not included are farmers andpersons without any income (such as children). RU: Total income of the total population (pensions,salaries/wages, grants, child benefits, interest incomes, rents); income from informal or illegal work is notincluded; children and pensioners are included
05 Detroit/U.S.: 2000; Ivanovo/RU: 2000; Halle/D: 2001; Liverpool/GB: 2001
Definitions of unemployment: US: Civilians 16 years and over are classified as unemployed if they 1)
were neither “at work“ nor “with a job but not at work“ during the reference week, and 2) were looking for work during the last four weeks, and 3) were available to accept a job. Also included as unemployed are civilians who did not work at all during the reference week and were waiting to be calledback to a job from which they had been laid off. D: Unemployed is someone, who 1) has no employment or less than 15h per week, 2) is looking for employment, liable for insurance deductions and over
15h per week, that means who is making an effort to find a job and who is available for the services ofthe employment office. Not included are persons, who a) are employed for more than 15h per week,b) are not allowed orn are unable to work, c) are restricting their availability for no reason, d) are older
than 65, e) are presently beneficiaries in employment measures. GB: Nomis-defintion: monthly administrative count of unemployed claimants--this is different from the ILO (International Labour Organization)
definition, which estimates all jobless people who want to work, are available to work, and are actively
seeking employment.The claimant count measures only those people who are claiming unemploymentrelated benefits (Jobseeker’s Allowance).This is always a lower measure because some unemployed people
are not entitled to or choose not claim benefits. RU: There are two differing figures: 1) collected by amethod based on monitoring/estimations, similar to the ILO method. 2) registered: people who claim
unemployment benefit, which is not worth the effort.
13, 14 Adjustments made as far as possible to account for local government reorganisation in 1974--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SOURCES:
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

U.S. Census Bureau, Census Reports for GB and Greater Manchester, Statistisches Jahrbuch Leipzig, Institut für Länderkunde (IfL) Leipzig / Datenbank „Städte
Russlands”
Liverpool Trade Directory, 1801-1951 & U.K. Census, 1801-2001; Census Reports for Great Britain and Greater Manchester Part 1 Volume 1 and Annual
Abstract of Statistics 1997
U.S. Census Bureau; CACI Ltd, Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS), Birmingham University; Statistisches Landesamt Sachsen; Goskomstat(Staatliches Komitee für Statistik), Moskau; Goskomstat, Ivanovo
CACI Ltd
Fischer Weltalmanach 2003; U.S. Census Bureau; NOMIS (GB, Employment Department Group’s on-line information system); Amt für Statistik und Wahlen
Leipzig; Goskomstat, Moskau; Goskomstat, Ivanovo
Department of Employment Gazette
Stadt Halle, Wohnungsmarktbericht 2003; Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS), Birmingham University; Center for Urban Studies, Wayne State
University
CURS, Birmingham University
annual labour force survey – ONS Crown Copyright Reserved [from Nomis on 4 February 2004]
CURS, Birmingham University
Department of Employment Gazette
CURS, Birmingham University
CENSUS 1961, 1971, CENSUS 1991, 2001
CENSUS 1961, 1971, CENSUS 1991, 2001
CURS, Birmingham University
NOMIS
CURS, Birmingham University
CURS, Birmingham University
CURS, Birmingham University-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

M62 REGION---------------------------------------------

II | 12--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ABANDONMENT AS OPPORTUNITY
Katherine Mumford and Anne Power-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Around 3,000 neighbourhoods in urban areas all over the country are difficult to live inand difficult to rescue. The overwhelming majority of the most difficult neighbourhoods
are in towns and cities, so that neighbourhood-based social exclusion, seen as the concentration of multiple problems in particularly disadvantaged areas, is primarily an urban
phenomenon (SEU, 1998). Many of the most severely problematic pockets are in large
council estates, which are also disproportionately concentrated in cities. But even themost prosperous and successful places have their small problematic neighbourhoods.
People with choice, money, jobs, know-how and energy try to move out of such difficult
areas. Even in London, many families in low-income neighbourhoods want to leave theircurrent homes for somewhere better (Mumford and Power, 2003)1.There are many longrun drivers of this wider collapse in confidence. But two historical factors underlie abandonment: outward sprawl and deindustrialisation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------WHY ARE INNER NEIGHBOURHOODS BEING ABANDONED?
As the first country in the world to become overwhelmingly urban — 90% by 1900 —and industrial — only 2% of the workforce in agriculture by 1900 — our cities paid a very
heavy price for the huge wealth and international status that Britain acquired.The politicalconsensus was to lead people out of them. Major efforts to tackle housing problems andslum conditions were driven over the following 100 years by the idea that crowded andimpoverished masses should be moved out of the city to new green field, suburban housing — council-owned as well as private.The famous World War One slogan ”Homes Fit
for Heroes” led eventually to a blunt and vast slum clearance programme targeting all
inner cities across the country in an attempt to create space for better housing within as
well as beyond city boundaries. The promotional poster for the ‘Homes’ campaign
showed a soldier pointing to the suburban semi as the dream home and spurning themonotonous, soot-blackened terraces of byelaw housing, many of which survive to thisday, but which were built in their millions before World War One as an orderly, low-cost
remedy for the unsanitary and chaotic slums.Very few challenged the idea of large-scaledemolition and exodus until the 1970s, by which time the damage to cities and thecommunities they housed was immeasurable (Young and Wilmot, 1957)2.
As the earliest industrial economy in the world, our dependence on old-style, heavy manufacturing was paramount. With the incremental decline in our factory-based economy
from the turn of the 20th century and the virtual collapse of our mainstay heavy industries in the 1970s and 1980s, older urban areas were left high and dry, almost devoid ofjobs, incrementally denuded of the more skilled and more ambitious who seized plentiful opportunities to carry on moving out (Turok & Edge, 1999). Slum clearance made thiseconomic transformation harder and harsher.The large-scale blight and eradication of old
inner areas left cities like Liverpool and Glasgow struggling to recover long after the population and jobs had been wiped out (MacLennan, 1997).
The process of ‘housing exodus’ was incremental and still continues today, certainly fromthe poorest neighbourhoods.The rate of outward migration has slowed, but is still significant (Holmans & Simpson, 1999). Industrial change gained rapid momentum under the
impact of the 1970s economic recession, Thatcherism and international market forces.
Both the housing and jobs transformation hit much harder in the major industrial cities

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Abandonment As Opportunity

II | 13of the North and Midlands because here urban conditions were more dominated bydirty industry and the high population density of the industrial workforce.The slum clearance and estate building process, on a vast scale in these industrial regions, left some innerneighbourhoods with a third of their former population (Power, 1987).
Thus Manchester and Newcastle, alongside Liverpool, Birmingham and almost all metropolitan areas, possessed by the late 1980s but shadows of their former wealth, population density and significance.The geographic spread of the conurbations was now wider,less concentrated and carved up by major roads. Old docks, monuments to our world
pre-eminence in shipping, lay idle in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Newcastle (HarveyJones, 1994). The great rivers of Clyde, Mersey and Tyne were deeply damaged by two
centuries of grime and obsolete industrial relics. The first industrial workhouses of theworld, along the banks of the Manchester and Birmingham canal networks, were literally
falling down or burnt down for insurance gains — a desecrated heritage of irreplaceablevalue.
It is against this backdrop of economic, social and geographical change that our work isset. The poorest neighbourhoods in our study, experiencing the most acute abandonment, are at the most extreme end of this long run and extensive process, whichembraced most of the country and certainly affected most cities. The Thames Gateway
area, to the East of the City of London, shows signs remarkably similar to the Eastern andNorthern areas of Manchester or the East and West Ends of Newcastle, albeit that newopportunities are closer to hand. Industrial closure, high unemployment, low-value housing and even, in places, signs of abandonment are clear (LSE Cities Programme, 2002).This
pattern pervades Western European and North American former industrial cities as wellas the United Kingdom (Core Cities Conference, 2002).
There is clearly a drastic need for change in direction. As inner neighbourhoods havebecome too depleted, with too little work, too much poverty, and eventually too few
people, social conditions have unravelled. Schools close, buses run less often, shops andbanks disappear and criminal networks thrive in the vacuum of left-behind spaces (HomeOffice, 1999b). The one thing that does not decline is traffic. People who have forsaken
the city still use the centre for its amenities and for work. As commuters, they now only
drive through the areas they would probably have lived in, in earlier epochs. Congestion
and the time involved in commuting are high prices to pay for allowing urban neighbourhoods to fall into such decay.
Housing built on the edge of cities, usually on greenfields, provides a popular alternative
to city living for those that can afford to buy, but in itself destroys both countryside andinner cities simultaneously. At the most extreme, crude over-building outside cities fuels
plummeting demand for lower-value inner neighbourhoods within. This is exactly theprocess this report documents in the North, where more homes are being built, almost
all outside city boundaries, than there are projected households who might form to fillthem. The over-supply of homes is a major driver of urban decline and abandonment(UTF, 1999; ODPM, 2002; GONW, 1999; DETR, 1999).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CITY CENTRES AND SUCCESSFUL INNER NEIGHBOURHOODS
A key to the revival of cities as a whole is the vitality of city centres. This is because, farmore than the proponents of the Information Revolution believed, we rely on city centresas the engines of the new economy. Proximity, face-to-face encounters, easy access tomultiple back-up services and a concentration and clustering of related enterprises all
generate new demand for space in cities.The centrality of financial services and requirements for high-quality amenities in a modern economy, the need for accessible personal
backup from child care, hairdressing, house maintenance to interior design, ready-preparedMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Abandonment As Opportunity

II | 14dinner deliveries and all kinds of specialist shops and repair, all help shape the revival of
cities as our ”creative nerve centres” (Rogers and Power, 2000).
British central and local governments in the 1980s adopted an innovative partnershipapproach to transforming the centres of our major cities from industrial relics into hightech global connectors. Obsolete historical infrastructures were readily, if expensively,
converted to new enterprises and housing. Neglected, often disused or underused landmarks, such as canals, theatres, libraries and old transport infrastructures, have become
exciting and appealing elements of the new as well as the old eras. As new businesses
and new people have been attracted in, so have new values followed. Marketing city centre
living has gathered its own steam.
On the back of this rebirth, travelling, foot-loose shoppers from outlying Cumbria andNorthumbria chose city centre shopping in Manchester and Newcastle ahead of the
giant Trafford or Gateshead Metro shopping malls where the names, styles and atmosphere are predictable, because people are also looking for ‘street experience’, for unexpected corners to explore, for recently restored side streets and bars where the ‘city
atmosphere’ is a special, if almost forgotten, asset.The interaction of new ‘urban tourists’and new urban dwellers is restoring the centres of every major city in the country.
So can inner city neighbourhoods catch this fever? The new, exciting urban walkway connecting Manchester’s city centre with the heart of East Manchester 1.5 miles away reinforces the link between the two.The truth is that the less decayed, more attractive neighbourhoods are already improving. Old Victorian or Georgian neighbourhoods, built for
artisans and respectable working families, have often recovered from industrial decay,
where the poorest slum areas, housing a mass of casual workers, though upgraded manytimes over, have generally stayed poor and proved harder to regenerate.
Reputations are very long-lasting (Lupton, 2001). Our cities were long ago sectioned intopoorer and richer areas and although people were physically closer together, because
cities were denser and less spread out, socially the distance between the poorest areas
and the rest of the city was vast. The Booth poverty maps of London at the turn ofthe century show how concentrated poverty was and how strongly linked to specificareas. These patterns have survived almost intact to this day (Davey Smith et al, 2000;
Economist, 2001).
It has been a lot easier to create the new economy and new prosperity in West London
than in the East End. It is easier to see South Manchester gaining ground than the Northernpart of the city, where property values are falling. So what helps the inner neighbourhoods that do recover take off again? Firstly, the intrinsic attractions of their housing.They
usually have solid, old, semi-detached or terraced houses that are big enough to adapt
easily to modern standards. People like old, but fully modernised homes. Previously multioccupied, privately rented rooms and flats in large old houses, often deeply decayed anddisrepaired, can be combined into spacious ‘good as new’ homes.The generous proportions and the simple, adaptable design of older housing allows for careful restoration, creating homes of character and style with the patina of time etched unmistakably on them,
yet offering light, airy, up-to-the-minute conditions. Insulation, central heating and ‘modcons’ combine admirably with old wooden floorboards, stripped, bevelled doors, ceilingmouldings and other attractive features that are signs of former wealth. Old gardens, evensmall ones, unlike back yards, often have mature trees that give a leafy green atmosphereand public streets become greener as the neighbourhood attracts young innovators. Infillsites, created by loss of work places or other changes of use, create new opportunities
for well-designed, high-quality housing and new uses make these recovering neighbourhoods more varied and interesting.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Abandonment As Opportunity

II | 15

Secondly, new urban residents attracted by such recovering inner neighbourhoods often
have civic connections and responsibilities and can lever in better services. Conditions
improve, pubs and shops survive and go up-market.The historic, community-forming roleof these neighbourhoods survives around the traditional street patterns while the moderately high density encourages street activity. These successful inner neighbourhoods
have about 50 to 100 homes per hectare, one quarter to one half the density of the typical Victorian slums of East Manchester or Newcastle, but at least double to quadruple
the density of modern suburban estates.This gives them a critical mass of people which
supports services, making them highly sought after in every city, including the inner areasof Newcastle, Manchester or Glasgow. Fast-reviving inner neighbourhoods are intrinsically attractive urban locations, often near to major parks, close to old universities, on wellestablished public transport routes, created before the advent of the car.They are urban
in the best sense of the word.
All these elements make inner neighbourhoods of ageing but solid structure highly attractive today. They offer all the advantages of city life and though they share many of the
problems of other inner city neighbourhoods, particularly crime and poor schools, they
have ‘kerb appeal’. They have the major asset of a growing social mixture, which many
people seem to prefer to more sterile, single-class suburbs. Notting Hill in London, orVictoria Park in Manchester, or Gosforth in Newcastle epitomise such areas.
Can the historically poorer neighbourhoods that are struggling to survive develop similar
assets from a very different base? We would argue that they can.The building of the new
Victoria line for the London Underground in the 1960s and the lifting of the large demolition plans hanging over much of Islington transformed it from a depopulating, decaying
slum into a lively, mixed-tenure, multi-ethnic area. It still has by far the least open spaceof any London borough, the worst schools and very high crime — serious blights on its
community — but it is very popular because of its density, its closeness to the centre, its
mixed communities and its terraces! Many argue that Islington is a far cry from North
Manchester or inner Newcastle, and this is indisputable. But a quick look back to the1970s might suggest a more comparable history. Then it was fast depopulating, had
extremely low property values, a high level of rapid-turnover private renting, a serious
loss of jobs, numerous school closures and racial disorders provoked by rapid in-migration of ethnic minorities from abroad and provocative policing (Power, 1970). It had theworst council record on many fronts, particularly housing, and the majority of its wards
ranked among the poorest in London on overcrowding, poor housing conditions, illegal
landlords, as well as some of the most extreme social problems in the city (Shelter, 1974;
Hamilton, 1978).
The turnaround came slowly, piecemeal, on the back of generous improvement grants to
do up old, decayed property, environmental improvements street by street, tree planting
involving residents throughout the borough, support for tenant co-operatives and amultitude of other community-based solutions to local problems. Local services havemushroomed on the back of its revival and many local jobs have flowed from its promising service sector. None of this made Islington into the gimmicky area of its newspaper
fame. It is still one of the poorest urban areas in London with many difficult-to-manage
council estates and it is beset with special needs and management problems. But it is so
popular as a place to live that its housing is now out of reach for most ordinary families.
Integrating the very different communities that live alongside each other in Islington andurban neighbourhoods like it is certainly a challenge, but a far more positive one thandealing with the decline and near collapse of its earlier history.
Under pressures of shortage and the fashionable revival of terraced houses in inner London,
following the pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s, many of the poorer neighbourhoods in

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Abandonment As Opportunity

II | 16

the East End are now recovering rapidly. This is a recent phenomenon of the last five
years. Neighbourhood success depends on housing that is potentially attractive to some,
not necessarily the most affluent sections of the community; that is well located; and thatoffers transport links. Most old housing has the potential to be modernised and almost
any urban area can be made greener and more attractive if there is sufficient demandand confidence.
Stratford, deep in the East End, and until very recently a severely declining, low-value areawith many economic, social, ethnic and environmental problems, is now recovering rapidly following new ultra-modern transport links and major environmental improvements.
Changes in London’s inner areas offer some clues to a brighter future for our cities.Thereis a new taste for city living, demonstrated by the high value of city centre apartments in
Manchester and Newcastle, that we believe can be galvanised into housing demand in
the urban core around the centre.The Northern cities can build on their success.
This paper is an extract from Boom or Abandonment: resolving housing conflicts in cities byKatherine Mumford and Anne Power, published by the Chartered Institute of Housing, 2003.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

K. Mumford and A. Power, East Enders: Family and community in East London, Policy Press, 2003

2

For more detailed accounts of the process, the reader could refer to Burnett, J., A Social History of Housing,
1991; A. Briggs, A Social History of England, 1983; Thomson, F. M. L., Cambridge Social History, 1990;
R. Rogers and A. Power, Cities for a Small Country, 2002.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 17--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHANGING HOUSING MARKETS AND URBAN REGENERATION:THE CASE OF THE M62 CORRIDOR
Brendan Nevin, Peter Lee, Lisa Goodson, Alan Murie and Jenny Phillimore(abridged version by Jonathan Roberts and Ed Ferrari)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This section of the study is broadly based on two reports compiled by CURS. The firstof these was published in February 2001 and was welcomed by the then Housing Minister,
Nick Raynsford MP and the DETR. Entitled Changing Housing Markets and Urban
Regeneration in the M62 Corridor1, it illustrates the changing aspirations of residents in the
North West of England in respect to housing type and tenure. For the first time, neighbourhoods which are at risk from changing demand for housing are highlighted, and aseries of policy recommendations are developed, aimed at local and central government,
regeneration agencies and social landlords. Secondly, CURS produced another document
focused on the changing demand for housing in the social rented and private sectors.
Changing Housing Markets:The Case of the M62 Corridor2 considered the notion of changing demand and low demand for social housing at a sub-regional level. Both of these
papers present a concise, yet thorough study of housing in the North West and are of
relevance to Shrinking Cities at a number of levels. Not least in examining the failing housing markets in the conurbation and the transformation in the perception and formationof space as a consequence. This has had a large impact on the urban renaissance andregeneration throughout the region.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT
There is a hiatus of interest in the UK in changing demand for housing. A considerable
volume of research now addresses changing patterns of demand apparent in different
parts of the UK and particularly associated with increased voids and turnover rates in the
public sector and low house prices and abandonment in the private sector. However,research contributions to this debate remain limited and there are no examples of robust
sub-regional studies currently available. The paper presents evidence from a substantial
sub-regional study concerned with the M62 corridor running between Merseyside andcentral Manchester and beyond.The discussion focuses on changing demand in the social
rented and private sectors and refers to the macro-economic factors affecting demand.
It also focuses upon original survey research which suggests the emergence of a dual
housing market within the region. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the frameworkfor discussion of changing demand needs to pay much more attention to sub-regional dimensions and the strength or weakness of linkages within these markets related to factors other than housing tenure.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------BACKGROUNDThis study was commissioned by the Housing Corporation, 18 local authorities, the National
Housing Federation, the National House Builders Federation, the Chartered Institute of Housing
and 24 RSLs.These agencies were responding to changes in local housing markets in the
North West which were experiencing strong demand for newly built accommodation forsale and increases in vacancies and turnover in the social rented and owner-occupied
terraced sectors.
There is strong evidence that it is growing affluence which is driving decentralisation fromthe older towns and cities in the North West. The region has experienced the longest

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Housing Markets

II | 18

period of economic growth since the war, and there is almost perfect statistical relationship between the fall in male unemployment and the fall in waiting lists for social housing over the period 1992–1999.This suggests that without measures to improve housing
choice and quality in areas which have a historically high level of low-income housing, economic regeneration will lead to the deterioration in the popularity of the most marginalneighbourhoods as economically active people choose to leave.
The worst-affected local authorities have experienced large-scale and persistent population loss over the last 30 years. Conversely, they are also the local authority districts thatare experiencing the largest inward commuting, highlighting the fact that people have preferred to live separately from their place of work. This points to a downward spiral in
localities where declining neighbourhood quality, increasing social polarisation, decentralisation and the growth of travel to work areas all interact to produce a surplus of lowquality housing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------AREAS AT RISK OF CHANGING DEMAND FOR HOUSING
There are 280,000 households contained within the overall clusters of areas at risk ofchanging demand (16.3% of the households in the study area).These areas contain a population of 690,000 people (15.9% of the population of the M62 Corridor). Neighbourhoods at risk are predominately social housing areas; however there is clear evidence ofmulti-tenure problems with nearly 100,000 properties being privately owned. These
multi-tenure issues are most pronounced in the Merseyside Inner Core, where 46% ofhouseholds either rent privately or own their homes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE IMPACT OF NEW BUILDING ON OLDER NEIGHBOURHOODS
The market for newly-built accommodation for home ownership in the North of Englandhas remained robust throughout the last decade.This research contained a vacancy chain
survey which examined the impact of suburban new build on older inner city neighbourhoods.The results of this survey show that new-build sites are largely sustained by movement within the population that had moved out of the inner city many years previously.
This survey highlights a suburban market which is largely disconnected from the inner-city
market, which is increasingly insular and prone to decline for demographic reasons.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------RESEARCH
Research contributions concerned with housing have begun to reflect a growing concern
over high levels of turnover and low demand. Over recent years the managers and providers of social rented housing (local authorities and Registered Social Landlords) haveseen a steady increase in levels of voids and rates of turnover within their stock. Whilesome would initially have regarded this as being either part of a normal cycle or as a ‘blip’,they have been sustained for too long to still be regarded in that way. In many areas they
have been coupled with a decline in waiting lists and the emergence of a situation inwhich the landlord is no longer involved in rationing and managing shortage. Rather thelandlord is finding it difficult to let certain types of properties in certain areas and has no
waiting list for such properties. The landlord, rather than rationing, is trying to attract
demand. Different forms of marketing, including advertising the availability of properties,
have become features of the social rented sector. These are dramatic changes from thenormal situation that has existed in post-war Britain.They also indicate the need for significant adjustment of the assumptions that generally drove housing market studies in that
period.The housing literature was largely written in a period in which demand for social
rented housing outstripped supply, and this has become part of the general framework
for analysing housing in Britain.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Housing Markets

II | 19

There are a number of important local studies which have begun to document different
elements within this process. The major study carried out by Bramley and Pawson andothers has also provided some statistical material related to patterns of demand. This
material has largely been generated through questionnaires sent to local authorities, butinvolved some social survey work and local case studies. While it is an important contribution to the debate, the methodology employed limits the insights that it can provide.
Other contributions have focused upon regional data and regional patterns. Holmans andSimpson, for example, emphasise inter-regional demographic flows and patterns of migration. Again, these provide an important input into the debate. Nevertheless, it is apparent that it is intra-regional movements rather than inter-regional movements which aremost important in relation to changing demand. There is low demand and unpopular
housing in every region in the UK, and the work of Champion and others highlights theimportance of the hollowing out of the city and the process of outward movement from
cities.
One of the implications of this research is that we should pay more attention to theemergence of partitioned housing markets at the sub-regional level and that an understanding of the dynamics of housing markets is fundamental to the discussion of changing
demand. The concluding section of the paper further discusses the policy and other
implications of this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NORTH WEST HOUSING MARKETThe DETR report North West Regional Need and Demand Research comprehensively outlines the structure and characteristics of the North West housing market.3 Issues relevantto this study include:¬ home ownership at 68% was higher than the national average,¬ home ownership is the preferred tenure amongst potential movers ranging from 56%
to 79% across the region,¬ the level of home ownership drops from nearly 96% of high-income managerial
households to just over half of those who are unskilled and¬ the average terraced house in the region could be purchased with an annual house
hold income of approximately £14,500 per annum.
The structure of local housing markets in the study area is set out in more detail later inthis paper. While factors which influence changing markets in different local authorities
have important common elements, these common influences do not present the sameoutcomes in different localities because of differences in:¬ the structure of housing and labour markets,¬ historic patterns of planning and development,¬ socio-economic and demographic profiles of the local population,¬ the nature and quality of the built form and its wider environment and¬ patterns of economic growth and decentralisation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------REGIONAL ISSUES
There are two key regional issues within the M62 corridor and these are set out below:¬ Decentralisation of Population: the two major conurbations have experienced three
clear phases of population loss over the last three decades.The first phase during the
1960s and the 1970s was planning, and public policy led by directing population from
Liverpool to Runcorn, Knowseley and Skelmersdale. Over a 20-year period to 1976,
the city of Manchester built 43% of housing outside of its own limits, in sites as far
away as Burnley in the North and Crewe in the South. However, the huge decentralisation from the two conurbations was partly based on erroneous assumptions. The

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Housing Markets

II | 20

North West study in the 1960s predicted the overspill needs of the conurbation up
to 1981. It predicted a regional population of 7.1 million by 1981, a figure which was
an overestimation by one million.This overestimation resulted from falling birth rates,
a decline in economic growth, and an increased outward migration from the region(Marshall, 19864). The second phase of decentralisation was heralded by the development-led planning regimes of the 1980s which favoured peripheral development,
facilitating more affluent groups to commute to employment centres. A third andmore mature phase is now underway in which inter-regional migration is still important, although the rate of population decline has slowed. The Greater Manchester
conurbations lost 105,000 people between 1991 and 1998, of which 58% consistedof migration to other regions (Bates et al., 20005). Account should be taken here of
the fact that Liverpool’s Travel to Work Area includes parts of North Wales andManchester’s includes Yorkshire and Derbyshire.The significant intra-regional migration
which occurs now is concentrated in flows between the suburbs and the rural hinterland (see Champion, 20006).
¬ Decentralisation of Employment: the urban-rural shift began in the 1950s when employment growth in the cities slowed in relation to more rural areas. In the 1960s and1970s, many of the local economies suffered absolute falls in employment, a position
which then worsened dramatically in the 1980s.The worst-performing economy in the
North West has been located in Merseyside, where, during the period 1981—1996,
83,000 jobs (one in three) were lost. There were, however, significant intra-regional
shifts, with more self-contained areas like Warrington and Wigan experiencing significant increases in employment, whilst areas such as the inner core of Manchester
experienced a 19% fall (Turok and Edge, 19997).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LOCAL FACTORSIn addition to the national and regional factors that are affecting localities, there are aseries of local factors which determine the precise nature of low demand in different
places.These factors can be listed briefly:¬ tenure structure — changing demand for council housing and private renting tenures
has a proportionately greater impact in the core areas,¬ dwelling type — flats and maisonettes are much more common in the social rented
sector,¬ age and obsolescence of dwelling — the relative importance of pre-1919 terraced
accommodation and especially properties fronting onto the pavement is greater inthe core areas and¬ infrastructure/service — the infrastructure of the core of the two major conurbations
contrasts starkly with that on the periphery.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CONCLUSIONSThe M62 study concludes that a number of processes have led to the housing market in
the sub-region becoming fragmented, consistent with processes of polarisation and migration between the metropolitan core and its periphery. As a result, polarisation of the
housing market can be seen in the fact that the market is now dominated by two distinct
parts:¬ an affluent, peripheral suburban market, predominantly owner-occupied, largely selfsustaining, and supported by growth in the number of households in this market,¬ a predominantly private-sector market operating in the inner-city neighbourhoods.
The housing is old, mainly dating from before 1919. It caters to a wider mix of households, but significantly those who are less affluent.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Housing Markets

II | 21

There is little connection between these two markets. Each of these has a significant
impact on land use patterns, with the first, more successful market in particular requiringa stream of new-build properties, often on green-field sites.The shrinking second market,
on the other hand, exposes problems of obsolescence of property types; a declining target market; vacancy of properties and land; and a general hollowing-out of the inner-city,
eroding the viability and sustainability of neighbourhoods and the services that supportthem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Brendan Nevin, Peter Lee, Lisa Goodson, Alan Murie and Jenny Phillimore, Changing Housing Markets and
Urban Regeneration in the M62 Corridor, CURS report for ODPM, University of Birmingham 2001

2

Peter Lee, Changing Housing Markets: The Case of the M62 Corridor, CURS report, University ofBirmingham 2002

3

Celia Wong and Moss Madden, The North West Regional Housing Need and Demand Research, DETR,
London 2000

4

Neil Marshall, British Cities and Their Regions, Routledge, London 1986

5

Richard Bate, Richard Best and Alan Holmams (eds.), On The Move:The Housing Consequences of Migration,

6

Tony Champion, Flights from Cities?, in: Bates et al. (eds.), On The Move: The Housing Consequences of7

Ivan Turok and Nicola Edge, The Jobs Gap in British Cities, Joseph Rowntree Foundation,York 1999

Joseph Rowntree Foundation,York 2000
Migration, Joseph Rowntree Foundation,York 2000, pp. 10–20------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 22--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHANGING EMPLOYMENT GEOGRAPHY IN
ENGLAND’S NORTH WEST
Cecilia Wong, Mark Baker and Nick Gallent--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------INTRODUCTION
The socio-economic restructuring that has taken place in British cities over the last century
has led to a more complex mosaic of production processes, consumption patterns andregulatory practices. The national labour market, for instance, has been characterised bya reduced demand for traditional (often male) skilled manual labour (Green, 1997).This
decline parallels a growth in flexible working — with women taking an increasing numberof part-time jobs — as well as an urban-rural shift in employment opportunities.Travelto-work patterns have also been subject to considerable change, with the tendency forless-skilled workers to take jobs closer to home (Coombes et al., 1988; Green, 1995),
partially offsetting the long-term trend towards lengthier journeys — to work.The hugeloss of manufacturing jobs in inner urban areas has been the root cause of long-term
unemployment in the urban workforce. The rise in service sector job opportunities insome of the worst-affected locations has certainly failed to compensate for the overallloss of manufacturing jobs, largely as a result of a skills mismatch and the failure of numerous re-training initiatives. In broader terms, research has labelled many cities centres ofsocial exclusion where the rift between the included and the excluded widens daily, particularly where there is an obvious failure to successfully integrate the provision of decent
homes with good job opportunities.
It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the changing spatial and sectoral distribution of employment in the North West, seeking to identify the essential links
between jobs and homes. The two major conurbations of the North West, Greater
Manchester and Merseyside, have suffered disproportionately over recent decades fromthe national problems of industrial decline and unemployment (Wong, 1994). It is aregion of tremendous internal variation, where affluent middle-class suburbs and deprived
inner-city areas exist almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Moreover, it comprises both densely
populated metropolitan areas and small, sometimes fragile, rural economies. The NorthWest certainly represents a mixed bag of residential and employment concerns and no
singular statement can capture the full range of issues at stake.This paper seeks to unravel the various socio-economic trends that have shaped the region during the post-war
period — as a precursor to considering more recent employment trends and offering apreliminary answer to the most basic of questions: where will the people work?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EMPLOYMENT TRENDS: FROM DAWN TO DUSKThe North West was one of the world’s first industrial regions. A handful of core industries(cotton, textiles and coal mining), the effective use of new technologies (steam power
and the railways) as well as the emergence of Liverpool as the leading centre for North
Atlantic trade gave the region an initial competitive advantage which propelled it tobecome arguably the leading industrial region not only in Britain but beyond. Regional
confidence was highlighted by the claim that ‘What Manchester does Today, the World
does Tomorrow’. As early as the 1870s, although the idea of industrial decline might havebeen alien to the prosperous businessmen of the time, other regions were already catch-

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 23

ing up whilst some of the North West’s traditional industries had already begun their long
trajectories of decline. Nevertheless, immediately prior to World War One, the dominantposition of the region was still apparent. For example, two-thirds of the world exports incotton goods still originated in Lancashire (Baker and Hebbert, 1995); and Lever Brothers,
based at Port Sunlight, retained control over 61% of Britain’s output of soap products. It
was also a time of continued technological development, with new industries emerging
across the region.The ‘chemical revolution’ had begun on Merseyside and in north-west
Cheshire; new engineering industries — initially linked to textile manufacturing but later
diversifying into new areas — were springing up across the North West; and a flourishingfood-processing industry, linked to imports through the port of Liverpool, was gatheringpace.Thus, by World War Two, the industrial structure of the region was diversifying into
new areas of industrial machinery, engineering, civilian and military aircraft manufacturing,armaments and other products such as glass (led by Pilkingtons).
After the war, government intervention became more pronounced as industries such ascoal mining and textile production went into free fall. A rising number of mergers, consolidations and closures led increasingly to an industrial structure dominated by nationaland multinational companies with an associated exodus of R&D and HQ functions.Thus,
from the 1950s to the 1970s, much of the region was targeted for various forms of assistance. Initially these policies appeared to meet with some success, attracting new manufacturing industries to Merseyside (notably vehicle manufacturing) and resulting inincreases in service sector employment, leading to the so-called ‘Merseyside economic
miracle’ of the 1960s. It was, however, to prove short-lived. Although by the time of theNorth West Study in 1965 (Department of Economic Affairs, 1965) Merseyside still had
the highest absolute population and employment increases within the region, closer
examination revealed increasing rates of both unemployment and out-migration. But
rather than attempting to stem outward migration from the two principal cities ofLiverpool and Manchester, the strategic planning policies of the time promoted thisprocess, with planned de-concentration (overspill) to the new towns of Runcorn,
Skelmersdale, Warrington and Central Lancashire. New town policy was coupled withextensive motorway construction, encapsulated within a broad development strategy(North West Joint Planning Team, 1974), which focused growth in the east-west axis of theMersey belt. Meanwhile, a 4% decrease in manufacturing jobs between 1953–1963 andservice-sector increases at a slower rate than the national average provided worrying
signs of the economic problems to come (Department of Economic Affairs, 1965). By
this time, although total employment was still growing, the North West’s performance
was markedly inferior to most other regions.
Recent academic debates centering on socio-economic restructuring have increasingly
drawn attention to processes of globalisation. In the North West, however, the negative
impacts of such trends have long been apparent. By the 1970s, the region’s employment
structure was dominated by large corporate enterprises — 13 firms accounted for 25% of
the manual manufacturing workforce — and it was this branch-plant syndrome which would
be most badly hit during the subsequent recession of the early 1980s. Between 1979 and1990, the North West lost a massive 368,000 jobs in the production and constructionindustries.These losses were offset by rapid increases in service sector jobs in regions suchas the South East. But in the North West, service sector employers were unable to makeup the job shortfall left in the wake of manufacturing decline (Baker and Hebbert, 1995).
By now, the earlier new towns programme had been all but abandoned, with population
forecasts suggesting a greater likelihood of decline rather than growth, and urban policy
shifting its focus towards the inner cities, firstly through the Urban Programme and thenthrough the establishment of enterprise zones and urban development corporations.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 24

Census figures for 1981 and 1991 show 4.1% a population decline in the North West anda parallel 2.8% employment loss compared with an almost stable population acrossEngland and Wales (-0.1%) as a whole and 1.2% overall employment growth in England.
These figures, however, mask significant variations in demographic and employmentchange in different parts of the region which, in general, can be seen to follow a fairly
similar spatial pattern.The patterns revealed in Table 1 suggest some linkage between job
loss/growth and population movements, with the well-documented urban exodus to suburban and rural areas, mirrored — at least to some extent — by similar transfers of job
opportunities. Consequently, the regional distribution of employment change by OPCS
urban types [Tab. 2] roughly parallels the national picture, though the North West has
suffered greater losses from its ‘principal’ cities (mainly due to a decline in Liverpool ofover 23%).
In addition to these geographical variations in employment change, the fortunes of individual employment sectors also varied markedly during the 1981 to 1991 period.
Employment in the North West’s primary industries declined by 28.6% (although national losses of 32.5% were even greater) and the region lost over 245,000 manufacturingjobs (down 24.9% against a national decline of 23.3%). During the same period, althoughservice sector jobs increased by over 200,000 (13%), this remained well below the 17.2%
rise in England as a whole. A more detailed breakdown of employment change by industrial sector is given in Table 3.This shows both percentage change and percentage shareof the region’s total employment base, highlighting again the severe declines in theregion’s traditional energy, manufacturing and engineering industries as well as the spectacular percentage increases in banking, finance and insurance employment (although stillslightly lower than the national growth rates). By 1991, although there was still a higher
proportion of regional employment in manufacturing, the region’s industrial structure wastending to converge, to a far greater extent, with the national pattern.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 1: Population and Employment Change 1981–1991
LAD% Population

LAD

Change% Employment
ChangeBest performers:
Warrington

7.1

Macclesfield

30.6

Congleton

5.2

Flyde

22.4

Eden

5.2

South Lakeland

17.9

Chorley

4.6

West Lancashire

17.5

Crewe & Nantwich

4.0

Warrington

16.3

Knowsley-13.9

Liverpool-23.3

Liverpool-13.5

Knowsley-21.5

Worst performers:

Manchester-12.1

Ellsmere Pt & Neston-21.1

Salford-11.1

St Helens-19.3

St Helens-7.0

Oldham-12.0

Source: MIDAS and NOMIS------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 25-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 2: North West Employment Change by OPCS Urban Areas,
1981–1991
Urban Type1981 Jobs

1991 Jobs

Change% change

1981–1991

1981–1991% change
1981–1991
England & Wales

Principal Cities

550,424

460,386-90,038

-16.4

-9.0

Metropolitan Districts 1,043,580

1,011,447-32,133

-3.1

-3.9

Non-Metro. Cities

71,74465,759-5,985-8.3

1.3

Industrial Districts

404,105

403,029-1,076-0.3

0.0

New Towns

180,182

200,136

19,954

11.1

11.3

Resort & Retirement

154,116

164,148

10,032

6.5

9.7

Mixed Urban / Rural

181,410

199,369

17,9599.9

11.8

Remote Rural

46,02453,553

7,529

16.4

13.3

North West2,631,585

2,557,900-73,685

2.8

1.3

Source: NOMIS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 3: North West Employment Change and Structure, 1981–1991
1981

1991

1981–91 1981–91 1981–91 1981change1991

1991changechange

NW

NW

Engl.

in %

in %

struc.

struc.

struc.

in %in %England in %Agriculture
forestry

24,39622,190-2,206

-9.0

-20.0

0.9

0.9

1.3

75,54749,152-26,395-

34.9

-39.2

2.9

1.9

1.8

139,133

99,068-40,065

-28.8

-28.4

5.3

3.9

3.0

360,075

259,728- 100,347

-27.9

-29.4

13.7

10.2

9.7

Energy/water supply
Extraction/
manufact.
Metal goods/
vehicle ind.
Other manufact.

357,441

267,187

90,254

-25.3

-18.8

13.6

10.4

8.7

Construction

131,810116,066 -15,744

-11.9

-11.5

5.0

4.5

4.3

494,771559,639

64,868

13.1

13.3

18.8

21.9

21.6

164,006

148,711

15,295-9.3 -

4.8

6.2

5.8

6.2

176,863

254,045

77,182

43.6

51.1

6.7

9.9

12.6

708,738

782,089

73,351

10.3

14.9

26.9

30.6

30.8

2,632,780 2,557,875 -74,905

-2.8

1.2

100.0

100.0

100.0

Distribution,
hotels/cater.
Transport/
commun.
Banking, finance,
insurance
Other services
Total
Source: NOMIS

Recent Employment Performance in the North West:Winners and Losers. Current employment patterns in the North West are seen as a continuation of the trends emerging in theearly 1990s. However, it is important to note that because of changes in the methodologyof data collection, the 1996 employment data are not strictly comparable with earlier
figures. For this reason, any direct comparison with earlier patterns must be tentative.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 26

In spite of this cautionary note, the 1996 Employment Survey data reveal that the Greater
Manchester conurbation has the largest share (40.2%) of regional employment whilst
Manchester alone provides 9.5% of the regional total. However, the best performers (interms of job growth) within Greater Manchester are Bolton, Bury, Stockport and Trafford.
Bolton,Trafford and Stockport each provide over 100,000 jobs in the region and together
account for 13% of the regional total. It is the stable performance of these boroughs (inretaining large volumes of jobs) which has helped to maintain the importance of theGreater Manchester conurbation as a major employment centre.
Lancashire provides one-fifth of the region’s employment, and Merseyside falls into third
place (17.1%), with Liverpool accounting for 6.8% of the regional sum. It is clear that the
Merseyside conurbation is consistently underperforming, with all five districts having experienced additional employment decline between 1991 and 1996. Both the city of Liverpool
and its hinterland have suffered from severe employment decline. According to the 1998
Index of Location Deprivation, Liverpool is the most deprived area in the country, and its
problems are shared by neighbouring districts (using the same index, Knowsley is ranked
ninth whilst Wirral and St. Helens are ranked 44th and 45th respectively). Merseyside also
stands out as the one county in the region with an economic activity rate below theregional mean (56.5% compared to 59.6%).
In the shire counties, there have been sharp variations in local economic performance. In
Cheshire, for instance, the success enjoyed by Macclesfield and Warrington can be set
against the laggard performances of industrials towns and boroughs such as Ellesmere
Port and Neston, and Halton. Similarly, in Lancashire, places like Chorley, Fylde,
Rossendale and West Lancashire are performing exceptionally well, leaving the districtsof East Lancashire wallowing in their wake. In Cumbria, there has been a clear divide
between those growth areas with easy access to the M6 corridor (e.g., South Lakelandand Eden) and those areas of general decline, reflected in significant job losses, in West
Cumbria (e.g. Allerdale and Barrow-in-Furness).
Returning to the broader structural concerns, it is largely the case that the lengthy
process of socio-economic change in the region has brought the North West to withina stone’s throw of the national structure [see Tab. 4]. However, the manufacturing sector
in the region remains marginally larger than the national average (20.7% regionallycompared with 18.3% nationally). In contrast, the region does not seem able to attract
producer service sector (banking, finance and insurance) employment to the same extent
as other English regions (14.5% in the North West compared with 18.4% acrossEngland). Overall, though the region may have a ‘traditional’ image, the manufacturing sector provides just over one-fifth of overall regional employment. The most important
employer in the region is now the public service sector (26.2% — encompassing administration, education and health), with second place held by the ‘distribution, hotels andrestaurants’ sector (22.9%).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 27-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 4: Employment by Industrial Sector, 1996
Industrial Sector
Agriculture, forestry

North West (%)
0.9

England (%)
1.2

Energy / water supply

0.9

0.9

Manufacturing

20.7

18.3

Construction

3.9

3.6

Distribution, hotels & restaurants

22.9

22.5

Transport & communications

5.8

6.0

Banking, finance & insurance etc.

14.5

18.4

Public admin., education & health

26.2

24.4

Other services

4.4

4.7

100.0

100.0

Total
Source: NOMIS

Economic globalisation has, according to some commentators (Amin and Thrift, 1994),
been matched by a parallel process of sectoral rather than functional specialisation at theregional level. The decline in heavy manufacturing affecting many regions has left a voidthat more ‘advanced’ and high technology industries (Castells and Hall, 1994; Hudson,1997) as well as some service — and particularly business — sector employers (Keeble
et al, 1991; Green, 1997) may be expected to fill. Unfortunately, the North West has
underperformed in terms of growth in business services employment (location quotient(LQ)=0.65) when benchmarked against England as a whole [see Tab. 5]. On a more positive note, the development of the high-technology sector (LQ = 0.97) in the region has
been on a par with the national picture [Tab. 6].
The North West provides 8.6% of all business services employment in England [Tab. 5].
However, nearly half of this employment is located in the Greater Manchester conurbation (4.4%) and a further fifth in Cheshire (1.8%).The City of Manchester alone provides
1.4% of all business services jobs in England — the fourth highest concentration behindLondon (with a 21% share), Birmingham and Solihull (3.7%) and Leeds (1.7%). In contrast,
the Merseyside conurbation is not performing quite as well in this sector and only provides
1.1% of the English total. In terms of the ONS classification, the mining and industrial areas
still provide a focus for the largest concentration of business services jobs (3.4%) —though the more prosperous areas appear to be rapidly increasing their share of employment in this sector (currently running at 2.5%). However, the region as a whole performs
relatively poorly in this sector.The inferiority of the region’s performance is highlighted by
the fact that none of the counties are able to match the English average. Only four local
areas have outperformed the English average.These are Trafford (LQ= 1.7), Crewe andNantwich (LQ=1.2), Macclesfield (LQ=1.2) and Manchester (LQ=1.1).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 28-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 5: Business Services Employment, 1996
business% of total

Location% share of

employment

employment

Quotient

English total

11,104

2.9

0.87

1.8

Cumbria

1,427

0.8

0.25

0.2

Greater Manchester

27,469

2.7

0.82

4.4

Lancashire

7,453

1.4

0.44

1.2

Merseyside

6,779

1.6

0.48

1.1

North West54,232

2.1

0.65

8.6

England627,578

3.3

1.00

100.0

By counties:
Cheshire

Note: The Location Quotient [LQ] is used to compare an area’s share of employment in a particular sector with the benchmark area (in this case, England)
Source: NOMISThe outlook for high-technology industries in the North West is rather more encouraging. The region accounts for 12.8% of all high-technology employment in England, of
which one-third is located in Lancashire and another third in the Greater Manchester
conurbation.The defence and aerospace industries have certainly played a pivotal role inshaping the hi-tech profile of Lancashire (LQ=1.6), especially in Ribble Valley (LQ=7.2),
Fylde (LQ=6.4), Burnley (LQ=2.8) and Blackburn (LQ=1.7). On the other hand, in spiteof the volume of hi-tech jobs available in Greater Manchester, it appears to be underperforming (LQ=0.8) in relation to the regional and national levels. Cheshire andMerseyside also seem to perform relatively badly and provide just 1.8% and 1.7% ofEngland’s hi-tech jobs respectively. However, individual towns such as Macclesfield(LQ=2.81) and Oldham (LQ=2.4) are outstripping the regional and national averages.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 6: High Technology Employment, 1996
Hi-tech% of total

Location% share of

employment

employment

Ouotient

English total

20,489

2.6

0.91

1.8

Cumbria

4,341

1.5

0.54

0.5

Greater Manchester

39,038

2.4

0.83

4.4

Lancashire

30,352

4.7

1.64

4.4

Merseyside

15,595

2.1

0.73

1.7

109,815

2.8

0.97

12.8

1,007,245

2.9

1.00

100.0

By counties:
Cheshire

North West
England
Source: NOMIS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE NORTH WEST PEOPLE:WHERE WILL THEY WORK?
From the patterns outlined above, it can generally be concluded that the North West is
no longer the beacon of progress that it was once considered. Overall, its recent history
and changing fortunes have been rather chequered, with particular parts of the region
becoming increasingly associated with economic decline and social disadvantage. Morespecifically, the analysis has highlighted six major trends that have come to characterise
the spatial and sectoral employment patterns in the region:

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 29¬ Firstly, the economic structure of the region has become increasingly similar to thenational structure. That said, the North West retains a greater representation of
manufacturing jobs, but a less impressive share of jobs in the business service sector.
¬ Secondly, the regional economy has moved from being industrially-based to being
service-driven. Branch plant closures and manufacturing rationalisation at the beginning of the 1980s resulted in an acute decline in the proportion of manual jobs acrossthe region.This decline was partially, but not wholly, offset by some gains in the service
sector.The net result, therefore, was an overall decline in employment opportunities.
¬ The third significant regional trend has been the switch from a traditional malecentred employment culture to a more flexible — and gender-neutral — situation.
This change is evidenced in the decline in full-time male employment and the parallel
increase in the number of part-time jobs being taken by female workers.
¬ Fourthly, there has been a sea change in the regional geography of employment
opportunities, with a gravitational shift away from traditional manufacturing and inner
urban areas towards the more prosperous suburbs, towns and rural locations.This shift
has been particularly dramatic in the high-technology and business service sectors.
¬ The fifth trend takes us into the complex spatial patterns of employment change in
the North West, which go beyond a simple binary metro/non-metro area divide.
Although the two principal cities, Liverpool and Manchester, and other traditional
industrial locations are the general losers in generating employment, successful examples
can also be found in the more prosperous suburbs of the Greater Manchester conurbation.This complex spatial differentiation is also evident in the shire counties.
¬ Finally, and despite a generally bleak picture (relative perhaps to the region’s more
prosperous past), analysis points to the fact that Manchester will continue to be
ranked as one of Britain’s principal business service centres. This is despite the city’s
overall underperformance in job creation and the persistence of social and economic
deprivation in many of its wards. That said, the success of the City of Manchester isincreasingly linked to the overall performance of its wider metropolitan areas and suburbs. Unfortunately, the Merseyside conurbation has been unable to escape its
current spiral of economic decline and the City of Liverpool — along with its neighbouring districts — has continued to cast a shadow over the region’s wider fortunes.
In bringing this discussion to a close, it is clear that the North West may never return toits position as the foremost industrial centre in the western world.The region’s heyday islong past and, quite rightly, those with a stake in the North West’s future must develop
regeneration and land use strategies that play to new strengths rather than harking backto former glories. This reality, of course, is universally accepted. It only remains to workthrough the precise details of how such a regional renaissance could be achieved,
although such strategies should seek to promote social equity and ensure that theregion’s future population is not disadvantaged — either locationally or economically —by the development of short-sighted regional policy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------References
A.Amin and N.Thrift, Living in the Global, in: A. Amin and N.Thrift (eds.), Globalisation, Institutions and Regional
Development in Europe, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994, pp. 1–22
M. Baker and M. Hebbert, The Regional Economy of the Trans-Pennine Corridor, Department of Planning andLandscape Occasional Paper No. 40, University of Manchester, Manchester 1995
M. Castells and P. Hall, Technopoles of the World, Routledge, London, 1994
M. G. Coombes,A. E. Green and D.W. Owen, Substantive Issues in the Definition of Localities: Evidence from
Sub-Group Local Labour Market Areas in the West Midlands, in: Regional Studies, 1988/22, pp. 303–318

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Changing Employment Geography

II | 30

Department of Economic Affairs, The North West: a Regional Study, HMSO London 1965
A. Green, Using Census and Survey Statistics in Local Labour Market Analysis, in: Local Economy, 1995/10,
pp. 259–273
A. Green, Exclusion, Unemployment and Non-employment, in: Regional Studies, 31, 1997/5, pp. 505–520
R. Hudson, Regional Futures: Industrial Restructuring, New High Volume Production Concepts and Spatial
Development Strategies in the New Europe, in: Regional Studies, 31, 1997/5, pp. 467–478
North West Joint Planning Team, Strategic Plan for the North West, HMSO, London 1974
D. Keeble, J. Bryson and P.Wood, Small Firms, Business Services Growth and Regional Development in the
UK: Some Empirical Findings, in: Regional Studies, 25, 1991/5, pp. 439–457
C. Wong, Quality of Urban Living: an Infrastructural Dimension, in: S. Neary, M. Symes and F. Brown (eds.),
The Urban Experience: a People-Environment Perspective, E& FN Spon, London 1994, pp. 257–269----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER---------------------------------------------

II | 32--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER — CITY PROFILE
Phil Misselwitz--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------INDUSTRIALISATION AND DECLINE
Manchester is the third-largest city in England and is considered the ‘capital’ of the North.
The city has 433,000 inhabitants (1996), surrounded by the Greater Manchester areawith a population of approximately 2.5 million. Manchester is arguably the oldest industrial city in the world. Its most significant expansion took place in the first half of the 19th
century, when the population of the provincial centre multiplied by four from 76,788 to
316,213 (A. Kidd), transforming Manchester into the cotton centre of the world, also
known as the ‘workshop of the world’ or ‘capital of the industrial revolution’.The famous
cotton manufacturing using steam-powered spinning and weaving factories took placemainly in a ring of mill towns (such as Blackburn, Burnley, Preston, Bolton, Oldham,
Rochdale, etc.) connected by a complex canal system and later railway lines, beginningwith the 1830 Manchester-Liverpool railway — the first in the world. Manchester itself
remained predominantly a trading town. Its commercial warehouses controlled the
majority of world cotton trade as the British Empire opened vast markets overseas.The
construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 reduced the city’s dependency on theLiverpool port.The boost to the local economy led to the construction of Trafford Park(adjacent to the canal), the first industrial estate in the world. Manchester’s economy
quickly diversified through spin-offs from the textile industry, such as textile engineeringand machine tool making. Indeed, by 1911, twice as many Manchunians were employed
in metals and engineering as in textiles, while others worked in transport and communication (port and railway stations), food or vehicle manufacturing. Most of the city’s workers
lived in dense urban quarters with back-to-back terraces huddled around factories andwarehouses, which inspired Friedrich Engel’s The Condition of the Working-Class in Englandas early as 1844.
The city’s industrial decline set in as early as 1914, the beginning of World War One,
when the city was cut off from its overseas markets, especially India, which received
almost half of the textile exports. Overseas industrial production soared and Manchester
felt accelerating foreign competition taking advantage of cheaper labour and newer
machinery. In the late 1930s, exacerbated by world economic crisis, the decline soon
became catastrophic, with only one-fifth of the 1913 textile exports remaining (A. Kidd).
The related industries were badly affected and, while the British home market remained
intact until the 1950s, British cotton cloth disappeared de facto in the 1960s.This decline
in cotton affected all sectors of the economy. Although the city’s diversified economy andthe port had protected the city at first, containerisation in the 1960s triggered its eventual closure and that of the adjacent estates, completed in the 1980s, when Manchester’s
industrial base had practically vanished. The city was plagued by unemployment anddeprivation. Between 1961 and 1983, the city had lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing.The
emerging service sector could not absorb these numbers, despite comparatively early
and above-average growth, suffering from the trend towards office decentralisation andleaving only 23% of the city’s workforce employed in 1985 (A. Kidd).
The process of deindustrialisation was accompanied by a radical restructuring of
Manchester’s urban fabric. Vast slum clearance programmes, peaking in the post-war
period, shifted the inner city population either to newly constructed housing estates on

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester — City Profile

II | 33

site (e.g. Hulme Crescents), to new housing estates in the outer conurbation (e.g.
Wythenshaw) or to the sprawling New Towns (while Manchester itself lost more thanhalf of its population, the suburban conurbation of Greater Manchester remained almost
stable). At first, this tabula rasa demolition was fuelled by modernist ideology, but soon it
became part of almost desperate measures to adjust neighbourhood densities to declining population numbers (negative migration) and re-organise estates in accordance withsecurity concerns in the face of rioting and exploding crime.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------REGENERATION
Today, a mere 20 years after the city’s most series moment of decline, Manchester’s predominant image is that of the booming centre of the North. In an exceptional processof regeneration and branding beginning in the late 1980s, the city has desperately andincreasingly successfully shaken off the image of decline.The last decade has seen unemployment figures drop from 18.9% in 1995 to 9.5% in 2001 and, despite controversial
census figures, demographic development has almost stabilised. Amongst the many
aspects that aided Manchester’s recovery, the simultaneity of the following trends wasparticularly significant:1) Grass-Roots Initiative,Youth Culture and the Rediscovery of the Warehouse
In the late 1970s and early 80s, urban decline was most keenly felt in the centre of thecity, which was left with less than 1,000 inhabitants. But this very availability of affordable
spaces began to attract a new generation who seized the opportunity to realise subcultural programmes. Empty warehouses and closed shop fronts or factory buildings
became an important factor fuelling the growing local music scene. By the beginning of
the 1990s, Manchester had become nationally and internationally famous as ‘Madchester’,referring to the countless independent record companies and recording studios (e.g.
Factory Records) scattered around the city centre.The development of a ‘continental’ cafe
bar and club scene (e.g. The Hacienda) eventually affected the entire city, attracting forexample soaring student numbers (today approximately 80,000), who contribute significantly to the economic and cultural life of the city.The liberal atmosphere in the city also
led to the growth of the ‘village’, the first gay cafes and clubs in the UK, concentrated
along Canal Street.The ‘unplanned’ rise of a vibrant urban culture not only created newbars or offices for the creative industries, but also generated new demand for singleperson or childless-couple households in the form of city apartments. Architects anddevelopers such as Urban Splash were soon to discover the potential of warehouses toinvent a particular Manchunian brand of loft living.The entrepreneurial spirit of architectdevelopers led to the regeneration of large parts of the inner city, beginning with Castle
Field and the Northern Quarter and extending into Ancoats to the present day.
2) From Municipal Socialism to Municipal Entrepreneurialism
After a period of radical opposition as the ‘citadel of municipal socialism’, the third electoral defeat of the national Labour Party in 1987 led to a rethinking of Manchester City
Council’s relations with the Thatcherite central government. The new ‘pro-business’
approach opened resources of central government funding. The shift of emphasis awayfrom the traditional objectives of social housing and welfare generated a series of largescale development bids that began to radically change the image of the city. Although the
1996 Olympic Games bid remained unsuccessful, it managed to raise ambition andcreated new and efficient management structure, committed to branding and keen to
promote public-private partnership that became the basis for the following successfulprestige developments in the sports, leisure and cultural sector. Amongst the first were

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester — City Profile

II | 34

Castlefield, GMEX and the re-introduction of the Metrolink tram system, the UK’s first onstreet rapid transport system, linking city centre to surrounding residential areas. Innercity regeneration gathered pace after the IRA bombing in June 1996, when large parts ofthe city centre were rebuilt. The development of Salford Quays as an arts and entertainment centre (Lowry centre, Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum) and the Commonwealth Games Stadium followed, exporting the idea of regeneration into the ring ofdereliction outside of the city centre. By now, all projects are part of a carefully planned
branding strategy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------POLARISATION
The last 15 years have seen Manchester emerge as the capital of successful regeneration,a model of how a city can re-invent itself through branding, self-promotion and re-building. Manchester’s economy is booming and its airport considered the fastest growing inEurope. Rent levels of apartments and offices in the inner city indicate the presence of ahighly affluent new urban class and thriving businesses. But a closer look reveals a morebalanced and perhaps more sober image of the city: Manchester is a highly polarised citywhere successful regeneration clashes with continuous deprivation. To the visitor, thebooming city centre still appears as an island surrounded by a ring of de-industrialised
wastelands and vacant and rundown estates ranking high on the national deprivationindex. Although the overall rate of unemployment has dramatically dropped, the mostdeprived wards still face long-term unemployment of over 20%. While the successful
redevelopment of the Commonwealth Games Stadium complex proves that well-branded
prestige projects can transform derelict parts of Eastern Manchester significantly, themuch-heralded trickle-down effect often does not affect the low-income sector of the
population. Most new housing development is private and does not include low-income
tenants / buyers who, consequently will be driven out (mainly eastwards) into more suburban parts of the conurbation.The problem of social deprivation appears to be pushed
out of the city rather than solved. As vast public funds are poured into private-public
developments, managed largely independently of the democratically elected town hall,questions of the accountability and sustainability of these investments must be asked.
Socio-economic and spatial polarisation is also to be found in Manchester’s larger conurbation. While the south of the city belongs to the UK’s most affluent regions, Oldham in
the East — traditionally home to large pockets of Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities— became notorious for the racial riots in Summer 2001 (its Alexandra ward was second from the bottom of the UK boroughs deprivation index).
It will have to be seen how the success of the New Manchester affects urban culture asa whole. Can the vibrant urban life of the city survive gentrification, epitomised by themost recent reincarnation of The Hacienda club site as a series of luxury apartments carrying the same name? While the revival of Manchester grew from a new faith and optimism generated from a local cultural scene able to take advantage of cheap space madeavailable in the shrinking city, how can these grass-roots independents afford the branded city? Can the branded city afford to lose these initiators of change?
The outrage with which recent census figures (indicating continual population decline) werereceived suggests that the ghosts of the city’s recent past are not yet laid to rest. However, for now, optimism and hope prevail and confidence continues to grow. With all its
contradictions, Manchester appears today as the ‘fastest-growing shrinking city’ in the UK.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 35--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TIMELINE: MANCHESTER 1750—2002
Alan Kidd-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Circa Beginning of Manchester’s role as a centre for manufacture and trading in cotton cloth, based on
1750 imports of raw cotton from the slave plantations of North America, imported via the port of Liverpool.
1762 Opening of the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal, the first ‘true’ industrial canal, which carries coal from
Worsley to Manchester — extended to Runcorn in 1776 thus halving the costs of the transport ofimported raw cotton from Liverpool to Manchester.
1767 James Hargreaves’ invention, the ‘Spinning Jenny’, revolutionises cotton spinning and enables the riseof the Lancashire cotton industry.
1773 Manchester has an estimated population size of 43,000.
1779 Samuel Crompton invents the ‘Spinning Mule’, which enables the cotton spinning industry to use
steam-powered factories. More than any other textile invention, this leads to the rise of factory
towns and ensures the success of cotton as the staple industry of the first industrial revolution. It also
helps make Manchester the greatest of the trading cities created by the industrial revolution.
1781 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society founded (over the years the town’s leading intellectuals
became members, including the scientists John Dalton and James Prescott Joule). Apart from theRoyal Society, this is the oldest enduring English institution devoted to scientific discourse and publication.
It does much to enable Manchester to become the first of the new cities of the industrial revolution
to create a cultural identity distinct from that of the London-Oxbridge axis.
1783 the first steam engine is used in the manufacture of cotton. Beginnings of the cotton factory system
in Manchester
1801 Manchester has a population of almost 80,000 according to the first official national census. This isalmost double the figure for 30 years earlier.
1803 First table of atomic weights of elements and atomic theory is propounded by John Dalton at a
meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Today, Dalton is widely regarded as thefounder of modern chemistry. The fact that Dalton conducted his experiments in Manchester
illustrates that the town was a centre of scientific as well as industrial innovation.
1804 Rochdale Canal is opened and, when linked to the Bridgewater Canal (at the Castlefield basin) andthe Ashton Canal, turns Manchester into an inland port.This greatly boosts economic growth.
1806 The Portico Library is founded (many of Manchester’s leading business and professional men become
members). This was one of many institutions founded for the town’s middle class, which together
provide a forum for the public expression of a common middle-class identity.
1816 86 steam-powered factories are recorded in Manchester and Salford, demonstrating the pace ofindustrial growth.
1819 Peterloo Massacre: a peaceful meeting of 60,000 persons on August 16 at St Peter’s Field Manchester,gathered to demand parliamentary reform, is violently broken up by soldiers. At least eleven die andover 600 are injured. This event is evidence of a reformist working-class movement and the belief
that democratic political representation will promote the economic interests of the people.
1820 Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Manchester Guardian newspaper are founded. Both reflect therise in importance of the manufacturing and commercial middle class.
1823 Royal Manchester Institution is founded to encourage the visual arts, demonstrating the increasing
sophistication of urban culture.
1830 Liverpool and Manchester Railway is opened, the world’s first purpose-built passenger railway.
1831 Manchester’s population is recorded as 187,000 in the national census. The pace of demographic
growth is greater in the industrial towns than anywhere else in the UK. Together with its suburbs,
Manchester is now the largest urban centre outside London.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Manchester 1750—2002

II | 36

1832 A Parliamentary Reform Act gives Manchester representation in the House of Commons for the firsttime, but on a limited, property-based franchise.This is regarded as including the new middle classes
but excluding the working classes from the political system.
1832 Outbreak of Asiatic Cholera, during which the doctor J. P. Kay publishes The Moral and Physical
Condition of the Working Class Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester. This analysis of
the problems of urban society has been described as one of the most important social documentsof the 19th century. Its industrialism and its factory working class lead contemporaries to regard
Manchester as the harbinger of modernity.
1833 Manchester Statistical Society is founded, a year before the foundation of the Royal Statistical Society
in London.This act represents the need to study the new industrial society.
1838 The Borough of Manchester is formed with an elected town council for the first time. Previously, thetown was managed by a combination of manorial court, parish vestry and police commissioners
established by act of parliament.
Manchester School of Art is founded. Manchester is developing a reputation as a centre of artistic
production. Edward Walters designs the textile warehouse on Mosley Street for Richard Cobden.
Manchester’s central streets are converting from residential to commercial usage. The town is
becoming zoned by function with distinct commercial and industrial quarters. The central area isbecoming depopulated.
Anti-Corn Law League is founded in Manchester. Richard Cobden and John Bright are the most prominent spokespersons for ‘free trade’: a middle-class campaign for national policies in the ‘manufacturing
interest’.
1840 The First Free Trade Hall is opened for an Anti-Corn Law League Bazaar.
1844 Prohibition of the construction of new back-to-back houses in the borough of Manchester. One of
the improvements introduced by the new town council.
1845 Friedrich Engels publishes Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England and describes Manchester as‘the archetypal manufacturing town’.
1846 The Anti-Corn Law League is dissolved after parliament repeals the Corn Laws.This marks the effective
arrival of ‘free trade’ as national policy and recognition of the importance of manufacturing over agriculture in the national economy. Manchester’s role in this is widely recognised. Manchester is so identified with the policy of free trade that the British ideology of economic individualism is symbolisedin Germany in the abstract noun ‘das Manchesterthum’.
The Manchester merchant John Owens dies and leaves money to found Owen’s College, later tobecome Manchester University.
Municipal policies for the creation of open spaces for working-class recreation leads to the openingof Peel Park, Salford and Philips Park and Queens Park, Manchester.
1848 Elizabeth Gaskell publishes Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life, a novel that sympathises with theworkers and criticises the employers.
Charles Hallé comes from Frankfurt to Manchester to conduct Gentlemen’s Concert Orchestra.
Music joins visual art as an attribute of urban culture.
Salford Roman Catholic Cathedral is consecrated, a reflection of the large Irish-born community
attracted to work in the cotton factories.
1849 Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway is opened, becoming the region’s first true
commuter route and marking the role of railway transport in the journey to work for the first time.
The railway network contributes to suburban growth from 1840s onwards.
1851 A population of over 316,000 is recorded in the national census. Manchester’s population has
quadrupled over a 50-year period, whilst that of the nation as a whole had merely doubled.
Demographic growth in Manchester will be at a steady but slower pace over the next 100 years.
1852 Manchester Free Library opens in the former Owenite Hall of Science, Campfield — later to become
Manchester Public Libraries: part of a programme of ‘rational recreation’.
1853 Manchester incorporates as a city.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Manchester 1750—2002

II | 37

1856 The Free Trade Hall opens. Manchester’s most important public building is dedicated not to a prince
or a saint, but to an idea.
1857 The Art Treasures Exhibition is held in Botanical Gardens, Old Trafford, designed to counteract
Manchester’s image as a city devoted to industry and work and lacking artistic culture.
1858 Watt’s Warehouse is opened. This was the grandest of the cotton warehouses to be erected in
Manchester and reflects the wealth of the merchant ‘princes’.Today it is a hotel.
First Hallé Concerts are held in the Free Trade Hall.
1862 The Cotton Famine caused by the American Civil War forces closure of cotton factories across theNorth West: a massive relief campaign is run from Manchester.The co-operative Wholesale Society isformed: the co-operative retail movement begins in the North West of England. It distributes cheap
and pure foods for the working-class home.
1872 C. P. Scott becomes editor of the Manchester Guardian. Under his editorship, the paper becomes thegreat symbol of Manchester radicalism.
1876 The first full-sized statue of Oliver Cromwell in the country is erected in Manchester, symbolising thecity’s radical tradition.
1877 New Town Hall in Albert Square is opened.The massive neo-Gothic edifice represents the growing
wealth and power of Manchester Corporation (Manchester City Council).
1880 Gorton West Football Club is formed. It becomes Manchester City Football Club in 1894.
1882 The Royal Manchester Institution passes its art gallery on to the Manchester Corporation. Subsequently
it becomes the Manchester City Art Gallery.
1885 The Manchester Ship Canal Act is passed by parliament.
1887 Work starts on construction of the Manchester Ship Canal.
1894 Manchester Ship Canal is completed, linking Manchester to the sea and turning it into a port.
Manchester Corporation is a major shareholder.
Thirlmere Aqueduct is opened by Manchester Corporation, providing Manchester homes with water
piped from the Lake District.
1896 The importance of the empire to Manchester’s economy is demonstrated in the statistic that 40%
of piece goods and 23% of manufactured cloth exported by the cotton industry goes to India.
1897

The de Trafford family sells their Manchester estates, eventually becoming the world’s first industrial
estate.Trafford Park is linked directly to Manchester Docks and the Manchester Ship Canal. Trafford
Park Industrial Estate becomes the most important element in the local industrial economy until the
1970s.

1901 John Rylands Library is completed to house the great merchant’s collection of ancient manuscripts andartefacts. An enduring symbol of the cultural legacy of the 19th-century middle class.
1902 Manchester United Football Club is formed (originally founded in 1878 as Newton Heath Lancashire
and Yorkshire Railway Football Club). Football is by now part of a mass urban leisure industry.
Municipal Technical School is established, later to become University of Manchester Institute of Scienceand Technology (UMIST).
1903 The Women’s Social and Political Union (Suffragettes) is founded at Emmeline Pankhurst’s house,
Nelson Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock. Suffragettes lead a high-profile national campaign for votes for
women.
1904 Manchester is ranked as the fourth most important port in UK, a position it is to hold until 1964.
1909 A.V. Roe flies the first British plane, heralding Manchester’s future role in the aerospace industry.
1911 Ford opens a factory at Trafford Park for assembly-line production of Model Ts. New production
techniques at Trafford Park are making engineering and transport at least as important industries as
cotton in Manchester’s economy.
1914 The outbreak of World War One is a momentous stage in the decline of the English cotton indus
try in the face of foreign competition and structural inertia within the industry.
1918 The Representation of the People Act grants universal suffrage for men over 21 and for women over
30 — almost 100 years after the Peterloo Massacre.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Manchester 1750—2002

II | 38

1919 Alcock & Brown of Manchester are the first to fly non-stop across the Atlantic in an aeroplane.
Rutherford first splits the atom in his laboratory at the University of Manchester.
1921 The extension to the Royal Cotton Exchange is opened by King George V. This rebuilding reflects
post-war confidence about the future of the industry, a confidence soon to be challenged by the
economic slump of the mid-1920s.
1922 First radio broadcast from Manchester (northern regional headquarters of BBC). This confirms therole of the city as a regional cultural centre, followed later by the locating of regional television
studios in the city.
1929–1931

The World Slump accelerates the decline of the cotton industry.

1930 Wythenshawe Garden City is begun. A solution to the problem of the slums that arose out of thegarden city movement, but which anticipates the ‘new towns’ of the post-1945 era. It is conceived
with industrial zones and civic amenities and a target population of 100,000. It does not reach maturity
until the 1960s.
1931 The population of the borough of Manchester reaches a peak of 766,000. Thereafter suburban
growth and re-housing policies cause over half a century of population decline.The inner city areas
are most affected.
1934 Manchester Central Reference Library, St Peter’s Square, is opened.The expansion of municipal services
started in the previous century continues.
1938 Ringway Airport (now Manchester International Airport) is opened with the support of publicmoney from the Manchester Corporation.
1940 Christmas Blitz inflicts serious damage on Central Manchester; much of the commercial district with
its numerous warehouses is destroyed.
1945 The Manchester Plan is published. This contains the city council’s urban planning proposals for postwar reconstruction.
1948 The world’s first electronically-stored programme computer is developed at Manchester University.
The University remains a centre of scientific excellence, reinforcing the city’s standing in the world of
science.Ten scientists who had been students, research fellows or members of academic staff at thisuniversity have been Nobel Prize Winners for Chemistry or Physics since 1906.
1952 Smokeless zones are introduced. This changes the appearance of Manchester’s soot-covered buildings as they are cleaned and the grime of generations of industrialism is removed.
The restored Free Trade Hall is opened (damaged by bombing).
1954 Between 1954 and 1976, as a solution to the problem of decaying 19th-century housing stock,
Manchester City Council will demolish around 90,000 dwellings and erect 71,000 new council houses
and flats. Approaching half of these will be on ‘overspill’ estates beyond the city boundaries.
1956 Granada Television is established, covering the North West of England and based in Manchester. It is
the most successful of the regional privately-run television companies.
1959 The Cotton Industry Act is a belated attempt to force modernisation on the industry. It is too late toprevent the final collapse of the cotton industry.
1960 Coronation Street begins broadcasting. Set in a fictional Manchester neighbourhood, this ‘flagship’programme of Granada Television projects a fictional ‘North’ to the nation. It rapidly becomes thecountry’s top TV show and remains at the top of the ratings over 40 years later.
1961 The Manchester Guardian moves to London and becomes The Guardian. The move symbolises thedecline of Manchester’s radical tradition.
1968 Royal Cotton Exchange ceases trading. This marks the effective end of the Manchester cotton indus
try and of the city’s role as a centre of the textile trade.
Manchester United win the European Cup.
1970 The Crescents, Hulme is opened. This architecturally innovative example of ‘high-rise’ public housing,drawing its inspiration from the 18th-century streets of Bath, rapidly earns a reputation as a sociallydisastrous failure, with high levels of crime and drug abuse. The Crescents are finally demolished in
the 1990s.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Manchester 1750—2002

II | 39

1973 Recession hits the Manchester economy hard. The destruction of the cotton industry and othereffects of deindustrialisation bring massive job losses. In addition, the ‘container revolution’ destroys
the trade of the Manchester Docks and Trafford Park Industrial Estate. Manchester is now one of theweakest industrial cities in the UK. Despite this, it remains the leading financial centre outside London.
1976 The Royal Exchange building is reopened as the home of the Royal Exchange Theatre Company.
1982 The Hacienda nightclub is first opened. It enjoys its heyday in the mid- and late 1980’s, when it pop
ularises the new dance craze, House, and becomes the most famous music club in the world.
Manchester becomes known as a centre for popular youth culture through the worldwide fame of
local artists such as Morrissey, Simply Red and the Happy Mondays plus the impact of performancevenues, especially the Hacienda Club.The city acquires a reputation for musical innovation and is reinvented as ‘Madchester’. The Hacienda closes in 1999.
1987 After a third electoral victory for the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher, the Labourdominated Manchester city council adopt a policy of working with government agencies to encourage urban renewal.The regeneration of the city centre begins, based on a policy of prestige building
projects. Early achievements include the conversion of the redundant Central Station into GMex
(Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre), the development of the Metrolink light rail system and theconversion of Manchester Docks into a complex of leisure amenities and commercial facilities (Salford
Quays).
1992 Hulme Regeneration Ltd. is established by the City Council in partnership with a range of public,
private and community interests to develop and manage the renewal of one of Manchester’s most
run-down inner-city areas. This is followed by the demolition of the worst of the high-rise housing,including the Crescents, accompanied by one of the most ambitious exercises in community architecture in Britain.The rebuilding is almost exclusively ‘low-rise’.
1994 The Northern Quarter Regeneration Study Report begins promotion of a run-down sector of the city
as a locale for popular youth culture, especially music performance and production — reinforcing thecity’s reputation as a centre for musical production and innovation.
1996 IRA bomb. The largest bomb to be denoted in Britain since World War Two causes extensive dam
age to the retail and commercial core of the city.The response is a massive stimulus to the regeneration programme — much of the city centre is rebuilt over the next few years, with the creation of
new streets and squares.
1998 For the first time in 150 years, the population of the city centre is recorded as increasing. Former
warehouses and factories are prime sites for developers to convert into apartments.The market forcity centre properties is buoyant and most of the incoming population is young, professional andactually or potentially high-earning.The Bridgewater Hall opens as a purpose-built home for the Hallé
Orchestra. The Free Trade Hall is now redundant; after a public enquiry it will be sold to a hotel
developer.
1999 Manchester United win the European Champions’ Cup. This football club is one of most widelyrecognised sporting ‘brands’ in the world, and the vast majority of ‘hits’ for the word ‘Manchester’ on
the world-wide web refer to Manchester United.
2001 Manchester Airport opens its second runway.The Airport is as important to the economy of the cityand its region as the Manchester Ship Canal was a century before.
2002 The Commonwealth Games are held in Manchester and widely recognised as a success. This is theculmination of Manchester’s attempt to ‘re-brand’ itself as a modern city of sport and leisure. It follows failed bids to host the Olympic Games of 1996 and 2000.
Urbis Centre is opened. Manchester’s interactive museum of the city explores contemporary experiences of urban life in cities across the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 40--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------REGROWTH OF A SHRINKING CITY
Ed Ferrari and Jonathan Roberts-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One could be forgiven for thinking that Manchester represents something of an unusual
focus for an investigation into shrinking cities. The last few years in the city have seensome statistical confirmation of what many have felt has been going on for some time:
the birth of a new Manchester, a popular and successful urban landscape, with the promise and potential of a youthful population making the most of what cities can offer them.
Since the industrial revolution, Manchester epitomised the industrial city par excellence. It
also showed extremely severe signs of decline during the latter half of the 20th century
as deindustrialisation hit hard. In some ways, its decline was almost as severe as its ascendancy. Depopulation in the latter half of the 20th century, for a time at least, was of anorder of magnitude that nearly rivalled growth during the late 19th century. During the1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Greater Manchester declined by over 8,000 inhabitants a year.
The implications for urban spaces were clear: with shrinkage came wastage, and empty
land and buildings were first testament to this, and latterly have provided the ‘raw materials’ for renaissance.
This paper aims to provide a brief and concise review of shrinkage in Manchester froma number of perspectives. It uses a variety of statistical sources to provide evidence ofabsolute shrinkage on the one hand, and processes of polarisation on the other, particularly as they are expressed through population, land use, housing, transport and employment.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------POPULATION
Beyond even processes such as sub-urbanisation, there has been a general loss of metropolitan population in most UK cities as selective migration favours towns in rural andsemi-rural districts. Population data show that since the start of the 1970s there has beena significant decline in the population of Manchester. Greater Manchester had grown asmuch as it was going to by around the 1930s. In 1931, its population was around 2.7 million,a level that remained relatively stable for the next 40 years. Significant decline set in during the 1970s, and over the next 30 years Greater Manchester would lose nearly one inten of its population.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 1: Population in Greater Manchester, 1880–2000

Population (1,000s)

Greater Manchester population
2,800
2,600
2,400
2,200
2,000
1880

1900

1920

1940
Year

1960

1980

2000

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 41

While the process of shrinkage began to slow in the 1990s, population losses were
occurring throughout that decade.The district of the city of Manchester itself lost some
45,700 of its population1 in the ten years 1991–2001, which equates to a loss of around
10% of its population. Greater Manchester has similarly declined in population, although
the decline has not been as severe as in the central districts of Manchester and Salford.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 1: Population loss 1981–2001

Greater Manchester

Loss in population

change in population

64,700-2.5 %

Manchester area

64,500-3.3 %

Manchester district

39,200-9.2 %

Salford district

23,300-9.7 %

Source: 1981, 2001 Censuses.

In the last year or so, Manchester has been beginning to reap the fruit of its new citycentre residential economy. Whilst the jury may still be out on the precise numbers, it isclear that the population of the district of the city of Manchester is on the rise again.
Manchester City Council proudly boasts that the city’s population has been on theincrease — albeit modestly — for at least three consecutive years now, and that thesuccess of its ‘thriving city centre community’ is one of the main reasons behind this.2
Despite the early developments by Urban Splash and others, this remains a very recent
phenomenon and is perhaps only just managing to reverse a pattern of decline that has
been evident and entrenched for at least 30 years. When one considers the remarkable
growth of Greater Manchester in the late 19th century — the epoch of ‘two nations’Victorian industrial pride, and of the railways — then the speed and extent of decline in
Manchester (as in many cities in northern Britain) from the end of the 1960s appears
unbelievably staggering.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 2: Population in selected districts, 1931–2001
1000000
900000800000700000600000500000LIVERPOOL

400000

MANCHESTER
300000SEFTON

200000STOCKPORTHALTON

100000
0
1931

1941

3
Source: Censuses of Population 1931–2001

1951

1961

1971

1981

1991

2001

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 42

Whilst the figures for Greater Manchester are indeed staggering, they serve to mask evenmore significant depopulation in the major urban centres of the north-west —Manchester and Liverpool. Their decline has been even deeper, with population decline
in both cities evident since at least the 1930s. Significant decline occurred a little earlier
in the main cities, which suggests that, in the process of out-migration, population ‘cascaded’ from the urban centres to the peripheral metropolitan districts, and then out tomore towns and more rural areas.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MIGRATION
These processes continue today, although they are tempered somewhat by a revitalisation and re-viability of city centres for residential use, and increases in the number ofhouseholds (in 1981 in Greater Manchester there were 2.7 persons per household on
average; in 1991 this was 2.5, and by 2001 it had fallen to only 2.3).4 While it is hard toclassify places like Warrington and Rochdale as ‘suburbs’ — in many cases their industrial heritage predates that of Manchester, and they are settlements with their own distinct
history and sense of identity — they are nevertheless peripheral to the central core ofManchester/Salford and thus prime beneficiaries of advances in personal mobility. Bury,
Rochdale and Warrington are the only districts in the Greater Manchester area to haveincreased in population in the last ten years. Oldham, with a population loss of 1%, canbe considered one of the more stable populations (the whole Manchester-Liverpool subregion lost 4.1% of its population in the same period, 1991–2001).
Concrete information on actual migration flows is very difficult to obtain. The decennial
censuses allow some data to be derived for the year up to the date of the census. Other
sources include estimates made from doctors’ registrations, although there are known tobe significant problems with the use of this data source.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 3: Net yearly migration flow between Manchester and surrounding
districts, 1991 (persons)Rochdale
Rochdale
Bury

BoltonBoltonSefton

Wigan
Wigan

2211
33

2299334499

1133

116644

OldhamOldhamSalfordSalfordSt. Helens
St.
Helens4433

16

Manchester
Manchester

66

Knowsley
Knowsley

Trafford
Trafford

37
374444667777
22

4Liverpool
Liverpool

Tameside

977339

Warrington
Warrington UA
UA
WirralWirral

11440066

1188

Stockport
Stockport

Halton UA

Elsewhere in
North West

Data source: 1991 Census SMS Set 2

In 1991, the main migration flows involving Manchester are out-flows to neighbouring
districts, mainly to the south, such as Stockport, Tameside and Trafford, as well as out of
the sub-region altogether. There was a net migration to all the surrounding districts inGreater Manchester, and the only districts within the sub-region where there was a net
migration flow to Manchester were Liverpool, Wirral and St. Helens.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 43-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LAND AND PROPERTY
Whilst population decline does not automatically lead to a decline in the need for urban
space (longer commuting patterns can still support a strong ‘daytime’ economy in depopulated areas), it is clear that the need for housing in Manchester fell. Furthermore, shifts
in the sectoral composition of the economy — the industries in which people were
employed — meant that the economy became less land-hungry.
In 1981, there were some 10,000 empty residential dwellings in Manchester districtalone.5 By 1991, there were nearly 15,000 empty dwellings, representing over 8% of thetotal housing stock.This was by far the highest vacancy rate in the sub-region at the time.
At the same time, in the wider city,6 approximately 44,000 dwellings were unoccupied.7
Ten years later, the local authorities estimated that there were around 34,800 unoccupied dwellings8 in the Manchester area — nearly 10,000 less than at the beginning of the
1990s. Not all of this signalled a recovering housing market, however. The response tounder-occupation — particularly of social housing — has been to embark on selective
clearances and demolition of property. By the end of the 1990s, the general health situation of the housing market in the Greater Manchester area led to the influential M62
report that documented failing housing markets and changing demand throughout theentire Manchester-Liverpool conurbation.
In 2001, nearly 3% of Manchester’s available land was classified as vacant or derelict.9
While this may sound like very little, it is quite surprising given the tightly-delineatednature of Manchester’s boundary and the small land-area of the district. About 330
hectares in Manchester is this sort of vacant or derelict land. In the wider city
(Manchester and surrounding districts), a little over 2% of all land is vacant or derelict. It
should be noted that this definition does not include land vacant of ‘urban’ land uses, suchas agricultural land.
Spaces have become polarised in that there is increasing unevenness in the consumptionof land. Changes in lifestyle and cultural aspects of housing consumption have beenaccompanied by longer, more complex commuting patterns, in which the private car has
proved its dominance. Where there is a remaining (or re-establishing) population in thecity centre, their needs are such that their transportation requirements are less, becauseof the close alignment of their live-work-play axes.
Spatial polarisation also reflects the uses to which spaces are put.There has been on the
one hand an increasing flexibility of lifestyles and of the uses that are expected of space,but at the same time spaces have become more and more demarcated by their function.
We observe the profligacy of out-of-town retail parks, fenced zones that exist for thesole function of retail sales. Where other uses are apparent, these are only to support
the primary function and have little other intended or ostensible role (e.g., car-parking,fast food).‘Mixed-use’ appears to have been the planners’ response to this; an attempt toreintroduce a concept that the city had originally spawned as a rational and inevitableconsequence of the coexistence of large numbers of people and processes in a constrained land-mass.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TRANSPORT
Some revealing aspects of spatial polarisation can be observed in the Manchester
context by looking at transport. Concomitant with the shrinking city has been a changing role for public transport. Bus passenger numbers have declined steadily since deregulation of bus operators (privatisation) in 1986. In the 15 years since then, the numberof passenger-kilometres travelled fell by nearly one-third.10 While in a situation of suburbanisation and spatial polarisation one might expect the number of journeys made toMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 44cede precedence to the actual length of those journeys, this has not been the case. In thecontext of the polarised spaces of suburbanisation — where new housing developers
expect homeowners to drive for even the most trivial acquisition of convenience goods— it cannot be expected that the overall need for trips has diminished. But private car
journeys will have largely fulfilled the flexible requirements of these trips .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 4: Bus ridership in Greater Manchester, 1986–2001

BUS PASSENGER KILOMETRES (MILLIONS)
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

Source: Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE)

Manchester was one of the first UK cities to re-implement a light rail public transportation
system in the 1990s.While trams were a familiar sight on Britain’s streets in the early 20th
century, by the 1970s they had been relegated to the position of objects of urban curiosa
in such places as theme parks and amusement promenades. Manchester Metrolink has
been a successful attempt to rethink the concept of tram travel. Rather than competewith buses for short journeys, or complete with cars for road space, the Metrolink utilised
a mixture of disused heavy rail lines and new surface-running construction to provide afast link to Manchester and Salford from suburban Bury and Altrincham. Hence, it can beseen that Metrolink confirms the need for frequent, longer-distance public transportation
to serve the fragmented, polarised urban landscape that surrounds shrinking cities. The
bus is neither as attractive nor as adept at serving the needs of ‘Shrinking Citizens’.
By contrast, Manchester Airport is fast on its way to becoming the second busiest in the
UK. Augmenting the North-West’s domination of the secondary British air-travel market(after London), nearby Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport has enjoyed a period as the fastest
growing airport in Europe. Air travel is the only mode for which the private car has noeffective analogue. It perfectly fits our thirst for more foreign travel while at the same time
representing the ultimate form in convenience. Airports by their very nature cater wellto passengers couched in car-comfort and are also closer to the suburbs they inhabit. It
is only fitting that mass-market air travel goes hand in hand with shrinking cities.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 45-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 5: Airport passengers, Manchester and Liverpool, 1991–2002

Passenger throughput, 1,000s
25000
20000
15000

Manchester

10000
5000

Both

Liverpool

20
01

19
99

19
97

19
95

19
93

19
91

0

Source: Department for Transport

To cope with projected population increases in the years after World War Two, government housing policy favoured the provision of new municipal housing in large estates that
continued a significant housing role for local authorities that had already been consolidated in the inter-war years. Vast peripheral housing projects of various vintages havebeen instrumental also in changing the population landscape of Manchester: in exacerbating its shrinkage. This was not sub-urbanisation. Often, the new developments lacked
the sort of social and infrastructural connections with the city centre that suburbanites
have retained. These became new settlements, but their distinction was that their residents were to become as isolated from the employment market as their houses wereisolated from the social and cultural amenities of the city. Manchester City Council built
and managed thousands of dwellings in neighbouring districts like Tameside. The
Wythenshawe housing estate in south Manchester became a byword for large municipal
projects — and the social problems that result from disconnection from jobs and facilities.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMY
By the 1970s, the industrial basis that had provided the foundation for Manchester andLiverpool’s past glories was going, and with it, employment. Deindustrialisation of Western
economies hit many cities hard — no more so than Manchester for the immense industrial bedrock on which it was formed. The boom towns from henceforth would not be
the Manchesters or Salfords, Liverpools or Sheffields, but often smaller cities with established financial services economies, predominantly in the south of England, or such places
as Nottingham or Edinburgh.The economy demanded greater flexibility of its workforce,and specialisation of its outputs, something which the industrial giants were ill-equipped
to do. Unemployment in the Manchester travel-to-work-area11 stood at nearly 12% in
1993, at the height of the 1990s recession. Notwithstanding this recession, unemployment rates have bees steadily decreasing in both Manchester and Liverpool — in linewith the national average — since their peak in the mid-1980s. However, the following
figure here demonstrates that when expressed as a ratio of the regional average,
Manchester’s unemployment rate has been following a general upwards trajectorythroughout the last four decades.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 46-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 6: Ratio of unemployment rate to regional average (travel to work
areas)
3

2.5

Liv

2

1.5

1

Mcr

0.5

0
1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Data source: Department of Employment Gazette, November 1960–November 2001.

As has been seen, shrinkage went hand-in-hand with deindustrialisation.Whilst the economy has since recovered, and the workforce has largely adapted and re-skilled to meetthe requirements of a new economic mode of capital accumulation, it is evident that thisnew mode requires less in the way of physical infrastructure to operate. The physicalityof our past economy has been replaced by the transaction: a service economy wherereturns are predicated on services rendered.The economy is changing still, as knowledge,
intellectual property, and licensing find expression in the ethereal media of electronic andprofessional networks.
Manchester, a city whose very existence owed such a great debt to those physicalexpressions of production — factories, land, mass labour — found that in some respects
it was even more difficult to adapt the form of the city in response to economic change.
Whilst people retain a certain degree of fluidity, able in theory to move to where thework is, the land forms and uses that were created by a manufacturing economy had agreater degree of fixity about them.
In 1961, just over half of all jobs in the city of Manchester were in manufacturing, transport, and communications. As can bee seen in Figure 7, this steadily fell throughout thelast half of the 20th century, to a point where in 2001 the equivalent industrial sector
accounted for just under a quarter of all employment. This equates to around 35,000
jobs. In 1961, there were over 220,000 jobs in this sector.
Today, there are around 100,000 jobs in service sector industries in the city ofManchester, nearly three times as many as in the manufacturing sector. While the service
sector now accounts for nearly 70% of jobs in Manchester, it still employs less people
than it did in 1961. There were nearly 204,000 jobs in the equivalent service sectors in

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 47

1961.This demonstrates not only a radical shift in the structure of employment in the last
four decades of the last century, but a massive fall in the absolute numbers of jobs in thecity. These are jobs that have been lost to cheaper land and more attractive locations,mainly in the surrounding districts but also further afield in places like Macclesfield (inCheshire).There is little centralising imperative with the jobs of the service sector economy; the labour economies of scale that were a result of transport constraints in thegrowing industrial cities bore no advantage.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 7: Sectoral composition of employment, by industry, Manchester,
1931–2001
100%
90%
80%

Other

70%
Services

60%
50%

Manufacturing

40%
30%

Agriculture andextraction

20%
10%
0%
1931 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001
Source: Census of population 1931, 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------HOUSING
It is now accepted government policy in the UK to promote home-ownership as a meansof fostering in individuals a greater stake in their neighbourhoods and as a means ofwealth accumulation. Around 71% of households in the UK own their own homes, slightly
above the EU average.12 Home ownership rates have been rising most in those parts ofthe country where traditionally the levels of ownership have been low.13 Hence, regions
like the North East and Yorkshire and Humberside have caught up with the rest of thecountry. The North West has historically had a higher level of home ownership thanother northern regions, although these have been significantly lower than in the south ofEngland. In 2001, the number of households owning their own homes in the North Westwas roughly in line with the national average, at 71%.14
The implication of this policy imperative, coupled with increasing aspirations amonghouseholders across the income spectrum, has led to the residualisation of social (public) housing in the UK and particularly to a situation of low demand for all ‘low-income’housing in the northern towns and cities.15 At the same time, need has generally given
way to aspirations in some northern UK contexts: as supply exceeds demand, those whoare able to exercise choice are able to move to housing that better suits their lifestyleaspirations.
Together, these factors and an economic climate that favours the borrower have led inrecent years to a house price ‘boom’ in the UK. The effect of house price rises has notbeen felt uniformly across the market, however, as year-on-year growth disproportionately

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 48

favours the top end of the housing market. Thus, larger detached and semi-detached
dwellings, already the most expensive dwellings, experience house price growth that iswell in excess of other property types.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 8: Median, upper- and lower-quartile average postcode sector
house sale prices, Manchester/Liverpool sub-region, 1995–2002
110,000

75th %ile

100,000

Median90,00025th %ile

80,00070,00060,00050,00040,00030,00020,000
1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

Data source: HM Land Registry-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 9: House sale price growth index, by district, 1995-2002. 100 = inline with regional growth
130
125
120

Warrington UA
Trafford

115
Manchester
110
105
100
Liverpool
BoltonRochdale95
90

Tameside
Oldham85
80
1995

Knowsley
1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

Data source: HM Land Registry------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 49-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 10: Average house sale prices, example Manchester neighbourhoods, 1995–2002
160,000
140,000

DIDSBURY
POSTCODESECTORS

120,000
100,000
80,00060,00040,00020,000GORTONBESWICKPOSTCODESECTORS

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
Data source: HM Land Registry

Figure 8 demonstrates how the house price growth processes are having a polarising
effect on the housing market, meaning that the gap between the top and bottom of the
housing market spectrum widens. It shows how the top quartile postcode-sector prices(the most expensive 25% of areas in Manchester-Liverpool sub-region) are now in excessof £100,000, while the bottom quartile languish at around £40,000 and, critically, experience little growth over time.
Figure 9 shows how house price growth in selected districts has performed in relation
to regional house price growth.The divergent fortunes of different districts in this respect
can clearly be seen. In this context, Manchester appears to have performed reasonably
well, outstripping regional growth. However, this is likely to be heavily skewed by thegrowth of city centre apartment living in recent years and the premium prices of suchproperties. It also masks a more complex pattern of spatial polarisation of the housing
market within districts. Manchester is, in this respect, a most instructive example.
Figure 10 shows how average house sale prices have fared, in absolute terms, for twocontrasting areas of the city. Suburban Didsbury, to the south, has seen its average housesale prices more than double in the seven years for which we have data. The average
price of such a house is over £140,000.This is in part skewed by the type of housing available in Didsbury — predominantly larger detached and semi-detached dwellings in ‘garden suburb’ settings. But even if it could be expected that in absolute terms such housing will always be more expensive, a generalised situation of high demand should lead toincreases in value across the property spectrum, as in the South East of England. It is clearthat there are significant locational dynamics at work in addition to just property type dif-

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

II | 50

ferentials. On average, house prices in the postcode sectors around Gorton, Beswick andBelle-Vue to the east of the city have remained static and very low.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------REBIRTH
It is now clear that Manchester is moving into a new phase of its shrinkage. Ironically, perhaps, the very processes that Shrinking Cities has been documenting have entered a new
era in Manchester. Somewhat jocularly, but with no less a sense of realism, the curatorsof this project now describe the city as “the fastest growing shrinking city in the world”.
Is Manchester shrinking or is it growing? Intuitively, it is impossible — at least with ourmemories of the recent past — to think of Manchester in any other terms than as anurban success. It has been indelibly associated with several movements that could be seen
as iconic of urban renaissance in the UK.The embracement of a youth-oriented culturalscene that had originally developed organically around new musical styles and the distinctly urban symbiosis of DJs/clubs and city spaces that played host to them is one.
Haslam (1999) has famously documented this process, concentrating not just on the cultural aspects per se, but also on their concomitant implications for the city as a social andphysical entity.
Somewhat similarly — at least in the sense of finding new uses for old spaces —Manchester can rightly claim that it has witnessed the first and most successful examplesof city living in the UK.The success of Urban Splash, an urban design and property development partnership, and the subsequent role model that it has become nationally, both
symbolises and, indeed, has facilitated the ‘new’ Manchester.
The city is now recognised to be one of the most vibrant provincial cities in Britain. It has
a new and constantly-redeveloping city centre; is attracting a new breed of luxury hotels(such as The Lowry); has a large and prosperous residential cohort living in the city centre;
staged the 2002 Commonwealth Games; and has seen unparalleled levels of investment
in public transportation.
Much of the visible manifestations of investment in the shrinking city have lately been inwhat might almost be termed ‘big city boosterism’, to borrow a historical phrase and concept.The impact of the hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2002 cannot be underestimated. New stadia and sporting facilities have been joined by impressive investment(at least in British terms) in public transportation and projects related to the urban realm.
But complex migration, commuting and lifestyle dynamics mean that the implications forshrinking cities like Manchester are far from clear. Even less clear is the extent to which
the benefits of investment and projects like the city centre or the Commonwealth Gamesfacilities are felt uniformly across the city, reaching low-income families who reside within Manchester’s boundary as well as some of the more affluent households who do not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

At the time of writing, the national statistics agency, Office for National Statistics, was involved in an exercise to validate the accuracy of estimates in the light of a challenge from Manchester City Council. It has
been agreed that Manchester’s population figures should be substantially revised upwards, to around
439,000 for mid-2000. However, because these changes have not been made for all local authority
districts and for the purposes of maintaining a broad comparison across time, this document reports on
the previous results. Whilst the ONS is revising its methodologies in the light of the 2001 Census andthe Manchester challenge, it can be expected that similar methodological deficiencies will apply else
where and not just in Manchester. It would be impractical, therefore, to proceed only on the basis of arevised Manchester population without using revised figures for all other districts.

2‘Numbers rise for inner-city living’ Manchester City Council Press release, September 17, 2001

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Regrowth of a Shrinking City

3

II | 51

This chart takes account of boundary changes caused by local government reorganisation in 1974 as far
as is practical, although other minor boundary changes will not be reflected here.

4

Census 1981, 1991, 2001

5

1981 Census of Population

6

In this study, the ‘wider city’ of Manchester is taken to mean the local authority districts of Manchester,
Salford,Trafford,Tameside, Stockport, Oldham, Bury and Rochdale. Readers should be aware that this isslightly smaller than ‘Greater Manchester’, which also includes Bolton and Wigan. We have taken thedecision to exclude these districts as we felt that they were sufficiently distant to warrant their exclusionfrom the built-up area of Manchester.

7

1991Census of Population

8

2001 Census of Population

9

2001, National Land Use Database

10

Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive

11

Manchester, Bury, Oldham,Tameside, Stockport,Trafford, Salford and parts of Wigan, High Peak (Derbyshire)and Macclesfield (Cheshire)

12Social Trends 34, Office for National Statistics, London

13

Author’s calculations using 1981, 1991 and 2001 Census data

14

2001 Census

15

For more detail on these subjects, the reader is directed to the summary of the M62 housing report,
reproduced as part of the working papers.

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II | 52--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER: A BRIEF ECONOMIC HISTORY
Alan Kidd-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Although Manchester has been intermittently inhabited for almost 2,000 years, a process
beginning just over two centuries ago was to put this hitherto remote Lancashire commercial and manufacturing town on the international map. Changes wrought by theindustrial revolution caused unprecedented urban growth, ushered in new ways of living
and working and generated new ideas of economy and society. The processes ofindustrialisation and urbanisation that took place during the 19th century transformed
Manchester. By 1850, the name of Manchester was known around the world and wassynonymous with cotton, commerce and industrial strength. The 100 years following
1850 were a period of gradual decline as other cities and other countries caught up withthe pioneers of industrialisation. After 1950, the decline of the cotton industry turned
into a collapse, and Manchester’s fortunes in the late 20th century depended upon otherindustries and upon the non-industrial sectors of the local economy.The task of this chapter
is to tell the story of Manchester’s rise and relative decline. To do so it is necessary to
begin well before the ‘industrial era’ of the 19th century.
For at least two centuries before the industrial revolution and the mechanisation of cotton production, Manchester had been a cloth town that combined manufacture withtrade. The origins of cloth production in the town remain obscure, but it is certain that
16th-century Manchester was already a manufacturing as well as a market centre forwoollens and linen. Raw materials were imported from as far afield as Ireland (linen yarn)
and goods were sold throughout the provinces and on the London markets.The diversityof Manchester’s economy made it the most prosperous place in 16th-century Lancashire,
but the county itself was among the poorest and most backward in the land. It was theintroduction of new manufactures in the early 17th century that proved a portent of
future greatness and that would ultimately raise Manchester to commercial pre-eminence
and would transform the economic fortunes of the county. Around 1600 began the
momentous rise of the Lancashire cotton industry. Manchester’s population rose from anestimated 2,300 in 1543 to around 43,000 in 1773, the greatest period of growth comingin the century following 1660, when the town’s population more than quadrupled in size.
Cotton was first introduced to the region through the manufacture of fustian cloth, a mixture of linen and cotton. Its production spread rapidly throughout southeast Lancashire,notably in the Bolton, Blackburn and Oldham areas as well as in the villages of the parish
of Manchester. By the later 17th century, Manchester was one of a string of newly
expanding British inland towns situated in rural-industrial regions, each catering for a
specialised product. Birmingham was already a centre of metal manufacturing, Nottingham and Leicester were noted for their hosiery and Leeds for its woollen textiles; with
Manchester it was fustians and linen. These middle-ranking towns of the 17th century
were the future industrial giants of the 19th century. Why was Manchester such an economic success?
The precise reasons for Manchester’s growing importance are unclear. Nor is there aclear consensus why the southeast Lancashire cotton industry became the cradle of theindustrial revolution.The town had always enjoyed some natural advantages from its location at the confluence of several rivers and from its proximity to Liverpool for importsof raw material. The absence of a corporation and of craft guilds is also regarded as apositive contribution to Manchester’s rising fortunes. The interests of newcomers were

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 53

not sacrificed to the privileges of freemen, and the lack of restrictions enabled the linen
industry to adapt quickly to the introduction of cotton. But some incorporated towns
expanded, too (Leeds and Nottingham are examples), and in the process generally abandoned guild restrictions.There may be more to the general point that once a town had
developed a specialised role in production and marketing, this initial advantage was reinforced by the arrival of an appropriately skilled population, the growth of a reputation for
a particular product and the development of a merchandising network. In Manchester’scase, the trading links already established with London during the 16th century facilitated the export of the new fustian fabrics. When the market for cotton expanded in the
18th century, Manchester was well poised to exploit its potential for wealth creation. By
the 1690s cotton, was being added to established linen lines to produce cotton-linen
checked and striped cloths to meet a growing domestic market.The relative importanceof cotton cloth amongst the other textiles manufactured in the region continued toadvance during the first half of the 18th century. By 1750, pure cottons were alreadybeing produced and Manchester was in decline as a centre of the woollen industry.The
future was hitched to cotton.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------COTTON AND INDUSTRIALISATION: 1780–1850
18th-century Manchester had become a provincial centre of the first rank, alreadyattracting interest for its urban growth, commercial life and transport innovations. But thiswas as nothing compared to the attention it was to receive during the first half ofthe 19th century. By the 1840s, over half a century of revolutionary change had madeManchester the ‘shock city’ of its age.The town attracted visitors from home and abroad
seeking the sights and sounds of a new way of living and working. From the late 18th
century on, the machine manufacture of cotton had made the Manchester region (southeast Lancashire and parts of northern Cheshire) a centre of sustained economic growth,
the like of which the world had never seen before. Cotton was central to British industrialisation. As early as the 1790s, 70% of the British cotton industry was concentrated in
the cotton district of Lancashire and Cheshire; by 1835 the figure had risen even further
to 90%.
A second reason for Manchester’s prominence was the enormous urban growth
revealed by the publication of decennial census figures (beginning in 1801), which madecontemporaries accept that theirs was the ‘age of great cities’. It was not just the risingnational population figures which impressed contemporaries, but also their concentrationin large towns, especially certain provincial centres which were growing at an unprecedented rate.Whilst between 1801 and 1841 the population of London had doubled, thatof Manchester had more than trebled and by 1851 was over four times larger than 50
years before. Manchester was not alone in this; among the larger towns, Liverpool had
also multiplied fourfold, and Bradford’s population was eight times greater than in 1801.
But there was a difference of scale. Manchester and Liverpool were three times the sizeof Bradford; outside London they were the biggest towns in England.The environmental
and social problems created by rapid urban growth were most marked in the biggest
centres, and, for a while, Manchester became a symbol for the nation of twin developments. It combined massive urban growth with factory production and acquired almost
mythical status as the emblem of a new order of things.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 54-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 1: Population of Manchester 1801–1851(Based on the municipal boundaries of 1838)
1801

76,788

1811

91,136

1821

129,035

1831

187,0221841

242,9831851

316,213

Another cause of interest was the realisation that Manchester represented new social
classes and unleashed political forces: trade unionism, Chartism and socialism. Workingclass politics demanded democracy and appeared to threaten property. If it was to becontained, it had to be understood, and Manchester seemed to hold the key to thisknowledge. Finally, the Manchester middle class was, by 1850, a force to be reckoned within national politics. Manchester entered the political arena as the voice of the provinces
against London, the proud possessor of a new economic creed, free trade, and the homeof the powerful political lobby that had helped to forge this creed into national policy, theAnti-Corn Law League. On each of these counts, Manchester could not be ignored.
Events had forced it centre-stage.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A FACTORY TOWN?
Many saw Manchester as the archetypal manufacturing town, the model of all the other
Lancashire mill towns, themselves sometimes referred to as ‘Little Manchesters’. But if weare to take this as our starting point, we will be misled, for Manchester was never merely
a mill town. As we have already seen, for centuries it had offered marketing facilities forlinens and woollens, and during the 18th century it had become the regional market centre
for cotton mixtures. Thus before the first factory was erected in the 1780s, Manchester
was already known as a premier trading town. It is well known that Manchester was aleading industrial centre; it is less well known that commerce was always more important
to its economy.
Whereas a stranger approaching the town in 1783 would have noticed the chimney of
only one large mill, that owned by the famous Richard Arkwright on Miller Street near
Shudehill, by 1816 there were 86 steam-powered spinning factories in Manchester andSalford. Around this time the main factory district was that focused on Ancoats but also
including New Cross, Beswick and Holt Town. Here could be found the huge factories of
McConnell and Kennedy and the Murray brothers as well as the greatest density ofworking-class housing. There was also a clutch of mills along Oxford Road by the River
Medlock, including those of Hugh Hornby Birley and Robert Owen. During the 1820s,
more factories were built in Ancoats and along the Medlock, and new industrial zones
developed alongside the Rochdale and Ashton canals to the east and astride the Irk Valley
to the north of the town. As the River Irwell wound its way through Salford, it brought
industry in its wake.The increasing complexity of the local canal network and the adventof a rail network after the Liverpool to Manchester line was opened in 1830 further
added to the industrial belt.
But visitors who saw only this side of Manchester life missed something very important.
Never more than a few streets away was the main warehouse district. As the demandfor commercial premises grew, the warehouses spread from King Street and St. Ann’s
Square in the 1780s to the Cannon Street, High Street and Market Street area by the

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 55

1800s; thence they moved to the region of Mosley Street by the second quarter of the
19th century and later to Portland Street and Princess Street. Here lay the commercial
heart of the city. On Cannon Street alone, in 1815, there were 57 warehouses occupiedby 106 separate firms. But the importance of the warehouse to the local economy ismost tellingly revealed by the striking imbalance of investment between the warehouseand factory sectors.
Total capital investment in factories was considerably less than in warehouses. Warehouses absorbed over 48% of property asset investment by 1815 as opposed to a mere
6% in factories. Even public houses and inns attracted a larger proportion at almost 9%.
This does not allow for machinery or the power to drive it. But even assuming a doubling of the value of the fixed assets of factory plant and buildings, the dominance of
warehouse investment remains clear. Investment in cotton mills increased, especially as
weaving was mechanised in the 1820s, but Manchester’s business structure still leaned
heavily towards its commercial sector. Whilst the proportion of all capital tied up in cotton factories had increased to some 12% by 1825, that invested in warehouses remainedmuch higher at nearly 43%. Industrial Manchester was not a factory town that became acommercial centre; from the beginnings of industrialisation, it had been a warehousetown with factories.
Indeed, Manchester’s symbolic role as the focus of the factory system may be best understood in terms of labour rather than capital. Workers flocked to the mills. In 1815
Manchester’s cotton factories employed approximately 11,500 men, women and children.
By the time of the 1841 Census, there were 19,561 working in all branches of cotton
manufacture in Manchester.This was a huge workforce. In size it approached the total forthe combined cotton workforces of Oldham, Blackburn and Ashton-Under-Lyne(21,615). But these figures can be misleading. Although cotton manufacture was a major
source of work in Manchester, it did not dominate the local labour market, as was thecase in the surrounding mill towns. As a proportion of total occupied persons in 1841,
cotton employed 18% of Manchester’s labour force, compared with the respective
figures of 50% in Ashton, 40% in Oldham and 40% in Blackburn. These were the mill
towns proper.
The different occupational pattern in Manchester is indicated by a further statistic. It is
well known that women formed a majority of the cotton workforce. Predominantly
young and single, they were the Lancashire mill lasses of legend. In 1841, there were
11,427 women working in Manchester’s cotton mills and workshops (out of a total
female labour force of 37,779). But this figure was exceeded by the combined total ofdomestic servants (9,961) and dressmakers/milliners (2,251). Mancunians certainly heard
the clatter of clogs on cobbles, but what they could not so easily discern was the gentler
sound of the chambermaid’s footfall on the back stairs. Amongst the men, whilst over
8,000 could be found working in the mills, approaching 6,000 were to be found in thecommercial district as warehousemen, porters and clerks. Manchester was a city with awide range of employments, and its social structure cannot be reduced to mill masterand mill hand.
Contemporary maps, such as Bancks & Co.’s Plan of Manchester and Salford of 1831, reveal
a complex pattern of buildings. Although there were several workshops and mills in andaround the central area, such as the huge Newton Street Cotton Mills near Stevenson
Square, most industry was confined to what was then the periphery, adjacent to the maintransport arteries (in 1831 the canals, later the railways).Thus the Medlock industrial belt
along Oxford Road grew up in close proximity to the river and the Rochdale Canal.
Here, gasworks, canal wharves, timber yards, saw-mills, foundries, ironworks and cotton
mills dominated a district entirely given over to manufacturing, and relieved only by pockets

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 56of back-to-back houses and courts. By contrast, public buildings, offices, warehouses,
shops and hotels dominated the streets of the city centre.
Manchester’s 19th-century commercial pre-eminence depended upon the phenomenal
growth in the production of cotton cloth during the industrial era. Precise data is notavailable but a few figures will suggest the scale of expansion. National consumption of
raw cotton increased from 5m. lbs. in 1781 to an annual average of 82m. lbs. by 1812–1818
and 937m. lbs. by 1856–1860. Manchester was the chief beneficiary of this industrial
growth and, whilst Liverpool was the marketing centre for the import of raw cotton,
Manchester became the world’s central market for the sale of cotton products. This is
why its commercial streets were lined with warehouses. However, the value of cotton to
the Manchester economy can serve to obscure the significance of developments in otherindustrial sectors, especially the metal and engineering trades and the chemical industry.
Events in these areas began as a spin-off from cotton, but soon developed their own
momentum.
Cotton spinning itself was dependent upon developments in machine technology andwas a constant stimulus to machine manufacture. In fact some of Manchester’s earliest
cotton spinners began as machine makers and engineers; McConnell & Kennedy, theMurray brothers, Robert Owen, Peter Ewart and others fall into this category. In the earlystages, a major capital outlay in cotton spinning would be the machinery. Thus, existingmachine makers had a logical entry-point into the cotton trade. As the latter became
more profitable, it made sense to devote all available factory space to spinning and topurchase machines instead. McConnell & Kennedy ceased their machine business around1800. So the specialist machine firm became more common.
Manchester was, therefore, at the centre not only of the revolution in the cotton industry, but also of the parallel revolution in engineering. Manchester engineers made technological innovations vital to industrialisation, such as Nasmyth’s steam hammer and
Whitworth’s standardised screw threads. In particular, Manchester became the centre of
the British machine-tool industry, and local firms like Nasmyth’s, Whitworth’s and Sharp
Roberts were paramount in the field of precision engineering. Intimately linked to the riseof cotton were the chemical and finishing trades. Chemical innovation went hand in handwith increased production. The demand of the finishing trades for chemicals, especiallyalkalis for bleaching, led to the development of chlorine bleaching in the early 1800s.
During the first half of the 19th century, the town saw the emergence of several large
firms in the chemical and finishing trades.
The ‘transport revolution’ of the 18th and 19th centuries played a vital part in the transformation of the once backward north into the most energetic industrial region of thecountry.The Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal, the first stage of which was completed in 1762
to carry coal to Manchester from Worsley and which was extended across north
Cheshire to Runcorn in 1776, thus halving the costs of the transport of raw cotton from
Liverpool, pioneered a process which ended in industrial Manchester being at the coreof a complex of navigable waterways.The Liverpool to Manchester Railway was openedin 1830 as the first passenger service in the world, although its economic impact as a newform of transporting goods was slower than might be imagined. Not till 1850 did the railway lines of the Manchester region capture a majority share of the freight traffic from
canals.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT CITIESThe 70 years to 1850 in Britain were dynamic years of economic and urban growth. By
1850, places like Birmingham and Glasgow were producing a great deal more than they
had in 1780, but only Manchester made contemporaries speak of an industrial revolution.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 57

In Manchester and the cotton district of Lancashire and Cheshire, not only an economic
but also a social transformation had taken place. New social forces had been conjured
up by industry in the age of the factory, and Manchester was the symbol of new ways ofworking and living.
Manchester had grown from the ‘boom town’ of the 1790s, when the chance of gain
attracted newcomers from far and wide as new red-brick factories with their toweringchimneys rose above the roofs of other buildings and the demand for warehouse spacetransformed quiet residential streets into a busy commercial quarter, to the massive urban
sprawl of the 1840s, the first city of the industrial revolution. Cotton was the driving forceof this expansion. Indeed, banks and financial services, transport and communications,urban growth and a more complex labour market all flowed from this miracle productof mechanised manufacture.Yet Manchester was a market first and a centre of industry
second. Cotton was an engine of economic growth in the industrial revolution and it was
Manchester that provided the commercial infrastructure essential for the success of theventure.
As the town grew, its economic base diversified. Cotton manufacture spawned an engineering industry that grew to dominate national production in certain areas. The needfor steam-powered factories engendered a transport revolution, which began with canals
and extended to railways, confirmed Manchester’s supremacy and was a key factor inits continued economic growth. The city became the focus of a network of industrial
communications in which all canals and railways seemed to lead to Manchester.
Manchester entered the second half of the 19th century as one of the world’s greatcities. An economic marvel in an age of great cities, Manchester had reached the peak of
its importance in both Lancashire and England. It was proud to proclaim its pre-eminenceover all other provincial cities and its rivalry for economic leadership with London. This,
however, was the pinnacle of its achievement. After 1850, other cities and other industries caught up and Manchester’s comparative importance declined.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE CAPITAL OF COTTON: 1850–1914
The industrial revolution had made Manchester one of the world’s great cities. Apartfrom London, it was the foremost commercial, banking and transport centre in what was
the most economically advanced country in the world. If Manchester’s comparative
importance was to decline during the second half of the 19th century as other cities andother industries caught up, it nonetheless remained one of the great trading cities of theworld. It certainly dominated the commercial life of the cotton district of Lancashire andCheshire. Some contemporaries referred to Manchester as a ‘metropolis of manufactures’, but it would have been more accurately described as a citadel of commerce.
As the world’s largest market for cotton goods, Manchester remained a centre of wealthcreation.The weekly turnover in trade rose from £1 million in the 1850s to £10 million
by the 1880s. The Royal Exchange was the economic heart of Manchester, and warehouses, banks, hotels, railway stations, shops and markets dominated the central business
district. Manchester’s increasing wealth was reflected in an 85% rise in the rental value ofcity centre properties between 1861 and 1891; and this despite periodic slumps in the
cotton trade (the Cotton Famine of the early 1860s and the cyclical pattern of the ‘Great
Depression’ of the 1870s–1890s) plus the growing challenge of foreign competition.
Manchester was also a major industrial city with an increasingly diverse manufacturingbase. Whilst the Lancashire cotton industry as a whole continued to expand, within
Manchester’s industrial sector cotton faced several rivals. Chief amongst these were metals
and engineering, but the production and sale of food and drink, road and rail transport
and the clothing industry were also significant employers of labour. In fact, the clothing

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 58

workshops of Strangeways were to become a more characteristic feature of the local
economy than the mills of Ancoats. Finally, the city’s trade and industry were boosted bya most extraordinary venture.The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 soon
made the inland city of Manchester the fourth most important port in Britain in the valueof its trade. Among its spin-offs was the construction of the world’s first industrial estate,
at Trafford Park.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------‘MANCHESTER GOODS’The Manchester market for cottons united and mobilised Lancashire’s chief industry.The
city had long controlled the export trade. Between 1830 and 1880, Manchester merchants
also established supremacy over London in the expanding home market. Merchant houses
specialising in the home trade exploited growing domestic demand after 1850. Rising real
wages and the statutory establishment of the Saturday half-day holiday all stimulated the
popular demand for goods. Ready-made clothing and the rising influence of the fashion
cycle were changing the dress habits of the lower middle classes and of young working
women. Manchester’s home trade firms, with the aid of rail transport, sent an army ofcommercial travellers to the linen drapers of the land. Fitting their trade to suit the market, they extended their range beyond cotton to include all cloths, making ‘Manchester
goods’ a synonym for textiles in general.
The export of textile goods to the self-governing colonies (Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, South Africa) passed gradually into the hands of the home trade houses. Foreign
trade firms sold across the globe, but exports became increasingly concentrated in a few
far-flung markets. India came to dominate, taking nearly 40% of piece-goods and 27% of
manufactured goods exported by the British cotton industry in 1896. From the 1870s to
1913, Manchester despatched, every year, well over one billion yards of cloth to India.
Other large markets included Latin America and China.
Cotton was not without crisis. Periodic booms and slumps characterised the cotton tradethroughout the century.The Cotton Famine itself began as a cyclical slump made worseby the Northern blockade of exports of raw cotton from the southern United States
during the American Civil War. This event destroyed the myth that the British economy
would collapse without cotton. Apart from the Cotton Famine, the most severe dips incotton’s trade cycle during the second half of the 19th century were those of 1877–1879,
1884–1885 and 1891–1893. In general, there was a crisis in the cotton trade from thelate 1870s through the 1880s.These were years of depression in the Manchester economy. In common with other staple industries of the industrial revolution, it was feeling thebite of foreign competition, which was to sink ever more deeply after World War One.
Under the impetus of low wages (Japan) or of technological adaptation (U.S.A.), the overseas challenge was developing. By the end of the century, cotton no longer dominated
Britain’s export trade as it had done for about a generation between the 1830s and the1870s. But despite periodic crises and a declining share of the nation’s exports, cotton
remained an attractive investment down to 1914 and even enjoyed something of a boomin the years preceding World War One.
The commercial core of the city expanded rapidly in the decades after 1850 as warehouses, shops, offices and banks lined former residential streets. Railway building andmunicipal street improvements added to the restructuring of the city centre as a business and market zone. This is reflected in the population statistics. Although ‘greater’Manchester with its suburbs continued to grow throughout the century, central
Manchester’s population actually fell. Thus began a vital feature of the city’s history overthe ensuing 100 years, an absolute decline in the population of the central area.The population of the Manchester region as a whole, which had risen from an estimated 322,000

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

II | 59

in 1801 to a shade over one million by 1851, more than doubled to 2.1 million by 1901.
The opposite trend was represented in the figures for the economic heart of the region.
The central Manchester sub-districts of Market Street, Deansgate and London Road
housed 92,176 people in 1851, but only one-third of this figure 50 years later. Offices andshops replaced dwelling houses, and commercial occupations escalated, reflecting thegreater complexity of business life. Between 1871 and 1914, the number of firms occupying office space increased by 41%.
Manchester’s commercial importance can be measured by the annual settlements at the
Manchester Clearing House, established in 1872 and embracing twelve local banks.
Between 1872 and 1896, the annual turnover of these banks rose from £69 million
to £191 million. This was the greatest of all the provincial clearing houses. In 1902,
Manchester clearings amounted to eight times those of Bristol and four times those ofBirmingham and were 48% larger than those of Liverpool. Manchester was the North’s
financial centre.Victorian Manchester could justifiably claim to be a major centre of insurance as well as banking. Given the importance of Manchester to Britain’s engineering
industry, it is not surprising that the city was the foremost centre for engineering insurance and home to the three leading specialist engineering insurance companies, Vulcan
Boiler (originally founded in 1859), National Boiler (1864) and British Engine (1878).
Finally, Manchester’s retail sector was assuming something approaching its modern importance to the city’s economy.The key to this was Manchester’s part in the retailing revolution that saw the advent of the department store and multiple-shop trading. Large-scaleretailing came to Manchester with the opening of Lewis’s Market Street store in 1880.The
other element in the retailing revolution was the retail chain or multiple store.Wholesale
distribution and the branch system revolutionised retailing techniques: the Co-operative
Movement pioneered both. The Cooperative Wholesale Society had its headquarters in
Manchester.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A BROADER INDUSTRIAL BASE
Lancashire cotton became a highly specialised industry during the second half of the 19th
century.Towns concentrated on either spinning or weaving or even specific kinds of cotton goods. Most weaving towns were to the north, like Blackburn, Burnley and Preston,whilst spinning dominated in south-east Lancashire towns such as Bolton, Oldham andRochdale. Manchester itself spun the finest of all cotton yarns. Most of this production
found its way into the city’s own weaving sheds, although its share of Lancashire’s looms
was steadily declining. Whilst the number of cotton operatives in Lancashire as a wholealmost doubled between 1850 and 1914, Manchester’s cotton workforce was shrinking.
By 1911, out of a total occupied labour force of nearly 350,000, the official Census listeda shade over 20,000 men and women working in textiles in Manchester.This was lower
than the textile figures for each of the much smaller towns of Bolton, Oldham, Burnley
and Blackburn.
Cotton, however, remained an indirect employer in Manchester through the textile engineering industry. The major British textile machine makers were in Lancashire. But
Manchester engineering was not solely dependent upon textiles.The local machine-toolindustry maintained the pre-eminence established before 1850. It was not until the 1890s
that American competition undermined the Manchester producers. By the 1900s,
Manchester and district had become one of the world’s foremost engineering centreswith famous local firms such as Armstrong-Whitworth, Crossleys, Mather and Platt andBritish Westinghouse. In 1911, Manchester’s workforce in metals and engineering wasmore than twice that employed in textiles. In terms of industrial production, Manchester
engineering had far outstripped Manchester cotton.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

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In Manchester’s manufacturing sector, engineering and metals were rivalled only by theimportance of the city’s clothing industry. The growth of a working-class market forready-made clothes had, by the mid-19th century, stimulated the expansion of a clothing
industry in most of the major urban centres. Diverse and decentralised, generally carriedon in small workshops, it was easily overlooked and its importance unrecognised. Yet,according to the Census of 1911, over 40,000 were engaged in various branches of clothing manufacture by this date.This was easily the largest concentration of clothing workers in Lancashire, and Manchester was second only to Leeds among northern clothing
centres.
Other industries important to Manchester’s economy included food, drink and tobacco;
wood and furniture; the building industry; paper and printing and vehicle manufacture.
The chemical industry was well represented, especially in the field of textile dyes.
Although aniline dyes were a British invention, German firms led the field. The largest
home producer of aniline oil and aniline salt was the Clayton Aniline Company, founded in1876 by the young chemist, Charles Dreyfus. The owner of a rival firm, Ivan Levinstein,
had begun by making magenta from aniline in a converted cottage in Blackley. Levinstein’s
soon expanded into larger premises in the adjacent Crumpsall Vale, thus forming thebasis of the future I.C.I. Dyestuffs complex at Blackley. Far from being merely a cotton
town, Manchester had become an industrial centre of the first rank with a diverse manufacturing base. It was also a major centre of transportation and communications. In
1911, over 27,000 worked on Manchester’s railways, roads and docks. Transport andcommunications were central to Manchester’s economic success.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL
Canals gave way to the railway in the middle of the century, but in the 1890s, one of thegreatest engineering projects of the era was to reinstate water transport as a vital feature of Manchester’s economy. Manchester’s role as a centre of international trade andof regional distribution was maintained by the city’s imaginative sponsorship of a shipcanal linking it with the sea. It is fitting that Manchester’s engineering know-how and commercial endeavour should combine in such a project. As well as dramatically reducing
transport costs, it transformed Manchester into a port of international standing and gave
Manchester and Salford their own docks. By 1914, the Canal had captured nearly 5% of
UK imports by value and 4.4% of domestic exports. It liberated the twin cities from theirlong-standing dependence on the port of Liverpool. Originally intended to revive the cotton trade, its chief economic impact was on the local engineering industry. The Trafford
Park Industrial Estate, the first of its kind in the world and located adjacent to the Ship
Canal, effectively shifted the industrial focus of the city towards its south-western fringes.
Despite some periods of slump and sluggish trade, between 1850 and 1914 there had
been no lasting check to Manchester’s economic vitality. Although cotton remained
essential to Manchester’s success, the city’s industrial base had diversified and its significance as a commercial centre had continued to grow. There had been numerous
economic problems, but each had been regarded as a challenge to be overcome. It wascharacteristic that the planning for the Ship Canal had begun in the depths of the depression of the 1880s.Yet future stresses were to be more profound and long-lasting. During
the 1920s and 1930s, the textile base was to slide into irretrievable decline. Manchester’s
greatest days were already over.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------IN THE FACE OF INDUSTRIAL DECLINE: 1914–1997
1913 was a record year for the Lancashire cotton industry. Cloth exports totalled over
7,000 million linear yards, comprising 80% of the industry’s total output. Over 65% of the

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world’s cotton cloth was the produce of Lancashire’s looms. But beneath this position ofsupremacy, the industry was vulnerable. There had been little recent investment in newtechnology and 45% of exports went to one market, India. World War One cut off the
supply of British-made cloth and left the Indian market open to the Japanese and theIndian producers themselves. After a brief post-war boom, Lancashire’s mills began to feelthe pinch. Prices fell in the face of foreign competition throughout the 1920s.The slumpof 1929–1931 further exacerbated the situation.
The chief problem was the development of textile industries in former British markets.
The British cotton industry was suffering the common fate of industrial pioneers facedwith the advantages enjoyed by ‘latecomers’, in this case cheap labour and newer plantand machinery. By 1939, the decline had become catastrophic. Cloth exports had plummeted to less than one-fifth the 1913 level. Furthermore, short-sighted management in
the face of the challenge of overseas competition left the industry ill-equipped to survive.
The home market was still intact in 1939, but this also went in the successive mill closures and final collapse of the industry in the 1950s.The failure to bring in new technology, despite the obvious success enjoyed by the American use of ring-spinning in place ofthe older mules, and the persistence of restrictive work practices in the interwar years
sealed the fate of Lancashire textiles.The forced rationalisation and modernisation introduced by the Cotton Industry Act of 1959 came too late to reverse the trend, and by the
1960s it was no longer strictly accurate even to talk of a ‘cotton’ industry since ‘manmade’ (synthetic) fibres developed by I.C.I. and Courtaulds now accounted for most of the
raw materials used. British production of the cotton cloth that had once generated anindustrial revolution was now effectively dead.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TRAFFORD PARK INDUSTRIAL ESTATE
How did the decline in cotton affect Manchester? The impact was dramatic for Lancashireas a whole, but the damage was unevenly distributed. Manchester’s more complex industrial base protected it against the worst effects of the Depression years, and the Ship
Canal and Trafford Park helped Manchester weather the storm better than most. The
city’s unemployment figures were consistently below the national average throughout theinterwar years. The Port of Manchester was ranked the third or fourth most importantcustom port in the UK on the basis of the value of import and export trade for 39 outof the 55 years for which figures exist between 1904 and 1964. The ‘Ship Canal Zone’
was an industrial magnet even during the Depression, cushioning the Manchester economy against its worst effects and benefiting the whole of south Lancashire at the expenseof the north. The Trafford Park Industrial Estate was the emblem of the Ship Canal’s importance to Manchester and a new manufacturing ‘Manchester’ on the doorstep of the parent city. However, Trafford Park was entirely without cotton mills; its most characteristic
industries were in the oil trade, engineering, chemicals and foodstuffs. Trafford Park had
served further to diversify Manchester’s industrial structure and helped it to cope withthe decline of cotton.
The Port of Manchester’s trading importance had attracted foreign, especially American,
firms to Trafford Park from the earliest years. British Westinghouse (re-organised in 1919
as Metropolitan Vickers) had begun the trend, which led, by 1933, to the presence of over
200 American firms. It was the 1914–1918 war that brought the Port and the Park intofull use for the first time, especially for the manufacture of munitions, chemicals and aircraft for the war effort.Trafford Park firms generally survived the Crash of 1929/31 without bankruptcies, which was not the case elsewhere in Lancashire. The return of war
between 1939 and 1945 once more benefited Manchester engineering. Even prior to theoutbreak of hostilities, local firms were the beneficiaries of rearmament. Factories andMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester: A Brief Economic History

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production lines were converted to war needs. During World War Two,Trafford Park was
the greatest of Britain’s arsenals and a prime target for the German bombers.
World War Two, however, proved to be the summit of Trafford Park’s importance. The
Port of Manchester had been the country’s second most important oil port since theearly 20th century, reaching a peak in 1946 of 24.5% of the nation’s imports of crude oiland maintaining an average of nearly 16% between 1946 and 1960.Yet the benefits drifted away from Manchester as the industrial focus of the Canal shifted to its western end.
Trafford Park gradually ceded economic first place to Ellesmere Port and Runcorn.
Employment in the Park declined from a peak of 75,000 in 1945 to 50,000 by 1967. But
the sharpest fall in the workforce came in the early 1970s. The Manchester Docks had
remained prosperous into the mid-1960s. But during the next decade, trade declined
dramatically in the face of containerisation. Only the ports which could handle the hugecontainer ships and had the storage space for bulk container traffic were going to survivethe ‘container revolution’. Manchester was not one of them. Felixstowe, Tilbury andSouthampton took over Manchester’s shipping trade.
The motorway revolution and the decline of rail freight-carrying further contributed to
Trafford Park’s decline by spreading the industrial zone along the Canal banks and awayfrom the focal point of East Manchester. Trading estates were springing up everywhere
and container lorries increasingly headed for the newer rivals of the world’s first industrial estate. In the face of these challenges, the workforce plummeted to 15,000 by 1976.
The Ship Canal and the Manchester Docks had been a vital success story for the city andof great significance for the economy of much of south Lancashire.Trafford Park was the
dynamo of Manchester industry during the first half of the 20th century. But the
Manchester Docks have now closed for business. Trade had all but disappeared by theearly 1980s. Since then the Docks have been reborn as Salford Quays, a complex ofleisure facilities and commercial offices.The granting of ‘Enterprise Zone’ status may revive
Trafford Park, but its comparative decline since the 1960s has been part of a more general malaise in local manufacturing which has made Manchester, the one-time powerhouse of the industrial revolution, into one of the weakest industrial cities in Britain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FROM MANUFACTURING TO A SERVICE ECONOMY
The greatest change in the economic structure of Manchester since the industrial revolution took place after World War Two. The half-century since 1945 has seen a restructuring of the local economy away from manufacturing and towards the service sector.
Over the period 1961–1983, Manchester lost over 150,000 jobs in manufacturing.Trends
in male employment figures, a crucial economic indicator, tell a dismal tale. If the 1961
figures for Greater Manchester are taken as 100, the index had fallen to 97 by 1966, 89
by 1970 and 84 by 1975.The inner core of the conurbation was worst hit. Between 1966
and 1972, one in three manual jobs in manufacturing were lost and one quarter of all
factories and workshops closed. The inner industrial belt of factories, workshops, canals,
railway depots and row upon row of terraced housing, which had once been a lively, dirty
but exciting place, betrayed the symptoms of inner-city decay.
Losses in manufacturing employments, although not replaced in the same numbers, havebeen accompanied by growth in service occupations.The regional trend towards service
employments was already apparent in the 1950s. It has been particularly marked in
Manchester. By 1985, only 23% of the workforce of the Manchester metropolitan district
were employed in manufacturing, compared to figures of over 40% for the nearby townsof Bolton, Oldham and Rochdale. Manchester’s much-reduced manufacturing sector
included the engineering, electrical, chemical, food, clothing and textile industries. In addition, a further 4% were involved in construction. Of the 73% employed in the service

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sector, the single most important element was the public and scientific services (e.g.
health and education), providing 22% of all service occupations; other large elements
were the distributive trades (14%), the financial institutions (11%) and transport andcommunications (9%). But even the service sector was under pressure. For example,
Manchester’s central business district suffered from the decentralisation of office development from the 1960s through to the 1980s. Put off by the problems of inner-city parking and attracted by better motorway access and lower rents, new office blocks haverisen across the southern suburbs.The city centre’s share of commercial offices fell fromapproximately 40% of the total for Greater Manchester in 1974 to 33% in 1982.
Despite the demise of cotton and decades of manufacturing decline, Manchester has
continued to dominate its region. Manchester’s role as a commercial centre was weakened after 1914 by the decline of its major commodity, but nonetheless, throughout theinterwar Depression, the city continued to provide commercial, financial, insurance andtransport services for industrial Lancashire. Manchester retained its 19th-century ranking
as the leading financial centre outside London. For many years it held on to its handful of
local banks. Local firms, even the larger ones, could obtain comprehensive financial
services in Manchester without recourse to London. All this gave the place an air of independence and helped to keep Manchester’s bankers’ clearings larger than those of
any other provincial city. In 1936, the total was over £533 million, or 38% of the total
provincial clearings, exceeding the amounts cleared at the three next largest centres
combined.
However, the constantly growing power of the City of London meant that Manchester’s
independent banks were eventually absorbed by national concerns.Thus William Deacon’s(begun in Manchester as the Manchester and Salford Bank in 1836) became part of theRoyal Bank of Scotland group in 1930, and the District Bank (originally the Manchester andLiverpool District Banking Company) was absorbed into the National Provincial group in
1962. Despite such developments, Manchester has retained its position as the secondlargest financial centre in the country.The 1980s even witnessed an explosion of financial
and consultancy services, which has revived the prospects of Manchester’s central
business district.
20th-century Manchester also remained a distribution centre of some note.The wholesale trade dominated until the 1950s. Apart from the distribution of manufactured goods,
Manchester was the most important market for foodstuffs outside London. However, theretail sector outstripped wholesale distribution in economic importance in the 1950s.
The numbers in shop work grew while the warehouse sector contracted. Independent
stores like Lewis’s, Paulden’s, Affleck and Brown’s, and multiples like Marks and Spencer, werejoined in the 1960s by the supermarkets, which have revolutionised British shopping
habits in a generation. The shopping streets of Manchester were transformed in the
1970s by the massive scale and indoor malls of the Arndale Centre, the city centre’s
answer to increasing competition from the region’s other retail centres.
Its distributive function and excellent communications for a time made Manchester themost important centre of the newspaper industry outside London, with national newspapers establishing complete printing, publishing and editorial offices in the city.
Manchester’s newspaper industry was probably at its zenith in the early 1960s, but aportent for the future was the removal of The Guardian to London in 1961. New printing machinery, new work practices and computerisation transformed the newspaperindustry during the 1980s. Manchester, however, remains the home of the country’s mostimportant provincial daily, the Manchester Evening News, and the city’s importance inother branches of the media seems secure. Manchester has enjoyed a high profile in thefields of radio and television. The B.B.C. chose the city for its Northern Regional head-

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quarters as early as 1922. Since the 1950s, Granada Television, based in Manchester, hasbeen among the most imaginative and successful producers of programmes in the country.
An improved communications network to match changing industrial conditions, residential patterns and new forms of transport required a co-ordinated policy across theconurbation as a whole. This was recognised as early as 1926 in the Manchester andDistrict Joint Town Planning Advisory Committee’s recommendation of 65 projects forregional and main district roads. Even at that early stage of the motor age, they spoke ofthe need for bypasses and widened arterial roads and of the necessity of inter-regionalroutes.The road network boldly envisaged in 1926 has taken some time to come about,but the Manchester region now has more miles of motorway than any other conurbation outside London. There has been less improvement in the city centre. The central
Manchester road pattern is in large part the one laid down during the 19th century.
If rail was the revolutionary new transport of the 19th century, then air travel has been
the most successful at contracting distance in the 20th century. Manchester’s air traffic hasgrown considerably since the prospect of an ‘air station’ was first mooted in the 1920s,
and the City Council took the decision in 1929 to give Manchester a municipal aerodrome. The great expansion of air travel came after 1945. In 1953, Manchester was
already handling 200,000 passengers a year; by 1983, the figure had risen to five million,
plus freight worth £1.5 millions every day. Manchester International is the country’s major
provincial airport and in 1997 was granted permission to build a second runway.
The vigorous population growth of the Victorian era came to an end in the early 20th
century. Population increase in the region had already slowed to less than 1% per annum
between 1901 and 1911 to a total of around 2.3 million. Growth slowed even further
over the next 20 years to reach a shade over 2.4 million by 1931, a figure which remained
stable for the following 30 years. Since then, population decline has been the pattern.
Ironically, the years between 1921 and 1951 were a period of the most rapid physicalexpansion of the built-up area in the region’s history. Whilst the pressure of numbers
eased, the character of the population altered in the new age of the smaller family withrising expectations of adequate living space.Thus the number of households in the region
grew by 22% between 1931 and 1951, despite zero population growth. Correspondingly,
the housing stock rose by 24% over the same period.
Within this overall picture, there is a submerged pattern of decentralisation, suburban
growth paralleling inner-city decline. After reaching a peak of 766,300 in 1931, the population of the borough of Manchester fell by 8% between 1931 and 1951, and a further
drop of 6% to 661,800 by 1961 meant a loss of over 100,000 people in 30 years. The
decline intensified over the next 20 years due to manufacturing decay, the drift of population to the suburbs and a local government policy of rehousing outside the municipal
boundary. The figure of 451,100 for 1985 was some 41% below the 1931 peak. Alongwith Liverpool and Glasgow, Manchester sustained the greatest population loss since1951 of any of Britain’s large cities.
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MANCHESTER IN PROSPECT
Alan Kidd-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------”Manchester is surging ahead on a flood tide of economic and cultural innovations …
We are sweeping into the new millennium with a city region almost bulging with new
facilities and new ideas … . The world needs to know all about these developments
if Manchester is to take its rightful place on the world centre stage and command its
share of global investment.” Sir David Trippier launching the Manchester is Up andGoing campaign, at the Bridgewater Hall. Manchester Evening News, May 15, 1997.
”Manchester has never been about boundaries, never been about lines on the map
or about local authority bureaucracy. Manchester is not so much a city as a state ofmind.” From an article in United We Stand, 1996 (football fanzine)
This has been a study of a city in retrospect. What can be said of Manchester over thelast decade and into the future? It is now 200 years since the place first came to thenotice of outsiders as the ‘boom town’ of the early industrial era. Manchester’s greatest
days of historical importance are undoubtedly over. It is unlikely that the city will ever be
as significant economically or politically as it was in the 19th century.Then its industry andcommerce had a global reach.Today, Manchester is more ‘globalised’ than ‘globalising’.This
chapter will examine the Manchester of today. Although Manchester may now follow
others rather than offer the lead, these are times of great change and may be marking
out a path for the future.
Like many cities in the older industrial nations of the world, Manchester faced a dual challenge in the later 20th century.The rapid decline in employment and investment in manufacturing of the 1960s and 1970s was further exacerbated by developments in the 1980s
and 1990s. The impact of the new information technology and the advent of the ‘network society’, accompanied by more liberal economic policies, together have facilitatedthe almost instantaneous flow of information, communication and capital across theglobe.This emergence of a global economy and the declining significance of nation-states
have forced a new agenda on the major metropolitan regions of Europe. In the current
competition for capital investment, globalisation places a premium on cities that are perceived as innovative, imaginative and entrepreneurial.
The new age of economic globalisation and the information revolution has forced cities
around the world to become protagonists in their own cause. In addition, the process ofglobalisation has eroded the economic influence of national governments, and (often following the example of the UK) many states have adopted less interventionist industrial
policies than during the 1945–1979 period. In the ensuing competition between urban
centres for resources, cities have evolved less managerial and more pluralistic management systems, mixing public and private agencies and revolving around entrepreneurial
strategies. Thus in Manchester, since the late 1980s, there has developed a ‘partnership’
between local council and non-governmental agencies such as the Central Manchester
Development Corporation and later the constellation of bodies which co-operated during
and after the Olympic Games bid. The intention was to develop a series of projects andpolicies to promote the city and the region. As elsewhere in the world this process beganwith a number of prestige projects and was soon accompanied by the rhetoric of
re-imaging. Manchester was promoted locally and internationally as a major European

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city-regional capital.This was presented as the only solution to the loss of manufacturing
status.The rationale was summed up by one of its chief architects, Graham Stringer, city
council leader from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. ”About a dozen of (Europe’s 40
or 50 second-tier cities) will become the cities where decisions are made … We have totry and get there, because the alternative is to gradually decline.”1 In practical terms, thepurpose was to win private investment and public grants for a city that was seen to havea vision and a sense of purpose and to offer an attractive environment.Thus, after morethan a generation of decline, Manchester was to be re-branded.
The revival of Manchester has revolved around a startling sequence of prestige projects
focused on leisure, culture and lifestyle. Arguably, the process began in the early 1980s.
Castlefield, GMEX and the Metrolink were all underway or were planned well before therhetoric of re-branding was defined. However, the trend was greatly reinforced by theConservative Party’s domination of national government whilst, locally, municipal politics
had made Manchester virtually a one-party state. Some see Labour’s third general election defeat in a row in 1987 as the spark that led one of the most left-wing city councilsof the 1980s to downplay ‘welfare’-oriented objectives and instead to adopt vigorously
market-orientated economic strategies in the 1990s.2 In fact the path to urban transformation followed in Manchester is common to a number of cities which seek to become‘global’. Firstly, it involves an awareness of the relationship of the local to the global in an
era of economic globalisation. Secondly, it requires a coming together of the urban public
and private agents and the existence of local leadership (political, business and civic). And
thirdly, it needs a consensus in the city (and its region) about the direction of change.3
Manchester has been foremost among UK cities in conceiving a local regional strategy inglobal terms.
Since 1987 the stream of prestige projects has been continuous. Sporting, leisure, culturaland heritage projects predominate. Manchester already enjoyed worldwide sporting
recognition through the brand name Manchester United.Thus it was in some ways a logicalstep to embark on the building of high-profile sports arenas. Sporting and leisure venturesin the 1990s included the Velodrome (the National Indoor Cycling Centre), the Manchester
Aquatics Centre and other sporting arenas built in connection with the unsuccessful bids
to host the Olympic Games of 1996 and 2000 and the successful bid for the Commonwealth Games of 2002. Equally, the qualitative value of a city’s cultural life has beencorrectly linked to its competitive advantage. This observation and the knowledge that
other cities have successfully trodden the same path (Barcelona is the oft-vaunted model
to imitate) led to the development of a cultural strategy for Manchester in which big
projects were to the fore. Major cultural and heritage projects since 1990 include
the Bridgewater Concert Hall (new home for the Halle Orchestra), opened in 1997; theManchester Evening News Arena (opened as the Nynex Arena in 1996); PrintWorks (an artsand leisure complex opened in former newspaper offices in 2000); and a major extension of the Manchester City Art Gallery and the Urbis Centre, both due for completion in
2002. The Lowry Centre (an award-winning building housing two theatres and galleries
devoted to the paintings of L.S. Lowry, 2000) and the Imperial War Museum of the North(2002), both in Salford, can be added to the list. These are each part of a massive artsand-leisure-led regeneration of the urban core.
A key element has been what one might call the international games bidding process. In
particular, the city’s ultimately unsuccessful bids to host the Olympic Games were the catalyst for policies designed to raise the international profile of the city. More than anythingelse, the Olympic competition symbolised the extent to which the city’s local politics had
adapted to the phenomenon of globalisation.The Games were seen as a vehicle whereby
Manchester could achieve its global aims.A promotional document of the time expressedMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester in Prospect

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it in the most optimistic terms: A targeted and managed economic and social programmeof urban regeneration linked to Olympic sporting and multi-cultural investment could
bring Manchester and the region a handsome and irrevocable dividend in the next century. Indeed by 2001, Manchester has the opportunity to emerge and remain unchallenged as: Britain’s second city — the capital of the northern region; a European regional capital — a centre of investment growth not regional aid; an international city of outstanding commercial, cultural and creative potential. 4
As an analysis of the bidding process has observed, ”going for gold becomes synonymous with going for growth”.5
In the event, growth has been most closely related to success in the winning of grant aid,rather than private investment. Although both have played their part, it has been theremarkable success of City Council-inspired initiatives and the Council’s ability to build
and lead coalitions of public and private forces that have been at the heart of the regeneration process. Indeed, in the 1990s, Manchester came to epitomise the entrepreneurial local state. Is it too much to cast Council leaders (Graham Stringer and Richard Leese)and the chief executive, Howard Bernstein, as the modern counterparts of those corporate entrepreneurs who created the Manchester Ship Canal project in the 1880s and1890s? Moreover, the involvement of businessmen in public projects (Sir Bob Scott andthe Olympic bid being the classic example) invites comparison with the role of the city’s
Victorian business leaders in local governance. After a century of exclusion from the publicsphere, have we witnessed a return of the ‘Manchester men’?
Whatever its structures or personnel, the potential of the regeneration process in
Manchester was nationally recognised when, in 1994, along with Birmingham and London,
the city was invited by the central government to prepare prospectuses for development
over the next decade. A result was Manchester’s City Pride Prospectus (1994, enlarged in1998), which envisaged a vibrant and cosmopolitan European city and concentrated on
measures to attract both investment and business visitors and tourists. It was a self-consciously metropolitan, and regional, prospectus, bearing the signatures of the political leaders of Salford and Trafford as well as Manchester councils. But most significantly, it wasalso signed by the leaders of two Urban Development Corporations appointed by theConservative central government and by 150 other private and voluntary bodies.6
A major theme in the City Pride Prospectus was the need for a new organisation to market the city. One that would co-ordinate existing marketing strategies to capitalise on theinternational profile created by the Olympic Games bid.The outcome was the May 1997
launch of ‘Marketing Manchester’, formed by a combination of local bodies and agencies,
including the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, Manchester Airport and a handful of private companies including British Airways and the National Westminster Bank.
‘Marketing Manchester’ used the notion of the city as the regional core and linked theeconomic success of the region to the performance of the core city. At the same time,
the formation of the Manchester Investment and Development Agency (MIDAS) put thecity at the heart of strategies for the regeneration of the region. None of this was uncontroversial. There were sharp criticisms from within the city of ‘Marketing Manchester’s’slogans and strategies. Additionally, the city-region notion behind both it and MIDAS
revealed tensions within the North West regarding the balance of interest (local, metropolitan and regional).This included resistance to the idea of Manchester as the super-city
subsuming the region.7 However, in the new global economy, it is important to have aclearly-established identity. This is why cities are so important. Manchester will have to
make good its claim to regional capital status. Its principal metropolitan competitor,
Liverpool, is already the clear core of the Merseyside metropolitan area. Liverpool could
aspire to broader regional leadership. But whilst the economic trajectory of both cities

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greatly depends upon winning grants from the national government and the European
Union, the award by the latter of Object 1 status to Liverpool in 1994(?) (a mixed blessing if there ever was one) effectively removed that city from such a contest. It is likely that
Manchester’s pre-eminence in business services and through Manchester International
Airport, as the international gateway to the North West, will bring long-term benefits tothe entire region.
Apart from the Olympic bid, the single most reported event of the 1990s was the IRA’s
bombing of the city centre on Saturday, June 15, 1996. At 1,500 kg (or 3,300 lb.), this was
the largest bomb to be detonated in Britain since World War Two. It was tremendous
good fortune that there were no fatalities.This was due chiefly to the well-organised evacuation of 80,000 people. However, over 200 people were injured, and the physical damage
to buildings in the retail and commercial core of the city was extensive. Commercially,
672 businesses were displaced, 49,000 m2 of retail space and 57,000 m2 of office space
were lost. The Arndale Shopping Centre was badly damaged, closing the city’s largest bus
station; two multi-storey car parks and key routes through the city centre were shut formonths afterwards.The commercial impact was marked.Trade in the city centre, alreadyvulnerable to out-of-town shopping malls (the largest of these and one of the biggest in
the United Kingdom, the Trafford Centre, was then under construction), was down a tentheven six months later.The direct insurance loss cover topped £100 million and the eventual costs of the rebuilding programme are likely to be over £500 million.
However, the city’s response to the bombing has been most striking and has become
symbolic of the process of regeneration which has been taking place since the 1980s.The
coalition of public and private interests responsible for that regenerative process swung
into action within 48 hours of the blast, the City Council catalysing a range of initiatives
for re-occupancy and recovery. A Lord Mayor’s Appeal Fund raised £2.5 million withintwelve months, and affected businesses were given financial aid and assisted with recovery
or relocation. However, from the outset the disaster was treated as an opportunity andthe aim was not merely restoration but reinvigoration. An International Urban Design
Competition invited architects to redesign the heart of the city, and a Task Force (Manchester
Millennium Ltd) was appointed to co-ordinate what was regarded as a programme ofrenewal.The competition brief asked for ”an architecturally distinctive core … physicallyand socially integrated with the rest of the city [which] stimulates economic activity …
minimises risk and fear of crime ... and where activity can take place at most times of day
and night.” A consultation process, in which the comments of the public focused on environmental provision, particularly pedestrian access and traffic and transport issues,
followed an exhibition of the five short-listed submissions.8
In the event, the chosen scheme offered a redesigned city centre whilst restoring the spatial link to the Cathedral, which had been removed in the 1960s, and the creation of new
green space in the heart of the city. Since the IRA bomb, an urban renewal programme ofremarkable speed has seen a number of high-profile projects. These include the restoration and enhancement of the retail core in an attempt to reinstate Manchester as the
shopping heart of the region.This involves, among other things, the largest Marks & Spencer
store in the world (23,000 m2), a reconfigured and enlarged Arndale Centre redesigned tomake it more visually integrated with its surroundings plus the fashionable boutiques of
The Triangle (a restored and recast Corn Exchange building). The ability to attract ‘upmarket’ stores such as Harvey Nicholls is evidence of the city’s recent retailing revival.
This renewal of the city centre shopping district is accompanied by the creation of new
open spaces (Exchange Square, Cathedral Gardens) in a newly designated Millennium
Quarter.The intention throughout is to make the heart of Manchester as attractive andaccessible as that of any European city.The plans for Cathedral Gardens, situated between

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Chethams School of Music, the Cathedral and the Corn Exchange, at the historic heart ofthe medieval town, include rolling, sculpted lawns and trees. At the other end of the central area, the Piccadilly area is being renewed under the auspices of the Piccadilly
Regeneration Partnership, a classic combination of public-sector agencies and private-sector
companies. Along with the refurbishment of existing buildings such as the Piccadilly Plaza
complex and Piccadilly Train Station, there are controversial plans for a multi-story officeblock on the Portland Street side of Piccadilly Gardens.This latter development is part ofa radical re-landscaping of Piccadilly Gardens due for completion late in 2002.
It is impossible to exaggerate the scale of the renewal programme. Manchester’s central
area has been redesigned in record time.This is arguably the most dramatic (and rapid)
restructuring of its landscape and architecture that the city centre has ever undergone(the work of the Luftwaffe and 1960s planners notwithstanding).Throughout the 1990s,
the urban skyline seemed permanently punctuated by cranes, the signal that building
work was underway.The aspiration behind such projects was to make Manchester visually important, an attractive place to be in for workers, shoppers and tourists alike. Muchof the debate over the renewal of the city centre in the 1980s and 1990s revolved
around the necessity to create a modern urban environment likely to appeal to professionals and office workers. The retention of existing firms and the attraction of new
employers are central to the economic health of the city. Heritage tourism, which the city
has sought since the 1970s (Castlefield), is also important to present plans. Moreover, its
attractions have been enhanced by a reinvigorated cultural infrastructure, including thereopening and enhancement of the Royal Exchange Theatre (badly damaged by the IRAbomb), plus ambitious new projects, chiefly PrintWorks, a Cathedral Visitor Centre and moststriking of all, the Urbis Centre. The Urbis Centre, in the Millennium Quarter, symbolises
both the ambition behind the regeneration of Manchester’s urban core since the 1980s
and also its ability to convince the holders of public money of the city’s capacity to realise
its objectives. Jointly funded by the central government (the Millennium Commission andthe Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions), Manchester City
Council and the European Regional Development Fund, Urbis is Manchester’s newmuseum of the modern city.
In most of its major schemes, the city has respected the architectural integrity of its valuable historical buildings (the Wellington Inn/Sinclairs, the Royal Exchange, the Corn Exchange,
PrintWorks and so on). However, it is unfortunate, to say the least, that the same discretion has not been extended to arguably the city’s historically most important structure
and a building of national historical significance, the Free Trade Hall. Sensitively restored in
the late 1940s after considerable war damage, the instantly recognisable façade wasregarded by Pevsner in the 1960s as ”a monument of which Manchester can be as proud,both architecturally and civicly, as of the Town Hall.”9 The removal of the Halle Orchestra
to the Bridgewater Hall left the Free Trade Hall ostensibly redundant. In 1998, Manchester
City Council sold it to a private developer who had plans for its incorporation into a luxury hotel complex. In the event, an original proposal for a cylindrical tower on the roof
met with strong protests from conservation groups and was rejected by the Secretaryof State. However, another design with a 14-storey hotel tower set back from the historic façade is to go ahead.The battle between developers and conservationists over the
future of the Free Trade Hall is evidence that the remaking of the city centre has not gone
uncontested.
Part of the process of city centre renewal is a bold attempt to repopulate the central
area. A strategic objective of the master plan following the IRA Bomb was the creationof a ‘living city’. This objective indicates recognition that what are regarded as exemplar
cities, such as Barcelona, have vibrant residential hearts at their core. Thus the renewal

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programme, in its attempts to enhance the attractions of the city centre, sought toencourage housing investment and provide a physical infrastructure appealing to newresidents. In fact the plan was knocking at an open door and tapping into one of the moststriking and unplanned phenomena of city life at the turn of the millennium.The patternof urban population movement over the last 150 years and more has been a migrationfrom the central areas to the periphery. The chief result of this has been the growth of
the suburb and a corresponding decline of the inner-city housing stock. As was also thecase in other UK cities, a poor and often elderly population has occupied central
Manchester’s generally lower-status rented properties. This process continued into the
1980s. Central Ward, which includes the city centre, experienced a 32% loss of population between the censuses of 1981 and 1991. Moreover, within that ward, the population of the city centre itself had fallen to a mere 800 persons in 1991.Yet by the time of
the city’s Local Census of 1998, this figure had risen almost six-fold to 4,550. For the firsttime in 150 years, the population of the city centre was increasing.10
The expansion of the residential sector has been a key feature of the urban renewal programme of the last 20 years and more. As early as the 1970s, 200 apartments were
included in the Castlefield regeneration project. In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the‘village’ concept took over with the construction of 125 town houses and apartments
immediately north of the city centre alongside the Ashton Canal (Piccadilly Village) and
Granby Village adjacent to the Rochdale Canal to the south. In the 1990s, there were aplethora of schemes and a move towards building in the central area itself. This has
involved the conversion of previous industrial buildings, especially warehouses, into apartment blocks by redevelopers such as Urban Splash. However, the composition of theincoming population that rents or buys these increasingly expensive apartments is its
most significant feature.The majority of the city centre’s new population in the 1990s wasyoung and either actually or potentially high-earning. University students in a range ofcommercially-provided lets as well as residence halls make up part of this new influx.
Others are high-income couples without children. A significant proportion consists ofyoung gay males attracted by the development in the city centre of a further residential
village quarter located in the Bloom Street/Canal Street area known as the ‘Gay Village’.
Manchester’s Gay Village developed spontaneously in the 1980s as part of the propertyled regeneration of the central district. However, the City Council was quick to realise its
potential both economically and culturally. Since 1991, it has been treated as a separate
planning district and supported as part of the strategy to bring jobs back into the corearea and to create a cosmopolitan 24-hour city. The area has two dozen gay bars andclubs, over a dozen gay businesses, and its own community and health groups. The Gay
Village symbolises the outward-looking confidence of the modern gay community, its culture not only tolerated but celebrated in the annual Mardi Gras Lesbian and Gay Festival
which fills the city centre streets at the August Bank Holiday Weekend. The existence ofManchester’s Gay Village contrasts markedly with the lack of a clearly-identified gay quarterin London, and the City Council thinks Manchester competes with Amsterdam rather
than London for international gay tourism. However, it is not just gay males who makethe young migrant population distinctive. In the late 1990s, a survey of single male households in the city centre revealed that gay males headed around 25%, a further quarter
were headed by young heterosexual males. Such statistics contrast markedly with thecharacter of the surrounding population. Whilst almost half (45%) of the households inthe city centre consisted of single males, the figure was only 11% for Greater Manchester
as a whole.11 These new residents are often high-earners, and their spending in the clubs
and cafes, which have sprung up in the central areas, has done much to rejuvenate theeconomic fortunes of the core areas and gives credence to the claim that Manchester

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possesses a vibrant urban culture.
The development of the Northern Quarter is the most recent manifestation of this newcultural status. This is the name the City Council gave to the part of the central area
located between Piccadilly, Ancoats and the Arndale Centre, including the former Smithfield Market and the run-down shops of Oldham Street. Following the Northern Quarter
Regeneration Study Report of 1994, it has been promoted as a cultural quarter with theemphasis upon popular culture, especially popular music. As with the Gay Village, commercial development preceded official status. By the end of the 1970s, this once-busy
industrial, residential and shopping district was depopulated and in rapid decline. Its chief
thoroughfare, Oldham Street, was particularly badly hit as the retail focus of the centre
shifted after the completion of the Arndale Centre. In the 1980s, the booming Manchester
music scene and the availability of low rents encouraged musicians, eager to find valuablerehearsal space, and musical entrepreneurs, keen to promote the many local bands, tofind a base in the disused warehouses and factories off Great Ancoats Street and in thewarren of back streets north of Piccadilly. Following the musicians came the cultural commentators.The listings magazine, City Life, which began as a Manchester version of London’sTime Out, was published from this quarter. Most important, the opening of Affleck’s Palacein the former Affleck & Brown department store building in 1982 secured the district’s
status as a site for the consumption of popular youth culture. It was closely linked to theyouth fashion phenomenon that gave Manchester a distinctive cultural identity as‘Madchester’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Oldham Street itself was reborn as a site
for the new cultural businesses, with shop signs and window displays that could be
regarded as a form of informal public art.12
The Gay Village and the Northern Quarter exemplify an aspect of the cultural approach
to urban regeneration, i.e., marketing Manchester as a ‘lifestyle’ for sections of the educated 25–40 age group. It is not just that the cultural industries are an important elementin the local economy or that the gay community is a focus for consumption and tourism,
but that they both appeal to the young and the professional.This is precisely the segmentof the population that has been identified as the focal group for economic production in
the advanced economies of the “Network Society”.13 Manchester’s ‘cool’ image with theyoung for most of the 1980s and 1990s has been part of its cultural identity and an element in its economic regeneration.The City Council’s Cultural Strategy Consultation Draft
of June 2001 shows how far the city recognises this. The creative industries, the media
and the popular music industry along with tourism, sport and leisure are seen as the key
components in the cultural economy.14
The prestige model of urban regeneration has gone some way towards rescuing central
Manchester. But in the 21st century, global cities face the challenge of achieving economic
growth whilst also advancing the employment prospects, quality of life and full social
inclusion of all their citizens. Few Western European cities face a more acute version ofthis challenge than Manchester. Since the 1960s, the region’s economy has faced a dramatic restructuring with the balance shifting from the industrial to the service sector. As
industrial activity has declined, social inequality has grown. A ‘poverty belt’ more or lessencircles the city core (a pattern of residential segregation Engels might still recognise);here lives a predominantly low-income, low-skill population experiencing poor educational achievement, high levels of ill health and crime and a poor physical environment.
Deprivation is more widespread than in any other UK city, and many neighbourhoods
display levels of social and economic deprivation substantially above the national averages. In 2000, the city as a whole was the sixth most deprived local authority area in the
country on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, and 27 of the 33 wards in the city featured
in the top 10% of the National Index of Deprivation. Contrasting values in the housing

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market are a symptom of greater social inequality. Whilst city centre values soar, a collapse in the demand for pre-1919 terraced homes in parts of north and north-east
Manchester and in Ordsall and other parts of Salford has rendered solid and viable houses
in some districts virtually worthless.
The attempt to re-brand Manchester as an international city of commercial and cultural
repute has to contend with facts like these. Cities are ‘states of mind’ as well as shapeson the ground. Historically entrenched images of industrialism, a dreary combination ofpollution and poverty, are hard to dispel. Similarly, mid-1990s media constructions of
inner-city districts, such as Moss Side, as sites of criminality and violence did little to help.
For a moment ‘Gunchester’ replaced ‘Madchester’, putting at peril the city’s recently
earned ‘cool’ image, as Moss Side acquired national status as the archetypal inner-city‘problem area’.15
Business success at the centre needs to be translated into secure (and decently paid) jobs
for local people.This is a question of social justice. It is also widely recognised as a matter of economic survival. The creation of a sustainable economic environment requires
an improvement in the quality of life for all.The shift in local government priorities from‘welfare’ in the 1980s to ‘growth’ in the 1990s has culminated in the recognition that thesepriorities are interdependent. If the Manchester-led revival of the region is to be maintained, it must be underpinned by an attack on poverty and deprivation which displays
the same degree of vigour and imagination as has been applied to the reinvention of thecity centre.
The problem is recognised in Manchester City Council’s area regeneration policy. Since
the early to mid-1990s, this has focused on policies designed to promote economic
development and investment in some of the city’s most deprived areas. Area-based
regeneration is designed to combine the efforts of public, private, voluntary and community organisations in strategies to promote economic revival and the quality of life.
Thus, Area Regeneration Teams work with local businesses to stimulate job creation,
improve the environment, enhance the existing housing stock and build new homes, tackle crime and vandalism and provide leisure and training facilities for the young. Area
Regeneration Teams include the Moss Side and Hulme Partnership, Eastside Regeneration(Ancoats, Miles Platting and the Northern Quarter), the Cheetham and Broughton
Partnership, North Manchester Regeneration (Newton Heath, Lightbowne, Harpurhey andMonsall), Beacons for a Brighter Future (East Manchester — Clayton, Beswick and Bradford)
and the Stockport Road Corridor Initiative (Ardwick, Longsight and Levenshulme).
Regeneration initiatives have gone furthest and proved most innovative in Moss Side andHulme. In 1992, Hulme Regeneration, Ltd. was established by the City Council in partnership with a range of public, private and community interests to develop and manage theCity Challenge programme for Hulme.The programme that followed saw the demolitionof some of the worst system-built high-rise housing remaining from the 1970s (including
the unpopular Crescent flats). This was accompanied by an extensive rebuilding programme, one of the most ambitious exercises in community architecture ever undertaken
in Britain. Tenant participation in choice of housing and estate layouts and the role ofhousing associations in the development has suggested a degree of community involvement which hopefully produces a more enduring solution to housing problems than its
predecessor.16 Since the completion of the City Challenge programme in 1997, the MossSide and Hulme Partnership Team has overseen the area’s various funding programmes.
Further fruits of this investment include the improvement of the Princess Road approachto the city, the remodelling of Alexandra Park housing estate, the construction of a large
business park (Birley Fields) and the continuing development of Hulme High Street.
The future success of the city’s revival strategy depends as much on progress in area

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regeneration initiatives like this as it does on successive city centre prestige projects.
There are signs that the attempt to promote Manchester as an international city of commerce and culture is yielding fruit.The City Council’s Community Strategy document of
October 2001 claimed that Manchester is now in the top ten European cities for business location, in the world’s top 50 as a conference centre and second only to London
as the most visited city in England for overseas visitors.17 This potential for economic
regeneration is rooted in traditional strengths in financial and professional services plus
success in heritage and tourism, the cultural and creative industries and knowledge-based
information and technology sectors. However, the occasional re-branding of Manchesteras ‘post-industrial’ has caused some concern amongst those who recognise the necessity
to defend the declining industrial base of the city and region (although it must be said
that the City Council has rarely deployed this kind of rhetoric). Employment statistics forthe 1990s suggest a continuing shift from manufacturing to service jobs.There are, however, some brighter spots and a recently revived industrial and business core at Trafford
Park Industrial Estate can be counted among them. Derelict and neglected after the collapse of trade at the Manchester Docks, this transformation of the former industrial
heartland of the city has been a success story of the 1990s in which the Trafford Park
Development Corporation has played a major role.The World Freight Centre in Trafford Park
is now the largest road/rail interchange complex outside London. More generally,
Manchester’s transport infrastructure, as a whole, is a major asset, notably the continued
expansion of the Airport (second runway opened in 2001), the extension of theMetrolink light rail system to Salford Quays and Eccles in 2000 and the long-awaited completion of the M60 orbital motorway (2000). Future success also depends on educational and technological institutions, and the city benefits from the presence of the four local
universities creating the largest ‘university campus’ in Western Europe and one of its
major centres of advanced teaching and research in science and technology.
Local confidence in the city’s future remains high. The extent to which the devastation
caused by the IRA bomb was turned to the city’s own advantage and the ambition exemplified in the international games strategy both serve to demonstrate the ability of local
forces to engineer an escape route from industrial decline. Part of this is the attempt toreinvent Manchester as a post-modern, cosmopolitan, international city. The extent towhich the city and the region can adapt to the pressures of the 21st century will greatly depend upon the success of this re-branding.The process still has far to go. However,in negotiating the future under conditions of globalisation, Manchester is well served byits past history of economic and cultural connections with Europe and the wider world.
First published in:Alan Kidd, Manchester,Town and City Histories, series, Edinburgh University
Press, Manchester 2002--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Manchester Evening News, October 1, 1993, in: A. Cochrane, J. Peck and A.Tickell, Manchester plays games:

2

S. Quilley, Manchester first: from municipal socialism to the entrepreneurial city, in: International Journal of

3

J. Borja and M. Castells, Local and Global: Management of Cities in the Information Age, United Nations

4

Manchester 2000: Economic Benefits and Opportunities of the Olympic Games, in: Cochrane et al,

Exploring the local politics of globalisation, in: Urban Studies, 33 (1996), p. 1,327
Urban and Regional Research, 24/2000, pp. 601–615
Centre for Human Developments, 1997, pp. 93–108, esp. p. 98
Manchester plays games, p. 329
5

J. Peck and A. Tickell, Business goes local: dissecting the ‘business agenda’, in: Manchester, International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 19/1995

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester in Prospect

6

II | 74

P. Loftman and B. Nevin, Going for growth: prestige projects in three British cities, Urban Studies, 33/1996,
pp. 991–1019; M. Hebbert and I. Deas, Greater Manchester — up and going?, in: Policy and Politics 28/2000,
pp. 79–92

7

Sir David Trippier, Marketing Manchester: the promotion of the city region nationally and internationally,in: Manchester Memoirs, 135/1996–1997, pp. 47–54; I. Deas and K. Ward, From the ‘new localism’ to the‘new regionalism’? The implications of regional development agencies for city-regional relations, in: Political
Geography, 19/2000, pp. 273–292; M. Hebbert and I. Deas, Greater Manchester — up and going?

8

P. Malone, The mending of Manchester, in: Urban Design Quarterly, 61; G. Williams, Rebuilding the entrepreneurial city: the master planning response to the bombing of Manchester city centre, in: Environment
and Planning B: Planning and Design, 27/2000, pp. 485–505.

9

Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Lancashire I,The Industrial and Commercial South, Penguin, 1969,
p. 282; See also John Archer’s assessment of the Hall and current conversion plans in Clare Hartwell,
Manchester, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Penguin, 2001, pp. 92–95

10

The City Council expects the city centre population to be over 10,000 by 2002.

11

P. Hindle, The influence of the Gay Village on migration to central Manchester, in: The North West

12

K. Milestone, Sites of sounds: spaces of pop culture in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, in: The North West

Geographer, 3/2000, pp. 21–28
Geographer, 2/2000, pp. 31–39
13

Manual Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwells, Oxford second edition, 2000

14

Manchester City Council, Cultural Strategy Consultation Draft, June 200115

For an assessment of the issues, see Penny Fraser: Social and spatial relationships and the ‘problem’ innercity: Moss Side in Manchester, in: Critical Social Policy, 49/1996, pp. 43–65

16

R. Ramwell and H. Saltburn, Trick or Treat? City Challenge and the Regeneration of Hulme, North British

17

Manchester City Council, The Manchester Community Strategy: Competing in the Global Economy, section

Housing Association, Preston, 1998
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II | 75--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------HYPOCRITICAL CITY:CYCLES OF URBAN EXCLUSION
Rosemary Mellor-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------”I know very well that this hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great cities… I have never seen so tender a concealment of everything that might affront theeye and the nerves.” (Friedrich Engels in 1844)
The classic presentation of Manchester is still that of Engels, who as a young migrant over
150 years ago used his insights into industrialising England to present a critique of theindustrial capitalist order. As an outsider, from a craft-workshop industrial town in the
Rhineland, he was able to develop his observations and the surveys and commentaries
of his contemporaries — doctors, scientists and businessmen — into an analysis of cityand society. The Condition of the Working Class in England was written between September
1844 and March 1845 and first published in England in 1892; it is both a founding Marxist
text and the first attempt at an analysis of industrial urbanisation.
What Engels pinpointed was not the factory system, but the conditions of living and association in the new-style city. These included the city-centre slums, notably Little Ireland;
the terraced cottages, short leasehold property built with single brick walls on bare earth;
the expansion of the commercial buildings in the urban core over both slums andGeorgian houses to form a distinct business district; the migration of the ‘money aristocracy’ to the suburban villas outside the dense knot of districts housing the ‘operatives’; thesystem of road-building which allowed the moneyed to come in and out of the city centre ‘without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to theleft and right’.That the elite of Manchester, the liberal manufacturers, could be so assured
that the working class was ”doing famously” while in such squalor indicated a hypocrisyin ”the matter of this sensitive method of construction” (Engels 1969: 79–81).
Central Manchester was then and for many decades subsequently the nerve centre of aregional production system — hence its designation as ‘Cottonopolis’. City and region
have gone through several phases since. In Engels’ own lifetime, the business core was toexpand over the city-centre slums as it maintained its monopoly over world trade in cotton. Only 30 years after his death did this control ebb, so that ultimately the productionof cotton textiles in North West England became negligible and the warehouses and merchants’ offices in the city centre redundant. Similarly, improvements to public health weresoon to be enforced and the worst of the workers’ houses were demolished or improved
before 1900. The extension of powers to local authorities and the levying of increased
local rates enabled extensive reforms to the infrastructure of the city and ultimately its
wholesale rebuilding in the 20th century.The great gain was the extension of the right ofaccess to decent housing and suburban living to the ‘operatives’ through the mandatory
provision of housing by local authorities after 1919. But, by the close of the millennium, thetransfer of responsibility from the ‘liberal bourgeoisie’ castigated by Engels (themselves, andmany of their wives and families devoting much money, time and attention to the amelioration of living conditions) to the local authorities had resulted in a far greater detachmentof ordinary people from investment decisions and policy-making. The great gains of thepast century and a half must not be understated. Indications of poverty now include lackof self-contained dwelling, no television or refrigerator, as well as frustration of children’sMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Hypocritical City

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expectations of toys, trips and treats. If the surveys conducted for the Ministry of Housing
and Local Government in Oldham in the 1960s are re-read, or the photographs of inner
Manchester or Salford at the same time are re-viewed, then it is obvious that poverty now
is a very different everyday experience. It is less a matter of survival (hypothermia, damp,
chronic malnutrition), more a question of comfort in the home, proper family life, andinclusion in the society’s common existence. If Manchester is a ‘dual’ city, one likened by anational newspaper’s property correspondent (Clark 2000) to a ‘Third World city’ in its
juxtaposition of inner-city poverty and abandonment with the concentrated investment in
the central area, then its dualism is of a different quality from that observed by Engels.
A counter-theme to this broad tide of progressive reform, peaking after the two worldwars and reconsidered since 1979, is to be found in the cycles of expansion, recession
and restructuring which have characterised the industrial economy. These have resulted
in a regional economy which confers affluence on a minority, sufficiency if not comfort
for the majority, in most cases without the rigours of lifelong industrial labour. Manchester,assessed either as city or city-region, has long ceased to be preponderantly industrial. But
it still has, as in Engels’ days, a reservoir of unskilled and underemployed people, very
often debilitated by generations of poverty and hardship, many concentrated in the urban
core districts. With the renaissance of the city centre, some are at work in the low-paid
casual jobs generated by the leisure economy, some on a career path, but the differential
is unmistakable. Much has shifted, but social inequalities are still concentrated in the city
— and the dualism is pronounced.
In the light of this, can it be said that Manchester of the new millennium evinces any of
the hypocrisy of the raw years of capitalist urbanisation castigated by Engels? After all, fordecades, both the Council and national leadership have been pledged to the improvement of the city for its people.The argument here is that the priorities for the post-war
reconstruction of Manchester have indeed showed selectivity and bias which can bedeemed insensitive if not hypocritical.This was most conspicuous in the clearance of theslums after 1955 and the comprehensive redevelopment schemes that destroyed the oldworking-class city. In these, absolute priority was given to improvement of city-centre
accessibility by road. In consequence, the arterial roads through Salford and South
Manchester scythe through old neighbourhoods, destroying their local centres, and thereplacement housing was stacked up in forbidding tower blocks since rejected by conventional households. Britain led the world in public-sector redevelopment (Mellor1977), but the new building was presented in terms of ‘punctuation of the skyline’ or ‘newtowns for old’, that is, revamping and modernisation to attract investment or secure business rank for that town or city. It also perpetuated the schism between the poor and theothers: only the poorest were unable to live in cottage-style houses, rather than flats constructed in a forbidding style. To justify this renewal programme in terms of modernisation showed social ignorance as deep as that of the first phase of Manchester’s development. People’s health and comfort were improved, but at a cost.
More recently, and conspicuously, in the 1990s there was a renewed attempt at remaking Manchester.This time there was a business-leisure agenda in which the cosmetic presentation of the city centre was crucial. In this the poorer people of Manchester (whose
only centre it is) have no role.To the investors they represent what a city should not be— untidy, shabby, without money, liable to crime.This reclamation of the city centre for alife-style whose motifs are boats (on the Irwell), bars and bistros, supplemented by boutiques and balls (in St Ann’s Square), is typical of city centres throughout the developed
economies; Manchester is one among many.The peculiarities of Manchester are the scaleof the poverty-belt enveloping the urban playground, the reality of it being the home oflast resort for the entire city-region and beyond, and also its 200-year history.

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The presentation in this chapter of this latest phase in the city’s modernisation is in threeparts. First it covers the re-conquest of the centre for leisure, before it moves on to
examine the value of a city-centre location to the regional business economy, and third,
it ends on the continuing denial of the city to the poor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CONSUMING MANCHESTERThe refashioning of the city centre stems from its local plan, whose publication in 1980
coincided with the calamitous downturn in the region’s industrial economy in 1979–1982.
The city centre of Manchester had dominated commercial labour markets in the conurbation.There were 167,000 employed in its 1.5 square miles in 1961, approximately 14%of the employment total of Greater Manchester. This had fallen to 98,000, 8.6% of thetotal, by 1977 (MCC 1980a).There was then evident a massive erosion of the urban coreeconomy.The basis of the decline was fivefold: the city had ceased to be the nerve centre for world trade in cotton textiles; its role as provincial business centre was diminishing; it was no longer host to wholesale food markets; its industries were closing; and it
was ceasing to be the town centre for the local population, which itself was much depleted by clearance (MCC 1980b).The labour force was to retract further as printing presses, warehouses and insurance companies decentralised in the next decade: for example,
Manchester Evening News closed its printworks in Deansgate and relocated its work to
Trafford Park.
The one comparative study of regional centres concluded that the Manchester region,
with few affluent residents in the inner core, no effective public transport system serving
the central area and ‘strong’ suburbanisation of office development, posed particular
problems for the city centre (Greater Manchester Council 1985). Subsequent policies
have been framed within this context of European disadvantage. The new thinking
switched attention to exploiting the city centre’s heritage as the cradle of the Industrial
Revolution and its legacies as ‘the last and greatest of the Hanseatic towns — a civilisation created by traders’ (Taylor 1976: 208). During the 1980s, the major achievements
were the establishment of the museums at Castlefield and the promotion of an urban
heritage park, the reconstruction of Central Station as an exhibition centre and massforum (G-Mex), the reopening of the two oldest theatres, investment in city centre hotels
and the tourist attraction at Granada Studios. Later, on recovery from the crash in thecommercial property market in 1990-91, there were to be two subsidised ‘landmark’developments — at Victoria Station and the Bridgewater development on the south side— before the concerted efforts to rebuild the core to the retail district and extend it
northwards after the IRA bomb in 1996 (Williams). There have also been more hotels,
leisure complexes on Deansgate and Oxford Road, the creation of a ‘gay village’ and aburst of investment in city centre housing.The city centre is now an esteemed model forthe renaissance of British cities (Rogers 1999).
First a heritage industry (Hewison 1987) was implanted in the city centre, then an economy with the panache of a holiday camp (or Mediterranean resort) was promoted in thearchaic shell of the old city centre. Archaeology — the reconstruction of the Roman fort,
industrial history — the conversion of the world’s oldest passenger station and its warehouses into a fine industrial museum, architecture — the renovation of the palatial mercantile headquarters of the textile firms into hotels and the ambience of canal and riverside — have all been promoted as conferring an aura of historic particularity on an otherwise inaccessible and uninviting environment. Local enthusiasts were vital in the earlystages in demonstrating the palatability of ‘heritage’; as decisive were the activities of local
entrepreneurs, such as Tom Bloxham at Urban Splash, with a passion for revitalising theold city. They showed what was possible, that there was a market for the artefacts andMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Hypocritical City

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ambience derived from the past. Eventually, as tides of property capital swept through allcity centres, this enthusiasm was lost in the presentation of Manchester as the city of the
new millennium.
The interests in regeneration of the city centre were diverse. There was Central
Government, pledged to the social and political reclamation of the inner cities; the construction industry deterred by the cost of greenfield sites and finding access to themslowed by planning controls; the financial institutions with substantial long-term investments in city-centre property; individuals and trusts adding to their property portfolios;
businesses (including the banks) with freehold or long leasehold interests at stake.There
was a business community fearing for its future as second-tier centre in Britain. As well,there was the local authority, deprived of central government support, facing diminishedlocal revenue and influence. By 1989 there was a fledgling coalition of public agencies andprivate interests generating an alternative vision of urban life and labour in a modernised
city. As the agenda was set by the need to regenerate markets in property, it inevitably
marginalised those whose access to markets was restricted.
All the efforts of the 1990s were to represent the city, as in the Commonwealth Gamesbid, as one of “Europe’s most exciting and energetic places” (City Pride Strategic PlanningGroup 1994). Since the initiation of the first Olympic bid in 1985 by a group from thebusiness sector (Cochrane) and the establishment of the Development Corporation in
1988, the City Council then endorsed a property-led regeneration strategy. Subsequently,
the submissions for the Olympics and other global sporting competitions attracted muchmedia attention. A vocabulary and policy prescription for the city’s regeneration has percolated through to public opinion and become accepted as the commonsense appraisalof the way forward.This ‘script’, articulated by the local authority, is ”shared and adhered
to by actors in all aspects of urban regeneration: a script which crosses institutional anddepartmental lines” (Quilley). It keeps the city ‘on the move’ and legitimises its destiny,
and it aligns with recent sociological writing which argues that the status and future healthof cities depend on the emerging pattern of information flows (Castells 1994, 1997; Lashand Urry 1994). This script enables fusion between the strategies of cultural promotion
and business reinvestment; it is also reflected in the emphasis on a small-scale mesh of
public spaces in the re-planning of the bomb-damaged retail core. The ideas are widely
disseminated: ‘the future of the city is very much tied up with information, with eventsand happenings, and with the city’s information base’ (Robson, B., quoted in City Life, June1997).
The most remarked feature of Manchester’s transformation has been the ascendancy ofthe leisure industry. It is evident in the promotion of the arts and the cultural industries.
Over two decades, public initiative has moved from the serious-minded recreation ofCastlefield to the construction of a single building — the Urbis Centre — simulating the
grand sweep of urban endeavour in history. Dominating public perception is the idea ofthe 24-hour city, first floated tentatively by architects and developers at the beginning of
the 1990s, received with suspicion by many (including the police), then, with the relaxation of licensing and the encouragement of residential developments, becoming theleitmotif of urban regeneration. A philosophy of urbanity, in which the city district (orquarter) should offer everything needed for daily existence, was to frame the policy
guidelines.Work and leisure, private and public life, day and night, were to be synthesised;
all the accepted break-points and boundaries cast away. Cumulatively this pointed to a
civilised lifestyle and the presentation of Manchester as “Glamchester” (Vogue, November1997) and a model for urban regeneration in Europe.
All this had been presaged by the French philosopher-sociologist, Henri Lefebvre, who
three decades ago observed the construction of the Pompidou Centre on the site of

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Paris’s food markets. He wrote then: “leisure is becoming an industry of prime importance.We have conquered for leisure the sea, the mountains and even the deserts.Thereis now a process of reintegration of space at the heart of the cities” (Lefebvre 1970: 265).
But the regional centre of Manchester cannot emulate Paris. It has neither the cultural
wealth of French heritage, nor the undisputed status of a national business centre. So,
whereas in Paris leisure investment has to compete for space in the city with either business or heritage interests, in Manchester leisure uses are increasingly the only contenders
for what were once prime positions.The centre is being transformed into a series of playgrounds; the development sequence vindicates Harvey’s claim that cities are subject to“the capitalisation of spaces of representation ... constructed spaces for ritual enjoyment
in the crowd” (Harvey 1990: 262). And yet for all the emphasis on ‘fun and games’, on
cultural promotion as the basis of the renaissance, there is another aspect: that of thesymbiosis of business and leisure. If Manchester is to retain its role as regional centre (andits claim to Euro-city status), the conversion of the semi-derelict buildings and vacant
spaces into something appealing, if not glamorous, must be promoted.
One development symbolises the complementarity of interests, and also their limitations.
The Bridgewater complex is the flagship for the business community and new home forthe city’s orchestras, including the Hallé, for so long a symbol of Manchester’s worth as acity. Designed by a London architect, with sculpture commissioned from a Japanese,
offices and concert hall cluster round a relic from the past, a canal basin reclaimed froma wasteland car-park. It was crucial in the reorientation of the ‘half square mile’ of the business centre southwards and in attracting further investors. But even this, initiated byproperty developers and the managing partner of the largest law firm, only went ahead
after years of negotiation, three-way subsidy from the EU,Whitehall and the City Council
for the concert hall and a package occupancy agreement by leading professional firms. In
the property market, the demand is for shopping and leisure for regional mass markets,
not commercial offices, nor elite culture (Williams).
In all this there was inconsistency and incongruency with everyday realities. First of all,there was tension between the promotional rhetoric and the capacity to realise the setting
for this urbane lifestyle. The city’s infrastructure was old, the revenue of the statutory
agencies limited and commercial investors hesitant.There was also a mythical element in
the promotional campaigns: this urbane vision presents plazas as more important thanmotorways, cafes than conference catering, and life in the crowd as more significant thanprivate transactions. The designation of defunct tracts in the city centre as public arenas
was to be the rationale for regeneration strategies that had to reincorporate a degradedenvironment into a modern society. Urbanity masks the development realities: expensive
land, high costs of renovation or site recapture and marketing difficulties.
The transformation of the sunken giant, a sad relic of Britain’s imperial and industrial past,
into the ‘cool’ or ‘vibrant’ playground is a manifestation of a general process of reconquestof space in the urban cores and their regrading. In the cycle of urban property investment, the moment has come for reclamation of previously developed land and buildings:
a rent-gap has opened between potential, or speculative, values of prestigious new buildings and the values conferred by previous use. The partnership between business community and state agencies depended on a consensus that ”bricks and mortar, regeneration, flagship developments and place marketing” (Quilley 1999: 244) would facilitate this”reimagineering” (Rutheiser 1996) which will further the restructuring of the regional
economy. It is ever more the case that the priorities of finance capital, realised in andthrough the speculative development process, dominate the uses made of cities (Harvey1977).

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II | 80-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CITY-CENTRE BUSINESSESManchester’s business community comprises specialised financial and professional services,many of which are not available elsewhere in the north west. Some firms, such as the
major accountancy or insurance companies, provide the skills needed ‘in-house’; others
rely on a network of referrals for complementary services.This can be termed the ‘business-service complex’, following the discussions of Andy Leyshon (1989) and Saskia
Sassen (1994, 1996). All of these emphasise the crucial role of such complexes in contemporary cities.They are regional (if not national or global) facilities; they retain central
city bases (for reasons which are discussed below).
In Manchester the business-service complex is not especially important in sustaining thegloss and glamour of the city centre. Partners and staff undoubtedly do use lunch-timefacilities, but most of the younger staff take sandwiches to their desks, and very few
indeed go to the concert-hall, the theatres, or participate in the night-life. Many do thegreater part of their ‘choice’ shopping in the outer suburbs where they expect to live.
Although the purchasing power of the business service professionals is high, the city centre
captures relatively little of it. The working hours are too long, the work too demanding
to encourage more central city use or residence. The business-service complex does
occupy ‘City’-style buildings, especially the newest ones, giving that aura of commercial
prosperity to the regional core. Rhetorically, could Manchester present itself as a significant
city without the imposing office buildings it now has? Would hotel towers and apartment
blocks substitute?
Nor does promoting the glamour city directly benefit the business-service firms or theirworkforce. Accessibility suffers, car parking charges increase, cherished venues for lunch
or after-hours’ sociability disappear to be either redeveloped or remodelled, nearly all theworkforce live elsewhere and the better qualified have neither the time nor inclination
to spend the valued hours outside work in the city centre.The leisure developments feed
off mass popular culture rather than elite tastes (the Hallé has struggled to survive financially). Arts and corporate business do not feed off each other as in New York or Los
Angeles (Davis 1990; Harvey 1990; Zukin 1988). But the second-tier American cities, suchas Detroit, Atlanta, St. Louis, Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, present a ghastly vision of what
could happen to the accumulated investment in central business districts if there were
no decisive action. The American experience was of office towers enveloped in urban
wastelands or ravaged ghettos, urban core economies abandoned as business and people
trickled to the suburbs. In contrast, there has been the happier European precedent ofcarefully-tended buildings and spaces for well-groomed people in urbane settings, all thisas the setting for business.
The business community of cities such as Manchester is not large enough to make fulluse of existing buildings, much less generate the investment for polished rebuilding. Oneof the world’s major industrial regions can no longer sustain its business centre on thatscale: something has to supplement it in the urban core. If the cluster of professional business and financial services that constitute the business community was to retain its city
centre status, then there had to be an eclectic strategy for the rebuilding of the city centre.
Only thus could the regional economy retain what the prominent urban theorist, Castells(1994: 27) termed “the economic engine of the city in the informational global economy”.
The designation is misleading, however, in that the business-service complex is the‘engine’, not of the city, but of the region. Within the North West its influence is disproportionate to both its employment capacity (although that in the professional firms has
increased greatly since 1995) and its direct contribution to regional wealth. There is noclear rationale for its being in the city, at its centre. The conditions that brought it into

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being in the first half of the 19th century — poor communications and the need for faceto-face contact in mastering volatile global markets — have evaporated.
The following discussion considers its role as this regional ‘engine’ and the issue of its central location within Manchester. Why is it that so much of the region’s business is facilitated by firms in the urban core — as it was in Engels’ day — when accessibility and communication are so different? The interview data that the following discussion draws on
are derived from a survey conducted in 1998 in which 34 senior partners of professionalfirms in six sectors of the business-services complex, as well as ten representatives of theprofessions and key spokespeople, were interviewed.The six sectors were those of commercial law, accountancy, business finance, advertising and design, the actuarial profession
and architecture. In addition, there were 70 interviews with employees in the firms headed by these partners or directors.The themes discussed here constituted only one section of the interviews (see Devine et al. 2000). Opinions were expressed vigorously, withskill and fluency; cumulatively, a most illuminating presentation was given of working life in
the business community and of its prospects.
Manchester is unusual in that it was once a world city, moreover, one which had in its hinterland a world industrial region — northern England.The retraction of the business centre has been lengthy — its heyday was 1920; the city has long lost its global significanceas a transactional centre. Similarly, the attrition of provincial autonomy — fully operationalat the beginning of the 19th century — has continued. Metropolitan dominance, that is,
the golden circle of London, is pervasive. It affects the location of headquarters (70% of
those in the UK are located in the south east), access to finance, and the location of thebusiness-service professions.There is also the threat of the ‘edge’ city (Garreau 1991): thebusiness parks and office developments of the suburbs, airport or satellite towns so much
more accessible to workforce and clients than the old urban core. With the investment
in infrastructure — motorways, rail link to the airport and the expansion of the airport
itself — the pressure to suburbanise Manchester intensifies. However, it is still of inestimable significance to the regional economy — fostering its development and maximising its potential for growth. Its value is evident in four respects — investment, know-how,wealth and careers.
Finance: the city has the headquarters of all the locally active financial institutions with thepower to make significant decisions and assemble financial syndicates, and they can callon all the associated services to do so. The business-services complex mediates muchinvestment from within and without the region. It is the skills of the professionals which
speed up business transactions, their knowledge that smoothes over the difficulties, theircommitment that effects the deal. They are responsive to the needs of local businessbecause it is the latter’s strength that will generate future fee income (Pritchard 1997:
323–355); they are promoters of entrepreneurship.
Know-how: through the 1990s, the concentration of professional, specialised services at
the urban core was the node for the restructuring of the regional economy, building on
innovation within it, and for the promotion of business efficiency. Globalisation opened
up opportunities for this business-services complex; not only has the attention of London
firms been diverted internationally, but the regional firms can also act as mediators andfacilitators for regional entrepreneurs.There is a distinct interest in promoting the effectiveness and the profitability of their business. Those with local orientation are taking awider view of possibilities and a longer-term commitment to the business they had initiated. In sum, ”good quality financial and business services play a major role as catalysts,
helping to ensure that economic opportunities are identified, structured into fundable
projects and supported by high quality advice and services” (Wood and Clifford 1993: 5).
So the commercial lawyers, accountants and venture capitalists have a direct hand in

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furthering the development of new technologies and maximising the returns from skilledindustrial management (Leyshon 1989).
These activities are as crucial to the viability of the region as they are to promotion of
the regional core as a European business city.The region is being incorporated into extraregional circuits of capital, even globalised, but while there is a strong local complex ofbusiness services, the locally generated economy has potential.
Wealth: many of the UK’s wealthiest people live in the region, which is important for local
economies. However, the impact of this wealth is diffused in that the demand of the professional workforce is for rural, small town or suburban living. Consumption is directedaway from the urban core and it is not a major element in its regeneration.
Careers: there is the direct reward of employment in the sector — highly-paid professionals, graduate trainees and white-collar support staff, many highly experienced. The
business services sector provides opportunities for the ‘creme de la creme’, the educated entrants to the labour force, to stay in their chosen region, so checking the brain drain
to London. More of the universities’ output can be absorbed, as well as the aspiring young
people of the region.
The distinguishing feature of Manchester as a business centre is its vitality at the turn ofthe millennium. In the interviews conducted in 1998, there was satisfaction that participants in the city business nexus had done more than hold the established complex ofservices against competition from either London or other regional centres: they had
actively rebuilt it. A common estimation was that the regional core had established acompetitive, intensely working, respected and profitable array of business services increasingly dominated by the large firms. There was considerable evidence of increasedsalaries and partners’ fees, extra recruitment, increase in turnover, extension of services
and upgrading of offices and investment in new buildings. The spokespersons for thebusiness community argued that it had the skills, resources and capacity to cater for thebusiness needs of the immediate region of almost seven million people, this in itself
exceeding that of several of the member-states in the EU. The current consensus wasthat, as in other regions, dependence on London was diminishing and the city was now
a full-service centre able to tackle a much greater complexity of business than ten years
previously. The long shadow of London is paler — though difficult to remove entirely
because Manchester remains a regional business centre in a national economy that isclosely integrated.
To an extent, therefore, Manchester is a factor in the new regionalism evident throughout Europe. If the supremacy of the national capitals is being dented, then there may be
a ”renewal of the role of regions and cities as loci of autonomy and decision making” for”major cities throughout Europe constitute the nerve system of the economy and thepolitical system of the Continent” (Castells 1994: 27–28). Castells’s argument, echoingthat of many others, relates as much to the cultural and political assertiveness seen incities such as Barcelona and Bilbao, Thessalonika or Frankfurt, as the balance changes
between national centres and their regional satellites in the provision of business services.
However, if there is a ‘re-regionalisation’ in England or the North West in a longcentralised nation-state, it is based on much shallower foundations than elsewhere (Jonesand MacLeod). Nor has the evaluation of the international business community yet shifted.The realistic assessment from the Manchester Business and Professional Forum is still:In that sense, whatever the expertise of this eccentric who happened to live in the city,
however good he was, he would be the exception rather than the rule, and the disdain
they have for their colleagues in Lille, Marseilles or Bordeaux or wherever, would beshared by those in London. Therefore, in fact, they could only choose people of theirstanding (Director, Association of European Financial Centres, 1998).

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The conventional explanation of clustering in central locations revolves round double
access to a central place: that of firms to a specialised labour force and clients to firms.
These were not the explanations given by the majority of respondents in these interviews. Access to staff was mentioned, for example by the manager of a large actuarial unit
in an insurance company, situated next to a central railway station. Others referred to theease of finding white-collar support staff. However, it was commonly agreed that theaccessibility of the city centre is poor and that although city centre location could be
attractive to support staff and graduate recruits, more senior staff hated their journey towork, frequently lengthening their working day by travelling early or late in an attempt to
avoid rush hour. It was admitted that congestion deters clients, too, and one aspect of thesensitivity to the demands of clients is willingness to travel to them. In some interviews
it was evident that there was ongoing discussion within firms as to whether a central
location was worthwhile.
The reasons expressed for maintaining a relatively expensive and sometimes inconvenient base for the firm were those of:¬ convenience — access to clients, to place of work (Law Courts), central area institutions (government offices or Town Hall) or technical services,¬ concentration — the cluster of interdependent professional firms in a given area,
expressed either as ‘the community’, or even ‘the village’,¬ conviviality — the opportunities for chat, conversation or more systematic cultivationof information and¬ credibility — firms would lose standing in their sector of activity if they located outside the urban core. Not only would they be seen to be detaching themselves fromthe networks of information, but from association with the key participants in theirsector.
For many firms, although it may be convenient to be in walking distance of associate firms,
there is something more at stake. One accountant who considered moving out to Salford
Quays chose to stay in the more expensive Manchester City Centre location in part due
to the ”belief that we should be near the bankers, the solicitors”. They went on to add,
”We have a lot of contacts in Manchester City Council, a lot of bankers out there, head
offices out there, all the solicitors are here. We just felt we ought to be in the business
community.” (Accountant, private sector corporation, 1998). Another accountant reinforced the sense that being ”in and amongst it” has broad material and non-material
returns to corporations: ”It’s just a perception I suppose that Manchester is a main
centre that keeps professionals concentrated within the area. Not just accountants —there are bankers, lawyers. It basically has a financial centre here. It is a necessity to be
attached to that, because of the need to benefit from meeting other professionals.”(Accountant, private sector corporation, 1998)
The reiterated, over-arching theme is that of ‘being in the business community’. There isan intricate structure of referral work; not only does each firm in each sector have its regular co-referees,‘little circuits of activity’, they will from time to time need specialised consultants.With technical refinement there is ever-greater need of interpretation and mediation between professions. In principle, this advice and consultation need not be in thecity centre; in practice, in commercially-driven competitive markets, being at the centre,
in this community, is seen as crucial.
It has been something of a mystery why the ‘new production complexes’ such as
Manchester’s are maintained in the city centre. As Sassen says, ”according to standard
conceptions about information industries, the rapid growth and disproportionate concentration of producer services in central cities should not have happened” (Sassen,
1994: 65–66). She advances a succinct rationale in terms of ”the joint production of

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certain service offerings”, the ”needs and expectations of the people likely to be
employed in these new high-skill jobs” and the nature of the production of these services that requires ”multiple simultaneous inputs and feedbacks”. In a regional centre, theemphasis has to be shifted: firstly, to take account of the mutual support and trust necessary in the more vulnerable setting: all gain advantage from the co-operative proximity of mutually servicing firms. And secondly, to give recognition to the social dynamics
which underpin locational choices. These affect all, employees, partners and firms, irrespective of the intensity of gaining a contract, servicing a client or doing a deal.
Manchester’s professional firms are gaining advantage because they work together; they
can do so because of the spatial convenience, the years of chance encounters and themore formal social occasions.They know their associates and know they can trust them.
And that trust is underpinned by sharing the same city location:
I think there is also the psychology. If we suddenly told all the professionals we weremoving out of Manchester ... they’d say ‘Oh, that’s nice for you. Have a nice short journey
to work’ and they’d never speak to you again.” (Senior banker, corporate finance, 1998).
Equally, within this business-services complex, firms seek competitive advantage
through their contacts and their cultivation of the local information circuits. The
clustering in a relatively limited tract of the regional core aids the cultivation of oftenfragile connections. Hence the awareness of the casual contact: ”“If you walk thestreets at lunchtime and you go into various watering holes you can bump into
people which you don’t outside the city centre ... Being near each other and bumping into people, it’s more of a social than a real business need ... But there is an argument for seeing people, you bump into them, you lunch with them and so on.”(Actuary, 1998).
Also, paradoxically, the new entrepreneurialism, breaking up domination by institutions ormonopoly firms, accentuates localism. Whether firms are breaking into a field or struggling to hold their position, there is the acute need for information. As one executive ina venture capital firm, recruited to establish a Manchester office the year before the interview, acknowledged: ”The investing end of our business is increasingly getting more andmore of a local game … It’s hard to do it from 200 miles away, and it’s a hell of a lot easier if you’re on the doorstep, you get to see things you wouldn’t otherwise see and you
get to see things earlier.” (Senior executive, venture capital corporation, 1998).
Conviviality, being a member of a business community, becomes all the more necessary
for firms exposed to risk. Absent from accounts focusing on the global centres such as
London is this dimension of competition in actively contested and re-framed markets.
Moreover, if we are to understand central city domination of professional businessservices, then we have to engage with the corporate culture in which centrality signifies
success. It is evident in the reluctance of overseas or London client firms to deal with
North West business-service firms away from the centre of the region. So a law firm relocating from Stafford saw its move as due to pressure from clients, stressing that ”it was
important to them for us to be in Manchester and this echoes what many of our national clients want”. Another firm moving from Liverpool justified its decision in similar terms.
The social referencing is as evident in the choice between more accessible sites in thesuburbs, or at Salford Quays, and the increasingly grid-locked city centre: ”If we want tobe a commercial player we have to be here and none of us would think of going anywhere else now and taking the firm anywhere else, it wouldn’t work, we wouldn’t be seen
to be seriously interested in commercially based work.” (Banker, corporate finance, 1998)

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The social gravitational effect of the elite firms has not changed. At the core of the corporate culture is the mystique and excitement of the major transaction, the deal which
generates a whirl of documents rushed by hand from office to office, the late evening
working in the lawyers’ offices on transactions and the resulting profit. Something of thesuccess and the excitement is experienced vicariously by the other associated activities
in the cluster. Even if few can attain or contribute to the major deals, maintaining thisproximity, marked by the same post-codes, is essential to the firm’s reputation in its own
field. ”I think for as long as we are here (in the city centre) any of the other major firms
will want to be where we are. Not because we’re ‘X’ but because we are one of the
major players.” (Senior partner, large law firm, 1998)
The interesting question is why lead firms not only stay but take on new and costly premises on lengthy leases in city centre locations which clients and staff find it arduous toreach. The answer is straightforward: ”It was quite deliberate in transferring our profile
within the cities and moving to more spectacular and prestigious offices and to makemore of an impact within the city and to show the direction of the firm, that we’re notjust a small local firm but a national firm with offices to rival the London firms ... We arenumber 14 in the top 20 national law firms so we don’t want to portray an image thatsays we are a small regional firm.” (Managing partner, large law firm, 1998)
The message is clear: if global and national business-services firms cluster at the core of
the world’s transactional centres, then so must the key firms in the regions.The corollaryof that principle is that Manchester must look and feel good to outsiders. However, in acity with an extended commercial core dating from a period of dominance in markets
beyond the region, the more compact business-services sector whose operations arelargely limited to the regional economy cannot alone reinvigorate the city centre.
Investment must be sought from other sectors of the economy. In Britain’s regional centres at the turn of the millennium, this tends to mean the retail and leisure industries. In
consequence, business and play coexist.The principal stockbroker will have offices over asmart café-bar and fashion shop, and glossy offices tower over shopping arcades. The
intensively working world of highly regarded professions is cheek-by-jowl with theappealing life of active streets and newly-engineered public spaces. It is also in sight of theinner city, whose residents’ visibility in the city centre is resented, feared and disliked.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EXCLUDING THE POOR
There is the city enveloping the revitalised core — poor Manchester, a city of uncertain
employment, lifetime poverty, chronic ill-health and educational disadvantage. The urban
core is notoriously poor; the local authority is repeatedly at the head of the national
league for the proportion of children living in poverty, those born to unsupported mothers, indicators of welfare support and death-rates (Herd and Patterson). Much of this isconcentrated in a poverty belt around the city centre, the same districts internationallynotorious for their ill-health a century ago and, because of their rebuilding in slum clearance programmes, now taking on the additional stigma of ‘inner city’.The linkage between
the two is long-standing: as regions industrialised, the slums in and around core business
districts housed the poorest of the poor looking for employment to depots and warehouses, gasworks and building sites, laundries and public services — all rough manual
labour. These notoriously unhealthy neighbourhoods, densely built, tightly occupied andheavily polluted, had therefore a symbiotic relationship with the regional centre — a relationship which was broken by the withering away of the central economy. Its restructuring from the handling of goods to information, along with the decline in routine jobs inshops and offices, disadvantages the unskilled, men and people of colour.

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Currently every stratagem is being deployed to tie the city centre into a cosmopolitan
circuit of work and play intended to maximise its appeal to investors, so enhancing its
image as the front stage for the region.The functional relationships of the inner city are,however, very different: it constitutes a regional pool of low-cost housing, a staging post
for newcomers to the city, a place where poor people feel at home and the site of informal industries such as drug-dealing and prostitution, as well as — more formally — thecheap labour industries of food-processing and clothing.The circumstances that brought
this stigmatised space in proximity to the city centre have gone.While some of this space
may be integrated into the ‘Euro-city’, the discontinuity between cosmopolitanism andpoverty will be accentuated.
Yet both cosmopolitan and poor are users of the central city, and indeed the latter
depend on it.The only accessible banks, principal shopping centre, market place, sourcesof entertainment and relaxation, even the venue for marriages are there. For many it is
the only place to sit out, to be part of public life, to be in the turbulence of the crowd.
For the many who never holiday, it gives a window on another life. So the seats in the
shopping streets and public gardens are sought after by the elderly, hopeless, extended
families and the lonely. And, as well, there are the shoplifters, pickpockets, ‘plastic’ fraudsters and the professional car-thieves staking out the car parks. (The indicators of notoriety for the city include ‘staggeringly’ high retail crime, use of stolen credit cards and cartheft.) And too there are the underground (and not poor) networks centring on the city’snightclubs and bars. Menacingly, hoodlums also target lone men in the ‘gay village’ andrevellers leaving the clubs. All these are as much an element of the ‘showcase city’ as thesmartly dressed crowds, night or day. The urban core is open to all comers; it does nothave the defensible space of the purpose-built shopping mall, leisure centre or country
club.
Efforts have been made to provide for this poor city, but does a Ferris wheel in Piccadilly
Gardens or a small fair in Albert Square compensate for the redevelopment of the oldmarket, the loss of cheap retail outlets or the paucity of sitting-out space? Upgrading thelook of the city means reinvestment from the private sector and therefore a change ofclientele and the dispossession of those with the lowest consumer potential. Also, revealingly, it means the sacrifice of its heritage to ‘abstract’, that is, ‘merchandised’ and homogeneous space (Lefebvre 1979: 293). Changes in designation and design of three placesin the city centre indicate the inevitability of dispossession.The first is the conversion of
the Corn Exchange after it was shattered by the IRA bomb in 1996. Before, alternativetraders and craftspeople clustered there with their stalls, popular with ‘drop-out’ youth;
now, refurbished in style, and with an ultra-modish plaza outside, it is renamed The
Triangle, and marketed for expensive boutiques. Secondly, there is the dismantling andmeticulous rebuilding of the two pubs from Shambles Square in an entirely different location and the associated loss of the public space as an unnoticed sun trap for casual
drinkers.Thirdly, there is the scheme proposed for ”putting the pride back into Piccadilly”(MCC 1999c), redesigning the Gardens so as to enhance the market value of the units
in the adjoining property complex (so losing popular cheap shops), and rescuing it fromits ‘sordid’ image (Coleman 1987). In this last controversial deal, the predominant considerations are those of recouping previous investment and ”creating a welcoming first
impression” (City Council leader Richard Leese quoted in Manchester City Council
1999). So another facet of the city’s heritage is diminished and the poor are further marginalised. The different interests are not reconcilable: in the view of the modernisers,
Manchester’s poor city people should not be there. But, unlike, say French or German
cities, there is nowhere else for them to be in public.The old shopping roads (the same
decried by Engels as concealing the poor districts behind their facades) were destroyed

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in the blitzkrieg of slum-clearance.Their cinemas, snooker or dance-halls, boys’ clubs, pubs,
churches, banks and shops were then replaced by parkways enhancing the approaches
to the business city.Trees there are aplenty, but the institutional foci of local life were obliterated.
If the poor are to lose ‘their’ city centre, then do they gain in other respects? Each of thethree developments listed above is hailed as bringing jobs and opportunities, however
short-term these may be.There are two issues here — the nature of the jobs provided,
and the criteria used for selecting employees. Nationally as much as locally, it is known
that the predominant characteristics of work in the retail sector and all branches of theleisure industry are those of low-skill, low-wage, part-time or casual employment. These
overwhelmingly outnumber skilled or managerial jobs. Many agree that those who live inthe stigmatised inner city do not have access to this work (post-code discrimination) andthose who are categorised as black, irrespective of skill or qualifications, find barriers.The
city-centre workforce of Manchester, like that of Liverpool and unlike that of London, isconspicuously white. Selective, exclusionary, segmented labour markets are the norm.
Racism is one element; enhancing the quality or impact of ‘service’ by style and accent isanother. Whereas rough labour was valued in the centre of ‘Cottonopolis’, presentational
gloss governs selection in ‘Glamchester’.
Cities such as Manchester with its regional core economy of business and leisure demonstrate the power of social divisions of labour which empower some and hinder others inthe scramble for legitimate work. In the leisure sector with its clubs, café bars, hotels,boutiques, entertainment venues and shopping malls, city-centre employers may put apremium on acceptability of manner, dress and accent and not skills.Typically, the employee represents the firm or organisation; the position is a public one. In the business-professional sector, where much of the service work is back-stage, priorities are different.The
critical parameter is the availability of alternative recruits, especially, school pupils and students from the 50,000-strong higher-education sector. If employers can pick and choose
they (can) exaggerate the skill, education, and experience requirements of their jobs.They
use diplomas, or colour, or personal histories as convenient screening devices.Therefore
inner-city residents, even ‘true’ Mancunians, living within sight of the city centre towers,
may be debarred from much of the work in the urbane core.
The problem of Manchester’s poverty cannot be resolved by the makeover of its city
centre. Even if there were not these barriers to employment and there were surer routes
to self-advancement, poor Manchester would still be there. Assessment of the impact ofregeneration policies has been hampered by failure to realise that the reserve of poor
people in the city is replenished by migration. With the exception of the southern student corridor, mobility rates are highest in the poor districts. If and when a household
experiences some success, it moves somewhere better, usually closer to the suburbs, so
relinquishing housing or school places for the next wave of poor. The inner cities now
constitute a national reserve of undesired housing (Power 1999). It is therefore essential
to distinguish between the ‘stock’ of urban poor, its so-called ‘underclass’, and this ‘flow’ inand through the city’s poor housing (see Ward 1988: 65 for a perceptive discussion). No‘landmark’ strategy can succeed if there is not the matching comprehensive investment
to anchor the city’s population.This should include provision and support for the region’s
small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than privately-built housing or supermarkets(as at Hulme). ‘Spot’ treatment of the fabric and services of the city can be rapidly nullified (as clinics, schools and nurseries subject to arson, theft, ram-raids or vandalism knowwell). And to magnify the old discontinuities between city centre and inner city is to jeopardise the security and therefore economic viability of the privileged spaces and glossy
facades of the region’s centre.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Hypocritical City

II | 88-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A JUST CITY?
To say that contemporary Manchester is characterised by hypocrisy is not to say that theneeds of the poor are disregarded at all times and by everybody. There are private
charities which fund hostels for the helpless and many voluntary organisations supporting families in the poorest districts such as Ancoats or Moss Side, the young homeless,drug addicts and others. Charitable fundraising mobilises sociable activity in the business
community as in the suburbs. Since the early 1980s, there has also been substantial public expenditure on the comprehensive reconstruction of districts such as Miles Platting
and Ordsall, then Hulme and now East Manchester.
Nevertheless, this consideration for the disadvantaged is not evinced in the promotionof the entrepreneurial city-region serviced by the business-community, property capital,
the construction industry and public authorities in the city centre.There is more to a city
than ‘hot’ money, investment fervour, image on some ill-defined international stage andthe latest fashion in civic design.The majority live in the city out of necessity, not choice;the poor cannot and should not be exiled from their city’s public spaces at the dictat of
speculative developers or the reluctance of the majority to countenance their existence.
As the urban core — the city centre, the canals, Salford Quays — is transformed into a
showcase for the region, the poorer residents (which include most young people andchildren) are edged out of sight. A small example, but a telling one, is the limitation offishing and swimming; another is the exclusion of skateboarders; another is day-time
drinking in the open. Authoritative institutions react to the threat of the poor’s visibility
and their use of public, that is, common space. In the planners’ estimation, the generativetide of investment has to be sustained if cities such as Manchester are to overcome the
incubus of the past. But cities have always been the home of the poor, and their city centres, at least in Britain, have been notable for their openness as places of congregation.
Whatever city is promoted has to take account of this, if its planning is to escape thecharge of hypocrisy.
Published in: J. Peck and K.Ward (eds.), City of Revolution: Restructuring Manchester, Manchester
University Press, 2002--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------References
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pp. 18–32
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R. Clark, Manchester disunited — the new and the old, in: Daily Telegraph, January 22, 2000
A. Cochrane, J. Peck and A.Tickell, Olympic dreams: vision of partnership, in: Ward, K. and J. Peck (eds.), Cityof Revolution — Restructuring Manchester, Manchester University Press, Manchester 2002
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R. Rogers, Towards an Urban Renaissance: The Urban Task Force, E. & F.N. Spon, London 1999
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S. Zukin, Loft Living, Hutchinson, London 1988----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 90--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER ENGLAND
Dave Haslam-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------First of all, I’m going to admit I haven’t come here armed with all the answers. I don’tknow all the ways that culture and creativity can play a part in urban regeneration, but I
do have an inkling that it’s about finding local solutions to problems. One size doesn’t fit
all; in fact, one of the criticisms that could be levelled at the regeneration process in thiscountry is that it’s created corporate uniformity in our towns and city centres; they all
aim for the same thing; a piazza, a big Marks & Spencer and loft developments. Uniformity
at the expense of individuality.
What I do know is the Manchester experience. And I am certain that the experience ofManchester over the last 20 years can throw some light on what can happen in towns
and cities. And it’s not all good news, as we shall see.
Manchester, as we know, as we are told, has enjoyed a recent surge in urban regeneration, by any accepted definitions of the phrase. When I walk around the city centre now
I’m surrounded by new buildings, sparkling hotels, rampant property development, retailers galore, cafe bars and quality restaurants; well, maybe not all quality, maybe some arepretty average, but that’s another story.
So Manchester city centre has been transformed in the last 20 years. In the early 1980s
I remember wandering round Castlefield with my friend Fiona Allen — now a respected comedienne in London — back then we had this idle plan to make a gritty film set inan evocative post-industrial landscape. We had no script but we loved Castlefield. Rusty
bridges, canals the colour of lead; it was the best example of urban dereliction you could
find anywhere in the world.
Elsewhere in the city centre there were areas nobody had cleaned up since the Blitz, andacres of empty warehouse space. In 1983, there was an estimated 20 million square feetof empty industrial floor space in Manchester, much of it old cotton mills, all of it potentially available for repair and refurbishment. Eventually new uses for these old buildings
were discovered, at first mostly informal, unplanned uses: to house secondhand market
stalls; as recording studios and rehearsal space. In 1982, The Hacienda club opened in an
old warehouse on Whitworth Street in a derelict part of town.
Around the same time, the early 1980s, there was a government-backed scheme called
the Phoenix Initiative.The aim was to drum up interest in Manchester and investment into
the city centre, and it failed.
The baton passed to the local Urban Development Corporation. During research for mybook Manchester, England, I met people at the CMDC who were only too happy to admitthat the high-profile music scene in the city in the late 1980s had helped kick-start theirmuch more successful efforts to attract investment into Manchester.
As The Hacienda became known as one of the best clubs in Europe, and bands like theSmiths and then the Stone Roses emerged, the Manchester scene featured on the front
cover of Newsweek magazine in America and multiple issues of the New Musical Express
and the Face.This was 1989, 1990. Politicians, investors and developers probably are notreaders of these magazines, but still word reached them that the music made in
Manchester and the club-culture, particularly The Hacienda, was of international quality.
Manchester was on the map, if you like.
By 1990 it was clear that popular culture was something the city excelled at. There aremany reasons for this; the influences that flow from the city’s multi-racial make-up; theMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Manchester England

II | 91

ability of the city to draw strength from surrounding towns like Wigan and Bolton; a subterranean tradition of popular entertainment in the city; a spirit of independence thatwent back to the Victorian entrepreneurs and the Chartists; and a belief in the power ofco-operation, learned from the co-operative movement founded in Rochdale down theroad.
Whatever the reasons for the boom in the music scene in the late 1980s, the results
were plain to see; applications from potential students to the city’s universities boomed,
jobs were created (not just in the clubs, but in the many ancillary businesses: design,
record recording and retail, fashion (after all, many of the clubbers — especially, I suspect,
the female clubbers — had to have something new to wear to the clubs every week);
and a flurry of bars opened, and other clubs appeared, many of them clustered around
The Hacienda. I can remember the first tourists I ever met in Manchester were music fans,young men from Germany who wanted their photograph taken outside the legendary
Hacienda.
The buzz helped CMDC and the city at large; it stimulated interest, confidence and thus
investment.
CMDC also acknowledged that the pioneers in many rundown areas were the clubs andbars like The Hacienda, the Boardwalk and Manto. It’s no coincidence that many of theplaces where the regeneration process has taken strongest hold in the city are spaces
first repopulated by recording studios, rehearsal rooms and, particularly, clubs: Castlefield,
the Whitworth Street corridor, Knott Mill, Canal Street. Repopulated at first by clubbers,
but subsequently too by apartments and lofts.
The City Council had no pre-prepared policy towards this boom in popular culture in
their city; they hadn’t gone out of their way to nurture it, but they certainly didn’t hinder
it. In 1990, in fact, when the police wanted The Hacienda closed, Councillors Stringer andKarney were vocal in their support for the club; they had realised it was an important
cultural asset to the city.
The Manchester story from the late 1980s onwards has been replicated elsewhere in the
North West, most notably by Liverpool. There the club Cream has played a pioneeringrole in raising the profile and stimulating the local economy, not least contributing to thegrowth of retailers like Wade Smith, and in the rise of an arts quarter in the area around
Cream’s HQ in Slater Street.
Now, I want to put forward some issues that can arise when popular culture like this isa driving force in a city. First of all, the scene that grew up around The Hacienda greworganically. All the great scenes with longevity, from the mods to Northern Soul to punkgrew naturally; they weren’t manufactured. Secondly, the best kind of pop culture is often
oppositional, created by maverick, unsettled people.
These are things that need to be acknowledged, because in Britain when the authorities
intervene in this cultural process, they often make some wrong moves. First of all they
assume that all culture will benefit the community and give the city a pat on the head,
whereas art and creativity may be critical and uncomfortable. More importantly, though,when the intervention comes from cultural planners in this country it tends to be topdown, not from the grass roots.
It’s to do with the definition of culture.Too often when we talk about culture in this country we’re talking just about famous paintings, museums, major concert halls or maybe now
we talk about retail and leisure; i.e., we’re talking about culture that’s something to be provided for the people. A more enlightened, lively, regenerative definition of culture is not
something provided for the people, but something created by the people.
The result of this limited definition — culture provided for the people — is that cultural regeneration doesn’t achieve what it could. It gets too wrapped up in providing, not

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empowering. It ignores the grass-roots. Instead of creating opportunities for creativity forthe young and the mavericks locally or the budding entrepreneurs, it creates a community of passive consumers.
In Manchester we’ve got retail and we’ve got restaurants, and museums and concert halls,
and far too many film multiplexes all showing the same films. In addition, the interventionof the property developers has given us hotels and loft apartments. You look at
Manchester now, and certainly on one level there’s some civic pride, but also there’s
alienation. Crime is rising, as is drug use. Manchester scores highly in many indicators ofsocial disease: teenage suicide, school exclusions and poverty.
Indeed, many of the most vaunted icons of regeneration fail to empower or enrich theordinary citizens. The situation as it is now has created a crisis of ownership. Who’s city
is it? I don’t think I’m the only person who feels like the city is in danger of being sold off
to the big corporations and property developers.
I’m a DJ, so I can’t help recommending records.There was a single by a band called theGang of Four from 1978 called At Home She Feels Like a Tourist which neatly encapsulates
feelings of emotional or social disconnection with your town or city.
The crisis in housing is especially problematic. We have a contradiction that’s only justbecoming clear. Although there has been an enormous rise in the number of people living in the city centre, the social mix isn’t there, and, in fact, there’s been a 15% fall in thegeneral Manchester population in the last ten years. Loft apartments at Number One
Deansgate are selling for close to a million pounds and Ryan Giggs has apparently put his
name down for one, but less than two miles away there are vacant properties, boardedup houses, whole streets with a value next to nothing. Conflict and gaps in wealth havealways been in the city, but it’s still worth pointing out that the new wave of urban regeneration has exacerbated, not solved this problem.
It’s clear we need to revise our definitions of urban regeneration. Just as we should lookagain at our definitions of culture, so we should look for a new definition for regeneration. We should go back to the roots, reach out to those empty streets.
How regenerated, reborn, would a community feel if people lived in an environment
where they could pursue their dreams: no doors closed.Their dreams could be anything;pop star, footballer, make a film, paint, design. How many people get to live out their
dream?
Having the space and opportunity to live out our dreams and ambitions is important forwhat you might call ‘the psychic health of a city’. Cultural activity is good in itself; I wasrecently researching the early days of hip hop in the Bronx. Now worldwide, hip hop andrap have become big business, but back in the mid-1970s it was a neighbourhood phenomenon, and the neighbourhood was the rundown, written-off area, the Bronx. It wasan unknown scene that had grown organically, around DJs, graffiti artists and breakdancers. One of the breakdancers back then was a guy called Crazy Legs — it’s possiblethat Crazy Legs is not his real name — anyway, Crazy Legs looks back on those days breakdancing in the Bronx like this: ”It was our outlet and our way of expressing ourselves, andshowing our individuality, our strength and our attitude.”You get the feeling that if the local youth had not been given — or taken — the spaceand opportunity to live out their dreams or express their identity, the alternative would
have been silence or violence. So how can the planners and the policy-makers nurture
this grass-roots, empowering culture on the streets? Is nurturing something that grows
organically virtually a contradiction in terms? Well, I think there are areas of cultural
policy which could usefully be adopted. First of all, let creative cultural activity grow —don’t stifle it. Instead, give it space to grow. Policy-makers could go further and intervenein the cultural process. I could give you the names of dozens of musicians, artists, writers,

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II | 93journalists, designers, playwrights, film-makers and DJs in this area who have plenty ofdesire and talent.The problem is harnessing that talent, keeping it in the North. One girlI know did one issue of her own fanzine in Manchester, then decamped to London where
she is now the editor of Dazed & Confused; two guys I know started out in Manchesterin the mid-1980s designing record sleeves; one has gone to be one of Reebok’s top
designers, the other is now art editor of the Face. In London.
Imagine a ladder. A comedy ladder.The first rung is there OK, near ground level, and the
top rung; but there’s nothing in between; no rungs to get you to the top. Well, there areplenty of people around who have the impetus, talent and desire to get on the first rungon the ladder, but to get further they have to go to London.The power stays in London.
What we don’t have in the North West are those missing rungs in the ladder that could
take somebody on from their first flush of enthusiasm all the way to the top? That infrastructure doesn’t exist anywhere outside of London; if you’re a writer you need agentsand a publisher. If you’re a fashion designer you need access to major fashion houses, andchain store buyers and magazine editors. If you’re a musician you need a recording studio, a powerful record label.
Planners and policy-makers therefore can have a useful role creating networks and infrastructure. Practical but necessary steps. And finding ways of providing information andadvice (creative people are not always practical people). Planners and policy-makers
could make available the kind of financial incentives previously enjoyed by big business —the likes of Vauxhall and Fujitsu — or public subsidies of the kind received by the likes of
the Royal Exchange Theatre. And spend money creating that infrastructure, building thoserungs. Could major record labels or fashion houses be brought into this area? Could wemove the New Musical Express up North? It’s not an either/or situation. Funds are available for the Royal Exchange; why not for the region’s record labels or live venues or nightclubs? Instead what’s happening in Manchester is that building new multiplexes andrestaurants and lofts and museums has pushed out young artists from their studios, bands
from the rehearsal spaces, young businesses from their offices. A result of rising real estate
prices and rising rents. Something has gone wrong somewhere.
What the cultural and creative community requires is space and an opportunity. Back in
1961, in this book by Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities — the Failureof Town Planning, about slum clearance and urban regeneration 40 years ago, the author
points out how an area dominated by property developers building new buildings means
there’s always major capital costs to recoup, so developers are looking for higher rents;
and that this doesn’t create the right environment for small, risky, adventurous businesses— the life-blood of a city — instead it encourages safe, dull, corporate enterprises.When
I say that what the cultural and creative community require is space and an opportunity, I
don’t just mean physical space, the buildings, but also, for the dreamers, the creators, aspace in their lives and time to create.There’s a case for individual grants, grass-roots subsidies, mentoring, arts and culture training.Then we’ll be moving towards cultural regeneration. One day we might have created a town or a city in which culture matters and thevalue of self expression is acknowledged and the possibility of fulfilling personal dreams
and ambitions feed through from school to local council and through the streets. It
requires some new ways of thinking — beyond bricks and mortar — and a belief in thelocal talent and space and opportunity.The solutions might be close to home.At one pointin her book, Jane Jacobs says: ”Dull, inert cities contain the seeds of their own destruction
and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration.”
This article is an edited version of a talk given by Dave Haslam to the Bolton Arts Quarter
initiative committee in September 2002.

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LOCAL MUSIC POLICIES WITHIN A GLOBALMUSIC INDUSTRY: CULTURAL QUARTERS IN
MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD
Adam Brown (corresponding author), Justin O’Connor and Sara Cohen-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------”Britain was once the workshop of the world. It led the industrial revolution. It was
defined by ship building, mining and heavy industry ...Yet more people now work in film
and TV than in the car industry ...The overseas earnings of British rock music exceed
those generated by the steel industry. I believe we are now in the middle of a second
revolution, defined in part by new information technology, but also by creativity.” (TonyBlair, The Guardian, July 22, 1997)”Oh well, I suppose it’s not the place’s fault”, I said. ”Nothing, like something, happens
anywhere”. (Philip Larkin, I remember, I remember.)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. INTRODUCTION
The last decade has witnessed a sea change in cultural policy-making in Britain. From
being a marginal concern or tied to the arts funding system, the cultural or ‘creative’industries have become highly visible and explicitly linked to economic development.
Now taken up by the Labour government, this shift had long been prepared at the subnational level by city authorities using the cultural industries as part of local economic
strategies. In this, music has gained increasing prominence, with local authorities attempting to create or promote a ‘local music industry’.
However, such policies raise a number of questions — about cultural policy, about local
economic strategies and about the music industry itself. In this paper we are going tofocus on two local initiatives which have a strong music industry or music sector focus,
in order to explore some of these questions.The first is the well documented and often
discussed Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield; the second is the Northern Quarter(NQ) area of Manchester. But before that we need to place this debate in the context
of the music industry as a global industry; it is as a global industry that it holds an
economic attraction for policy-makers, but it is precisely this which demands a close
scrutiny of what a ‘local music industry’ might mean.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. GLOBALISATION AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Globalisation is taken to point to the rise of a global market place — the weakening or
dissolution of distinct national markets regulated by the nation state; the unprecedented
penetration of previously self-contained economies (whether ‘third world’ or ‘ex-communist’) by global companies; and, as precondition and consequence, the integration ofthese far-flung markets into a world financial and regulatory system. That is, a global
market (Morley and Robins, 1995). Globalisation also involves the global integration of
production factors and services.‘National’ industries ‘selling abroad’ are increasingly giving
way to the organisation of production and distribution on a global scale, sourcing materials, labour, services, etc. across borders with little or no attachment to particular places.
Both global production and global markets rely on (though by no means exclusively) new
information and communication technologies (ICT) which allow the complex management and regulation of these global systems.

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The cultural aspects of globalisation include the rapid increase in the global flows of information and of signs and symbolic goods. It is frequently argued that this increased flow
blurs the boundaries between ‘here’ and ‘there’; represents a displacement of place by
space; acts as a further impetus to the ‘disembedding’ of lived experience; and accelerates further time-space distantiation, whereby the forces which act upon us have a complex causality (or simultaneity) located ‘elsewhere’ (Giddens, 1990). Many believe theseprocesses erode distinct local identities, contributing to a homogenised global ‘airport’culture. For others, the situation is more complex. Distinct cultures open up to ‘the other’to produce hybrid cultures, ‘third spaces’, migrant cultures. On the one hand, this may beseen as the adoption of local (ethnic) cultures by a global market; on the other, it can beseen as a reassertion of the local — not in the face of but within these global cultural
flows (Chambers, 1994; Featherstone, 1990).
These debates are very much to the fore when it comes to the music industry.The musicindustry is increasingly globalised and concentrated, currently dominated by five multinational companies based in a few of the world’s capital cities — Tokyo, L.A., New York andLondon.These multinationals deal with multiple media, hardware and software, and they
have integrated music production, marketing and distribution with that of other (increasingly globalised) cultural or media industries, with Seagram/Universal’s 1998 purchase of
Polygram the most recent integration. Between them they account for over 90% of U.S.
sales and between 70% and 80% of world-wide sales (Burnett, 1995, p. 18). Some, therefore, see music as a global culture, pointing to a global basis for the production and consumption of popular music which, it is argued, bears little attention to nationality, let alone
cities or localities.The domination of a few companies in all aspects of the market (software and hardware, film and video, etc.) has heightened the debate over the control of
media and cultural industries and raised questions about the ‘defence’ of local indigenous
cultures from such irresistible market forces. Others argue that developments in information and communication technologies are continually opening up new forms of musicalproduction and distribution and increasingly linking small local producers with global
production, marketing and distribution networks.
How do local music scenes and local music industries figure in all this? This paper will ask
two questions. Firstly, how have these been used, not by ‘the global music industry’ but by
the local city attempting to respond to globalisation? Secondly, how does this connect
with the way those involved in the production and distribution of music operate — how
does it relate to local scenes, networks and cultures of production, distribution and consumption?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. CITIES AND LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Sheffield and Manchester — like many other cities across the globe dependent on 19th
century ‘smokestack’ manufacture and export — experienced catastrophic deindustrialisation in the 1980s and have since been looking to new sources of employment. In a
more halting and unfocused sense there was a gradual recognition that this demanded
not just the attraction of new industries or services, but a complete ‘re-invention’ of what
they were as cities. This accompanied another common notion that cities were now
engaged in competition with other cities — not just at the national but also at the international level. In this context they were competing on a ‘European’ or ‘global’ stage.
Many British cities had more or less accepted this notion by the end of the 1980s — that
their futures depended on attracting and generating new investment and new businessthrough an openness to private sector co-operation and partnership; new planning flexibility; local tax and funding incentives (usually through central government initiatives);
marketing schemes; integrated business support and training (one-stop-shops) and so on.

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The interaction of this with cultural policy is too complex to be mapped here. In general and for our purposes, we would say that cultural policy has followed two tracks(Wynne, 1991; Bianchini and Parkinson, 1994; O’Connor and Wynne, 1996; O’Connor,
1998). Firstly, it has looked to its input into image. The ‘old industrial’ image was off-putting to inward investors — PR and marketing campaigns for towns and cities took off
exponentially in the 1980s. Mostly this was an external consultation exercise with little
strategic rethinking. Within this, cultural facilities were held to be very attractive to the‘footloose’ executives and senior management, upon whose preferences relocation could
depend (it was argued). Cultural capital should be mobilised in the image campaign — if
the facilities were not there, then they needed to be built.
This line became increasingly sophisticated in both its marketing and its understanding ofimage and cultural pull.The early 1990s saw cities linking ‘quality of life’ issues and tourism
which used a wider notion of culture — the ‘feel’, the ‘atmosphere’, the bars and restaurants, the night life. Cities became ‘European cities’ — a strangely mythical, amorphous
notion involving café bars, cappuccinos and late licences. This image- and facilities-based
approach, linked to the attraction of real estate investment in the central sections of thecity, was part of an ‘urban regeneration’ model drawn from North America. Culture
renewed the built stock, revived the image, created a tourism infrastructure and underpinned the vibrant, late night ‘European city’ (Lovatt and O’Connor, 1995).
The second cultural policy area concerns the employment possibilities of the cultural sector, though its intellectual make-up is more complex than that. Stemming from the Greater
London Council (GLC), this approach emphasised the economic potential of the cultural
sector alongside a set of intellectual arguments intended to overcome the art/industry,
culture/economy, creativity/business divide that was fairly entrenched culturally and institutionally in Britain (and to some extent in English-speaking countries generally). It wasalso linked to a redefinition of what ‘art and culture’ was in a way that pointed to popular culture and to culture as a ‘way of life’.
The GLC began to elaborate a cultural industries strategy involving film and video, music
recording, publishing, design, etc. It was abolished before it really took off — but it was
picked up by other cities. Although concerned with economics, employment and other‘hard’ issues, this cultural industries approach was very difficult to pursue, mainly because
it fell between two constituencies (arts and culture/economic development) and because
making it work demanded a level of understanding and experience which was simply
lacking in most city authorities. However, by the mid-1990s cultural industries strategies
became common in Britain’s towns and cities. It was out of this policy context that themusic industry policy with which we are concerned in this paper emerged.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. SHEFFIELD AND MANCHESTER(cf.Taylor, 1996; Hill and O’Connor, 1997)
In the 1980s a key linkage between cultural industries and urban regeneration strategies
emerged around the notion of cultural quarters. Whilst in the North American version
these tended to be very much consumption-orientated with related office developments,
the influence of the GLC approach saw a number of initiatives focusing on cultural production as the key driver for regeneration. Previously deserted or run-down areas — theold 19th-century industrial zones located close to the Central Business District — weretargeted for new uses in the form of work, exhibition and performance space geared to
local, emergent cultural producers. In line with the new emphasis on ‘vibrant’ mixed use
as opposed to the sterile monocultures of zoning, these areas were designated culturalindustries ‘quarters’.

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4.1. Sheffield — Cultural Industries Quarter
The development of the Cultural Industry Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield was a response totwo distinct pressures.The first was the decline of the local steel industry, which led to adramatic loss of jobs in the early 1980s and prompted Sheffield City Council to look to
cultural and media industries as a new growth sector.The second was the fact that by thelate 1970s Sheffield had a distinct local music scene based on a group of avantgarde, postpunk electronic bands including The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, ABC and Heaven 17.
These bands had major record deals and national and international chart success (it wasargued during several interviews that Sheffield was responsible for 5% of the market
share of UK singles in 1982), and they and other local bands were dissatisfied with thelack of adequate recording/design/performance facilities in Sheffield. There was a perceived inevitability about the ‘drift’ to London of Sheffield talent, which some key musicians wanted to reverse. Sheffield’s musical success, therefore, was not being translated
into a successful Sheffield music industry or benefiting the Sheffield economy.These musicians began to work with Sheffield City Council to establish local music industry facilities:”What I found, to my surprise, was that there was a layer of music and film-makers
who had been producing products for five to ten years, making a relatively successful
job of it, in terms of exporting music and song to countries around the world ... Once
I started talking to them they were saying, We’ve got lots of ideas about how this
sector should grow and we want to involve a recording studio and attract music
makers to this area”.
”... bands like Human League, they respected the opportunity they’d been given by
the city council, which developed into employment for them, a good living for them.
They easily saw the importance of trying to encourage and support initiatives thatdeveloped talent and business and grow the sector (sic!) and provide facilities as well.
In the early years they worked alongside us a hell of a lot, Phil (Oakey of the Human
League) popping up, kitted out in make-up and convincing politicians and in the working meetings. One of the features that is now a strength of what we do is, nearly all
those people who were involved in the early 1980s are still around and nearly all ofthem have invested and developed their activities in quite dramatic ways”.
(Paul Skelton, City Council Cultural Industries Officer. Unless otherwise stated, all theinterviews are with Dr Adam Brown.)
Sheffield’s strategy began, then, with the provision of facilities aimed, on the one hand, atincreasing access (a legacy of Sheffield’s strong community arts sector) to the resources
to make music (and film) — rehearsal space, recording facilities, a live venue, etc. — andon the other, at providing a means whereby musicians with money to invest (from record
deals, advances, etc.) could do so in Sheffield.
Over the next ten years, the council was involved in renovating a group of empty buildings based near the city centre and in the setting up of: The Leadmill live venue and nightclub (with local community artists in 1982); Red Tape recording studios (the first municipally owned recording studios, opened in 1986 providing training courses and cheap
rehearsal and recording facilities); the Audio Visual Enterprise Centre (AVEC, in 1988)
where the Human League set up base, along with Axis and Fonn recording studios, theSite Gallery and Sheffield Independent Film; the Workstation managed workspace providing
short-term, cheap-rent accommodation exclusively for cultural businesses; The Showroom
cinema/cafe bar; and the National Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) visitor attraction,
which opened in early 1999.The promotional literature for NCPM reads:

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II | 98”The NCPM will be the first building of its kind in the world — an innovative visitor
centre and educational resource celebrating the dynamism and diversity of popular
music ... the centre will entertain, stimulate and inform visitors from around the globe... Situated in Sheffield city centre’s Cultural Industries Quarter ... its four highly distinctive stainless steel drums combine a recognition of Sheffield’s industrial past with an
exciting reflection of the mixture of art, technology and vitality that is popular music”.
(NCPM promotional document, November 1996. NCPM opened in March 1999.)
All this has been funded through a mix of public and private monies. According to Paul
Skelton, the actual level of investment by Sheffield City Council has been minimal:There’s
about £35 million worth of capital investment gone in over the last ten years, startingwith Red Tape in 1986 and finishing with The Showroom next door. That investment has
improved and refurbished all of these buildings, it’s created the basis for a thousand jobs
here and created and sustained 150 companies. Of that £35 million, £6.1 million was
public money. Of that £6.1 million, only £400,000 over ten years has been Council money.
Most of it has come from the government’s Urban Programme and, more recently, (City)
Challenge money and European Regional Development funding. Red Tape was funded in
the first stage to the tune of about £90,000 by the council in 1985/1986. From then on,
we got four phases of Red Tape from elsewhere.
The Sheffield CIQ has followed a four-stage development plan, moving from local, regional and national to an international focus, hence the NCPM promotional literature emphasises the centre’s local context, whilst its Creative Director stresses that ”we don’t want
it to be seen as a Sheffield centre, but a national one” and estimates visitor numbers up
to 500,000 per year. Sheffield CIQ thus involves balancing the desires to:¬ nurture local music (and other cultural) businesses — which, if successful, will be taken
up on the global market,¬ create a tourist attraction to bring people into Sheffield from elsewhere in the UK andabroad,¬ use both of the above as part of a strategy of re-imaging the city on a global basis.
The CIQ can be seen as an attempt to reassert the local within global cultural flows. It isnot, therefore, an attempt to set up an alternative industry in competition with the established, global music industry, but to maximise the benefit for the local economy of thesuccess of music businesses in that global industry. An early project to set up a Councilowned record company, for instance, was quickly shelved. More broadly, the city, like manyothers in the deindustrialised west, has been attempting to re-image itself, moving awayfrom the image of industrial steel producer to that of a youthful, creative and vibrant cultural centre: Sheffield has made sport a particular focus, acting as host to the ill-fatedWorld Student Games in 1994 and more recently winning the bid to build the UK Sports
Institute centre of excellence (Henry, 1998).
According to Paul Skelton, in 1996, the CIQ had gone some way to offset job losses, create new businesses and encourage a previously marginal sector in Sheffield’s economy:”It’s taken a long time and we’re quite proud of the thousand jobs we’ve got down here
now we’ve created the cultural industries sector. Of those thousand about 350 are
brand new jobs which have been created by the activity down here.The other 600, 650
or there abouts are jobs that have been relocated here that existed before ... we’d liketo think we’ve contributed significantly to those jobs surviving and growing ... (O)ut of
the 150 companies that are down here now, only four over the last ten years havegone out of commission in some way or another ... four out of 150 is quite an amazing
track record when you compare it to any other group of companies in any other sector”.

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The claim being, then, that CIQ may well have meant that a number of music businesses
have managed to survive when they may not have done otherwise, given the notoriously volatile nature of the sector.This is supported to some extent by a recent consultancy report by EDAW and Urban Cultures: ”The CIQ has created 1,300–1,400 jobs in an
estimated 150 businesses, generating a total turnover of £25 million ... ” although theyadded that ”at present the sector is no more than of subregional significance”.
(EDAW/Urban Cultures, 1997, p. 3.11).
The position of the CIQ and the focus of Council policy in this area have been the sourceof some contention over the years, with some opposition to investment in what somepolicy-makers have viewed as a ‘soft’ industry. The CIQ team have had to fight hard toprotect the policy, both from scepticism in the council and from commitments to otherdevelopments (e.g. some sporting initiatives). Indeed, in 1997, under severe budget cuts,
the Council abolished the department responsible for the CIQ. Whilst AVEC, The
Workstation and NCPM remained secure, questions hung over the future of Red Tape andfuture investment in the CIQ. However, the restructuring of the council in 1998 under a
new Chief Executive and the major EDAW report on the area, which recommended theestablishment of a new CIQ executive and Steering Group (an ongoing process at thetime of writing) now seem to have secured the CIQ process for the foreseeable future.
Furthermore, the impact of the NCPM on the area is likely to be crucial, but is at present unclear. We shall look in more detail at the CIQ strategy below.
4.2. Manchester’s Northern Quarter
Manchester has a rich and distinctive musical history and its rock and pop bands haveachieved national and international notoriety (from Herman’s Hermits and The Hollies in
the 1960s, to 10CC, Buzzcocks and Joy Division in the 1970s, The Smiths, New Order, The
Stone Roses and Happy Mondays in the 1980s, and Simply Red, Take That and Oasis in the
1990s).This success has contributed to the development of local music scenes and businesses: recording studios such as Strawberry, set up by 10CC; record labels like Factory;
and venues like The Hacienda, which played a central role in the development of the UK
Acid House scene and the so-called ‘Madchester’ scene of the late 1980s. The latter
involved white, male guitar bands such as the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses performing
indie music with strong dance sensibilities (Champion, 1991; Collin, 1998; Cornerhouse,
1992; Middles, 1991; Rietveld, 1998; Savage, 1992).
‘Madchester’ attracted the attention of the international media and music industry andled to an explosion of club culture within the city, involving a proliferation of clubs, record
shops, DJs and designers. Consequently, it has been suggested that Manchester now has
a strong local music industry (perhaps the most developed in the UK outside London)
which, alongside the city’s music scenes, has helped to promote and regenerate the city.
‘Madchester’, for example, is believed to have contributed to a 25% increase in student
applications to Manchester’s three universities during 1990 (although figures are hard to
confirm), attracting to the city young people who not only provide a market for local
music businesses, but also set up their own. Further, the success of Manchester’s music ata national and global level has been one of the reasons for the growth in small, often
closely networked groups of music-related businesses within the city. Although this has
had an impact on other areas previously, since ‘Madchester’ this has been most evident in
the Northern Quarter (NQ).
The NQ is situated at the northern edge of Manchester city centre.1 A major popular
shopping and market area since the mid-19th century, it was devastated by sixties redevelopment and the building of Europe’s (then) largest indoor shopping mall in the early
1970s. When city centre rents rose in the property boom in Manchester around 1987-

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1988, the availability of cheap rents, flexible letting, high vacancy and small properties all
encouraged a migration of small cultural businesses to relocate to the area from the late1980s onwards. This was also fuelled by the Enterprise Allowance Scheme (a grant additional to social security given to new self-employed persons and much taken advantage
of by the cultural sector) which demanded that a business had to trade from premises
to be eligible for funding.The take up of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme was particularly noticeable in the music industry. Long a centre of popular entertainment and pleasures
up to the 1970s, the NQ rapidly became a focus for the ‘Madchester’ and later club/dance
scenes. The area includes major independent record retail outlets such as Eastern Bloc
and Piccadilly Records; cutting edge music venues and clubs; numerous music-orientatedbars such as Dry 201 (formerly owned by Factory Records/New Order); trendy fashionoutlets, especially in Afflecks Palace; and numerous offices and workshops used by microcultural businesses.
In contrast to Sheffield, however, this agglomeration of cultural businesses (now around200) did not result from, nor result in, a concerted cultural industries or cultural quarter
strategy from the city. The city was mostly concerned with a basic building stock, environmental and economic audit and strategy in line with the then Conservative government’s requirement to produce unitary city centre plans. The Northern Quarter was,indeed, a name invented by the city to designate a ‘leftover’ bit of the city centre. The
specific push for some cultural element to this development plan came from a local
community organisation made up of traders, residents and workers in the area. It was thisassociation that insisted on a cultural remit in the Regeneration Study commissioned jointly with the City Council in 1993. This Regeneration Study (Urbanistics/Manchester City
Council, 1993; O’Connor et al., 1993) recommended (amongst other things) seeing thearea as a ‘creative quarter’, both a seed-bed area for new cultural businesses (production,
retail, venues) and using the cultural sector (making no distinction between ‘subsidised’
and non-subsidised sectors) as a unique and creative input into the regeneration process.
The renamed Northern Quarter Association (NQA) has since attempted to push forward
on this ‘creative quarter’ agenda, but as we shall see, this has happened with little financial support and a ‘hands-off ’ policy which actually revealed a failure by the City Council
to fully buy in to the ‘creative quarter’ strategy. It was a laissez-faire policy which reflected the attitude to the cultural sector generally, but especially to the music industry.
Manchester City Council took a long time to catch up with the existence of a global
industry on its doorstep. When it did so it was largely on the basis of its contribution toa vibrant image for the city. The Hacienda had a particularly high profile, serving as alaunch venue for a number of public initiatives — unthinkable a few years earlier. The
increased interest in Manchester as a youth and popular culture destination, from
‘Madchester’ onwards, led to Manchester’s Visitor and Convention Bureau, featuring theHacienda in its promotional material, whilst the then leader of Manchester City Council
defended the city’s premier club, when under threat of closure from magistrates andpolice, thus: ”The Hacienda is to Manchester what Michaelangelo’s David is to Florence”.
(Graham Stringer, quoted by Anthony Wilson, interview) In addition, local popular music
images were used in Manchester’s (unsuccessful) bid for the 1996 Olympics, which included the Stone Roses’ landmark 1990 Spike Island concert, and later in the successful 2002
Commonwealth Games bid.
More proactive support came in the form of strong backing for the Hacienda when the
club was closed by the police and magistrates in 1991 after a licensing dispute over drug
taking. The Council’s ‘European’ and ‘24- hour city’ strategies were a concerted attempt
to take on police and magistrates and to loosen licensing laws.This included experimentswith relaxed licensing during the 1993 Manchester Festival and the Euro96 ‘Soccercity’MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Local Music Policies

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events, although it did not lead to a more permanent solution to the problem. However,in terms of more specific support for an increasingly high-profile music industry, the city
had a hands-off approach, bar the development of two, small community recording
studios.2
A city council consultancy document stated: ”The [music] industry craves new products, new ideas, and it is important that the environment which enables this small-scale
activity to flourish is maintained — a hands-off, but strongly supportive approach fromthe City Council”. (Urban Cultures Ltd, 1992, p. 31). According to the City Council’s
Arts and Cultural Policy officer, Lyn Barbour: ” ... the (local) music industry didn’t want
any council intervention. What they wanted was a city that they could operate inmore effectively.They wanted transport sorting out, they wanted licensing sorted out,
and the kind of issues they were concerned with were not about supporting businesses ... that wasn’t the way they felt we should be intervening.They felt we should
create a city which doesn’t have the barriers which exist at the moment. So we didn’t
include within our strategic vision any specific intervention into the cultural industry
sectors and specifically popular music”.
Although the City Council did provide modest support for In The City — the UK’s firstmajor international music industry convention, which began in Manchester in 1992 — it
has tended to stick by its ‘hands-off ’ approach. Such an approach is supported by manybusinesses in the city. Our research has confirmed other related research that there is a
deep scepticism in the music business (however widely defined) towards central or local
government intervention (MIPC/Manchester City Council, 1999). Some prominent
members of the local industry, such as Anthony Wilson, constantly point to the ‘success’and vibrancy of the music scene in Manchester, contrasting it to that of Sheffield as a salutary lesson about irrelevant municipal meddling in a sector it cannot understand. Below
this lies a particular understanding or model of the cultural sector in general and themusic sector in particular which is set against the ‘top-down’ approach in Sheffield.
This is not straightforward, however. Many in the local sector have little knowledge ofwhat such support initiatives might be — often equating them with ‘grants’ and ‘council
recording studios’, etc. in a very simplistic fashion. Many did not realise that certain events,
such as In The City, did indeed have council sponsorship.3 Many did not equate initiatives
such as training, or Enterprise Allowance, or city-brokered European Structural Fund investment, into events, or the joint development of managed workspaces, etc. with ‘government intervention’. As we shall see, in many cases further discussion led to a change of
attitude towards ‘intervention’. A similar process may have been observed with respect
to the debate around the Government’s Music Industry Forum and Creative Industries Task
Force, whose creation uncovered a deep hostility toward intervention in general (‘meddling’) and the perceived threat to pop music’s rebellious and/or Darwinian ethos.These
deep-seated attitudes, coupled with a lack of local structures for the articulation of needs
and demands (as exist in the more traditional subsidised sectors), meant that the City
found its own distrust of intervention reassuringly echoed by the local music industry.
Recently the Council (or part of it) has begun the process of establishing a local Cultural
Industries Development Service, indicating a growing interest in enabling and supporting
small-scale cultural business activity (MIPC/Manchester City Council, 1997; MIPC/ MCC,
1999) This will be discussed below.
In the next section we will try to contrast two models of ‘cultural quarters’ as a way of
opening up the whole issue of local ‘music industry’ strategies.

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II | 102-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. CULTURAL QUARTERS AND LOCAL INDUSTRY STRATEGIESThe key initial distinction to be made between the two quarter initiatives is that Sheffield
attempted to establish a quarter more or less from scratch — providing buildings, facilities and a venue in order to attract cultural producers into the area — whereas the NQ
already had a large number of businesses located within it before the council recognised
it as a quarter.
The idea of cultural quarters involved new uses of old buildings, a revitalisation of theurban realm and the promotion of a highly networked group of compatible businesses.
The sources for this are many and varied. Cultural quarters looked to ‘mixed use’ and theurban village — Jane Jacob’s pre-planning Manhattan (Jacobs, 1961). Indeed, the North
American version could be seen to have usurped this vision with (for some) disturbing
consequences usually described as ‘gentrification’ (cf. Zukin, 1992). But in Britain thenotion of cultural quarters also drew on the ‘industrial district’ model of the ‘third Italy’and elsewhere, which looked back to pre-Fordist economies of small and medium-sizedenterprises clustering around complementary skills and services, both competing and collaborating at the same time (cf. Amin, 1994). This latter model found one expression in
the science or business parks which became popular in the 1980s, and in many respects
this is what the CIQ attempted to achieve (Castels and Hall, 1994).
Its emphasis was very much on facilities first (workspace, technology); then on attracting
key companies which would both give credibility and begin to catalyse clusters of support or spin-off businesses around them.The gamble was that a critical mass of cultural
producers would be attracted to the area by the facilities and ‘creative buzz’ on offer.The
questions to ask of this strategy were, firstly, does this sort of initiative attract one sortof industry rather than another or, rather, can a ‘cultural industries quarter’ include a wide
spectrum of sub-sectors which make up the cultural industries. More particularly, is themusic industry attracted to such initiatives and what needs does it have in common withother sectors (such as film,TV, design)? Secondly, can such clusters be created in this way— how do they relate to the wider networks of cultural production in the city andbeyond that, globally?
5.1. Infrastructure
If we look at the first set of questions, there are clear suggestions that the CIQ has not
had the catalysing effect on the music business that had been hoped. Whilst it must berecognised that the CIQ strategy was a cultural industries one, and not specifically targeted at music, Sheffield cannot show a significantly large music industry sector. It may
have had other effects, but it has been less than successful in creating a large music sector. A recent report argued that although the initial focus of the CIQ was film and music,
between them they still only represent 30% of the businesses in the CIQ and there are
only a handful of music businesses in the Workstation (EDAW/Urban Cultures, 1997).
Indeed, some of the main developments in Sheffield’s music scenes over the last decade— such as the post-Acid House Techno scene — have occurred outside the CIQ; leadingorganisations, such as techno label Warp Records, have continued to expand out of the
CIQ; and the success of Sheffield bands recently — Pulp, Longpigs and Babybird — has
not translated into tangible benefits for the city or its music industry.
Warp Records is probably the largest and most successful music industry business in
Sheffield. Warp has grown from a company of two people with a turnover of £50,000 to
become one of the largest independent dance labels in the UK, now with ten employees, a turnover of £2 million, deals with Sony, Virgin, Play It Again Sam and others opening
markets around the world. It also has a distribution company employing a further nine

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people and a turnover of £1 million, with their Sheffield shop (now franchised) turningover a further £0.5 million. Red Tape did help Warp access funds for a marketing
consultant, and Warp made use of cheap office space within the CIQ’s Workstation
during the early stage of their development, although they relocated once bigger officesnear the city centre were available. Despite the CIQ, Warp, Pulp and other Sheffieldmusic-makers have still found it necessary to work in or move to London, where the bulkof the British music industry is located.
Some in the industry have doubted the usefulness of facilities apart from ‘cheap space’.
A number of councils seized on recording studios as a straightforward solution to questions posed by a music industry and/or ‘community arts’ policy — sometimes confusing
the two and in some cases (though not in Sheffield’s case) taking little account of what
local music producers actually needed. This illustrates a problem generally with musicindustry support — but also relates to the anti-intervention, maverick, individualist, even
Darwinian, ideology of many in the music business. In terms of attracting music businesses, the CIQ seems to have been no more successful than more basic managed workspaces, such as New Mount Street, Ducie House and Beehive Mills in Manchester. Indeed,
Red Tape’s strong association with the council — including for many years some opening
hours restrictions, non-smoking policies, etc. — may have made it less attractive to a‘rebellious’ sector. The managed workspaces in Manchester had no restrictions on thetype of businesses and have achieved an eclectic and ultimately effective mix.
Although music was always a focus (especially in AVEC), the CIQ as a whole has so far
arguably proved more attractive to film,TV and design companies, who felt able to takeadvantage of the workspaces and links to city policy-makers. The synergies which workfor them did not perhaps work as well for the music industry: clusters around dancemusic, for example, with the links to flyer and tee-shirt design, club fashions, café bar furnishings and lighting, DJs, etc. have mostly happened elsewhere. Cultural Industries
Quarters, therefore, need to know which sub-sectors they are targeting and be able torecognise their differences and special requirements.
This concentration on the facilities and buildings, on establishing a physical and geographically defined infrastructure, actually hampered the development of other possible
music industry support.There has so far been little small-scale music training other thansound recording (there are 1,500 Media School students); little sub-sector-specific business support (legal, financial, marketing) except for basic music business courses at Red
Tape; and a developing ‘Cultural Business Support’ service. It should be noted that theissue of training is a contentious one in the music industry at present, and this situation
is not specific to Sheffield; and also that Red Tape is currently undergoing a ‘Strategic
Review’ and the NCPM will provide a wide range of education which may have changed
this situation significantly. However, there has been much less of a stress on ‘soft’ economic
development tools and there have been few music-specific marketing or production initiatives such as are taking place in Liverpool and elsewhere. Also, links with the Higher
Education campus nearby have not been maximised (partly the fault of the education
institutions), an issue highlighted by the EDAW report.
5.2. Networks and clusters
This can be seen more generally in terms of the second set of questions — linkages tothe wider set of networks and music scenes in the city. Despite its notion of being mixed
use, there has been a lack of retail and residential businesses in the area which has severely reduced street level activity and animation. ”You’ve got no reason to go there unless
you’re called to a boring meeting or have an office there”, says Winston Hazel (a prominent local DJ).The mix of small-scale retail, café bars and small businesses actually works

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II | 104in the Devonshire Street area of the city, which has grown up independently of the city
council or CIQ.The mix of production and consumption is crucial for music — to emphasise production facilities alone is to ignore this crucial element of any ‘buzz’.
Physically, the linkage between the CIQ and the rest of the city — a prime consideration
amongst all the traders in the NQ — has remained a problem, and major improvements
are now planned. Issues of lighting, pedestrianisation, public art and signage are still to beaddressed, partly due to the production- and facility-based emphasis and partly a sign ofthe limits of the CIQ’s influence on city policy-making. There have been, until the opening of the NCPM, no big cultural magnets like Temple Bar or Dublin possesses and thus
the physical impermeability tends to reduce the usage of the existing gallery and performance spaces. Shopping, wandering, random socialising, looking — none of these paths
flow strongly though the CIQ at present.
The concentration of effort on one physical area of the city without thinking through thespatial implications has also produced a sense of exclusion amongst some. The barriers
between city centre and ‘inner city’ are a real source of contention in Britain at present,
involving complex class, gender and ethnic lines. (On some issues around this, including
the role of cultural quarters within a multiplex city, see Amin and Graham, 1997, pp.
411–429.) The spatial politics of a CIQ and other quarters and the implications for thesort of businesses that make use of its facilities has not been fully addressed, exacerbated by the fact that some previously-funded community arts perceive themselves as having suffered due to the priority given to the CIQ.
The problems with physical linkages are thus often questions of social linkage.The CIQ’semphasis on focusing support on a specific area has tended to ignore links to wider networks of cultural production and consumption. Networks are about how the sector
interacts and how knowledge is passed around. Networks are how ideas, sounds, ‘product’ are tested, validated, given credibility.The ‘music industry’, conceived as business concerns trading from premises, is merely the visible part of a complex series of networks,
milieus, scenes and cultures.To ignore these linkages is quite damaging to a music industry strategy. The CIQ addressed the need of the music industry through what it could
provide in physical terms within its immediate area. This has not only led to feelings of
exclusion by some outside, but has also retarded their ability to think about a wider cultural industry strategy within which the CIQ could fit.We have already seen this in termsof the sector-specific targeting of training and support, but this also occurred in a moregeneral sense.
In part this reflects a general problem of local governance and the cultural sector. A coordinated approach to developing the cultural sector would include many non-culturalareas of policy, such as transport, housing, licensing and policing. However, even where, asin Sheffield, certain officers within key departments (in Sheffield’s case, employment) havebeen able to pursue cultural strategies, without a horizontal integration across departments of such an approach, the impact will always be limited and partial, as both the CIQ
and NQ have found.
A classic example was with late licensing. Those behind the CIQ managed, despite theodds, to build up strong political support for their initiatives — that music and culturalindustries were worth investing in and taking seriously. However, despite vigorous support from the CIQ for ventures such as The Republic Club, and initiatives such as the Dirty
Stop Out Tour, licensing remained a policy problem for the CIQ as well as Sheffield as awhole. Whilst cities in the UK began to think about making the city centre more attractive and user-friendly — whilst Manchester and Leeds vied for the title of ’24-HourEuropean City’, however fictional — Sheffield’s centre was suffering under the impact ofan out-of-town retail park and severe problems with licensing. Until Republic opened its

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doors in 1995, there had been no new night-club license granted in the city centre forthe previous 15 years. The delay in Republic’s opening (up to two years) has been cited
as one of the reasons for its financial failure and receivership (although it was bought andfully re-opened in 1998). Draconian magistrates seemed completely out of touch with acity trying to reinvent itself as a centre for media and cultural production.The CIQ werepowerless to reverse this. The key point here is that, despite the efforts of the CIQ
officers, Sheffield City Council could promote the successes of the CIQ whilst making
no effective connection to or gaining any contribution from other policy areas such as
licensing, where serious problems persist (a recent development proposal for the
Leadmill Bus Garage site was turned down because it contained a night club as part of its
proposals).
This is indicative of a failure by the city to realise the connection between cultural quarter,
music industry, the wider scene and the cultural context of the city as a whole.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6.THE NETWORKED CITY
The point here is not to criticise the CIQ, but to question the usefulness of the cultural
quarter model and, more generally, local authority intervention in support of local musicindustries. What the Sheffield example illustrates is, firstly, the need to look beyond theprovision of facilities — the need, that is, to take account of the ‘soft’ infrastructure, thepeople, the skills, the networking, the social context of those involved in the music industry.
Secondly, that any cultural quarter must be conceived as part of the wider socio-spatial
fabric of the city.
The relevance of the Northern Quarter (NQ), Manchester, here is certainly not to assertthat this has been ‘done better’ but to indicate that a large cluster of music-related businesses and services have emerged without specific targeting by the local authority.
Quarters are complex clusters of activities — they are networks embedded in a particular place. Though there are some obvious reasons why clusters emerge in a particularplace — cheap rents, city centre, nearness of a venue or other key services — this does
not mean the place is an indifferent space (Larkin).The complex networks of activity andexchange are given a context — they take place.This place acquires a series of associations which can be iconic (‘Bourbon Street’, ‘Carnaby Street’, ‘Kings Road’, ‘Haight
Ashbury’) but are also spatially embedded social networks.
As we argued above, it is these ‘scenes’, ‘milieus’, ‘happening places’ — rather than ‘facilities’ — which are the real context for a local music industry.The exchange of knowledge
and information is accompanied by a validation, a testing of product.4 Networks areabout the exchange of information (contacts, grants, funding opportunities, jobs, technology, etc.) They are about the exchange of experience — they act as reservoirs of previous trial and error. Network entry points (very informal, usually — acquaintances, workneighbours, gossip) allow informal sharing of personal experience. They also allow theexchange or sharing of harder knowledge — how, who, what, when.
”Knowing Jockey Slut [magazine] helped a lot because they’d been through the sameprocess two years before. So we were able to learn from their mistakes.They gave us
a lot of support. Similarly, Rob’s Records were really helpful, supportive, as they were
the first record label we’d worked with. They have a track record of wanting tosupport Manchester-related businesses.They gave us work and that was very encouraging. People generally — because of the nature of the city, people know what you’re
up to. Y’know people say ‘hi, what you up to’ and people were interested even if it’s
just to work out exactly what was going on. It didn’t ever really feel like we were
working in a vacuum ...” (Emma Warren, Freestyle Promotions)

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II | 106”There is a distinct sense of collaboration ... At a [colleague/friend’s] leaving party,
there were about three or four journalists there and three photographers, and wewere just talking about the immense amount of collaboration, and people in London
who they work with, can’t understand that there are writers from different publications who talk to each other and actually help each other out, and if one person can’t
do a bit of work, they pass it on to someone else ... the same thing happens withphotographers. Because people have got those different specialisation’s (sic!) — that’s
why it’s not competitive. And also because people know each other and see eachother all the time.That competition isn’t as strong as it would be, say in London, where
there’s ten people barking up every tree. Here it’s a lot more relaxed — there’s notthat intense egocentric thing ...Which is really helpful and I think that’s helped a lot of
people”. (Vicky Perrin, Events Organiser, Lifeline, interview by Dan Hill [DH])But networks are also about validating and testing cultural capital. The networks, themilieus within which these operate, act as test beds for ideas.
”The family here is immense.We could test our minds for anything and come up withgood interpretations. We are staying within the family and that is important”.
(Mark Rae of Fat City)
As such, these networks are about social capital — but not based on the family as such.
Indeed, these metropolitan milieus have historically been anti-family, bohemian, countercultural. What holds them together is a loosely structured, place-based milieu:”You just go out onto the street and bump into people and start talking to people
and drop notes through the doors. It’s just very informal. Even planners — you bumpinto them on the street and say ‘oh, I meant to tell you, this is starting on-site, blah
blah, or what about a grant for cleaning that ...‘ It happens on the street really. It’s nice— it’s really nice. It’s a nice thing to have during the day, just to be able to go out andsay hello, and have that sense of community spirit. There used to be communities in
the old days where you lived, but it’s not the case anymore, I don’t think. People aremuch more isolated where they live. So, re-establishing that community thing is really
good and I think people appreciate it and it does give us a certain sort of strength tothe area”. (Dominic Sagar, Architect — DH)”It is quite a bit of a community thing and the problem for me is that I can’t walk anywhere without being sidelined, in the street, at the bus stop, in here, whatever ... when
I want to go to the bank and it takes me half an hour to walk down Oldham Street,
so I try and hide and go down back streets ... Between us there is a big informal network because I talk to my neighbours, and they talk to their customers and it is reallyeffective and you find that information gets out and about very quickly”.
(Michael Trainer, Design Goes Pop — DH)
These clusters allow trust to build up in face-to-face contact.They allow a common identification with a locale or local culture. This can frequently give common context to thecultural product — through a particular style or a more amorphous ‘attitude’.These clusters are place-based, place-centred networks, the knots that tie a series of networks —they are part of the soft infrastructure.They accumulate knowledge and experience; theygenerate and reproduce social and cultural capital in metropolitan areas (Banks et al.
2000).

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It is here in these very localised networks that the first real interface between the flowof global musics, images, ideas, styles become consumed, absorbed, embedded, repackaged, rejected, reformed, reconstituted. It is here that the local music scenes are formed
around a sense that they could do better, or as well, or at least do something. Local
scenes, even the most basic, form a supportive, or inspirational context for this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7. CULTURAL POLICY AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Does this mean then that local authorities should keep well out of the music industry? In
Manchester, the hands-off (Darwinian) approach has been strongly voiced by Anthony
Wilson (Factory, Hacienda, In The City):”You know, it’s very difficult to put money into this kind of industry — how do you
help? ...There’s very little you can do. It’s like this building a municipal rehearsal room,
you know — fuck it! The argument being, if you can decide which ten bands out of
the 1,000 deserve the rehearsal room, don’t be a Councillor, be a fucking record
company, because you’d be a millionaire. Because, you know, the whole point of musicis that everybody does it, everybody does it, and therefore it’s impossible really to do
anything.You know, one of the strange things, since the music industry comes from byand large ... from the radical left or whatever ... one is aware of pop music’s Darwinian
inheritance in that it succeeds and it’s as if you have to have that winnowing-out
process.You know, you have to believe in what you’re doing, to actually struggle andto get the equipment, gigs, find a manager”.
Dave Haslam, a Manchester DJ agrees: ”You know, ‘Madchester’ happened anyway.
‘Madchester’ would have happened anyway. Those guys knew what they were doing... and if the Buzzcocks and New Order and the Smiths, and the Hacienda, and theBoardwalk and whoever else can rise out of nothing, then anybody else can.”This chimes very discordantly with other city governments and public agencies who, forvarious reasons, are increasingly interested in ‘doing something’ for the cultural industries
in general and the music industry in particular. In some respects, Wilson may be right insounding a warning. Local authorities are very much attracted to the music industry —as a highly globalised industry, it seems to sound the charge for new, forward-looking
cities. Music can be glamorous with a huge local PR potential — local stars being used topromote various initiatives. Music scenes are used by cities (often long after the event)— the iconographic value of streets and venues associated with particular events or
scenes inevitably tempt cities into inappropriate labelling (jazz quarter, bohemian quarter) and crass tourism (Cohen and Atkinson, 1995). The music industry often seems tohold out huge wealth potential — being amongst the most visibly lucrative cultural industries and among the UK’s top export earners generally. It is also widely felt that, for whatever reason (use of English, links to the USA, unemployment, ‘natural creativity’, etc.)
Britain is well placed to take advantage of this almost instant access to a global arena/marketplace — though the unequal distribution of this wealth, between and within local
areas, is not always recognised. Moreover, music production is widespread and arguably
accessible to even (especially?) the most excluded groups. Music strategies are often seen
as low on expense and skill and high on enthusiasm and creativity — as opposed to thehigh investment, skills and logistics required in the film industry, for example. Moreover,such spending has a more ‘populist’ profile than traditional or other cultural industry
investment — thus is easier to justify politically.The accessibility of music-making as wellas its widespread, quotidian consumption tends also to make musical success much more

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emblematic of the locality than other cultural production is. Although there are local ‘success stories’ in other cultural industries sectors (actors, films, designers) music seems to‘express’ a locality through sound, image and discourse in a way that is quite powerful.
So local authorities are more and more interested in the industry — the question is
can they do anything? The response lies at two levels. Wilson would want Manchester tokeep to its hands-off policy whilst ‘removing barriers’. This includes flexible planning andlicensing regulations; it means organising public transport and other, traditionally ‘non cultural’ initiatives. These are quite general demands, but crucially important to the successof any cultural strategy in either city. On the other hand,Wilson thinks that the things thecity does do — commissioning buildings, public spaces, festivals — need to be ‘inspirational’, that Manchester needs to move beyond the provincial to occupy a place inNorthern England similar to Barcelona in Catalonia. In order to do this, it needs to raise
its vision and to listen to, respond to, use those local cultural producers who have been
globally (or at least nationally) successful in their own sphere.
This, despite being couched in iconoclastic anti-policy language, is in fact a cultural policy.
But in the end the anti-policy language has undermined the evolution of such a policy. As
we saw above, the local music sector’s distrust of intervention fitted well with the dominant policy discourse in the city. Manchester’s regeneration is almost exclusively focusedon buildings, with a strong sense of laissez-faire with regards to the cultural industries sector. This discourse stems from a very powerful coalition of planners, public and private
regeneration intermediaries, and large/medium property developers. Heavily dependent
on city-brokered deals with national agencies such as English Partnerships, Lottery/
Millennium Funds and European Structural Funds, along with the city’s (limited) financial andplanning powers, this group is strongly laissez-faire when it comes to cultural industries
and other economic development areas. It points to the strength of the cultural sector
in Manchester (Manchester has the largest cultural sector in terms of employment outside of London, MIPC/MCC, 1997) and in particular to the language of the music sector
as confirmation of this approach.
However, at a local level the relationship between the cultural industries and urban
regeneration interests around property development is clearly fraught with tensions. A
hands-off approach can ultimately allow a property market to price out small-scalecultural producers. This may not just impact on a particular area but on the ecosystemof the city as a whole.
This can be seen in the case of the NQ. Whilst the city were willing to use the notion of‘the creative quarter’ in its literature it never bought into the vision of the area as a cultural industries quarter.The NQ was taken under the wing of the Planning Department
and Chief Executives — concerned mostly with property-led regeneration. Economic
Initiatives, the department driving a new cultural production strategy, was kept at arm’s
length. The local Northern Quarter Association (NQA) was given basic funding (£30,000
per year, from a Single Regeneration Budget (SRB)) and European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF) money was used to support building refurbishment and a public art project
and as leverage for new building investment.The major indicator of success was new businesses in the area and new investment in the built stock.There was no linkage of a NQ
regeneration strategy to the cultural sector other than to note the suitability of the smaller lettings in the area to such cultural businesses. At no point was the NQA encouraged
to look to business development/training funds (ERDF, ESF, SRB, etc.) to support cultural businesses, as was happening across the region and is happening in Sheffield. Whatdevelopments there were came from the Further and Higher Education establishments,
but again, there was no co-ordination around a central set of objectives, and their investments were registered in terms of building refurbishment. Whilst large sums were being

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drawn down by organisations who claimed to be delivering to the cultural industries
sector, the NQA was left to ask around the council for some money to paint their offices.
Some of the basic demands of cultural businesses in the NQ were improvements in thephysical environment (lighting, pavements, transport, parking, traffic congestion, etc.) andgeneral initiatives in marketing the area through publicity, signage, events, linkage withmore central activities, etc. Whilst a certain amount of investment has gone into infrastructure (though nothing like the levels in other areas of the centre), the marketing of
the area has been either opportunist (mentioning it when promoting the ‘vibrancy’ of thecity) or left to the poorly-resourced NQA. A marketing of the area at a strategic level,
as seen in Sheffield, has never been remotely attempted.The NQA, whilst seen as a ‘goodthing’ amongst those who talk of partnership with the community, has in fact a low political profile.Thus despite long and loud opposition, buses continue to be routed throughthe main streets in huge and increasing volume.
The issue of licensing, as with Sheffield, is instructive.
A failure to deal with long-running issues of gangs, organised crime, protection andviolence associated with Manchester’s night life and clubs has led to two prominent clubs
closing in the Northern Quarter. Although Manchester’s night life has been a central plankof the city’s re-imaging, and a generally laissez-faire approach has allowed club culture toflourish in the last decade, ‘non-intervention’ and a lack of co-ordinated action fromdifferent policy areas is now threatening that cultural activity.
But the conflict between property-led development and small cultural businesses seems
set to take centre stage. A number of recent large-scale developments have seen thefamiliar story of rising rents loom.The growth of residential developments is causing conflicts with music venues and bars.This is repeated elsewhere in a city that promotes city
centre living and the ‘24-Hour City’ with little overall co-ordination between them. The
latter is used to sell an image of the city, the reality of which may not be to the tastes of
those who move in. Currently, residential usage is at a premium here as in other ‘regenerated cities’, and this pushes small cultural uses out in a now almost classic pattern(Zukin, 1982).
This lack of any cultural quarter strategy can be seen in a major new NQ development
on a site of a car park and surrounding buildings owned by the city. Rather than used as
strategic elements in a regeneration strategy managed by the city, the site is to be soldoff via an overall development plan set by a private developer chosen through competitive bidding.The NQA, once a potential community development organisation, is now to
be consulted as a ‘voice’ of the local community. The developers’ brief stresses cultural
usage, but the inevitable tendency will be towards ‘cultural’ clients who can draw downlottery and other public funding, i.e., the subsidised sector.This will leave the music industry out. The first act of the new developers appears to be the eviction of small culturalusers in favour of a residential development (interview with Northern Quarter Association).
This growing conflict between property development and the cultural sector threatens
to be damaging to the NQ and to the city as a whole. In the absence of the major institutional players — which, as we have said, in the music industry are located in London— it is these clusters which provide a key infrastructure for the local industry, as well asa source of new talent for the national and global industry. But more generally, thesedevelopments indicate that whilst a local authority cannot conjure up an industry out of
nothing, it can let it disappear by failing to support it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------8. MUSIC INDUSTRY POLICY
What is becoming clear is that the discursive opposition of ‘top-down’ to ‘bottom-up/
laissez-faire is increasingly failing to articulate the complex needs of the music industry at

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local levels. However local music scenes and industries emerged in the past, it may wellbe the case that non-intervention is no longer an option.The existence of local networks
and creative talent does not necessarily mean that a local industry is secure. In fact thedominant characteristic of all local music scenes in the UK is that they have failed to dent
the hegemony of London as national/global music city; and only a few have secured a limited autonomy from the London-based networks. From the industry perspective, the‘provinces’ are feeder routes of talent to be developed and promoted from the headquarter capital, with minimal investment or supply of resources to help further supply
that talent.
The key problem for local strategy is increasingly centred, not on retaining talent, but on
developing an infrastructure that can help and benefit from this local talent as it moves
towards the global centre (geographically and metaphorically).This infrastructure includes
facilities (venues, studios, rehearsals, etc.) and business services (legal, financial, marketing,etc.) — but it also includes those wider networks of knowledge and creativity whichallow innovation, adaptation and the development of new markets. In this context, theimpact of new digital technologies could prove to be crucial. The implications for new
forms of distribution are by no means clear as yet; what is clear is that the old structuresof band/gig/recording are no longer the model by which we can approach local musicindustry policies (Frith, 1999). And as with other areas of city policy implicated in a shift
towards an informational economy, the role of knowledge, connectivity and adaptability
will be crucial. And non-intervention becomes retrograde.
The question then becomes what sort of intervention? Such an intervention would
require a knowledge of the sector and the development of new models of sector support which are only slowly beginning to emerge. Indeed, the difficulty lies in that what isrequired is Wilson’s ‘new vision’, but coupled with an attention to detail and flexibility ofdelivery which local authorities have found difficult to combine.
The problems implicit in Factory Records’ Anthony Wilson’s approach are quite clear here.
How can these fluid networks of highly creative, highly motivated people be used by acity without stifling them by the political and administrative bureaucracy of local government? What the NQ suggests is the need to locate these networks, to understand how
they operate and to try to find ways of adding value to their existing operations.
Networks are informal and fluid - but certain aspects of the knowledge and information
they carry can be formalised and made more widely available.This is not just in the caseof basic information, but also of business knowledge — high-quality sector-specific business advice, for example, can really make a difference. New product development
through new information and communication technologies has also great potential in themusic sector — but this requires high skills at high cost with low visibility. Local authorities like high visibility — they are very ill-equipped for the highly precise and skillsintensive support entailed by the music industry.
Micro-business clusters can be encouraged and supported using a ‘cultural quarter’ strategy, but this has to be low-key and in tune with the dynamics of the sector. Local authorities are tempted to go in ‘feet first’.The potential for creative collaboration, joint services, joint ventures is very high in these areas — but they demand attention to detail andsensitivity to the creative process itself as well as the different needs and character of different cultural sub-sectors. This usually sits awkwardly with the outputs demanded byeconomic development-related funding, through which most of these initiatives arefinanced.The new cultural production strategy in Manchester, looking towards the delivery of services to and via networks within the industry, may be the beginnings of this, but
it will depend on gaining high-level strategic representation — ‘the vision thing’ — inorder to have any long term chances of success.5

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II | 111-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9. CONCLUSION
There is a general question about the new support for cultural industries. In wanting tostress the economic (wealth-generating and employment-creating) aspects of ‘culture’,the specific cultural or creative moment is in danger of being overlooked.This raises thequestion of how economics can come to an understanding of the context and processof the generation of value-added in the production and distribution of symbolic goods.
The answer is not to turn back to a ‘culture as an end in itself ’ approach (pure creativity), but to integrate the business of culture into a wider cultural policy — which in theend is a challenge to ‘free market’ economics.The problem then remains how to square
the notion of culture as a central driver for cities in the next century with the powerful
networks around property development which emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The reduction of culture to economics is here mirrored in the reduction of the assets ofan area to their marketable potential.The notion of intellectual or social capital assets isalien to the discourse of this group — and yet it is these that will ultimately guarantee
the long-term sustainability and adaptability of cities. This is an emerging opposition, thefailed resolution of which could very well jeopardise the ability of cities to respond to thechallenges of the next decade.
In terms of music policy, it may indeed be inappropriate or restrictive for local authorities to target a ‘local music industry’ as if it were a self-contained local sector. Despite
strong local identification and networks, music is the industry most penetrated by global
industry structures.This is its strength and its weakness. Local talent can emerge and create local waves; but it is quickly and easily taken up in large-scale global business structures. Local music scenes and acts can resonate powerfully with a local area; but a precondition is often a global exposure which has little in common with this local identity.
Thus there may be a case for widening the scope from ‘music industry’ to include all thoseelements that contribute to the emergence and sustainability of a vibrant local musicscene, in terms of the scene’s links to the wider environment as well as other cultural
sub-sectors. This would have to recognise the wider ‘culture’ of the city and how thisrelates to actual participation in the production, consumption and distribution of music.
In which case local authorities would have to think much more profoundly about the relationship between the city, culture and globalisation than the ‘quick fix’ which the musicindustry seems to hold out.
Published in: Geoforum 31/2000, pp. 437–451, www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

See Northern Quarter Network, www.nqn.org.uk.

2

These were Abraham Moss and Fallover in Hulme and were not connected to any industry develop-

3

Indeed, the diffculties of securing such support which has led to ITC moving to Dublin, Glasgow and now

ment strategy as such. See MCC minutes: EDU/GP/90/147; EDU/GP/90/34 and F/90/153.
Liverpool (Manchester’s arch-rival in these matters) has brought the organisers to the point of demanding a music industry strategy from the city.
4

Part of the following section comes from research co-funded by ESF-Adapt (Networking for Business
Advantage), some interviews are by Dan Hill (indicated DH).

5

Manchester’s Cultural Industry Development Service is a networked service intended to act as sign-post,
broker and information rely between the different networks. The city has also set up a Music Industry
Development Network intended to do the same specifically for the music industry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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References
A. Amin (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader, Oxford, Blackwell 1994
A. Amin and S. Graham,The ordinary city, in: Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers, vol. 22, 1997,
pp. 411–429
M. Banks,A. Lovatt, J. O’Connor and C. Raffo, Risk and trust in the cultural industries, in: Geoforum, 31, 2000,
pp. 453–464
F. Bianchini and M. Parkinson, Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration, Routledge, London 1994
R. Burnett, The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry, Routledge, London 1995
M. Castels and P. Hall, Technopoles of the World, Routledge, London 1994
I. Chambers, Migrancy, Culture, Identity, Routledge, London 1994
S. Champion, And God Created Manchester, Wordsmith, Manchester 1991
Cohen, Atkinson, ESRC-funded research project: Popular Music, Tourism and Urban Regeneration, 1995,
R000235566
M. Collin, Altered State, Serpents Tail, 1998
Cornerhouse, Sublime: Manchester Music and Design 1976–1992, Cornerhouse Publishing, Manchester 1992
EDAW/Urban Cultures, Sheffield CIQ Strategic Vision and Development Study, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield
1997
M. Featherstone, Global culture: an introduction, in: M. Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism,
Globalisation and Modernity, Sage, London 1990
S. Frith, Communication to Music Industry Research Network, author’s own records, 1999
A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge 1990
I.P. Henry, Sport and the Analysis of Symbolic Regimes: An Illustrative Case Study of the City of Sheffield, unpublished paper, University of Loughborough, 1998
D. Hill and J. O’Connor,The Invisible City, in: City no. 5, 1997
J. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York 1961
A. Lovatt and J. O’Connor, Cities and the night-time economy, in: Planning Practice and Research 10 (2), 1995
Manchester Institute for Popular Culture/Manchester City Council, Cultural Industries Development Service
Feasibility Study, MIPC/MCC, Manchester 1997
Manchester Institute for Popular Culture/Manchester City Council, Cultural Production in Manchester:
Strategy and Research, MIPC, Manchester 1999
M. Middles, From Joy Division to New Order: The Factory Story,Virgin, London 1991
D. Morley and K. Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries,
Routledge, London 1995
J. O’Connor, Popular Culture, Cultural Intermediaries and Urban Regeneration, 1998
J. O’Connor, A. Lovatt and K. Milestone, Culture and the Northern Quarter, MIPC, Manchester 1993
J. O’Connor and D.Wynne (eds.), From the Margins to the Centre, Arena, Aldershot 1996
H. Rietveld, This is Our House, Avebury, Aldershot 1998
J. Savage, The Hacienda Must Be Built, International Music Publications, London 1992
I. et al.Taylor, A Tale of Two Cities, Routledge, London 1996
Urban Cultures Ltd, Manchester first: how to become a cultured city; arts and cultural strategy for Manchester
city council, Urban Cultures, Manchester 1992
Urbanistics/Manchester City Council, Northern Quarter Regeneration Strategy, 1993
D.Wynne (ed.), The Culture Industry, Avebury, Aldershot 1991
S. Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change, Radius, London 1982
S. Zukin, Landscapes of Power: from Detroit to Disneyworld, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 1992------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL---------------------------------------------

II | 114--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL CITY PROFILE
Phil Misselwitz--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------GROWTH AND DECLINE
Liverpool’s rise began after 1700 as a merchant city and its early importance was linked
to the global slave trade.The city took immense profits as a hub within a triangular ‘slaves
for raw materials’ trading network, exporting cotton and hardware to Africa in exchange
for slaves that were then traded for sugar, rum, tobacco or raw cotton in the West Indies
and Virginia. Liverpool’s global trading connections proved valuable after the abolition of
the slave trade in 1807 and, indeed, the 19th century was the period of most rapid
growth for the city. Within only 50 years, Liverpool’s population increased fivefold(from 77,000 in 1801 to 376,000 in 1851) and doubled again in another 50 years (1901:
704,000). Prosperity and power reached their peak in the early 20th century when
Liverpool was known as the ‘second city’ of the British Empire (after London) and its
most important port city with approximately 870,000 inhabitants in the 1930s. Throughout this period of growth, the docks continued to be the main engine of the city’s economy, playing a key role in linking the prosperous Lancashire industrial region as well as theentire British Isles to the overseas markets of the Empire. During the period of rapid
expansion, the city grew in concentric rings around the centre and along the rapidly
expanding docks that stretched along the river Mersey over a total length of 14 miles
and were linked by an efficient overhead railway system. The city’s strength during thistime is embodied in the famous waterfront buildings — the three Graces — built
between 1906 and 1917.
Another boosting factor for the city was its status as one of the main gateways for
European emigration. Between 1830 and 1930, nine million people set sail from the
Mersey’s docks for Australia and the USA. Many would-be emigrants decided to travelno further than the Pier Head as the low-skilled jobs available in the city provided reliable work. In the late 1840s, an estimated 250,000 Irish immigrants arrived escaping thepotato famine — the largest influx of an immigrant community, whose tightly-knit character is still apparent today. To a lesser extent, Liverpool was also the port of entry for
migrants from Britain’s far-flung colonies; and Caribbean, Indian and Chinese communities, founded mainly by settling sailors, made it one of Britain’s first multicultural cities.
Housing conditions in the city were, however, extremely poor, with some of the densest
urban quarters in Europe, consisting (like the former Scotland Road area) of tiny, backto-back terrace houses and courtyard housing, which were located mostly to the northand east of the city centre. In stark contrast to these slum-like conditions, Liverpool’s
wealthy trading classes occupied generous town houses and villas, located mostly towards the south.
Liverpool’s decline began when global trade links were severed in the inter-war period.
In addition, the focus of Britain’s economy shifted towards the southeast of the country,
pushing the city’s hinterland into a deep recession. During World War Two, these trends
were temporarily disguised by the sudden importance of the port as the main window
to transatlantic food and raw material supply.The trends towards containerisation in the
1950s made the docks rapidly redundant, and port activities were shifted further north
towards the mouth of the river. The loss of the docks as a main source of employment
marked the beginning of a relentless period of economic and demographic decline.

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Liverpool’s municipality was aware of the structural problems of the mono-functional
economy of harbour and harbour processing industries. As Richard Meegan explains,
already from 1936 the municipality became a key player in the attempt to stir against fatal
trends of decline with policy initiatives (later to be called regeneration programmes) that
fundamentally altered the face of the city; and indeed, policy experimentation was often
ill-conceived and fatal in its own way. Its first stage was a promotion of decentralisationof housing and economic activity (Richard Meegan). Liverpool tried to tackle problemsof overcrowding and slum housing by building municipal housing estates on newly
acquired land at the outskirts of the city (during the 1930s, Liverpool nearly doubled its
built-up city area) or in the emerging independent New Towns such as Skemersdale or
Runcorn. For the time being, this policy was not unsuccessful. Helped by national decentralisation programmes, the city managed to attract new national and multinational corporations industries, which provided temporary substitute jobs for unemployed lowskilled labourers. Businesses were located in new estates close to the peripheral housing
areas. For centrally-located local industries, however, decentralisation was often disastrous, and companies closed, being unable to compete with the multi-nationals. In the city
centre, the tabula rasa demolitions of the traditional neighbourhoods meant the destruction of tightly-knit communities, which were scattered in the new estates at the periphery, which contained little or no amenities. After World War Two, slum-clearance programmes gathered pace. The inner city ring of 19th century slum housing was replacedby four- to five-storey, open-deck access blocks. De-densification and fragmentation of theurban tissue continued with the construction of inner city highways in the early 1960s(Shankland Plan) that cut off the city centre from the surrounding housing areas. In thelate 1960s and early 1970s, in some areas terraces were demolished and replaced bylarge clusters of tower blocks within expansive green areas of distinct suburban feel. In
effect, the city had been turned ”inside out” (Meegan).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------STRUGGLE AND SURVIVALIn the late 1970s, the impact of the global economic recession on the city’s economy wasparticularly severe, as most of the employment was provided by multi-national corporations. While employment in the early 1960s had been at its peak, between 1966 and1978 Liverpool lost 20% of its employment base (Meegan) and by 1991 a further 37%(particularly devastating were the years 1978–1981, when 18% of the jobs were lost).
Unemployment soared to unimaginable heights. The predominantly low-skilled job basemade service sector growths or any other diversification of the industries difficult. The
remaining industries engaged in restructuring that, despite new investment, led to computerisation and mechanisation to retain competitiveness, resulting in a ‘jobless growth’.
In addition to global economic change, decline was further exacerbated by a national
political and economic shift towards the European Union, which left Liverpool at its
periphery.The resulting social catastrophe prompted vast numbers of the population toleave the city that had experienced a ‘Golden Age’ only ten years before with a vibrantlocal culture that had produced world famous bands like the Beatles.The nadir of decline
was marked by violent riots in Manchester’s Moss Side and Liverpool’s Toxteth districts
in 1981.
From 1979 on, Thatcherism imposed a draconian overhauling of national policies inaccordance the principles of cost saving, a reduced role of local municipalities and theencouragement of the role of the private sector. Liverpool’s municipality opposed thesepolicies and engaged in a bitter war against the neo-liberal experiments of Central
Government. From 1983 on, the local Council was dominated by a militant wing of theLabour Party, led by Derek Hutton and committed to municipal socialism with municipal

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool City Profile

II | 116

employment and social housing as its core programmes. The resulting confrontation
climaxed in 1987 when a majority of the city councillors were discredited by soaring local
corruption and when the Thatcher government abolished the Merseyside County
Council. Liverpool was left in a state of free fall.The subsequent selling of large parts ofthe city’s owned properties and land to very few large developers did little to improve
the situation. The prices were extremely low and the selling was unconditional, i.e., no
development obligations were attached, which meant that most of the land and buildings
remained empty as investors decided to ‘wait for better times’. As a consequence of privatisation, developers and newly-formed housing associations took over the Council’s
driving seat position in city planning and house building. In a second period of inner city
tabula rasa demolition, the 1950s multi-storey terraced blocks were replaced by privately-owned bungalows and two-storey semi-detached houses that proved more easily
saleable. This process continues to the present day and led to the almost complete disappearance of the last, once widespread urban typology: the residential tower. Most
affected was again the inner-city ring around the centre, which lost significant parts of its
population: from 50 to 60 units per hectare previously to a mere six or eight.The planning of new private estates reflects the traumatic riots and exploding crime rates of the
1980s in its use of the cul-de-sac principle, in-built CCTV and neighbourhood watch programmes, solid perimeter brick walls, etc. Fortress-like estates are surrounded by vast
expanses of green spaces: inner-city suburbia. However, exceptions to the predominant
trend towards privatisation do exist and point towards an often forgotten, but vital
resource of Liverpool: Already in the late 1970s, during the beginning of the downfall of
the city, tenants formed citizens initiatives to set up housing co-ops (e.g. Aldonian Estatein Everton), which became a safe haven in the following years. It is here where cul-de-sac
development in Liverpool started first, predating the riots of the early 1980s, fuelled byideas of community rather than security.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FUTURE PROSPECTS
While Liverpool continues to be one of the most deprived boroughs of the entire country and one of the poorest within the EU (75% of the average EU GDP), since 1991, a
process of consolidation in the city’s finances began and an increasing sense of optimismis spreading in the city.The turnaround was largely helped by huge national and EU regeneration grants. From 1993 on, the city received Objective 1 status, prolonged for a second term in 1999 (overall EU funds amounted to £ 800 million so far, distributed in five
Strategic Partnership Areas), which significantly contributed to the process of stabilisation.
Both EU and national funding was conditional upon the principles of ‘partnership’ andthus helped to found new and effective strategic alliances within the city, such as theLiverpool Partnership Group (1995).The physical transformation of inner city areas set thestage for foreign (e.g. Irish) speculative investment in the housing sector. New typologies
emerged, such as loft living or luxury apartment blocks in the former dock areas. An additional boost for the centre was achieved through liberal licensing laws allowing the selling of alcohol until 2 a.m., and Liverpool became a regional centre for youth culture andentertainment.This also benefited the local music scene, which developed into a vibrantclub culture of regional and national importance. Attracted by the success of popular
music, students began to pour into the city. Clubs and popular culture generated newjobs together with other niche economies, such as the new John Lennon Airport (European
budget airlines) and expanding call centres.
Recent Census figures have shown that the period of large demographic decline hascome to an end and Liverpool’s population appears to be stabilised at around 460,000
inhabitants, approximately half of the population of the 1930s. Population figures in the

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool City Profile

II | 117

Merseyside conurbation are even slightly increasing. Much seems to point towards further consolidation in the future. However, while the city centre rejuvenates and run-down
warehouses are gentrified, on the scale of the entire city, Liverpool’s social and economic fabric remains highly polarised — a trend that appears to have increased in recent
years. While rents in centrally-located apartment and loft developments have skyrocketed, targeting a new urban class of managerial workers and professionals, much of the city’s
population still lives in some of the most deprived wards in the country. Unemployment
and poverty figures vary strongly between city areas. The traditional north-south drop
can partly still be felt, with unemployment in the North much higher, although the mostrecent Census figures of 2001 point towards significant improvement. Much of the successful new economy, including the port that handles more tonnage than ever before, is
not labour- intensive, and many call centres are beginning to shift to cheaper-labour countries, such as India. Despite new development in the centre, 7.86% of the city’s area still
remains vacant.
Liverpool’s most recent success is the European Capital of Culture 2008 award, describedby Sir Bob Scott, head of the bidding team, as a scholarship rather than a prize for pastachievements. It is hoped that this will not only boost vibrant cultural activities in the city.
New projects such as the Paradise Street development and the Fourth Grace by William
Alsop will alter the appearance of the inner city dramatically. It has been rumoured thatthe most immediate effect of the announcement of the title was a 20% increase in innercity real estate value. As regeneration gathers pace, Liverpool (like Manchester) is likely
to face ongoing and possibly deepening polarisation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 118--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TIMELINE: LIVERPOOL 1699–2004
Jon Murden (2004)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1699

William III passes an act making Liverpool, hitherto part of the parish of Walton, an independent parish. Liverpool Corporation is given the power to erect its own new church.

1700

Liverpool acquires its own Customs House, giving the town control over its own trading
affairs. This was a fundamental step towards becoming a major port, and the Port ofLiverpool is now considered entirely separate from that of Chester, of which it had once
been a part.

1707–1806

In Liverpool’s 5th century, it first begins to develop rapidly as an urban centre. Its population
grows from 20,000 to 80,000. While in 1707 just over 100 ships use the port each year, thisgrows to nearly 5,000 ships by 1806. Moreover, tonnage handled by the port increases froma meagre 9,000 tons to over 450,000 tons in the same period.

1712–1715

Construction of Liverpool’s first wet dock. Built in the mouth of the pool, it can accommo
date between 80 and 100 ships.

1720–1723

Growth in shipping in the port from 102 vessels in 1707 to 131 in 1723 sees the boundaries of the port further expanded.

1726

The road between Liverpool and Prescot is improved following the establishment of a turnpike trust. Better communications with its hinterland provide an essential ingredient for
Liverpool’s trade expansion

1729

Liverpool and Manchester are connected following work to make the Rivers Irwell andMersey navigable.

1730

Liverpool becomes the third mercantile port of Britain, behind London and Bristol.

1740–1800

Liverpool is the world’s leading port for slave ships, sending out between 40 and 100
voyages each year. By 1800, 25% of Liverpool’s ships were engaged in slaving and one-tenthof outbound shipping tonnage went to Africa in exchange for human cargoes.

1740

A Dock Trustees Board is set up and took over the dock making it public property.

1755

An act of Parliament permitting the construction of the Sankey Canal is passed.The first canal
to be built in Britain, once completed it connects Liverpool to the coalfields around St. Helens.

1757

Beginning of the Liverpool cotton trade as the first imports of raw cotton arrive from theWest Indies.

1760–1825

This period sees a rapid and massive expansion of cotton imports to serve the industrialising cotton mills of Manchester and Lancashire. In 1784 1,800 lb. of raw cotton pass throughthe dock. By 1825, this rises to 124.3 million lb.

1760

Following improvements to the road between Liverpool and the existing stagecoach station
at Warrington, the first-ever stage coach service from Liverpool is begun.

1766

Communication links with Liverpool are further improved with the construction of the Dukeof Bridgwater’s canal between Runcorn and Manchester.

1773–1820

Further gradual improvement to the turnpike road system sees the journey time between
Liverpool and Manchester cut from twelve hours to three hours.

1775

The Liverpool economy suffers a recession due to the effects of the American War of
Independence. Liverpool seamen attack the Town Hall in protest at having their wages
reduced, and in response the Common Council calls in the military.

1776

As a result of the previous years’ trouble, a permanent garrison is stationed in Liverpool.

1777

Under the direction of engineer James Brindley, the 92-mile Grand Trunk Canal connecting
the Mersey with the Trent is completed.

1784–1825

First shipments of U.S. cotton arrive.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1787–1807

II | 119In the face of hostile opposition from the town’s merchants, Liverpool notaries Rathbone,Binns and Roscoe organise the Society for Abolition and campaign vigorously against slavery.

1800

80 coaches each day leave Liverpool with raw cotton bound for Manchester.

1807

The slave trade is abolished in the British Empire. Cotton becomes the primary trade of thePort of Liverpool

1808–1850

Following the abolition of the slave trade, many of the merchants go into property and invest
in the court slums. Overcrowded and low-quality, this type of housing is organically linked topoor health, poor housing and poverty.

1813

The East India Company’s monopoly on trade with India and China is abolished. This greatly
assists Liverpool’s attempts to trade with the Far East.The following year, 1814, the Kingsmill
becomes the first Liverpool ship to trade directly with China.

1823

The West Indian and U.S. cotton imports are further supplemented by those from Sudan
and Egypt.

1824–1858

Jesse Hartley, appointed as Liverpool’s dock surveyor and engineer, oversees the creation of
the world’s first fully enclosed dock system. During his 34-year tenure, he is responsible foradding no less than 140 acres of wet docks and ten miles of quay space to Liverpool docks.
His most notable constructions include the Clarence (1830), Brunswick (1832), Waterloo(1834),Victoria and Trafalgar (1836), Canning (1842) and Albert (1845) docks.

1826

An Enabling Act passes parliament which permits a railway to be built linking Liverpool and

1826–1830

George Stephenson oversees the building of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway. Once

Manchester.
opened, this becomes the first passenger railway in the world.
1828

Aintree racecourse is founded by Waterloo hotelier Bold McLynn.

1832

Overcrowded, unsanitary, poorly-constructed court houses in the rapidly expanding town
provide the ideal breeding ground for cholera. An outbreak this year infects 4,912 and kills
1,523.

1834–1918

Approx. 3,000 Chinese seafarers settle in Liverpool.

1835

Parliament appoints Liverpool an Assize Town. This leads directly to the building of
St. George’s Hall, which becomes the seat of the Crown Court.

1836

Construction of Lime Street railway station.

1837

First ‘Grand National’ run at Aintree, though it is not until 1847 that it adopts its now famous

1837–1985

Liverpool founds its own stock exchange.

title.
1838

The foundation stone of St. George’s Hall is laid, although work does not officially start until
1842, taking twelve years to complete.

1839

Samuel Cunard wins the Admiralty contract to carry mail to the Americas and establishes
the Cunard Shipping line, operating a twice-monthly trans-Atlantic passenger service from
Liverpool.

1839–1890

Liverpool’s population increases dramatically as large numbers of Irish migrants settle in theCity, fleeing from land evictions and the effects of the great potato famine. Many intended tomove on to the U.S. or Australia, but for those who cannot afford the passage or who are
too ill to travel, Liverpool becomes their home. They settle in dockland, in over-crowded
courts and cellars, exploited by rack renters. Joined by Scots, Welsh, Jewish, West African,
Caribbean and Chinese communities, Liverpool develops into a multi-cultural city.

1840–1930

The port exploits a major new form of cargo as nine million emigrants pass throughLiverpool for the New World.

1840

The town makes advances in high culture as the Liverpool Philharmonic Society is founded.

1840–1846

A number of factors combine to give Liverpool the highest death rate anywhere in the UK,
around 36 deaths per 1,000. In response, a locally-driven public health movement emerges
from the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society. Dr David Duncan is at its forefront.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1842

II | 120

To improve the public health situation, Liverpool opens public baths and washhouses, the firstin the country.

1842–1911

A number of craft trades union bodies come together to gradually evolve the Liverpool
Trades Council. Despite this and despite the impact of ‘New Unionism’ from the 1880s
onwards, the vast majority of unskilled and casual workers in Liverpool remain without
permanent organisation. This is due to a combination of: employer opposition; religious,
sectarian and ethnic divisions; and the fact that casual and irregular port work does not lend
itself to solid organisation.

1843
1843

Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society is founded.
Dr. Duncan publishes The Physical Causes of the High Mortality Rate in Liverpool, arguingthat mortality and the appalling living conditions are connected.Typically 25% of his patientsin the Vauxhall area of Liverpool are living in cellar dwellings with between 15 and 30 people
in a single airless room.

1844–1846

Irish migration reaches a peak as the worst effects of the potato famine are felt.

1846–1863

The Liverpool Sanitary Act is passed, creating the post of Medical Office of Health inLiverpool — the first appointment of its kind. Dr Duncan fills the post, and by the time of
his retirement 17 years later, has overseen improvements to the city’s sewers, public baths,
washhouses, street paving and lighting, in conjunction with the first Borough Engineer,
Newlands.

1848

Cunard establishes a regular passenger service between Liverpool and New York.

1849–1854

Despite the best effort of Duncan and Newlands, cholera strikes Liverpool twice more. In1849,
5,308 die out of a total number of cases estimated at between 15,000 and 20,000.The effortsof the health reformers mean that when cholera returns in 1854, its impact is much reduced.

1850

Royal Liver Assurance founded. Liverpool is now the UK’s second most important insurance
centre after London.

1850–1913

This period sees a trebling of imports and a fourfold increase in exports through the city’s
docks. Liverpool’s national and international status as a port is indisputable. It has reached its
heyday, and by the outbreak of war is still responsible for handling over a third of UK exports
and just under a quarter of imports. However, a slackening pace of growth at this time also
indicates growing competition from foreign shipping lines and a certain weakness in the
British export economy as a whole, which for the first time is no longer in a monopoly
position in terms of international trading relationships.

1850–1945

Immigration of Irish Catholics into Liverpool creates a religious divide in politics, making thecity a stronghold for Protestant Toryism. Connections between the Orange Lodges, theWorking Men’s Conservative Association and the Tory party play upon the sectarian traditionsof the Protestant working class for the benefit of Conservatism. Merchants and casual workers,
rich and poor, are all united by Protestantism, resulting in a shared political focus. In response,
Catholics together vote for their own party, the Irish Nationalist Party, making that thesecond largest party in local politics.

1852

Peak year of emigration from Liverpool: 299,099 departures on over 1,000 sailings

1856

David Lewis founds his department store, the first group to introduce centralised buying.

1857–1970

MDHB is empowered by an act of parliament to manage shipping and commercial interestsof the port, removing control from the town council.

1857

Liverpool becomes the second most important port in the UK as nearly half of the UK’s
exports and approximately one-third of its imports pass through the town

1860–1900

Of the five million emigrants who leave Britain, four million embark from Liverpool.

1861

The Liverpool Omnibus Company begins operating a horse-drawn bus service linking the1864

The building of new courts is banned. At the time, there are 3,073 courts, consisting of

town centre and the docks.
17,825 dwellings, housing an estimated 110,000 people.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1866
1868

II | 121

A further cholera outbreak kills 2,122.
The Liverpool Tramways Act authorises a new company, the Liverpool Tramways Company, tobuild a circular line round the city centre with tracks out to Dingle and Walton.

1870–1939

For the first time, there is a gradual growth in manufacturing industry in Liverpool. It is, however, almost entirely dependent on processing the port’s commodities or servicing its ships.

1870–1890

Jewish migration to Liverpool peaks, as the Russian pogroms intensify.

1872–1978

Tate & Lyle sugar factory, processing imported West Indian sugar cane, is operational at Love
Lane. In time,Tate and Lyle will buy up all other processors in the city, to become the largest
processor in the world.

1873

Brunner Mond found alkali works in Liverpool, using local and imported salt — later becoming
a key component of ICI.

1876–1882

A merger of the Liverpool Tramways Company and the Liverpool Omnibus Company (to form
Liverpool United Tramways and Omnibus), backed by the financial assistance of the Liverpool
Corporation, marks the beginning of the great extension of the tram network into the outerareas of Liverpool and Bootle.

1878

Everton FC is founded from St Domingo Methodist youth club.

1880

Queen Victoria recognises the success of Liverpool by granting her City status.

1881–1886

Building of the underground passenger railway between Liverpool and Birkenhead.

1881

A Royal Charter establishes a University College in Liverpool.

1888

Everton FC are one of twelve clubs invited to become founder members of the Football
League.

1889–1893

Construction of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the first elevated electric railway in theworld. Affectionately known as the ‘Dockers Umbrella’ it is built to ease congestion on thedock road, which by the last quarter of the 19th century has become so cluttered that it isalmost impossible to transport goods and men between the different docks. It operates
more than seven miles between Dingle and Seaforth.

1892

Liverpool FC founded as breakaway from Everton FC.

1893–1937

Life of Frank Hornby, toy entrepreneur.

1897

Crawford’s Biscuits is established, supplied with flour from Rank’s Mills and sugar from Tate & Lyle.

1897–1903

Liverpool Corporation assumes full control of Liverpool United Tramway and Omnibus and quickly
converts the system to electric traction. As the city grows, there is great demand to use thenew electric services, and a revised fare system enables even more people to use them.

1900

Frank Hornby patents Mecanno.

1900–1921

A fledgling Labour Party begins to emerge in Liverpool. At first it centres on the Trades
Council and the local ILP, before they formally merge in 1921.

1903

The University College re-establishes itself as a fully-fledged University of Liverpool.

1904–1978

Construction of Anglican Cathedral to a design by a then 23-year-old Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
Once completed, it is the largest Anglican Cathedral in the world.

1906

A memorable sporting double as Liverpool FC win the league and Everton FC the FA Cup.

1907–1916

Three of Liverpool’s most famous buildings are constructed on the site of St George’s Dock,
which have been filled in:The Liver Building (1911),The Cunard Building (1916) and the Portof Liverpool Building (1907) comprise the trademark image of Liverpool’s waterfront.

1910

BICC builds an insulated cable factory dependent on Sumatran latex and Chilean copper, alldocked in Liverpool.

1911

Dockers, carters, seamen and railwaymen are invovled in three months of strike action. By
August there is almost a general transport strike in Liverpool. Gunboats are anchored in the
Mersey and the climax of unrest is reached when riots on St Georges plateau are violently dispersed.A decisive victory is won with the securing of better pay and conditions. In the aftermath,the unions set about consolidating their new-found strength, building up their finances, tackling
casualism and building membership. Liverpool becomes the best-organised port in the country.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1914–1979

II | 122

Mecanno and Hornby Dublo trains are made in a purpose-built factory at Binns Lane,
Wavertree.

1919–1921

The end of World War One sees a boom in demand for British exported goods, especially
cotton, and by taking advantage of this it briefly appears that Liverpool will regain its pre-war
prosperity and status

1920

Hornby introduces the Dublo toy train system.

1921–1939

The brief post-war boom collapses and unemployment begins to rise in Liverpool.
Liverpool’s decline is directly related to the changing international structure of production
and the declining competitiveness of British exported staple goods. Male unemployment in
the Merseyside region as a whole, therefore, consistently remains above 20% during theinter-war years, because there are few opportunities for alternative work outside the port.
70% of those unemployed are from sectors related to shipping, transport or building.

1921

The Irish Nationalist Party’s basis in Liverpool politics is eroded after partition and, in
response, changes its name to the Catholic Party.

1922–1939

Members of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and the National Seaman’s Union struggle
to democratise their organisations and refuse to submit to what they see as ‘union dictation’— especially when the T&G attempts to de-casualise the docks in the 1920s. In 1922, seamenin Liverpool form a short-lived breakaway union, the Amalgamated Marine Workers’ Union tocombat the NSU (which is widely viewed as a company union) and in 1925 the NSU’s
attempts to impose two wage cuts on its members provoke an unofficial strike.

1923

Labour wins its first parliamentary seat in the city with victory in a by-election at Edge Hill.

1924

Littlewood’s football pools founded.

1925–1934

Construction of the Queensway road tunnel linking Liverpool and Birkenhead.

1925–1929

The Catholic Party is gradually absorbed into the Labour Party, which becomes the secondlargest party in local politics. Labour is now however seen as representative only of theCatholic interest.

1926

The Liverpool Act passes through Parliament.This enables the local authority to sponsor the1929

The continuing casual nature of the dock labour system means there are 239 stands along

construction of industrial estates in order to attract new industries to the Merseyside area
the seven-mile waterfront, where an estimated 60,000 men come each morning hoping tobe picked for work.
1929

Conservative estimates suggest the numbers of people living below the official poverty line
in Liverpool are around 30% with another 14% just above this, all suffering hardship,
deprivation and insecurity.

1930–1967

Construction of Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King. Work on an initial design by
Edward Lutyens is abandoned during the war and a lack of funds prevents its completion. In
1962, Sir Frederick Gibberds’ radical modern design of a ‘cathedral for our time’ is selected
and is built in less than five years.

1931–1981

Population falls by 50% – a reflection of economic decline.

1932

Littlewood’s enters mail order business

1933

First provincial airport constructed at Speke to provide a lead for industrial growth in the area.

1933

Everton FC win the FA Cup for the second time.

1936–1939

Liverpool City Council begins work on building the Speke estate – a mixed community ofhomes and new factory premises. Similar developments get under way at Aintree and Kirkby.

1936–1945

Rearmament sees huge new factories built making air frames, vehicles and aero engines.
These are the first factories to be directed to Liverpool by central government and represent
state recognition of the city’s need for a broader-based economy.

1938

Bryant and May open a model match factory close to Garston docks to utilise Baltic timber
unloaded locally.

1939

The stylishly modern art deco new Philharmonic Hall is completed.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1939–1945

II | 123

The city provides the control centre for the Battle of the Atlantic. Nearly 1,300 convoys,
some of over 60 ships, dock in Liverpool carrying essential war supplies. In the first six
months of 1944 alone, 750,000 men and two million tons of supplies pass through the city’s
docks.

1941

Between May 8–15, Liverpool experiences blitzkrieg. 2,315 bombs, 119 land mines andcountless incendiaries are dropped on the city.Almost 4,000 are killed, 3,500 seriously injured
and over 70,000 made homeless. Much of the city centre is razed.

1941–1942

A further 68 air raids are made upon the city.

1945–1947

The Distribution of Industry Act is passed and Industrial Development Certificates are introduced, allowing the state to intervene directly to promote and control economic development in the regions for the first time.

1945

Armament factories are sold off to become satellite factories for English Electric, GEC, Lucasand Dunlop.

1945–1955

The nature of Liverpool politics begin to change. Sectarian politics gradually become less of
an issue, and at the same time the ideals of Labourism are given a great boost by the sweeping Labour victory of 1945. Furthermore, Catholic opinion in the Party begins to be outweighed by the power base assembled by Jack and Bessie Braddock. For the first time, theLabour Party appears capable of winning the support of all sections of the working class inLiverpool, both Catholic and Protestant, casual and non-casual.

1945–1979

Workers on Merseyside are again at the forefront of attempts to achieve full democratic
rights for rank-and-file trade unionists.

1945–1957

The popular music scene in Liverpool is heavily influenced by American Country and Black
Music, which arrives in the city in large quantities due to the impact of the U.S. airbase at
nearby Burtonwood and the influence of the ‘Cunard Yanks’ — young seamen who work the
Cunard Line to New York and who, inspired by the cultural and consumer revolution taking
place there, return with American clothes, consumer durables and, most significantly, records.
This, combined with the later skiffle craze, leads to the development of a distinctive ‘Mersey
Sound’.

1946

Playwright Alan Bleasdale is born.

1946–1947

Liverpool FC win the Football League championship.

1948–1957

By 1945, further extensions to the Tramway system out to Fazakerley, Woolton, Allerton,
Gillmoss and Kirkby see it grow to become the third largest in Britain. However a fire in
November 1947 destroys 10% of the fleet; this is quickly followed by the decision to phaseout the tramcar routes and replace them with ”cheaper” and ”more flexible” buses.The lasttram runs on September 14, 1957 from Pier Head to Edge Lane.

1949–1969

As part of the rapid post-war expansion of higher education in England, the University ofLiverpool campus is re-built and greatly extended.

1949–1980

Except for a few months in 1962–1963, Merseyside as a whole is classified as a Development
Area — thus qualifying for special treatment of its economic problems. Government policy
succeeds in diverting about half of new investment to the DAs, but with little overall effecton Liverpool’s unemployment, which stubbornly remains roughly twice the national averagethroughout this period.

1950–1958

Numbers employed in manufacturing do increase by 10%, giving signs for the first time that
Liverpool’s absent manufacturing base might be filled. The increase is mainly in metals, engineering and food, as firms like Birds Eye, Cadburys, Huntley and Palmer and Kraft move in.
While 29,000 jobs are created in the region, 19,000 are lost.The net gain (0.4%) being only
just enough to keep up with the growth in the labour force. Unemployment remains twice
as high as the national average, at over 3%.

1952–1961

Kirkby housing estate is constructed, increasing the population of the area 16 times! 10,000
dwellings are built, re-housing 50,000 people ‘decanted’ from inner city Liverpool.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1954

II | 124

Liverpool Daily Post reports that, although nearly 60 non-Merseyside firms have opened
factories and created jobs for 27,000 since the war, this has not been sufficient to alter the
economy of the area radically.The main body of the local economy remains focussed uponactivity at the docks.

1955–1967

Labour takes control of the local council for the first time. With the Braddocks (and latterlyBill Sefton) at the helm, Labour on Merseyside comes to signify boss politics of the mostblatant kind. Their political machine becomes increasingly remote from ordinary Party
members, which leads to an atrophying of the organisation at ward level.

1956

Requiring £2,000,000 worth of repairs and modernisation and unable to acquire assistancefrom the Council or other organisations, the Liverpool Overhead Railway announces itcannot guarantee safety and is forced to close. By 1959, nearly all traces of the line havedisappeared.

1956–1958

1,500 jobs are cut from the docks by the MDHB.

1956

The container revolution begins. The American Malcolm McLean sails a modified tanker, theIdeal X, from New Jersey to Houston carrying 58 modified truck trailer units.There are spectacular savings in the time ships spend in port. One U.S. study later shows that, where it look
10,500 working hours to load and unload 11,000 tons of general cargo, it took only 546
working hours when utilising containers. Of course, Liverpool’s prominence came from oldfashioned cargo liners and these were precisely the type of ship that would soon become
obsolete.

1957–1962

As part of the skiffle craze, John Lennon forms The Quarrymen. By 1962, both the line-up andthe name had changed and The Beatles were beginning to attract a large following in the local
underground clubs of Liverpool, in particular the Cavern Club on Matthew Street.

1958

The Minister of Labour, Hugh MacLeod, tells a deputation from Merseyside Trades Council
that Liverpool is an area which should export labour.

1959

John Rodgers MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade says, ”no area of similar size
anywhere in the UK has employment problems remotely comparable”.

1960–1965

A steeply declining export trade and reduced Commonwealth imports see the MDHB shed
10,000 workers from the docks.

1960–1968

A turning point in the industrial and economic structure of Liverpool. Further decline in thedocks is offset by the relocation of giant multi-national branch factories to the area (coerced
by a mixture of sticks and carrots). For the first time, there is the opportunity for factory
work on a large scale. As a result, 28% of Liverpool’s workforce is employed in factories with1,000+ workers. 58% of the region’s jobs in manufacturing are in such plants. By the end of
the decade, 25% of Liverpudlian workers are employed in multi-national branch factories.

1960–1966

The Seaman’s Reform Movement attempts to harness rank-and-file militancy into concerted
action against the reactionary leadership of the NSU. In 1960, it brings the port to a standstill and provides the impetus for the official strike of 1966 — the first since 1911 — which
prompts Prime Minister Harold Wilson to intervene.

1961–1969

Over 6,000 families are moved into New Towns surrounding Liverpool, including
Skelmersdale and Runcorn, after agreement between local authorities.

1961–1971

Due to the mixed success of the new ventures and the continuing decline of the traditional
economic base, 76,000 jobs disappear on Merseyside as a whole, 90% from Liverpool.

1962–1965

Car giants Ford,Vauxhall and Standard-Triumph (latterly part of British Leyland) invest £65 million
in three new car plants on Merseyside, creating 30,000 jobs.

1962–1965

The Beat boom gets underway as the Cavern Club hosts its first Beat Night and Liverpool’s
music newspaper, Merseybeat, estimate that some 350 beat groups existed in the city. As wellas The Beatles, groups such as Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Searchers and The Swinging Blue
Jeans achieve widespread recognition.

1963–1966

Liverpool FC are twice champions of the Football League.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

II | 1251963

Signed by EMI, the Beatles take popular music by storm both in Europe and the U.S.A.

1964

A group of young trade unionists, including people such as Tony Mulhearne and Peter Taaffe,found a group to agitate for the ideas of socialism and Marxism within the labour movement.
They launch a newspaper entitled Militant.

1965–1970

Realisation grows that multinational investments located on the periphery of the city havedone little to solve the high rates of unemployment in central Liverpool. On the contrary, in
combination with the local authority’s decanting policy, they have exacerbated many of thetendencies that were already leading people to talk of the ‘decline of the inner city’.

1965
1965–1967

Malcolm McLean begins the first regular North Atlantic container service.
The Mersey Dock and Harbour Board (Seaforth Works) Act passes through parliament and isapproved by the Minister of Transport.

1965

The Merseybeat boom ends as the Beatles move permanently out of their home city andthe music industry as a whole stops looking for new talent in Liverpool.

1965–1979

Workers at Ford’s Halewood factory are at the forefront of a new style of trade unionism
based upon workplace strength. Pioneered from 1945 on by activists at Dunlop’s Speke plant,
this marks a new era of union democracy, based upon the creation of a powerful shop stewards
movement. In 1969 and 1971, Halewood leads national strikes against Ford on matters ofprinciple — first unfair penalty clauses in the work contract and latterly to achieve parity of pay
for workers in different areas doing the same job.

1966–1972

A further stage of the slum clearance program sees 38,000 families from 150 central
Liverpool clearance areas re-housed in 56,000 new dwellings in experimental developmentson the outskirts of the City, such as those at Halewood, Lee Park and Cantril Farm.

1966

On the sporting front, the double success of 1906 is repeated as Liverpool FC win the Football1966–1994

The decline of trade with Commonwealth countries and the rise in trade with the EEC

League, while Everton FC win the FA Cup.
leaves Liverpool marooned on the wrong side of the country. Liverpool’s share of all ship
arrivals in the UK is halved, while at the same time Dover’s share increases four times.
1966–1978

After the briefest of post-war golden ages, the Liverpool economy begins a period ofcontraction.The docks continue their decline, whilst multi-national branch factories relocatedon Merseyside during the 1960s begin to be closed as companies retrench to their traditional heartlands in the midst of a world recession. In total, 340 factories close and 20% of
the city’s employment base is eroded.

1966With debts of £10,000, the Cavern Club is closed. After an appeal raises the necessary
capital, the club re-opens. It remains an important city venue, but it proves impossible toreturn the club to its former glory.

1966

The Beatles perform live for the last time at Candlestick Park, San Francisco.They stop touring
in order to concentrate on their musical development and produce a string of seminal
studio albums, beginning with ‘Revolver’.

1967

Last Liverpool-owned transatlantic liner sails from the city.

1967–1983

The rise of the Liberal Party sees Liverpool City Council hung for most of the 1970s. Noneof the three major parties holds a majority for a significant amount of time throughout the
decade.

1967–1970

Shortly after the release of the acclaimed ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, the Beatles
manager, Brian Epstein, dies. They decide not to replace him and in 1968 form their own
record label, Apple Records. Rifts within the band are clear during the recording of The WhiteAlbum that same year and in 1970 the band finally split.

1968–1971

Work gets underway for the construction of containerised dock berths at Seaforth.The firstship to use the new docks is the Tasmania Star on December 6, 1971.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1968

II | 126

The work of the Liverpool poets Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten is widely
acclaimed as a book of their work, The Mersey Sound, is published. It becomes a bestseller, as
20,000 copies are sold in just three months. It comes to symbolise the ‘pop poetry movement of the 1960s’ and the irreverent, sardonic nature of the ‘Liverpool Scene’.

1968–1971

In the midst of concerted local opposition to the scheme, a second Mersey Tunnel isconstructed, the ‘Kingsway’ linking Liverpool and Wallasey.

1968

The Gladstone Graving Dock is adapted for container handling as a temporary measure.

1970–1971

MDHB becomes insolvent following financial crisis caused by the unfitness of the Board’sconstitutional and financial set up to adapt promptly to the container revolution.

1971–1977

Merseyrail Underground system expanded.

1971

MHDB bailed out by central government and converted to a private concern, the Mersey
Dock and Harbour Company.

1971–1975

Decline in Liverpool’s traditional docking and manufacturing industries further worsened by
a 1% contraction in service and retail sectors.

1971–1977

Workers at Fisher-Bendix occupy their factory to try to save it and its 600 jobs.The plant is

1972

MHDC closes south docks to shipping. Within the space of a decade, the Port of Liverpool

saved by a new owner, but closes after another five years
has shrunk so much as to be almost unrecognisable. Whereas in 1948 the docks directly
employed 18,000, by 1972 fewer than 5,000 work there.
1972–1976

Workers at CAV Lucas occupy and then plan a scheme of alternative work in order to savetheir factory. It is rejected and the plant eventually closes with the loss of 1,600 jobs.

1972–1990

Liverpool FC are the leading team in English football, winning the league championship title 11times: 1972/73; 75/76; 76/77; 78/79; 79/80; 81/82; 82/83; 83/84; 85/86; 87/88; 89/90.

1973–1977

At Aintree, punter’s favourite Red Rum dominates the Grand National.

1973–1979

The Brunswick entrance gates to the dock system are fixed permanently open and the docks
begin to silt up.The MDHC makes various attempts to sell the dockland for property development, including one proposal to centrally house the hitherto dispersed Liverpool Polytechnic.
All come to nothing and Liverpool’s seven-mile waterfront becomes characterised bydereliction.

1973

The Cavern Club is closed for a second time. The Fruit Warehouses above the Cavern Club’s
basement venue are demolished and the cellar itself filled in.

1974–1979

Disillusionment with the Wilson government sees the appeal of Marxism grow amongst thelabour movement on Merseyside. A new generation of Militant supporters emerge, including individuals such as Derek Hatton. Suffering from an apparent crisis of confidence, theotherwise moribund local Labour Party begins to be overwhelmed.

1975

Alan Bleasdale becomes resident playwright at Liverpool Playhouse

1976–1978

Tate and Lyle’s plant is gradually run down and closed with the loss of 1,200 jobs.

1977–1984

In contrast to the fading industrial fortunes of the City, Liverpool FC are dominant in European
football, winning the European Cup four times.

1977–1985

Estimates by the Liverpool Planning Officer suggest that the rate of unemployment is 50%
for the areas around the North Docks and 40% for the South Docks and Speke estate.
Outer area estates, such as Kirkby and Fazerkerley, are not far behind, with about one in fivepeople out of work. Half of those on the dole are between 16 and 24 — leading to an
exodus of young people for the city.

1978–1979

British Leyland’s Standard-Triumph car factory at Speke is closed with the loss of 3,750 jobs.
Militant opposition that threatens to obstruct the closure fizzles out without presenting aproblem to management.

1978–1985

In a period of extreme deindustrialisation, companies based in Liverpool eliminate a total of
40,000 more jobs. Almost 450 factories close and 25% of Liverpool’s employment base islost. As a result, over one in five of the city’s occupants is jobless.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

II | 127

1979

Dunlop announces the closure of its Speke factory. 2,400 jobs lost.

1980

With few job opportunities, estimates calculate that people are leaving the City of Liverpoolat the staggering rate of 12,000 per annum.

1980

Estimates suggest 15% of land in Liverpool is either vacant or derelict – the largest amountof any city in Britain.

1980–1982

In local elections, Labour loses six seats, the highest loss by any party since 1964. In theaftermath, the Militant manifesto becomes the centrepiece of Labour’s campaign for the next
two years.

1980

John Lennon is murdered in New York, and in the immediate aftermath, fans congregate
out side the Cavern Club’s old Matthew Street venue. Later, 10,000 will assemble outside
St George’s Hall as a tribute.

1980–1990

Sections of Liverpool’s youth evolve a style of their own in the form of the ‘scally’. Welldressed, clean, cocky and arrogant, occasionally inclined to violence and frequently unemployed, some see them as representative of the real youth of Liverpool under Thatcher.
Arguably they revitalise the music scene in Liverpool.

1980–1981

Liverpool is arguably Britain’s most ‘electro-musical’ city, with success for three of its bands:
Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen and Wah!

1981

In a bid to boost jobs and investment in South Liverpool, a new airport is constructed atSpeke.

1981

In a further regeneration initiative, the Thatcher government creates the Merseyside
Development Corporation to manage regeneration in the City and surrounding area.

1981

Unemployment, feelings of hopelessness and terrible social conditions in the Toxteth area ofLiverpool create a tinderbox of deprivation. Police harassment and oppression spark a riotof both black and white youths. CS gas is used by the police against a riot that is far more
desperate, wider in scope and more furious that the earlier uprisings in St. Paul’s in Bristol
and Brixton in South London

1981

In response to the Toxteth uprising, Michael Heseltine is appointed de facto ‘Minister for
Merseyside’, and a revision of regional assistance policy sees the city declared an ‘Enterprise
Zone’.

1982–1985

The MDC oversees the £100-million restoration and rejuvenation of the Albert dock andtransforms its grade-one listed warehouses into luxury flats, shops, cafes, a studio for
Granada TV and a permanent home for Tate Liverpool and the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

1982

The plight of Yosser Hughes, an unemployed Scouser desperate for work, highlights thesituation on Merseyside as Alan Bleasdale’s play The Boys From The Black Stuff is watched bya record audience on the BBC.

1982

Channel 4 is launched; its opening night features a new drama serial, Brookside, created by Phil
Redmond and set in and around a Liverpool housing estate.

1983

The Merseyside Unemployed Resource Centre is opened to provide a range of services andfacilities, for those in or out of work. Plans are laid for a recording studio and concert venue
at the Centre, which, after fundraising concerts supported by Alexei Sayle, Pete Townshend,
Paul Weller, Peter Gabriel and Alan Bleasdale, opens as The Picket in late 1983.

1983

Catastrophic material conditions in Liverpool bear fruit as the Labour Party with a Militant
manifesto, previously described as an ‘electoral albatross’, increase their vote at the polls by
40% and win control of the City Council with a landslide.

1984

The La’s record their first demo at the Unemployed Centre’s recording studio.The band go on
to sign to Go Discs and release the seminal single ‘There She Goes’. Arguably a precursor of
the Britpop boom.

1984

The first signs of revival begin when an estimated one million spectators watch the Tall Ships
Race when it docks on Merseyside. Later that year, the International Garden Festival redevelops
an area of 125 acres in the Otterspool area of the waterfront; it is visited by 3.6 million.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

1984–1986

II | 128

Militant-controlled Liverpool City Council challenges the Thatcher government over housing
policy and proposed cuts in public spending. By setting an illegal deficit budget, the city iseffectively bankrupt, and its leading politicians, including Hatton, are fined £106,000.

1984

At a cost of £7 million, the Cavern Walks Shopping Centre is completed, including a reconstructed and re-opened Cavern Club.

1984–1990

The Scouse group The Farm helps pioneer the acid house and rock crossover sound that themedia will later categorise as ‘Madchester’.

1984

Liverpool FC and Everton FC meet in the Football League Cup final. After a nil-nil draw at
Wembley, Liverpool emerge 1-0 winners after the replay.

1984

Everton FC win the FA Cup for the fourth time.

1984–1985

Scouser Holly Johnson achieves massive success in the pop charts with his controversial
group Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

1985

The Heysel Stadium tragedy at the European Cup final in Brussels between Liverpool andJuventus leaves 39 dead.

1987

The Militant tendency is expelled from the Labour Party and an air of normalcy returns topolitics in Liverpool.

1989–1998

The Liverpudlian group The Lightning Seeds have a string of hits, including ‘Pure’, ‘Life of Riley’
and, in collaboration with David Baddiel and Frank Skinner,‘Three Lions’ — the definitive football song of the 1990s.

1989

96 Liverpool FC fans are killed at the start of the FA Cup semi-final held at Sheffield
Wednesday’s ground, Hillsborough. Eventually both Liverpool FC and Everton FC reach the final
at Wembley. Liverpool win 3-2 after extra time.

1990–1996

After the break up of The La’s, bassist John Power forms Cast, who have a number of Britpop

1991

After the tribulations of Militant, the city’s finances undergo a process of consolidation, andhits.
confidence begins to return to Liverpool after two decades of setbacks.
1992

Dance music super-club Cream is launched by Darren Hughes and James Barton.

1993

The murder of James Bulger by two young boys on Merseyside shocks the UK.

1993–1999

As one of the poorest areas in the EU (with only 71% of average EU GDP), Liverpool
receives Objective One status, securing grants of £800 million. As well as accelerating regeneration, Objective One significantly contributes to municipal fiscal stabilisation.

1995–1998

Liverpool Dockers’ strike for two and a half years over the dismissal of trade unionists who
refused to cross a picket line. Finally defeated, today fewer than 500 work on the docks in
Liverpool, but the Port itself is thriving, regularly handling over 30 million tonnes of cargo ayear — more than at any other time in its history.

1995

Everton FC win the FA Cup, defeating Manchester United 1-0 in the process.

1996–2004

The Merseyside Special Investment Fund invests £27 million in 493 small and medium-sizedbusiness in the area.

1997

Funded by the North West Arts Board, Liverpool City Council and the EU, the Merseyside
Music Development Agency is set up to create new jobs in the music industry by attracting
new investment and improving the scope and competitiveness of the local music sector.

1998

The MDC is wound up as Liverpool receives a further £844 million tranche of EU Objective
One funding, matched by £844 million from the UK public sector and around £400 million
from the private sector.

1999

First Liverpool Biennial

2001

An estimated worldwide audience of one billion watch the Grand National from Aintree.

2001

Speke Airport is renamed Liverpool John Lennon by Yoko Ono as part of a £45 million expansion, creating 500 jobs and significantly boosting the city’s image.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Timeline: Liverpool 1699–2004

2001–2004

II | 129

The Liverpool Rope Walks project brings together a cross section of key partners in a
£40-million regeneration of the Duke Street/Bold Street area as the City’s Creative Quarter,
creating 1,500 jobs over 3 years.

2002

Liverpool is announced as the UK’s officially number-one music city, with 53 No.1 Chart Hits
by 23 different bands and soloists over the previous 50 years.

2002

Second Liverpool Biennial

2003

After 21 years as Channel 4’s flagship show, and widely acknowledged as having redefinedsoap opera on British television with its gritty realism and controversial storylines, Brookside
is axed by the station.

2003

Liverpool bids successfully to become the EU Capital of Culture in 2008, a venture expected
to create 14,000 new jobs, attract 1.7 million visitors and generate £2 billion investment in
the local economy.

2003

Opening FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology

2004

Third Liverpool Biennial------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 130--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL — CHANGING URBAN FORM
Ed Ferrari and Jonathan Roberts-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Liverpool is a cultural centre and focus for the North West of England. Unlike its NorthWest neighbour, Manchester, it is a traditional port city. Steeped in industrial history,
Liverpool has undergone numerous changes and is most recently remembered for what
could be described as a ‘mini-revival’ culminating in the successful European Capital of
Culture 2008 bid. But crucially, although culture remains a vital asset of Liverpool’s
renewed vibrancy, memories and examples of economic and social tension are never far
from view.This section of the paper aims to provide hard statistics to express and enable
explanation of the changes that have occurred in Liverpool.
The ‘City’, in this study, is an expression that refers to an amalgamation of districts. For
the purpose of the Shrinking Cities study, we have chosen to describe Liverpool in termsof three administrative districts, namely Knowsley and Sefton, in addition to the district ofLiverpool itself. This wider city area includes some of what could be referred to as thesuburbs of the city.These are areas that encompass the changes that have occurred overtime. Many of the processes and developments that have transpired in the ‘Urban City’,i.e., Liverpool without the neighbouring districts, have extended to the surrounding area.
The following statistical data attempts to confirm this trend and develop the concept of
the shrinking city.
Population data for the ‘City’ area shows that Liverpool’s population shrank at a rate of
6.4% between 1991 and 2001.1 The 2001 Census calculates Liverpool’s population at
873,000, a figure that had fallen from the mid-year estimate of 932,800 in 1991. Historical
data for Merseyside County indicates that this declining trend first became apparent in
the late 1960s [Fig.1].This decade marked the beginning of a period of intense deindustrialisation and sub-urbanisation throughout the United Kingdom. These processes havecontinued and the city has been required to reinvent itself.This is a characteristic of many
UK cities.
Population data reveals that the district of Liverpool’s population fell at an even fasterrate than that of the city area. Mid-1991 population estimates show that the populationstood at 480,700, falling to 439,500 (source: Census 2001). This is a decrease of 8.6%,
41,200 people fewer than only ten years previous. Population change during this period
in Knowsley and Sefton was a mere -4.1% in comparison.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool — Changing Urban Form

II | 131-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 1: Population data: historical series
2000

Population (thousands)

1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800

1991

1981

1971

1961

1951

1939

1931

1921

1911

1901

1891

Year
Source: ONS, 2001

A major force of this population change is migration. Data is as yet not fully available fromthe 2001 Census to allow an accurate assessment of the regional migrational movements,
but the 1991 Census is still of great relevance in terms of the movement that has been
occurring on the regional level.
There is a large amount of migration within the city area, but as Figure 1 accurately displays, the district of Liverpool, in terms of regional migration, is suffering population displacement to surrounding districts.The 2001 Census available data reveals that the levelsof both in-migration (15,150) and out-migration (15,586) from within the UK were infact very similar. In total, 15,586 individuals moved out of the administrative district ofLiverpool, 17,653 moved into the area (includes migration from outside the UK) with
36,058 moving within the area.This pattern is comparable in Knowsley and Sefton as inLiverpool.
Of extreme importance to the Shrinking Cities debate are the migrational changes thathave occurred in the North West. In terms of the debate surrounding shrinkage inLiverpool, Figure 2 exposes the net loss of 2,364 persons to the region that was occurring in the early 1990s (Source: Census 1991). Firstly, only two of the 16 surrounding districts relevant for this study had a net migration loss to Liverpool, Knowsley (150) andRochdale (13). However, Liverpool on the whole can be seen to shrink in relation to its
neighbours.The neighbouring areas of Wirral and Sefton were the major beneficiaries ofLiverpool’s net loss, 564 persons and 569 persons respectively. Elsewhere, the region also
shows a net gain of 948 persons, with even Manchester showing a small net gain.
This data may well be representative of the regional migrational changes occurring today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool — Changing Urban Form

II | 132-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 2: Net yearly migration flow between Liverpool and surrounding
districts, 1991 (persons).

Elsewhere in
North West

Rochdale
Rochdale
Bury

BoltonBolton994488

SeftonOldhamOldham
Wigan

569

St.
St. Helens
Helens

13

2200

17

SalfordSalford70
Knowsley
Knowsley
6633
00
1155
Wirral556644

Liverpool
Liverpool

Tameside
Tameside11

Manchester
Manchester

1155

Trafford
Trafford

37
37

95

4433

36
36
22
22

Stockport
Stockport

Warrington UA
Halton UA

Source: 1991 Census SMS Set 2. © Crown Copyright, all rights reserved.

Income and household data reveals information concerning the fabric of society inLiverpool. The 2001 Census recorded 365,265 households in Liverpool (source: Census
2001). A total of 853,683 people were recorded as living in households, which corresponds to a ratio of 2.34 persons per household. Data contained in the census also assists
in calculating the living space per capita.The average number of rooms per household in
Liverpool was measured at 5.34 (source: Census 2001). Thus, the room per capita ratio
is calculated at 2.25.
The income data is available only for households. Thus far only available for 2001, andtherefore again incomparable with historical data, it nonetheless remains of interest.The
average household income in Liverpool for 2001 is £16,530 (source: CACI Ltd, 2001).This
is considerably lower than the average household income elsewhere in the sub-region,£18,140, and also than that of the ‘City’ of Manchester, calculated at £18,491.This is dramatically lower than the national average for England, where household income stands at£26,481. In analysing the data more closely, it becomes apparent that a major area ofconcern is the average household income in the districts of Liverpool and Knowsley.The
income level falls below £16,000 per household, i.e., Liverpool = £15,592 and Knowsley= £15,461.
Following on from this, benefit data reflects the findings of income data. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the statistics of benefit claimants for Liverpool substantiate the general employment and income trends already found. 16.1% of the total population of Liverpool claim
benefits (either Income Support or Job Seeker’s Allowance). This is a total of 140,521 of a
total population of 873,000. This is compared with 8.2% of individuals claiming benefit
throughout England. If we look at the sub-region, 11.8% claim benefits; this in stark
contrast also to the ‘City’ of Manchester, where 11.1% claim benefits.
Rather key to this assessment of income and benefit data is employment data. Figures
produced by NOMIS show that the unemployment levels in Liverpool in the last decade
have been falling every year. This has occurred throughout the North West and elsewhere in England. The absolute number unemployed stood at 53,939 in 1996 inLiverpool. This figure has fallen to 28,902 in 2001. The rate of unemployment fell from

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool — Changing Urban Form

II | 133

10% to 5.5% in this five-year period. This despite the fact that the working-age population remained almost static throughout the period, falling from 538,939 in 1996 to
528,534 in 2001.
Figure 3 shows the unemployment levels between 1960 and 2001 in Liverpool andGreat Britain. Using data from the Department of Employment Gazette, unemployment
levels appear to have followed a pattern relatively similar to that which occurred throughout the country over the 41-year period. Levels in Liverpool have fallen to a point almost
similar to where they were back in the 1960s. Of greatest concern to the city and theregion is the extent to which they are far above the levels experienced in Great Britain
as a whole. More recently, levels in Liverpool have fallen at a faster rate than that of GreatBritain, which is promising, as much a vindication of the renewed belief and successes as
it is of economic circumstances.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 3: Unemployment Level: 1960–2001
25

Liverpool
Great Britain% Unemployed

20

15

10

5

0
2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

1970

1968

1965

1964

1962

1960

Year
Source: Jon Murden; Department of Employment Gazette, November 1960 – November 2001.

DESCRIPTION HERE FOR SECTORS OF EMPLOYMENT DATA [Figure 4 below]¬ Fall in manufacturing over five-year period¬ Rise in banking and finance sector employment¬ Overall increase in numbers employed in service industries--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool — Changing Urban Form

II | 134-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 4: Percentage Change in Sectors of Employment; Liverpool,
1996–2001.
% Change in Sectors of Employment: Liverpool, 1996-2001
5
4

Percentage Change (%)

3% all in emp. in manufacturing

2% all in emp. in constuction

1% all in emp. in distrib. Etc% all in emp. in tran. & comm.

0% all in emp. in bank, finance-1% all in emp. in pub. admin etc-2% all in emp. in other services% all in emp. in service ind.

-3
-4
-5

Source: Labour Force Survey; NOMIS, 2001

DECRIPTION HERE OF PORT STATISTICS [Figure 5]¬ Relevance of fall in port traffic coinciding with deindustrialisation and threat of transatlantic flights¬ Recent rise as containerisation and regeneration of some of the Docks in Liverpool.
1980s Port activity returns and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company begins investment that continues to today.
¬ Comparison with Manchester and the fact that there has been no renewal in port
traffic (change in industry – revival elsewhere)¬ Liverpool is handling as much cargo as ever but without the manpower. Merseyside’s
docks are experiencing a new lease of life, many used by new industries.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 5: Port Traffic, 1965–2002
Foreign and Domestic Port Traffic

Thousand Tonnes

35,00030,00025,000Liverpool

20,00015,000Manchester

10,000
5,000
0

2002

1992

Source: Department of Transport, ONS

1990

1985

1980

1975

1970

1965

Year

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Liverpool — Changing Urban Form

II | 135

A crucial aspect of the shrinkage concept is the dynamic of the built-up environment.
Both the number of vacant dwellings and the amount of derelict land are vital when considering this environment in the city area.The statistics for vacant dwellings are available
through the Housing Investment Programme, whose data for 2001 shows much of thevacancy in the ‘City’ is within the district of Liverpool, thus the majority in the inner-city
environment. Vacancy levels are particularly high in private sector housing, 11,979 of
18,666 in the Liverpool area. The overall number of vacant dwellings in the ‘City’ iscalculated at 25,584. 4,623 of these are local authority, whereas 16,869 are private
sector dwellings.
The data for derelict land, defined as ‘previously developed land that is unused or may beavailable for redevelopment’, shows an interesting picture of the ‘City’ area. Sefton has alarge proportion, 49% specifically, of previously developed vacant land. Table 1 shows thedata for the three administrative districts of Liverpool.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 1: Derelict land, by hectares
Knowsley

Liverpool

Sefton

Area

37

56

91

of which proposed for housing

8

10

22

Area

68

481

236

of which proposed for housing

2

48

15

Area

1

40

4

of which proposed for housing

–

11

–

Area

21

19

44

of which proposed for housing

21

15

5

Previously developed vacant land

Derelict land and buildings

Land occupied by vacant buildings

Land currently in use with planning allocation or planning permission

source: ONS, 2001

This also indicates that there is a large amount of derelict land and buildings yet to be
redeveloped.
Finally, it is important to consider transport in an assessment of shrinkage. In the first halfof the 19th century, Liverpool was a major centre for passenger liner services catering
for vast amounts of seafaring voyages. However, this was threatened in the 1960s by theadvent of regular transatlantic flights. Since this time, the use of passenger liner services
has declined massively. Liverpool’s international travel is now served by John Lennon
Airport.The airport is one of the ten largest in the UK and caters to transatlantic flights.
Liverpool has very good transport links throughout the region.
In assessing transport, it has also become vital to consider cars usage. In 2001, 265,598
cars were registered in Liverpool (source: DVLA PARC via experian).This equated to an
average of 0.32 cars per capita, a figure that is considerably lower than that of Manchester,
0.47 cars per capita, and of the sub-region as a whole, 0.42 cars per capita.This also again
falls below the national average for England of 0.44 cars per capita. Transport data may
demonstrate the concept of shrinkage as well as any other.
To continue this assessment of shrinkage in the ‘City’ area of Liverpool, it is crucial tomeasure changes in industry and sectors of employment. This data will be examinedfurther and then incorporated into this analysis.

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The process of shrinkage is developing and perpetuating in the core area of the subregion.The district of Liverpool has been hit by large-scale depopulation, and it is the area
described as the ‘Urban City’ that has been hit the hardest.
Liverpool lost 59,800 inhabitants between 1991 and 2001 (source: Census 2001). At thesame time however, the absolute number unemployed has fallen to less than half, andacross the sub-region the economy has, if anything, grown in strength.This is in direct contrast to many of the processes that have occurred in other shrinking regions in this study.
The example of Manchester/Liverpool is relevant, though, compared with the changes
elsewhere in England and the rest of the UK.There has been no major economic or political process singularly leading the sub-regions shrinkage, but perhaps a less obvious andsubtle change in lifestyles and aspirations. The culture of city ‘living’ and ‘working’ haschanged, influencing the processes operating in the core of the region. These processes
were to some extent led by large-scale deindustrialisation and suburbanisation in the
1960s, but have not continued solely because of this. The city has had to reinvent andtransform itself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Census of Population, 1991, 2001.

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II | 137--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------‘HISTORY BROKE LIVERPOOL, AND IT BROKE MY
HEART’
Linda Grant-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1904, shipping agents in Poland sold my grandparents a ticket to the New World. I
believe they travelled overland to Hamburg and boarded a ship for America. After ashorter voyage than they had expected, they finally came ashore. Even used to thebaroque splendour of the Warsaw my grandfather visited from the agrarian plains of theeast, he was staggered by the city where he made landfall. New York! he cried.The greatest city on earth! The splendour of its architecture bearing down on the water wasenough to impress any pogrom immigrant. It was only after three days that my grandparents understood that they had been put off at Liverpool, the final destination on aticket they couldn’t read.
100 years ago, the city was the gateway to the Empire, the port from which nine million
emigrants sailed off to the promised lands of the United States, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand. My grandparents stayed.They joined the life of what was then Britain’s only
really multicultural city, which teemed with Lascar seamen from the Indies, the descendants of African and Black American sailors, Jews from the Pale of Settlement and thelargest Chinatown in Europe. It was a city with its back turned against the land, one whichbarely inhabited the country it was nominally part of. Everyone went to sea at somepoint, one way or other. A young man learning his trade signed on at the docks and next
day sailed to South America. In the manifest of the SS Lacona at Ellis Island, my father’sname appears in 1923 as part of the crew: Jew Cook.
Liverpool came into existence to move things around: cotton, sugar, slaves and, later,
paperwork when the insurance companies moved there.There was a saying that lingers
in Liverpool today – the Liverpool gentleman and the Manchester man. Manchester was
an industrial city that made things, its workforce stable, drawn from the Lancashire hinterland, dedicated to progressive causes such as the industrial revolution and the campaigns
that grew out of it for trade unions and socialism. The Manchester mill owner had dirt
under his fingernails.The Liverpool gentleman engaged in commerce sat in an office in awhite collar. The dock labourers, crowded along Scotland Road, formed the largest anddensest slum in Europe, famine-Irish in origin, subject to arbitrary labour practices which
had more to do with the slave auction than industrial relations. The gentlemen voted
Liberal and the dockers right up to the 1930s still saw politics as an extension of the
Fenian/Orange struggles over the water. But from the port came an infection of new
ideas.The convoy ships that dodged the U-boats during the battle of the Atlantic to bringfood to Britain from Canada also brought the records of Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters,
Willie Dixon, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf, and the discs changed hands for huge sums inthe dock road pubs, the beginnings and origin of the Mersey Sound that grew up in thewarehouses that smelled of damp and the cargoes they once held, everything made ofbrick and iron to avoid combustion.
Liverpool’s blitz was second only to London’s and got a lot less newsreel coverage
because of the propaganda value to the Germans of knowing how badly the docks had
been bombed. Liverpudlians sat sullenly in the cinema as the brave Cockneys grinned into
the cameras.What about us, they asked? My father would turn off the TV in disgust when
Dad’s Army came on.The Home Guard he was part of defended the blazing warehouses

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after the German bombers came over. When the war ended, Liverpool’s heyday had
passed, transatlantic shipping was in decline, the unskilled dockers were decanted out of
Scotland Road into brand new council estates in Halewood and Speke, and car factories
were built to give them work. For the first time since it came into being, Liverpool was a
predominantly industrial city, and this state of affairs lasted until the 1980s, when successive Tory governments eviscerated manufacturing, transforming Britain into a service
economy. Liverpool went Labour in the 1970s, but without a strong indigenous traditionof town-hall socialism it was prey to take-overs, from the Militant Tendency to the oneday wonders who strutted the streets in their mohair suits, the Derek Hattons who told
the people that if Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle caved in, it would be
Liverpool that would take on Thatcher, even if it lost and went to the wall.
It went to the wall. From a population high of 700,000 in the 1960s, Liverpool now struggles to maintain the 400,000 mark.What has Liverpool given Britain in the past 30 years?
Its population, a genuine diaspora. History broke the back of the city and it broke myheart. Bold Street, where in the 1950s my mother stepped out of Cripps with a blackand-white Cresta hat box, had by the 1980s descended into a street of run-down charity
shops. What do you do with a port on the wrong side of Britain? Tow it round to
Gravesend? But even if the total tonnage coming into the container port at Seaforth isgreater now than it was in the 1960s, it still doesn’t need the sheer manpower of the former days of shipping. At the lowest point of its decline in the early 1990s, Liverpool
descended into mass redundancy, failed strikes, depopulation, the anarchy of the gang, gun
and drug culture, the bottom of the league table in all the indices of poverty and social
exclusion. If that wasn’t enough, it has been victimised further by what, from afar, I canonly describe as a form of racism, a venomous derision for Liverpudlians that condemns
them as soon as they open their mouths as thieves and scallies, rob-dogs and whiners.
You felt as if the rest of the country wanted Liverpool drowned just off the coast of
Ireland with all its whingeing population. Liverpool was Britain’s Detroit, a city that had
died through its own irrelevance to the modern economy. My own childhood and teens
felt cemented over; I had come from one culture which had seen its past in eastern
Europe obliterated, only the dead left behind in its vandalised cemeteries, now everything
my parents had striven for and made as the children of immigrants growing up in the city
centre, migrating out to newly built suburbs, was boiled down to a Brookside script, toHarry Enfield in a perm wig, crude stereotypes that dehumanised the whole complex
identity of a city whose inhabitants were formed by a history of immigration andemigration, where the bitterness of life could only be alleviated by a humour that was
harder, had bite.
The last time I wrote about Liverpool, in 1998, the city council’s press officer told me that
it was applying for European Capital of Culture status and would get it.There was a castiron confidence about the bid. Liverpool was about to reinvent itself because it had noother choice. Its period as an industrial city that made things had not even lasted half acentury, it had to return to what it once did, preoccupying itself with impermanence.
What I heard and saw then was greeted with contempt when I returned to London.
Liverpool planned to, and was already demonstrably succeeding in attracting tourists, particularly from the U.S. The hotels were full. New ones were being built and when they
were completed, they were full too.To Americans, Liverpool wasn’t football or men withperms or drug dealers, it was the city of the Beatles and the place from which their own
ancestors had left Europe for the New World. Something of the land on the other sideof the Atlantic was there in Liverpool. Its twin city was New York, which seemed naturaland obvious; the two had joint millennium night celebrations. In the Liver Building, a kindof Trump Tower of the early years of the century, America recognises one of the world’s

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first really large-scale reinforced concrete buildings and the start of a revolution, a systemof construction which would lead within 20 years to the symbol of 20th-century
America: the skyscraper. And down the street from it, perhaps the most important officebuilding in the world, the first cantilevered glass curtain wall, built in the 1850s.
Now Liverpool has a shot at reinvention. It is accused of trading on its past, but its pastis modernity. Its heritage is people dreaming of escape and of the future. If the city canbe reborn, this is its moment. There could be no other choice but to give this to
Liverpool, nowhere else needs it so badly. Carl Jung came to the city in 1927 anddreamed of a magnolia tree growing from an island in the city square. He saw the dreamas the climax of the whole process of the development of consciousness. “Liverpool is
the pool of life,” he wrote, ”it makes to live.” Jung came and saw something where othersscorn and see nothing. In 2008, I hope that millions will come to my native city and seethat it is still there, despite everything, infecting the country, as all ports do, with new ideas.
Published in: The Guardian,Thursday June 5, 2003,
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
Linda Grant’s novel, Still Here, set in Liverpool, is published in paperback by Abacus.
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II | 140--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------URBAN REGENERATION, POLITICS AND SOCIALCOHESION:THE LIVERPOOL CASE
Richard Meegan-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Peter Hall concludes his authoritative history of urban planning, Cities of Tomorrow, with adespairing discussion of the persistence of poverty and disadvantage in the city, of what
he reluctantly describes as the ‘city of the permanent underclass’ (Hall, 2002). Although
he does not use Liverpool to support his argument, there is no question that he could
have done so. At the height of its global economic and political power, the city had amarked social geography. In the south were the mansions of the wealthy (Liverpool
housed the largest number of millionaires of any city in the country at the time) while in
the north end of the city were the overcrowded and unsanitary cellars and courts whose
inhabitants experienced a poverty that, unlike that of today, was both relative andabsolute. Contemporary press reports referred to these areas in a language of social
pathology that was to be echoed, albeit less bluntly, in some of the early debates aboutthe ‘urban problem’ in Britain in the 1960s:”Here resides a population which is a people in itself, ceaselessly ravaged by fever,plagued by the blankest, most appalling poverty, cut off from every grace and comfort
of life, born, living, and dying amid squalid surroundings, of which those who have notseen them can form a very inadequate conception.” (extracted from an article investigating ‘Squalid Liverpool’ in the Liverpool Daily Post, November 1883).
Flash forward 120 years and we see the city introducing a Neighbourhood Renewal
Strategy (Liverpool Partnership Group, 2002) aimed at tackling a geography of social exclusion that takes in not only the areas in the ‘north end’ of the city that had so concerned
Victorian commentators, but also inner-city and outlying social housing areas in the south(including Speke as discussed in a number of chapters below).
As Stuart Wilks-Heeg argued, the city has experienced a profound economic and social
restructuring as it has gone from playing a leading role in the ‘old international division oflabour’, based on colonial and imperial trading connections, to the urban core of a cityregion officially designated as a ‘lagging region’ in the European segment of the triadic
structure of the global economy (U.S.A.–Europe–Japan and the Pacific Rim). Figure 1
shows how this transformation has been reflected in the city’s population. The population grew from 5,000 at the beginning of the 18th century to just over 700,000 at thestart of the 20th century; and it continued to grow thereafter, to a peak of around
870,000 just before the start of World War Two.The decline thereafter has been relentless, only slowing down in the 1990s. The 2001 Census shows that there were some
440,000 people living in the city, very nearly half of the peak in the late 1930s. And thiscontraction, as already indicated, has been the context for the development within thecity of a mosaic of social advantage/disadvantage.
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MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 141-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 1: Liverpool’s population in global economic and geo-political context

Sources: (i) Population figures: Brabner (updated), Cook and Stevenson (1978), Lawton and Pooley (1992), Marriner (1982), 1991 Census of Population
Preliminary Report for England and Wales, 2001 Census of Population; (ii) Periodisation: Hobsbawn (1989), Barraclough (1986), Knox and Agnew (1989), Marshall(1989), Taylor (1989), Pollard (1992, 1997)

Liverpool is, of course, not alone in experiencing increasing social exclusion and polarisation. Cities across Europe and the U.S.A. are also displaying, in varying degrees, similar
patterns and processes, as Peter Hall (2002) acknowledges.These patterns and processes appear to be the outcome of what can best be described as ‘disjointed structuralchange’ (Allen and Cars, 2002). Structural economic change impacting on aggregate
employment patterns through broad sectoral and occupational shifts produces new
demands (in terms of the provision of education, housing and social insurance) on welfare states whose capacity to adjust is limited by financial constraints operating on themas part of the political adjustment to the changing role of the state in increasingly global
economic management.The loss of (manual) employment and the long-term increase inMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 142

unemployment, accompanied by the growth of flexible labour in service sectors demanding particular accredited and personal skills, have detached from the labour market groups
and individuals who are also suffering the effects of a welfare state that is struggling tocope (in terms of education, income support and housing). In metropolitan areas, thesemacro-structural processes interact with micro-local factors in the form of labour, landand property markets to produce geographical concentrations of disadvantaged groups(Byrne, 1999; Glennerster et al., 1999; Madanipour, 1998; Musterd and Ostendorf, 1998).
This socio-spatial polarisation, as Liverpool also amply demonstrates, has proved to behighly resistant, if not impervious, to remedial state intervention, both national and local.
In this chapter, I want to trace Liverpool’s recent history, charting some of the key
attempts at ‘regeneration’ in five periods: the decentralisation of population and employment in the 1950s and 1960s; the inner-city focus of the 1970s; the radical politics of the
1980s; the ‘governance by partnership’ of the 1990s; and the city’s current position at thestart of the third millennium.
‘Liverpool Turned Inside-Out’:The 1950s and 1960s
Liverpool was probably at the peak of its economic power at the turn of the 20th century,
a power symbolised in the bricks and mortar of the three world-famous waterfront
buildings at the Pier Head, which were started in 1906 and finished in 1917. But whilethese buildings were being erected, the world was changing, the international division oflabour was changing and with it Liverpool’s role. In the inter-war years, as global trade(and the old international division of labour) closed down, the city was pushed into recession as its trading links, both globally and domestically, were severed. Developments in thenational spatial division of labour, pulling the locus of economic activity away from thenorth and north-west towards the midlands and south-east, were working inexorably
against the city.1
Both the national and local state were aware of these trends.The city was the first local
authority in Britain to seek legal power to undertake local economic development — inthe shape of the Liverpool Corporation Act (1936).The Act gave the council the necessary
powers to buy up land on the city’s outskirts for industrial development and was partly
inspired by the city’s failure to qualify for designation for assistance from central government’s first attempts at regional policy (with the Special Areas Act of 1934).The aim wasto try to create new employment opportunities to compensate for the already apparent
decline of port and port-related activity. ‘Urban entrepreneurialism’ got off to an earlystart in Liverpool.2
The council’s efforts in this direction were overtaken by preparation for what became
World War Two, which steered development towards military-related production. The
Merseyside Plan, drawn up just before the end of the war, confirmed the move to basefuture development (it was not then referred to as ‘regeneration’) of the city on thedecentralisation of both population and industry from the core of the city-region (effectively north Liverpool) to the outskirts.The problems of overcrowding and slum housing,exacerbated by wartime bomb damage, had put housing firmly on the local political agenda, where it has remained, albeit with differing emphases, pretty resolutely ever since.
Shifting people to new homes in municipal housing estates on the city’s outskirts and in
nearby New Towns was seen as a key remedy to the housing problem, although it is now
clear that it produced new problems of geographical and social dislocation for the‘decanted’ families living in social housing perceived by them (particularly in its high-riseform) as soulless and ‘anti-social’.
A key element of this decentralisation of people and economic activity was central stateregional policy that helped the city-region to receive more than its share of so-called

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 143‘mobile industry’. In the six years after the war, for example, regional policy helped tosteer to Liverpool some two-thirds of the employment generated by relocating industry(about 24,000 jobs). More came in a second wave in the 1960s (Meegan, 1989). Thesewaves of investment represented a new form of external orientation for the city-regionand saw it being assimilated in a new way into the newly evolving international divisionof labour that underpinned the ‘Golden Age’ of development in the advanced capitalist
countries in the 1950s and 1960s (Knox and Agnew, 1998).The city’s dwindling colonialrole in the global economy was being replaced by integration through the operations ofnational and overseas-owned multi-national corporations. Some features of the previous
localised social structure were reinforced (the semi-skilled nature of the labour processes) while others were changed (with provision, for the first time, of substantial numbersof full-time jobs for women in the new food-processing plants). But it was a fairly tenuous connection, as was revealed in the restructuring that followed the abrupt ending ofthe ‘Golden Age’ in the early 1970s, and the transformation from what has been characterised as ‘Fordism’ and/or ‘organised capitalism’ to, respectively, ‘post-Fordism’ and ‘disorganised capitalism’ (Harvey, 1989a; Lash and Urry, 1994) became apparent.While Britain’s
economic growth had been historically relatively strong during the 1960s and early
1970s, it was markedly lower than that of other ‘late starters’. And just as Liverpool had
both contributed to and benefited from Britain’s (and previously England’s) cycles ofworld leadership in the international economy, so it suffered as Britain lost its economic
and political power.
With hindsight, it is also possible to see how the turning of the city ‘inside out’ in the
1950s and 1960s helped to contribute to problems in the city core through depopulation and deindustrialisation (with, for example, small firms in the inner city finding themselves unable to compete in the labour market with the multi-national newcomers). And
as the processes of circular and cumulative decline settled in, these problems became
magnified, alongside the newly emerging social and economic problems experienced in
the outer estates.
This local social geography was reflected in political concern at the national level over theperceived concentration of economic and social problems in Britain’s cities.The ‘regional
problem’ was gradually overshadowed by the ‘urban problem’. Liverpool has not only
been on the receiving end of virtually all of the subsequent urban policy initiatives, it has
also often operated as a kind of experimental test-bed for a significant number of them.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE ‘INNER-CITY PROBLEMS’ OF THE 1970S
The first phase of urban policy development reflected a degree of political consensus
between the two Labour governments of 1966–1970 and 1974–1979 and the intervening Conservative administration of 1970–1974. Indeed it is arguable that theConservative administration, with its Inner Area Studies of 1972, was perhaps even morecommitted to intervention in the cities than its Labour counterparts. The political consensus was initially informed by a belief that the inhabitants of inner cities need direct
help to be better able to participate in their local housing and labour markets.This social
pathology philosophy, emphasising the social and economic characteristics of disadvantaged inner-city residents, was only challenged towards the end of the period as a morestructural approach developed, shifting emphasis away from the economic and social
characteristics of inner-city residents to a political-economy perspective in which the socalled inner-city problem was seen as one produced by global and national structuralchange. This shift in emphasis was seen in its most radical variant in the Community
Development Projects, initiated by the Labour government in 1969, but with most of the
projects themselves put in place under the Conservative government of the early 1970s.

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Liverpool had already provided one of the two neighbourhood projects started by the
Urban Programme (in the Brunswick area), and the Vauxhall area of north Liverpool was
subsequently selected as one of the first wave of Community Development Projects.3 It
was this area that had been the focus of concern over poverty 100 years earlier. As
elsewhere, a team was established in the area to analyse the problems and recommend
community-based solutions. The analysis emphasised the structural problems faced byinner-city residents in both housing and labour markets and, along with most of the otherprojects, argued for radical, systemic change. Its critique of ‘reformist’ intervention found
few friends in local or central government, however, and the projects were systematicallywound down.
Liverpool also provided one of the three Inner Area Studies (along with Birmingham andLambeth) set up by the Conservative government in 1972, which reported to its Labour
government successor.The study focused on an area to the south-east of the city centre(taking in the Smithdown, Granby and Edge Hill areas). The structural emphasis of thereports was revealed in the emphasis on the role of economic factors in shaping the fortunes of the inner cities and the less radical policy recommendations for a targeted innercity-based approach with joint working between central and local government.The recommendations were largely taken up in the Labour government’s White Paper ‘Policy for
the Inner Cities’ in 1977 and the following 1978 Inner Areas Act. Following the latter, an
Inner City partnership was formed in Liverpool (1979–1982) that took in 19 inner-citywards and parts of four adjacent ones, pretty much the whole of inner Liverpool.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL IN THE 1980S: CITY OF CONFLICTThe regional and urban policy initiatives of the 1960s and early 1970s were swamped intheir effects by the severity of global economic recession in the late 1970s and its local
impact.The ‘Golden Age’ had seen employment in the city-region peak in the mid-1960s.
Apart from the last few years, to which I will return below, there has been relentlessdecline thereafter and most dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s [Fig. 2].
Between 1966 and 1978, employment in the city fell by some 20% (compared withnational, regional and city-regional declines of 5, 12 and 15%, respectively).The acceleration post-1978, however, is particularly marked. In just three years, 1978–1981, employment in the city fell by a further 18%. Over the longer period, 1978–1991, 37% of jobs
disappeared (a loss of just under 9,000 jobs per year).The local economy was devastated. Unemployment soared and out-migration accelerated.
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MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 145-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 2: Employment change, 1996–2001: Great Britain, North Westregion, Merseyside County and Liverpool (Index 1966=100)

Notes: For continuity over the period, the North West Region excludes Cumbria (which has been included in official definitions of the region since the mid 1990s).
Changes in the method of data collection and industrial classification means that there are a number of discontinuities in the figures pre-1981 and 1991. These
discontinuities have been accommodated where possible. Nevertheless, the lines in the figure should be seen as representing only a reasonably approximate rather
than exact measure of change.
Sources: Various Local Authority (pre-1978) reports, estimates by CRED Resaerch Unit, Department of Geography, University of Liverpool (Liverpool 1966 figure) andAnnual Census of Employment/Annual Business Inquiry (re-scaled figures 1995—2001) — NOMIS (1978 onwards).

While regional policy had helped to attract new industry to the city-region, it had increasingly mixed success in keeping it there as conditions in the global economy worsened. As
Stuart Wilks-Heeg points out, multi-nationals closed and shifted operations abroad, contributing to the formation of the new international division of labour that characterises
the era of ‘disorganised capitalism’. Liverpool and its city-region were the losers in thisglobal restructuring of production. To make matters worse for the local workforce, thepressures of restructuring encouraged labour-saving production changes in the factories
that remained. Not all of the multi-nationals left the city-region. Some have remained andcontinue to invest in their production facilities, but the operations of this remaining ‘modern core’ of multi-national manufacturing (such as Vauxhall and Ford/Jaguar in motor vehicles or the American pharmaceutical companies) have increasingly been characterised by‘jobless growth’, and the periodic injection of state regional development funding into thiscore has increasingly been concerned with job retention rather than job creation.
As the manufacturing branch plants either closed or shed labour to retain competitiveness, the docks began to feel the consequences of the declining relative economic importance of their hinterland (as de-industrialisation cut through the northern manufacturing
regions) and the reordering of Britain’s trade patterns around new geopolitical interests
in Europe, leaving Liverpool on the periphery of the European segment of the ‘Triad’.4
The closure in 1984 of the Tate & Lyle sugar factory in inner Liverpool was particularly
symbolic of this shift. Membership of the EEC meant adoption of its policy towards theencouragement of sugar production using sugar beets at the expense of sugar cane.This
shift favoured the southern and eastern beet-growing areas of the country and meant, of

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course, that the industry was not only turning its back on Liverpool as a manufacturingsite but also on the West Indies as a materials provider.The closure in 1990 of the British
American Tobacco factory (the name says it all) in the same area as Tate & Lyle provided
yet another sign, if one was needed by then, of the demise of the city’s previous globalrole.
The implications of this restructuring for civil society and the local social fabric wererevealed in the serious inner-city rioting in 1981 in Liverpool 8. The despair and anger
underlying the rioting flagged the extent of deprivation in the inner-city and, with similar
public disturbances in Bristol and London, once again forced urban policy up the national political agenda. But this agenda was very different from that of the 1970s. The
election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative prime minister in 1979 saw national statepolicies subject to a neo-liberal overhauling as the New Right obsession with extending
private ownership and the market system, rolling back the state and cutting public expenditure permeated all areas of government policy. Urban policy was overhauled accordingly.The central priority was to give a more prominent role to the private sector throughderegulation (the removal of planning regulations and relief from rates through the creation of ‘Enterprise Zones’) and subsidy (through such grants as Urban Development
Grant, later subsumed under the City Grant). Mirroring this promotion of the private sector was the relative downgrading of local government influence on inner-city policy
through a combined strengthening of the arms of central government departments operating in inner-city areas (with the introduction of Task Forces and City Action Teams in innercity areas), the establishment of quangos with specific urban regeneration remits (theUrban Development Corporations) and the removal of a whole tier of metropolitan local
government (the so-called ‘Streamlining [of] the Cities’).Again, Liverpool featured in these
initiatives. It had one of the first Enterprise Zones (in Speke in 1981), the first Task Force(the Merseyside Task Force), one of the first City Action Teams (in Granby and Toxteth), oneof the two first-generation Urban Development Corporations (the Merseyside Development
Corporation, 1981–1998) and the first National Garden Festival Site (1984). ‘Streamlining
the Cities’ meant that it lost its city-regional tier of government, the Merseyside County
Council, in 1986. Regeneration of the city was to be based principally on property-led
development (and its hypothesised social ‘trickle-down’ effects) and the local state was toplay a subordinate role in it. This national state intervention interacted with and conditioned the local state. In the years when economic restructuring really began to bite —the late 1970s and early 1980s — the city council was led by an unstable ConservativeLiberal coalition with the largest single party, Labour, refusing to take a lead.This situation
changed dramatically in 1983 when the local elections returned a Labour council led bya left-wing (‘Militant’) faction (Parkinson, 1985; 1989).Tracing its growth locally to the ‘collapse of British capitalism expressed in a particularly extreme fashion in the early 1980s
on Merseyside’ (Taafe and Mulhearn, 1988: 9), it was resolutely against civic boosterism(it closed the council promotional agency) and traditional local economic development(it refused, for example, to fill the seat set aside on the Board of the Merseyside
Development Council for a city council politician). It focused instead on municipal employment and particularly housing in the shape of its Urban Regeneration Strategy, which
focused resources on the renovation and rebuilding of the municipal housing stock in
identified priority areas. This particular variant of municipal socialism (it was very different, for example, from that pursued at the time by other Labour-controlled metropolitan authorities and particularly that of the Greater London Council) and its funding implications — and Militant’s national political ambitions — inevitably brought the council into
conflict with a Conservative central government seeking to restrain local spending andencourage a less interventionist role for local government.

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The political odds were not favourable for the council. Continuing population decline anda shrinking local rate base increased its dependence on central government support.
Indeed, to sustain its strategy, it had to take up a number of loans from overseas banks
and sell off sizeable chunks of municipal real estate. Its political stance also brought it
under attack from a national Labour Party attempting to rid itself of Militant influence aspart of its national electoral ambitions and produced opposition from sections of thelocal polity (inner-city black groups, a large working-class housing co-operative and outerestate community groups; Meegan, 1989). As the conflict heightened, the council also lostthe support of local trades unions. A combination, then, of national political oppositionand local civil society undermined the council’s strategy, which ended in the law courts
with the disqualification from office and surcharging of a majority of city councillors in1987 for ‘wilful misconduct’ (in delaying the setting of a local rate).5
Meanwhile, the city continued to lose jobs and people. Over the 1980s (1981–1991),
employment and population fell by 23 and 12% respectively (some 59,000 fewer jobs
and 60,000 fewer people). And the city’s geography of disadvantage extended from theinner city to include the outer council estates.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL IN THE 1990S: FROM ‘CITY OF CONFLICT’ TO ‘CITY OF
PARTNERSHIP’?
As the 1980s drew to a close, urban policy, along with the extreme neo-liberal experiment in government of which it was a part, was being exposed to a sustained critique(Lawless, 1996; Moore, 1992; Robson et al., 1994). It was seen to lack strategic vision,
comprising a hodge-podge of policies and agencies with implementation handicapped,
and local democracy undermined, by centralisation and the intrusion of centrally accountable Development Corporations and privatised Training and Enterprise Councils.The policies
seemed incapable of coping with rapid social and environmental change in an innovative
way and were failing both to tackle social and economic disadvantage in the inner cities
and to reduce the gap between conditions in them and in other areas. In effect, there
was a recognition of the failure of increasingly property-led development both on its own
terms and in its ability to secure ‘trickle-down’ benefits to especially disadvantaged areas
and groups (Imrie and Thomas (eds.), 1999).
The 1990s thus saw yet another raft of new urban policy initiatives and institutionalchange. Co-ordination of programme spending became the leitmotif of the new urban
policy. Some 20 spending programmes formerly managed by five separate government
departments were consolidated into one Single Regeneration Budget. English Partnerships
was established to oversee physical regeneration projects across England and government departments, and their spending programmes were brought together at regional
level into Integrated Regional Offices.
City Challenge provided the first indication of the shift in policy emphasis.While it still bore
the mark of the ‘competitiveness’ ethic of Conservative government thinking (with local
authorities having to compete with each other to secure funding from the programme
for the regeneration of specified areas), it also introduced a new emphasis on, and definition of, partnership. Local authorities were recognised as being the most appropriate
bodies for co-ordinating the project bids, but were expected to involve a range of private, public and, importantly, voluntary and community bodies in both the design and theimplementation of the regeneration programme. An implementation agency, independent of the local authority and based on a partnership between the latter, other publicagencies and the private sector, was responsible for delivering the five-year programme.
This new wave of urban policy was introduced into a very different local political context.The dismissal of the Labour councillors in 1987 was followed by a decade of Labour

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rule heavily conditioned by the political fallout of the Militant period. Elected with anincreased majority but riven by internal splits over poll tax payment, budget setting andstaffing cuts, the council experienced difficulties and the first years were difficult. When
City Challenge was introduced in 1991, there were effectively two Labour parties in the
council chamber: ‘Official Labour’ (with 43 of the total 99 seats) and ‘Liverpool Labour’(with 25 seats). While the former was the largest group in the council, its position wascompromised on a number of occasions by a voting coalition of Liverpool Labour andthe other main group in the council, the Liberal Democrats. It was in this context ofrelative political inertia that a new era of governance in the city started to take shape, an
era of ‘partnership’. Urban policy was important in structuring this, in the shape of thecity’s successful bid for City Challenge funding for the regeneration of the eastern fringesof the city centre.There were 37 signatories to the Liverpool City Challenge bid, a mix ofrepresentatives of the public, private and voluntary sectors operating in the area.6
Significantly, there were also other pressures on the need for partnership and theseemanated from what was becoming an increasingly important dimension of politicalintervention — Europe.While Liverpool was clearly experiencing economic difficulties asa result of the country’s geopolitical turn towards Europe, these difficulties were themselves making the city eligible for intervention by the European Commission’s StructuralFunds programmes. The city-region had received support from the European Regional
Development Funds in the early 1980s and this was increased between 1989 and 1993 in
the shape of Objective Two funding and the so-called ‘Merseyside Integrated Development
Operation’.The latter was an important initial experiment in European intervention andhad considerable impact on the partnership working that was developing in the cityregion.7 This impact was cemented by the granting of Objective One status to Merseyside
in 1993.
An informal relationship between the five Merseyside local authorities had been established, bringing together the chief officers — and, through them, the political leaders —to discuss strategic issues and to fill the administrative and political vacuum created by
the abolition of the county council. Europe and European funding had given more impetus and rationale for this ‘shadow’ city-regional governance. In conjunction with local MEPs
and MPs, a campaign was launched to secure Objective One funds assisted by the
Merseyside European Liaison Unit, based in Liverpool City Council offices (and eventuallywith an office in Brussels) but funded by all of the five local authorities. As the name suggests, the unit’s role was to act as an intermediary between the local authorities and theEuropean Commission.
Designation was not entirely straightforward, because the key statistical indicator for
Objective One designation (namely levels of GDP per capita at or below 75% of theEuropean Union average) had not yet been reached. The fact that the trend was veryclearly in that direction (as figures have subsequently confirmed) sealed the political argument that greater levels of ‘aid intensity’ from the Structural Funds were justifiable.
Merseyside moved, in July 1993, from Objective Two to Objective One designation, the firstmajor conurbation in an old industrial region to be so defined. At its core was Liverpool,a city that was now having to recognise its status as a European city, not least because it
was now embroiled in the ‘multi-level social governance’ that intervention by theEuropean Commission was creating (Geddes and Bennington (eds.), 2001).
Governance of the Objective One programme was the responsibility of a Monitoring
Committee made up of representatives of the agencies that were now the local partnership constituency for regeneration activity. Significantly, the European Commission, in an
attempt to push subsidiarity in the delivery of the programme below city-regional level,negotiated a priority in the finally agreed plan, or more accurately Single Programming

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document, called Action for the People for Merseyside. This priority was based on thepremise that one of the key ‘drivers for change’ in the economic and social conversion of
the area had to be the people of Merseyside themselves, including, of necessity, groups
and individuals hitherto excluded from or in danger of being excluded from mainstream
economy and society.The priority included measures for career development and training, equal opportunities in the labour market, training targeted at people ‘at risk of permanent exclusion from the labour market’, improved education, training and employment
services, increased access to work through improved public transport and environmental improvement and the treatment of derelict land. These measures applied across thecity-region. People living in areas with particularly pronounced economic and social problems were also to be eligible for a raft of measures (subsumed under ‘Driver 5.1’) aimed
at providing ‘pathways’ to education, skills, training, jobs, a better quality of life and assistance to secure community involvement in designing, implementing and monitoring theinitiatives funded in their areas. They were to be given something extra from the programme and this extra resource was to be delivered with the involvement of people livingin the designated areas in Area Partnerships. In the event, 38 areas were designated acrossMerseyside (eleven of them in Liverpool), predominantly on the basis of census indicators of disadvantage. In each of these, local partnerships involving representatives of public, private, voluntary and, notably, community sectors were created (Meegan, forthcoming).
By the early 1990s, then, partnership had become the main mechanism for regenerationin the city and city-region. In the city, this development was crowned by the formation in
1995 of the so-called Liverpool Partnership Group, which brought together the chief executives or head officers of 18 public, private and voluntary bodies, including, for example,
the city council, the Government Office for Merseyside, the police, English Partnerships, theHousing Corporation, the Liverpool Housing Association Trust, the Employment Service, theBenefits Agency and the local universities.
The city’s developing partnership structure and ethos were reinforced by changes in bothnational and local government.The election of ‘New Labour’ nationally in 1997 saw urban
policy overhauled, with an emphasis on social inclusion and neighbourhood-based regeneration, promoted through the Social Exclusion Unit (1998), the Regional Development
Agencies for the English regions (1999, with responsibility for administration regionally of
the Single Regeneration Budget), the New Deal for Communities (1998), the Urban Task
Force (1999), the second Urban White Paper (2000) and the National Strategy for
Neighbourhood Renewal (2001). Partnership was central to the new urban policy, and‘modernised local government’ was expected to take a lead role in it.
Following the election of ‘New Labour’ nationally, Liverpool demonstrated once again its
exceptional local politics. After what appeared to be a stabilisation of Labour control inthe mid-1990s (the Labour leadership changed hands five times in the period
1987–1997), there was a dramatic turnaround in 1998. The massive national swing
towards ‘New Labour’ was followed by the election locally of a Liberal Democrat administration that currently has just over two-thirds of the seats in the council, leaving Labour
with its lowest level of representation since the early 1950s.8 In the event, the new Liberal
Democrat-controlled city council has proved itself almost more ‘New Labour’ than ‘New
Labour’ itself. It has enthusiastically pursued the agenda of modernisation of local government, opting for the leader and cabinet model of government (but rejecting an elected mayor). The council had become a ‘pathfinder authority’ for the New Commitment toRegeneration and this has been extended to engage with all the urban policy initiativesof national government. The city thus has a major New Deal for Communities initiative(in Kensington, north of the city centre), and the council leader chairs what was theMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

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country’s first Urban Regeneration Company,‘Liverpool Vision’, which is responsible for theredevelopment of Liverpool city centre (assisted by Single Regeneration Budget funding)and also the board of Liverpool First, the strategic arm of the local community strategy, towhich I will return below. The council has sponsored the bid for European Capital of
Culture in 2008, a year after the city’s official 800th birthday. If successful, the bid would
be seen as recognition of the Liverpool First vision of Liverpool as a European renaissancecity.
By giving local authorities the power ‘to do anything’ to promote or improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of their areas, the Local Government Act of2000 marked a significant milestone in the evolving relationship between central and local
government in the UK. The Act introduced a counterweight to the growing central
control of local government activities that had marked the previous two decades. It also
reinforced the shift towards partnership in urban governance. Local authorities are
required to produce ‘community strategies’ in partnership with other organisations andagencies working in the locality and with the involvement of local communities.The Act
thus not only gives local authorities new powers to intervene, but also imposes on themthe duty to work in partnership with other agencies and local communities — throughLocal Strategic Partnerships — to exercise those powers.
Liverpool’s community strategy is set out in Liverpool First, a document produced by thecity’s Local Strategic Partnership, the aforementioned Liverpool Partnership Group (2002). It
is a remarkable document, not just for the context in which it was produced — throughpartnership in a city that, on the basis of recent political history, might be expected to be
one of the last to embrace the notion — but also for what it says:
Our Vision — For Liverpool to become a premier European City. Achieved by building a morecompetitive economy, developing healthier, safer and more inclusive communities and enhancing individual life chances.
Our Aspirations — To create an inclusive European Renaissance City by 2010.To be the most‘business friendly’ city in the country by 2006.
¬ To meet and exceed national targets for schools, qualifications and employment by 2005.
¬ To reduce levels of poor health, preventable death, impairment and disability so that
Liverpool is better than the national average by 2010.
To stabilise the population by the year 2010. (Liverpool Partnership Group, 2002, inside cover).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL IN THE 21ST CENTURY: A EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE
CITY?
The city has certainly witnessed a major physical transformation in recent years, andthis transformation has been heavily reliant on public-sector policy. Thus, the Merseyside
Development Corporation’s reclamation of derelict land literally provided the ground forthe resuscitation of both housing and office markets in its territory (Meegan, 1999).There
are now housing developments and offices on riverside land that was disused and withzero market value 20 years ago. City Challenge helped to transform dramatically the built
environment of the eastern wedge of the city centre, with the Liverpool Institute for
Performing Arts and Blackburne House (the home of a pioneering women’s technology
training centre) acting as the anchors for the development of the area around theAnglican cathedral. Funding from Objective One and English Partnerships has transformed
parts of the city centre, with new hotels, bars, shops and public transport facilities.
Between 1995 and 2000, average retail rents in the city almost doubled from £150 to£250 per square metre (for A-grade retail property; Estates Gazette, 2000).

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This physical regeneration has helped to set the stage for private sector developers such
as Urban Splash and the Beetham Organisation to invest in the conversion of warehouses, lofts and old office buildings into residential apartments. This promotion of ‘urban
living’ saw the population of the city centre grow to 9,000 in 2000, nearly four times thefigure from a decade earlier (Liverpool City Council, 2000). While a substantial proportion of this early development was in student accommodation, the balance has shifted
towards young managerial and professional workers.This ‘urban living’ has created a niche
housing market reflected in a free glossy magazine, Homes, which markets the ‘new property’ and its associated lifestyle and which would have been unviable five years ago. In theyear to mid-June 2000, house prices in the city centre increased more quickly than thenational rate, at an average of 30%, with capital values ranging from £14 to £18 persquare metre (Estates Gazette, 2000). And there are now signs that this city-centre
gentrification is beginning to ripple outwards to immediately adjacent areas.
In these circumstances, it has been hard for the writers of the city’s promotional literature to contain their enthusiasm:
Visitors to the new Liverpool are amazed at the transformation of the city. Once derelict docklands are now home to award-winning retail and leisure amenities, waterfront apartments,
family housing, marinas, hotels, offices and restaurants.
The magnificent city centre architecture — testament to the city’s heritage — has beenretained and is being creatively restored and converted to create modern city living and officespace. Developer interest in the city’s at its highest for over a century. Liverpool’s world famouswaterfront is one of the most outstanding in Europe and is in line to become a World Heritage
Site.
With a masterplan for the city centre co-ordinated by Liverpool Vision … creative developers
are restoring the best of the past to meet the needs of the future. Stunning new developments
include the Paradise Street Development Area with one million sq. ft (93,000m2) of prime
retail development and state of the art, multi-purpose arena and conference facility at Kings
Dock.
Liverpool will soon have a retail, office and leisure offer which rivals anything in the UK.
Renaissance is not just confined to the city centre.The Speke Garston Development Company
have created superb business space at Estuary Commerce Park and Boulevard Industry Park,
adjacent to Liverpool John Lennon Airport and the stunning new Marriott South Liverpool Hotel …
£3 billion (4.8 billion Euro) of construction projects are planned throughout the city region overthe next five years — in retail, office, leisure, schools and hospitals …
Liverpool is one of the most competitive locations in the UK for businesses seeking an investment location, with prime office rents in Liverpool up to a third less than other UK cities …
Rental and capital values for retail, office and residential space are on the increase, creatinga healthy growth environment for investors.
(Liverpool Business Centre, 2002; emphasis in original).
While parts of the city have been transformed, there has also been a recent increase inemployment and a slowing-down of population loss [Fig. 1 and 2]. Indeed, between the

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mid-1990s and the start of the third millennium, Liverpool saw a faster growth of jobs
than did comparable ‘core cities’ nationally (Hutchins, 2001).9
So where are the new jobs being generated? Certainly not by the port, in any significant
number. ‘Jobless growth’ still applies.The port now handles more traffic (in tonnage) thanit did in the mid-1960s, but this recovery has not had anything like the local impact generated by previous dock activity.The operational docks are now much smaller in size, having predominantly retreated to the mouth of the estuary into the adjacent local authority district of Sefton (albeit in Bootle, the ‘Liverpool-speaking’ part). This relocation wasmarked by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company’s sale of its Port of Liverpool building at the Pier Head in 2001. Indeed, the development of its former land ownings has
given the company a significant source of profit, most notably in its development activities in the Princes Dock in the city centre.
The port’s direct employment impact has withered. In the early 1980s, what is now the
Mersey Docks and Harbour Company alone employed around 10,000 people. It now
employs 800 in its Liverpool operations — a reflection predominantly of the shift intransport technology towards containerisation of cargoes. Its imports have also done little to encourage the local secondary import-processing industries which were so important in the past.The main imports still reflect the old links with the Americas (particularly for grain and timber) and Ireland, but the port is now operating much more as a ‘hub’
operation for transhipment on to Ireland and parts of Europe (especially Portugal andSpain) and Israel.The recent increase in oil imports from the East (captured in part as aresult of the closure of a nearby terminal in North Wales) again barely touches the local
economy, the oil being pumped straight through the local Tranmere terminal for processing in Cheshire. A factor in this reduced local impact must also be the designation ofpart of the port’s operations as a Freeport. The Freeport offers traders freedom fromimport duties, VAT, European Commission levies, taxes and quotas as long as the affected cargoes are retained within its confines.This, of course, further encourages ‘hub’ operation and constrains potential leakage of economic activity outside the zone boundaries.
In terms of exports, manufacturing goods have now been replaced in importance (symbolically?) by scrap metal. Liverpool is now second only to Rotterdam in the export ofscrap metal. While the port thus retains an international space of economic activity, its
equivalent local space is much constrained. Estimates of the size of the maritime sector
suggest that something like 400 companies together provide 7,000 jobs (Liverpool
Business Centre, 2002).10 Indeed, as Table 1 shows, the transport sector as a whole (road,rail, air and sea) now accounts for only around 24,000 jobs in the Liverpool travel-towork area as a whole and represents about the same share of total employment as
nationally (around 6%). It is against this background of restructuring and job loss that the
recent protracted strike by Liverpool dockers needs to be seen. Lasting nearly two anda half years between 1995 and 1998, it was played out at national and global levels aswell as locally (see, for example, Castree, 2000; Lavallette and Kennedy, 1999). It raised all
kinds of issues about the scale and nature of industrial struggle, but what it also underscored was the ‘depoliticisation’ of the local polity. A weakened and divided Labour city
council, struggling to position itself in the new terrain of governance through partnership,
was unable to come out in unequivocal support of the dockers, something that would
have been a political given just ten years earlier. The distancing of promotional bodies
such as the Mersey Partnership from the dispute was understandable, but the issue madeit clear that the whole ethos of partnership actively conditions the politics of local government. Here was a dispute that put on the agenda problematic issues not only of city
image but also of balancing competitiveness with social cohesion. And the ‘city of partnership’ found it difficult to respond.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 153-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 1: Employment change, Liverpool Travel-To-Work Area (TTWA) andGreat Britain, 1995–2001
Employees

Changeby sector,
L’pool TTWA
1995

2001

ChangeEmployment

1995–2001

1995–2001

share (%)

L’pool TTWA

1 GB

No.

%

%

L’poolGB

Agriculture and fishing

155

356

201

129.7*(12.4)

0.09

0.97

Energy and water

1,426

1,218

(208)

(14.6)

(9.9)

0.31

0.82

Manufacturing

50,62244,047(6,575) (13.0)

(9.8)

11.17

14.15

Construction

10,30813,254

2,946

28.6*

27.5

3.36

4.51

73,245

97,064

23,819

32.5*

15.3

24.62*

24.26

22,99423,555

561

2.4

15.9

5.98

6.12

53,26159,755

6,494

12.2

23.8

15.16

19.63

110,116 133,869

23,753

21.6*

12.1

33.96*

24.31

Distribution, hotels
and restaurants
Transport andcommunications
Banking, financeand insurance etc.
Public administration,
education and health
Other services

20,321

21,104

783

3.9

25.2

5.35*

5.23

TOTAL

342,449 394,222

51,77315.1

12.0

100.00100.00Notes: (*) where percentage employment change is more favourable in the Liverpool TTWA than nationally (faster growth than national rate or growth set against
national decline) and where the sectoral share of total employment in the Liverpool TTWA is greater than the national share.The Liverpool TTWA encompasses all of the local authority districts of Liverpool, Knowsley and Sefton, the bulk of wards in West Lancashire and one ward each from Halton and St Helens.
Source: NOMIS

Table 1 gives a breakdown of employment change by broad sector in the period between
1995 and 2001, with national comparisons of percentage growth rates. It also shows thesectoral distribution of employment in the Liverpool travel-to-work area and Great Britain
in 2001. A number of things stand out, particularly the continuing decline of manufacturing both locally and nationally. Manufacturing employment in the Liverpool travel-to-workarea actually fell faster than it did nationally (by 13% compared with a national decline ofjust under 10%), reinforcing just how tenuous the city-region’s grip on manufacturing had
been in the 1960s and 1970s. Within manufacturing, there were some gains (in telecommunications equipment and motor vehicle parts), but these were more than outweighed
by losses (in food and drink, clothing and printing). Altogether, a further 6,600 manufacturing jobs were lost in the travel-to-work area in the five-year period. And the sector still
looks vulnerable. Since the census date for the 2001 employment figures, the telecommunications company Marconi has cut back employment as part of its global retrenchment.The specialist sports car manufacturer Jensen Motors and the computer games software firm Rage have both gone into receivership, and the pharmaceutical multinational
Glaxo Smith Kline has confirmed the closure of its Liverpool factory in 2004.11 Of someconcern for local planners is the fact that three of these companies were in the knowledge-based industries that policy is seeking to encourage (Marconi and Rage in information communication technologies and Glaxo Smith Kline in the bio-sciences sector).
The recent growth in jobs has come from services and very noticeably in the distribution,
hotel and restaurant sector, which grew by a third over the six years, more than double
the national rate of growth, and provided in total nearly 50,000 jobs (just over 12,500

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jobs in Liverpool itself). In Liverpool, these jobs were mainly in retailing (nearly 7,000 jobs)
and in bars, cafés, restaurants and hotels (together about 5,500 jobs).The retailing growthsuggests that the city might well be recapturing its city-regional and sub-regional
shopping centre role, which has been eroded by, for example, Chester and Greater
Manchester in recent years. And this growth will be reinforced by the recently commissioned redevelopment of the core of the city centre shopping area. Costing nearly £1 billion
and scheduled for completion in 2007, the redevelopment will include over 100 shops
alongside offices, apartments, a cinema and public squares. All of this reflects and reinforces the city centre property development already referred to. The city is becoming
more and more a city of consumption.12
As du Noyer (2002) argues, Liverpool has always been renowned as a place of entertainment and especially of music. The adjective ‘lively’ certainly does not do the city fulljustice. A key element of both the city’s image and reality has been its media, entertainment, arts and cultural activities. It has its indigenous television company (Phil Redmond’sMersey TV), but it has also seen recent employment cutbacks by the Manchester-based
Granada Television company, with the loss of its national morning programme previously
filmed at the Albert Dock (and crucially important in giving a public image to that development) and the failure of the company’s joint venture with Littlewoods into television
shopping (also based in the Albert Dock). What remains of its presence is the relatively
small newsroom. Music recording studios, nightclubs, the Philharmonic Hall and orchestra
and a nascent film sector all contribute to the cultural heartbeat of the city but still, as
yet, do not provide a substantial amount of (regular, full-time) employment.
Much more important in terms of employment has been the banking, finance and insurance sector.This has grown in the last few years but only at about half the national rate,
and there are signs that an evolving regional spatial division of labour in the sector heavily conditions the nature of this growth. Thus, for example, the paucity of large locallyowned companies has seen the concentration of corporate accountancy and related
services in Manchester, while Liverpool concentrates more on life and maritime insurance, general banking support centres and call-centre banking.
One area in which the city and city-region have disproportionately attracted new investment is that of call centres (in banking and finance and mail-order retailing): Liverpool
now claims to be the ‘number one contact centre’ in the UK and the only UK location to
figure in the European top ten. Labour availability (including graduates from the local universities), low-cost sites and financial assistance have been important in the developmentof what has become a significant infrastructure for the activity.The transnational ownership of these facilities (with companies such as 7C, Bertelsmann, Swiss Life and US Airways
all having operations in the city) illustrates the new global connections that are developing in the city. It remains to be seen how strong these connections prove to be, given theintense global competition for such activities. Competition for these centres is not only
between UK cities and city-regions, but also, increasingly, with overseas locations, mostnotably (in the case of British banking operations) locations in countries with old imperial connections, such as India.
Despite recent cutbacks in employment in the city council (which employs around 2,000
fewer people than it did in 1998), public sector jobs remain important in the city, withpublic administration and health accounting for a third of its workforce (compared witha national figure of 24%). It is noticeable, however, that employment in the sector as awhole did not grow as quickly as the national rate, and the fact that some of the jobs are
dependent on population levels means that growth is likely to be further constrained tothe extent that population continues to decline.

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The city’s renaissance, then, appears to be being built principally on leisure and entertainment.The decision by a group of the sacked dockers to pool their severance pay toinvest in a bar in the city centre is surely a poignant testament to this re-making of thecity. But the local economy remains weak. The awarding of a second round of Objective
One funding (2000–2006) was a recognition of the fact that gross domestic product perhead had actually fallen over the period of the first programme, reflecting the deep-seated structural problems it faces. A first attempt at measuring the productivity and competitiveness of UK cities — the so-called UK Urban Competitiveness Index 2002 — wasproduced by a firm of consultants, Robert Huggins Associates, in 2002.This index attempts
to combine measures of gross domestic product per head of population, economic activity, business density, proportions of ‘knowledge-based businesses’, unemployment rates
and average earnings. On this index, Liverpool comes out nationally as the least productive city. And some of the basic contours of the prevailing spatial division of labour are
indicated by the fact that only three of the top 20 cities (Aberdeen, Edinburgh andBristol) in the index are outside what the report calls the ‘South East England arc’.
Recent employment growth has seen unemployment fall, but more slowly than nationally,
and its current rate remains over double the national average.The Indices of Deprivation(2000) rank Liverpool as the second-worst local authority district in terms of ‘employment deprivation’ in England (out of 354 local authority areas). The state of the local
labour market is also reflected in the fact that the Indices also place the city second-worst
in terms of income (with mean income 75% of the national level). Overall, the Indices ofDeprivation rank Liverpool as the fifth most deprived local authority in England. Given
the state of the local labour market and low levels of income locally, it is no surprise thatthe housing market is also depressed, despite all the inner-city housing development thatfeatures in the promotional literature.This inner-city ‘property boom’ has to be set against
whole areas of the city in which the housing market is not so much depressed as nonexistent (Nevin et al., 1999). The housing stock is massively biased towards low-costcouncil and social housing, with all the implications for council tax revenue for the council [Fig. 3].
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 156-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 3: Council Tax: Percentage of Properties in Tax Bands, England andLiverpool, 2001

The Indices of Deprivation also give a measure of the degree to which deprivation is
spread across local authority areas (the Rank of Extent). Liverpool is ranked seventh on
this measure, showing relatively widespread deprivation: 26 of the city’s 33 wards are in
the worst 10% in England. The Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy referred to in the introduction (Liverpool Partnership Group, 2002) maps this geography of disadvantage thattakes in both inner-city and outer housing estate areas [Fig. 4].
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 157-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 4: Ranking of Liverpool Wards by Index of Multiple Deprivation,
2000

Source: Liverpool Partnership Group (2002)

The Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy clinically documents relative disadvantage and social
exclusion within the city. Overall, the city has a ‘real unemployment rate’ over twice thenational figure; and this rises to six times the national rate in the worst affected ward,
Granby, which is also the ward with the highest proportions of black and ethnic minority groups. No Liverpool ward has a rate lower than the national figure.13
The implications of these rates of unemployment for the local income base are clear[Tab. 2]. Table 2 gives income estimates for the 21 wards that have been designated
Neighbourhood Renewal Areas in the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy. Columns 5 and 6
show the differences between the ward averages and those for Liverpool and the UK.
The average household income in Liverpool is just 79% of the national figure. To matchthe national figure, average household incomes would need to be increased by, at best,
8% (Canning) and, at worst, 126% (Chatsworth). For the Neighbourhood Renewal Areas asa whole, the increase would need to be 55%.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 158-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 2: Income in Liverpool Neighbourhood Renewal Areas, 2001
Neighbourhood

No. ofIncomeMean

Difference

Renewal Area

house

£ per

incomefrom L‘pool

Difference
1

from UK

holds

annum

£ per annum

average (%)

average (%)2

Anfield/Breckfield

11,723203,202,100

17,333.62

-19

-51

Canning

2,375

57,609,600

24,256.67-15-8

Chatsworth

492

5,709,100

11,603.86

-78

-126

Dingle6,526

105,990,200

16,241.21

-27

-61

Dovecot

9,640

157,109,200

16,297.63

-26

-61

Elm Park

1,706

34,465,000

20,202.22-2-30

Fazakerley

2,458

41,961,600

17,071.44

-21

-53

Gillmoss

3,372

60,501,400

17,942.28

-15

-46

Granby/Lodge Lane

7,863

136,160,000

17,316.54

-19

-51

Kensington

5,949

93,314,700

15,685.77

-31

-67

Kirkdale

4,000

65,370,900

16,342.72

-26

-60

L1

1,419

21,996,600

15,501.47

-33

-69

Larkhill/Tuebrook

3,524

71,005,100

20,149.00-2-30

Lower Breck

3,142

55,128,100

17,545.54

-17

-49

Molyneux

3,219

52,744,100

16,385.24

-26

-60

Netherley

7,493

129,579,700

17,293.43

-19

-52

Norris Green

11,816

188,104,400

15,919.46

-29

-65

Picton

5,069

86,466,800

17,057.96

-21

-54

Speke/Garston

9,989

166,176,100

16,635.95

-24

-57

Urban Village

6,699

98,252,900

14,666.80

-40

-79

Walton/Florence Melly

8,132

135,095,600

16,612.83

-24

-58

116,606

1,965,943,200

16,859.70

-23

-55

All NRAs

Notes: Based on data provided by CACI.1 Mean Liverpool income = £20,600. 2 Mean UK income = £26,200. Source: Liverpool Partnership Group, 2002

The table points to a couple of key characteristics of Liverpool’s urban renaissance. First,
the relatively depressed levels of household income within the city clearly constrain consumer-based growth.The entertainment and retailing activities on which this renaissanceis based will need to draw on commuter and visitor spending (and, of course, the unmeasurable income generated locally by the ‘informal economy’) to maintain growth.
Secondly, it gives an indication of a new pattern of socio-spatial segregation that ‘urban
living’ appears to be producing, with the ward that stands out as having the highest average household incomes in relation to both Liverpool and the UK averages, Canning, being
the location of some of the most expensive apartments. These apartments are forminga relatively privileged segment of a ward that overall still needs ‘Neighbourhood
Renewal’.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CONCLUSION
Behind Liverpool’s current aspirations to be a ‘premier European renaissance city’ and its
bid to be European Capital of Culture in 2008 lies a profound transformation in the city’s
status in the global urban hierarchy, a transformation that is itself inextricably linked to
Britain’s changing geoeconomic and geopolitical relationships. It has lost jobs and people
on a scale and at rates that are exceptional even among the industrial cities of the north,and it finds itself at the core of one of the most disadvantaged city-regions in Europe.

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 159

Disadvantage is not new to the city. At the height of its power there were pronounced
social divisions between the rich and the poor that also had a marked geography. This
geography of poverty has become more extensive, with 19 of the city’s 33 wards now
featuring in the 10% most disadvantaged wards in Britain.
The city has been on the receiving end of substantial political and policy intervention at
different scales and in different forms. In the 1950s and 1960s, national regional policy andnationally encouraged population dispersal policies sought to create new jobs and bettersocial housing on the city’s outskirts. The 1970s saw regional policy overshadowed byurban policy as conditions in inner-city areas and some of the peripheral housing estates
deteriorated. The city experienced the whole battery of urban policies thereafter, followed in the 1980s and especially the 1990s by programmes funded by the European
Union’s Structural Funds. The scale of this intervention testifies to the severity of decline;
and policy has clearly struggled to make an impact.That said, Liverpool has shown somesigns of renaissance in recent years and this has been due, in no small part, to this public-sector intervention. The physical transformation of the city centre has been dramaticand seems set to continue, and there has been some related recovery in both labour andhousing markets. But this transformation has not benefited everyone and has not reached
all parts of the city; indeed, some of the developments threaten to reinforce establishedpatterns of socio-spatial segregation.The city’s aspiration to be an ‘inclusive European renaissance city’ still remains a very difficult challenge, a difficulty created by the very powerof the processes that combine to create the ‘disjointed structural change’ discussed in the
introduction.
For Liverpool to become such a city requires a politics and policies that operate at thewhole range of spatial scales, from neighbourhood to global. The city’s first community
strategy, ‘Liverpool First’ (Liverpool Partnership Group, 2002), does offer the potential forbuilding upwards from based-based development plans to a city-wide regeneration
framework in which public service spending can be ‘joined up’ and steered towards areasof need. It also offers the potential for reinforcing central government neighbourhoodbased initiatives such as Sure Start (aimed at children at risk of exclusion).The potential
is also there for the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy to link up, at city-regional level, withthe second Objective One programme, which retains a strong emphasis on social inclusion (as shown, for example, by attempts to make the jobs generated in so-called Strategic
Investment Areas accessible to people in ‘Pathways Areas’ looking for work). At regional
level, the Government Office for the North West offers the potential for better co-ordination of departmental programmes, and the North West Development Agency offers thepotential for developing an evolving Regional Economic Strategy that could promote collaboration rather than competition between the region’s two city-regions, Liverpool andManchester.The next scale is the national, and what seems essential for Liverpool’s renaissance (and for that of other similarly positioned cities) is a genuine commitment on
the part of national government to balanced regional growth (which, it has to be said,
seems to be lacking at the time of writing, with developments such as the Thames
Gateway being planned for the south-east).This national regional policy needs to fit within broader European social and economic programmes.
At all levels, there needs to be an openness to alternatives to orthodox policies of economic development — alternatives that can develop broader definitions of ‘work’ and inwhich ‘social economy’ initiatives such as Intermediate Labour Markets, Local Economic
Trading Schemes and ‘time banking’ (what Nathan and Westwood refer to as ‘broad work’[2001]) are developed. In such an approach, the payment nationally of ”basic income”,”citizen’s income” or ”participation income” (Atkinson, 1995; 1998; Desai, 1998; Hines,
2000) makes sense. There do appear to be pieces of this jigsaw falling into place inMANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 160

Liverpool (in the form, for example, of the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy, Sure Start andthe developing social enterprise sector that has recently been boosted by the North West
Development Agency’s sponsorship of a Merseyside Social Enterprise Initiative), but otherpieces (such as a strong national regional policy) still need to be found.
Published in: Ronaldo Munck (ed.), Reinventing the City, Liverpool University Press,
Liverpool 2003----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

The threats were disguised to a degree, however, by the onset of World War Two when the westernfacing port fulfilled one of its greatest roles, handling the materials and food that helped to sustain the
country in the war against Fascism.

2

If Liverpool is anything to go by, then, ”urban entrepreneurialism” (Harvey 1989b) is not simply a ‘postFordist’ phenomenon.

3

There were twelve projects in all set up in four phases: Coventry, Upper Afan (Glamorgan), Southwark
and Liverpool (1970); Batley, Newham (Canning Town) and Paisley (spring 1971); Cumberland andNewcastle (summer 1971); and Birmingham, Oldham and Tynemouth (North Tyneside) (winter 1971).

4

There is an interesting historical coincidence in the dating of Britain’s entry into the European Economic
Community (in 1973) and that of the ‘turning point’ that most commentators identify in terms of theshift from ‘Fordism’ to ‘post-Fordism’ or ‘organised’ to ‘disorganised’ capitalism.

5

For two opposing political interpretations of Militant in Liverpool, see Taafe and Mulhearn, 1988, andKilroy, 2000.There is also a website commemorating the disqualified councillors and their political stance,
www.Liverpool47.com.

6

One of the signatories was the former Beatle, Paul McCartney, who had a particular interest in the establishment of what became the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts on the site of his former, and by thenderelict, secondary school.This building became one of the showpieces of City Challenge.

7

It required a Directing Committee comprising the major central government departments and agencies,
the five local authorities in Merseyside County, the Merseyside Development Corporation, the Merseyside
Chamber of Commerce, the Merseyside Tourism Board, Merseytravel, the North West Water Authority,
voluntary sector representatives and European Commission representatives.

8

In the period since the mid-1960s, there have only been two full years when political control of Liverpool
City Council has coincided with that of central government and only another three when there has beensome overlap as control shifted.

9

Established in 1997, the Core Cities Group brings together the local authorities of the seven largest cities
outside London — Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sheffield— to represent their interests in policy debates.

10

The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company has adjusted to the country’s geopolitical and economic shift
towards Europe with its acquisition of the Medway Ports. While Liverpool’s geography places it on the
Atlantic Arc periphery of Europe, the company has made sure that its operations are more centrally placed.

11

All four of these companies feature in the listings of leading firms in the promotional brochure produced
by Liverpool Business Centre (2002).

12

One major cloud on the retail horizon, however, has been the recent sale of the Littlewoods mail-orderbusiness. Since Littlewoods is one of the few remaining large locally-controlled businesses, there is reason to
be concerned about the impact of the sale on headquarters-type jobs. There is also every reason to beconcerned about what the sale might mean for the firm’s hitherto exceptional levels of local philanthropy.

13

The measure of the ‘real rate of unemployment’ includes groups who are not officially registered as
unemployed but who have been effectively forced out of the labour market (such as elderly former
coalminers who reregistered as sick).

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Urban Regeneration

II | 161--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------References
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P. Healey, A. Madanipour and C. De Maghalhães (eds.), Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity and Social
Milieux, Ashgate, pp. 90–105, Aldershot 2002
A. Atkinson, Incomes and the Welfare State, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995
A. Atkinson, Poverty in Europe, Blackwell, Oxford 1998
T. Baines, History of the Commerce and Town of Liverpool, Longman, London 1852
G. Barraclough (ed.), The Times Atlas of World History,Times Books, London 1986
T. Bloxham, Creating an Urban Splash: Rehabilitation of Central Sites, in: M. Echenique and A. Saint (eds.),
Cities for the New Millennium, E. & F.N. Spon, London and New York 2001
J. H. F. Brabner (ed.), The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, Will London, n.d., c.1900
D. Byrne, Social Exclusion, Open University Press, Buckingham 1999
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D. Coyle, , Britain’s Urban Boom:The New Economics of Cities, in: The Richness of Cities: Urban Policy in a New
Landscape, Working Paper 7, Comedia and Demos, London 1999
M. Desai, , A Basic Income Proposal, in: The State of the Future, Social Market Foundation, London 1998
P. du Noyer, , Liverpool: Wondrous Place — Music from Cavern to Cream,Virgin Books, London 2002
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M. Falkus and J. Gillingham,, Historical Atlas of Britain, Granada, London 1981
M. Geddes and J. Bennington (eds.), Local Partnerships and Social Exclusion in: the European Union: New
Forms of Local Social Governance, Routledge, London 2001
H. Glennerster, R. Lupton, P. Noden and A. Power, Poverty, Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood: Studying the
Area Bases of Social Exclusion, Case Paper 22, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of
Economics, London 1999
P. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, 3rdedition, Blackwell, Oxford 2002
D. Harvey (1989a), From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism:The Transformation in Urban Governance in
Late Capitalism, in: Geografiska Annaler, 71B: pp. 3–17
D. Harvey, (1989b), The Condition of Postmodernity, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
C. Hines, Localization: A Global Manifesto, Earthscan, London 2000
E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914, Cardinal, London 1989
M. Hutchins, Are Big Cities Getting Better? Socio-Economic Trends in England’s CoreCities, European Institute for
Urban Affairs, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool 2001
R. Imrie and H.Thomas (eds.), British Urban Policy, Sage, London 1999
P. Kilroy, Left Behind: Lessons from Labour’s Heartland, Politico’s Publishing, London 2000
P. L. Knox and J. Agnew, The Geography of the World Economy, Arnold, London 1998
M. Lavalette and J. Kennedy, Solidarity on the Waterfront: The Liverpool Lockout of 1995/96, Liver Press,
Liverpool 1996
S. Lash and J. Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism, Polity Press, London 1987
P. Lawless,The Inner Cities:Towards a New Agenda, in: Town Planning Review, 67, 1996, pp. 21–43
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Liverpool Partnership Group, The Liverpool Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy Framework and Action Plan,
Liverpool Partnership Group, Liverpool 2002

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Liverpool Partnership Group, The Liverpool Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy Baseline Report, Liverpool
Partnership Group, Liverpool 2002
Madanipour, A., Social Exclusion and Space, in: A. Madanipour, G. Cars and J. Allen (eds.), Social Exclusion in
European Cities, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London 1998
M. Marshall, Long Waves Of Regional Development, Macmillan, Basingstoke 1987
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R. Meegan, Merseyside in Crisis and in Conflict, in: M. Harloe, C. Pickvance and J. Urry (eds.), Place, Policy and
Politics: Do Localities Matter?, Unwin Hyman, London 1990
R. Meegan, Urban Development Corporations, Urban Entrepreneurialism and Locality, in: R. Imrie andH.Thomas (eds.), British Urban Policy, Sage, London 1999
R. Meegan, (forthcoming), Pathways to Integration: Tackling Social Exclusion on Merseyside, in: M. Parkinson
and M. Boddy (eds.), Changing Cities: Lessons from Research, Policy Press, Bristol 1999
S. Musterd and W. Ostendorf, Urban Segregation and the Welfare State: Inequality and Exclusion in Western
Cities, Routledge, London 1998
M. Nathan and A.Westwood, Broad Work: Fast Futures, Industrial Society, London 2001
B. Nevin, P. Lee and J. Phillimore with A. Burfitt and L. Goodson, Measuring the Sustainability of Neighbourhoods
in Liverpool, Liverpool Partnership Group and Liverpool City Council, Liverpool 1999
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1985
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Regenerating the Cities:The UK Crisis and the US Experience, Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview (IL) 1989
S. Pollard, The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1990, Arnold, London 1992
S. Pollard, The International Economy since 1945, Routledge, London 1997
Robert Huggins Associates, The State of Urban Britain, Robert Huggins Associates, Cardiff 2002
P.Taafe and T Mulhearn, Liverpool: A City that Dared to Fight, Fortress Books, London 1988
P.Taylor, Political Geography: World-economy, Nation-state and Locality, 2nd edition, Longman, London 1989
F. Vigier, Change and Apathy: Liverpool and Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, MIT Press, Cambridge
MA 1970----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 163--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PORT STATISTICS
Patrick Keiller(abridged version)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The following paragraphs were written in the last months of 1996, during the final stagesof production of a film, Robinson in Space, for which the journeys they recall were carriedout. Robinson in Space (35mm, colour, 82 min., UK 1997) was filmed between March andNovember 1995. It documents the explorations of an unseen fictional character called
Robinson, who was the protagonist of the earlier London, which was a re-imagination ofits subject suggested by the Surrealist literature of Paris. Robinson in Space is a similar
study of the look of present-day England in 1995, and was suggested to some extent by
Defoe’s Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain. Among its subjects are many new
spaces, particularly the sites where manufactured products are produced, imported anddistributed. Robinson has been commissioned by ”a well-known international advertising
agency”1 to undertake a study of the ‘problem’ of England. It is not stated in the film what
this problem is, but there are images of Eton, Oxford and Cambridge, a Rover plant, theinward investment sites of Toyota and Samsung, a lot of ports, supermarkets, a shopping
mall and other subjects which evoke the by now familiar critique of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, which sees the UK’s economic weakness as a result of the City of London’s longterm (English) neglect of the (UK’s) industrial economy, particularly its manufacturingbase.
In the Department of Transport’s 1994 edition of Port Statistics,2 based on figures for thetwelve months of 1993, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company was the most profitable
port authority listed. Associated British Ports, which was not listed, declared a higher profit for 1993, but they operate 22 ports in the UK, including Southampton, Immingham andHull. The MDHC bought the profitable Medway Ports in October 1993 and operate aferry service and a container terminal in Northern Ireland, but it seems nonetheless that
Liverpool was (and still is) ‘the most profitable port in the UK’.
Reading these figures, I imagined there might be some exceptional reason for the
MDHC’s profitability — a one-off land sale, perhaps; commercial rents, or grant aid fromthe EU. Like many people with a tourist’s familiarity with the waterfronts of Liverpool andBirkenhead, I took the spectacular dereliction of the docks to be symptomatic of a pastdecline in their traffic and Liverpool’s impoverishment to be a result of this decline in its
importance as a port. In fact, in September 1995, when the images of Liverpool in thefilm were photographed, Liverpool’s port traffic was greater than at any time in its history.
In modern terms, individual British ports are not very large: Rotterdam — the world’s
biggest port — has an annual traffic of about 300 million tonnes.The UK has a long coastline, and its traffic, though greater than ever, is divided between many different ports.
Since 1960, the tonnage of exports has quadrupled, increasing most rapidly in the 1970s
when North Sea Oil was first exploited.The tonnage of imports has fluctuated, and overall has risen by more than 20%.
Southampton and Liverpool each handle about 30 million tonnes. Both have large container terminals; Liverpool has a large traffic in animal feeds, a new terminal forPowergen’s coal imports and most of the UK’s scrap metal exports. Southampton has avehicle terminal — Renault, Rover, GM, Jaguar — and a lot of oil imports.
It is presumably a mistake to assess a port’s importance solely by the tonnage of its traffic— a tonne of Colombian coal is worth about £28 at the destination port, a tonne of

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Port Statistics

II | 164

Volkswagens say £12,000, a tonne of laptop computers probably not less than £250,000.
Container and road vehicle loads probably always represent considerably greater monetary value than bulk materials. On this basis, Felixstowe probably handles the traffic withthe greatest value. However, given that other large ports are either fragmented (London),aggregates of two or more sites (Tees and Hartlepool, Grimsby and Immingham) or
specialists in particular types of traffic (Sullum Voe is all oil exports, Felixstowe is only
containers, Immingham and the Tees largely bulk), Liverpool can now be described as‘the UK’s largest conventional port’. If Liverpool’s relative importance is not what it was
100 years ago, it is not because its traffic has declined, but because there is now much
more port traffic, and there are more big ports.
Certainly, Liverpool’s traffic did decline. In the early 1980s, it was down to about ten
million tonnes per year, but it is now about the same as in the mid-1960s. What has
vanished is not the working port itself, even though most of the waterfront is derelict,but the contribution that the port made to the economy of Liverpool. Of all the UK’s
maritime cities, only Hull, which is much smaller, was as dependent on its port for wealth.
Liverpool’s population in 1994 was estimated at 474,000, just 60% of the 789,000 in
1951. At its peak, the port employed 25,000 dock workers. The MDHC now employs
about 500 dockers (and sacked 329 of these in September 1995). Similarly, a very large
proportion of the dock traffic is now in containers and bulk, both of which are highly
automated and pass through Liverpool without generating many ancillary jobs locally.The
Channel Tunnel enables the MDHC to market Liverpool as a continental European port
for transatlantic traffic, so that the ancillary jobs it supports may even be outside the UK.
Also, like any English city outside London, Liverpool is now largely a branch-office location and long ago lost the headquarters establishments (White Star, Cunard) that made ita world city, the point of departure for emigrants from all over Europe to the New
World.
Another influence on Liverpool’s economy and culture has been the virtual eliminationof the UK’s merchant shipping fleet. According to Tony Lane of Liverpool University’s
Sociology Department, although there were never more than about 250,000 seafarers in
the British merchant fleet (about a third of whom were of Afro-Caribbean or Asiandescent), seafarers were once the third most numerous group of workers in Liverpool.
The typical length of a seafarer’s career was about seven years, so that at any time a very
high proportion of men in Liverpool had at some time been away to sea. Most of the
few remaining British seafarers work on car, passenger or freight ferries, on which the
majority of jobs are in catering. Apart from the decline in UK-owned ships and UK crews,
modern merchant ships are very large and very sparsely crewed: there are never manyships in even a large modern port; they don’t stay long, and crews have little — if any —time ashore, even assuming they might have money to spend. The P&O’s Colombo Bay,for example, a large UK-registered container vessel, has a crew of 20 and a capacity of
about 4,200 20-foot-equivalent containers (4,200 teu), typically a mixture of 20-foot and
40-foot units, each one of which is potentially the full load of an articulated lorry.
Presumably, jobs lost in port cities and on ships have to some extent been made up by
expansion in the numbers of truck drivers.
Not only do ports and shipping now employ very few people, they also occupy surprisingly little space. Felixstowe is the fourth-largest container port in Europe, but it does notcover a very large area.The dereliction of the Liverpool waterfront is a result not of the
port’s disappearance, but of its new insubstantiality. The warehouses that used to line
both sides of the river have been superseded by a fragmented and mobile space —goods vehicles moving or parked on the UK’s roads at any given time: the road system
as a publicly-funded warehouse. This is most obvious on summer evenings, when busy

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trunk roads on which parking is permitted become truck dormitories: south of Derby, an
18-mile stretch of the A42, lined with lay-bys, that connects the M42 with the M1 is oneof these; the nine-mile stretch of the A34 between Oxford and the M40 another. Manyof these trucks are bound for the enormous warehouses of inland distribution estatesnear motorway junctions — Wakefield 41, for example, at junction 41 of the M1, next toits junction with the M62.The road haulage — or logistics — industry does not typicallybase its depots in port cities, though it is intimately linked to them: the road construction
battlefields of Twyford Down and Newbury were the last obstacles to rapid road accessto the port of Southampton from London (by the M3) and from the Midlands and theNorth (by the M40 to the A34).The relative insubstantiality of industrial development in
the modern landscape seems to be accompanied by very high levels of energy consumption.
Despite having shed the majority of its dockers, the Liverpool port employer’s attitude
to its remaining workforce is extremely aggressive. In September 1995, two weeks after
telling Lloyd’s List that it had the most productive workforce in Europe, the MDHC sacked
329 of its 500 remaining dockers after they refused to cross a picket line. Five employees of a contract labour firm had been sacked in a dispute over payment periods forovertime. This led to the picket line which the MDHC workers refused to cross. Liverpool dockers were supported by secondary actions in New York and elsewhere, so thatthe giant U.S. container line ACL threatened to move its ships from Liverpool unless thelock-out was ended. In other countries, even employers were shocked by the MDHC’s
unrestrained determination to be rid of most of their last few dockers. In July 1996, ACL
carried out their threat and moved their ships to Thamesport,3 an independently-owned
container terminal within the MDHC-owned Medway Ports in Kent. Medway Ports,
which had been privatised in 1989 as a management-employee buy-out, was bought by
the MDHC in 1993 in a transaction which made Medway’s former chief executive amulti-millionaire. Medway had previously sacked 300 of its dockers for refusing to accept
new contracts. On dismissal, the dockers were obliged to surrender their shares in thecompany at a valuation of £2.50 per share, shortly before MDHC bought them for£37.25 each.
The main port of the Medway is Sheerness, which is the largest vehicle-handling port in
the UK, with imports by Volkswagen-Audi, two-way traffic by Peugeot-Citroën and exports
from General Motors UK plants, among others. Like other modern UK ports, it is a somewhat out-of-the-way place. Opposite the dock gates is the plant of Co-Steel Sheerness,
which recycles scrap into steel rod and bar. Co-Steel, a Canadian company, is the proponent of what it calls total team culture, in which all employees are salaried, overtime isunpaid and union members fear identification. In June 1996, the ILO called on the UK
government to investigate Co-Steel’s anti-union practices. On the other side of the Isle ofSheppey, at Ridham Dock (a ‘hitherto little-known port’ which featured in the Scottenquiry and from which Royal Ordnance military explosives were shipped to Iran) there
is another Knauf automated plasterboard plant, which the 1995 Medway Ports Handbook
and Directory describes as ‘the fastest running production line in Europe’. Opposite
Sheerness, on the end of the Isle of Grain, is the automated container terminal ofThamesport to which ACL’s ships were diverted from Liverpool. In the Medway Ports
handbook, Thamesport is described as the UK’s most sophisticated container terminal,”where driverless computerised cranes move boxes around a regimented stacking areawith precision and speed”.
The juxtaposition of successful industry and urban decay in the landscape of the UK
is certainly not confined to the north of the country. A town like Reading, with someof the fastest growth in the country (Microsoft, US Robotics, Digital, British Gas, Prudential

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Assurance) offers, albeit to a lesser degree, exactly the same contrasts between corporate wealth and urban deprivation: the UK does not look anything like as wealthy as itreally is. The dilapidated appearance of the visible landscape, especially the urban landscape, masks its prosperity. It has been argued that in 18 years of Conservative government, the UK has slipped in a ranking of the world’s most prosperous economies in termsof GDP per head, but it is equally likely that the position has remained unchanged, andin any case this is only a ranking among nations all of which are becoming increasingly
wealthy. If the UK has slipped in this table, it has not slipped anything like as much as, say,
Australia or Sweden, or even the Netherlands. The UK’s GDP is the fifth-largest in theworld, after the U.S., Japan, Germany and France. What has changed is the distribution of
wealth.
In the UK, wealth is not confined to a Conservative nomenklatura, but the condition of,say, public transport or state-sector secondary schools indicates that the governing classdo not have a great deal of use for them. People whose everyday experience is of
decayed surroundings, pollution, cash-starved public services, job insecurity, part-time
employment or freelancing tend to forget about the UK’s wealth. We have been inclined
to think that we are living at a time of economic decline, to regret the loss of the visible
manufacturing economy, to lower our expectations. We dismiss the government’s claims
that the UK is ‘the most successful enterprise economy in Europe’, but are more inclined
to accept that there might be less money for schools and hospitals, if only because of thecost of financing mass unemployment.
There is something Orwellian about this effect of dilapidated everyday surroundings,
especially when it is juxtaposed with the possibility of immediate virtual or imminentactual presence elsewhere, through telematics and cheap travel. Gradually, one comes tosee dilapidation not only as an indication of poverty, but as damage inflicted by theincreased centralisation of media and political control in the last two decades.
In the rural landscape, meanwhile, the built structures, at least, are more obviously modern, but the atmosphere is disconcerting. The windowless sheds of the logistics industry,
recent and continuing road construction, spiky mobile ‘phone aerials, a proliferation of
new fencing of various types, security guards, police helicopters and cameras, new prisons, agribusiness (BSE, genetic engineering, organophosphates, declining wildlife), UK and
U.S. military bases (microwaves, radioactivity), mysterious research and training centres,‘independent’ schools, eerie commuter villages, rural poverty and the country houses ofrich and powerful men of unrestrained habits are visible features of a landscape in which
the suggestion of cruelty is never very far away.
With the Conservatives and their obsessions removed, the new industrial landscape of
the UK begins to resemble the computerised, automated, leisured future predicted in the
1960s. Instead of leisure, we have unemployment, a lot of low-paid service sector jobs,
and a large number of people who are ‘economically inactive’, including ‘voluntary’ carers
and people who have been downsized into a more or less comfortable early retirement,
many of whom once worked for recently privatised utilities.The enormous irony of theTory twilight is that their protestations that the UK is a prosperous country are largely
true.There are even a few signs of a revival in the manufacture of indigenously financed
high-technology consumer goods.The UK is a rich country in which live a large numberof poor people and a similar number of reasonably well-off people who say they are willing to pay for renewal of the public realm.There seems to be no reason why the UK cannot afford a minimum wage, increased expenditure on welfare and education, incentives
for industrial investment, environmental improvements, re-empowered local governmentand other attributes of a progressive industrial democracy.

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II | 167--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Nations for Sale, a study of Britain’s overseas image, was written by Anneke Elwes in 1994 for the international advertising network DDB Needham. Patrick Wright reports (in The Guardian, December 31,
1994) that she found Britain ‘a dated concept’ difficult ‘to reconcile with reality’.

2Port Statistics (HMSO, London) is compiled annually by the Department of Transport. Most of the
figures in this essay are from the 1995 edition.

3

ACL later returned to Liverpool-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 168--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ADDRESSES AND CONTACTS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LIVERPOOL
Liverpool City Council, Municipal Buildings
contact: Dale St, Liverpool L69 2DHUK, www.liverpool.gov.uk
The Liverpool Culture Company Ltd., Company founded to deliver the European Capital of
Culture 2008 programme
contact: 3rd Floor Millennium House, 60 Victoria Street, Liverpool L1 6JD,
phone: 0044-(0)-151-233-1360, www.liverpoolculture.com
FACT — Foundation for Art and Creative Technology. Recently re-housed in purpose-built
inner-city premises. Fact is the UK’s leading organisation for the support, commissioning
and exhibition of film, video and new media projects.
contact: 88 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4DQ, phone 0044-(0)-151-707-4450,
www.fact.co.uk
Tate Gallery Liverpool. Liverpool became the first city outside London to receive a branchof the renown Tate Gallery, which was located in the disused Royal Albert Dock.Today it
is one of the city’s main cultural venues.
contact: Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4BB, phone 0044-(0)-151-702-7400,
www.tate.org/liverpool
Liverpool Biennial. Biggest visual art event in the UK, organised in cooperation with various local art institutions. Opens September 18 to November 28, 2004.
www.biennial.org.uk
Liverpool Vision. Inner city regeneration agency bringing together public and private sector
agencies to revitalise the city centre.
contact: The Observatory, 1 Old Haymarket, Liverpool L1 6EN, www.liverpoolvision.com
The Mersey Partnership. Formed to promote tourism and investment, the MerseysidePartnership’s website gives a good overview of culture, housing, working and education
with useful further links.
phone: 0044-(0)-151-237-3916, research@merseyside.org.uk, www.merseyside.org.uk

MANCHESTERManchester City Council.Town Hall
contact: Albert Square, Manchester M60 2LA, phone: 0044-(0)-161-234-5000,
www.manchester.gov.uk
CUBE — Centre for the Understanding of the Built Environment. Gallery/Bookshop in
Manchester with an emphasis on architecture and design, regular exhibitions and lectures.
contact: 113–115 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6FB, phone: 0044-(0)-161-237-5525,
info@cube.org.uk

Manchester/Liverpool | Addresses and Contacts

II | 169

Manchester City Council
contact: Manchester City Council, Town Hall , Albert Square , Manchester , M60 2LA ,UK, phone: 0044-(0)-161-234-5000, fax: 0044-(0)-161 234 3760
city.council@notes.manchester.gov.uk, www.manchester.gov.uk
URBIS
contact: URBIS, Cathedral Gardens, Manchester, M43BG, phone: 0044-(0)-161-605-8200,
fax: 0044-(0)-161-605-8200, www.urbis.org.uk
Cornerhouse Galleries
contact: Cornerhouse Galleries, 70 Oxford Street Manchester, M1 5NH Greater Manchester,
England, phone (general information): 0044-(0)-161-228-7621, fax (general information):
0044-(0)-161-200-1506, exhibitions@cornerhouse.org, www.cornerhouse.org
Manchester Art Gallery
contact: Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley St, Princess St, Manchester,
phone: 0044-(0)-161- 235-8888,www.manchestergalleries.org/html/mag/mag_home.html
URBED
contact: David Rudlin (director Manchester), 41 Old Birley Street (Hulme), Manchester
M15 5RF, phone: 0044-(0)-161-226-5078, fax: 0044-(0)-161-226-7307, urbed@urbed.co.uk,
www.urbed.co.uk
SURF — Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futurescontact: SURF, University of Salford113–115 Portland Street, Manchester, M1 6FB,
phone: 0044-(0)-161-295-4018, fax: 0044-(0)-161-295-5880, www.surf.salford.ac.uk
Manchester Institute of Popular Culture
contact: Dr Justin O’Connor, Manchester Institute of Popular Culture, Manchester
Metropolitan University, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West, Manchester
M15 6II, phone: 0044-(0)-161-247-3443 (office), fax: 0044-(0)-161 2476360,
j.connor@mmu.ac.uk, www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/mipc
THE REGION
Northwest Development Agency.The NWDA co-ordinates economic development, regeneration, skills development, strategic sites, business relocation and inward investment as
Regional Development Agency (RDA) in Northwest England.
contact: www.nwda.co.uk
North West Regional Research Laboratory. The NWRRL is run by a Management
Committee consisting of well-established teaching staff from the Departments ofGeography, Biological Science, Environmental Science, Management Science and theCentre for Applied Statistics.
contact: www.lancs.ac.uk
UK
National Office for Statistics. Central British site for official statistics reflecting the countries
economy, population and society at the national and local level. www.englandsnorthwest.com

II | 170--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BIBLIOGRAPHY-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ken Grant and James Kelman, The Close Season, Stockport 2002
Ken Grant, a photographer who grew up in Liverpool, documents life after the end of
the Docklands on the Mersey River over a period of one and a half decades. Where theport no longer offers jobs and life seems to go awry, other forms of private or public
daily life together become important. Close Season is the season in which hunting is not
permitted. And indeed, the social networks of the young and old people depicted in the
58 black-and-white duoton photos need protection. Ken Grant’s camera, of course, gives
them more. It provides them tender affection.The introduction to the volume was written by the Scottish writer James Kelman.
Linda Grant, Still Here, London 2002
The newest novel by this writer and journalist, the 1951-born daughter of Russian andPolish Jewish immigrants, takes place for the most part in her hometown. It is the story
of Alix Rebick and Joseph Shields, who, in the middle of everyday life, are both confronted with what is unresolved in their past outside the country. Alix has to take care of her
severely ill mother, while in the course of his occupational work, Joseph, the architectfrom America, has to win a struggle with Liverpool’s gangster scene.
Dave Haslam, Manchester England, The Story of the Pop Cult City, London 1999
A better author for this topic could hardly have been found than the 1962-born DJ andjournalist Dave Haslam. His book describes the history of popular music in Manchester,from the Victorian music halls of the late 19th century through the jazz and rock ’n’ rollof the 1950s and 1960s to the punk and post-punk of the 1970s and 1980s.The author
lavishly portrays the raves and clubs of the 1990s — including the legendary Hacienda,
where he himself played a major role as a DJ.
Alan Kidd, Manchester, Edinburgh 2002
The author divides the history and depiction of Manchester into three sections. From
1780 to 1850, Manchester was the focus of the Industrial Revolution and the very firstindustrial city, where what is known as ‘Manchester’ capitalism had its origins. Between
1850 and 1914, the home of the ‘Mancunians’ took the role of the capital of the wool
trade.This is the period when the huge Victorian public buildings were constructed in thecentre of the city. Alan Kidd subsumes the decades after World War One as the time”within living memory”.This chapter deals primarily with the dramatic deindustrialisationand its consequences. For the most recent edition of his book, the author has written achapter about Manchester’s development into a centre of cultural and social services.
Ron Martin and Bob Rowthorn (eds.), The Geography of De-industrialisation, Basingstoke
and London 1986
This volume is concerned with the consequences of the deindustrialisation of the 1970s
and 1980s for the spatial system of Great Britain. Ten essays provide a comprehensive
understanding of the decline of the economic basis of broad segments of the country’s
productive regions. Ron Martin and Bob Rowthorn, both instructors at the Colleges ofCambridge University, and the other authors show how industrial concentration was
pushed forward by the imperatives of British capital. They also show how the Thatcher

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Bibliography

II | 171government supported this policy, which discriminated against whole regions.The spreadof services and the emergence of small high-tech companies privileged the Southeast,
which was already economically privileged. Emphasis on the role of the free market exacerbated socio-geographical polarisation.
Katherine Mumford and Anne Power, The Slow Death of Great Cities? Urban Abandonment
or Urban Renaissance, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1999
Researchers Anne Power and Katharine Mumford from CASE, Centre for Analysis of Social
Exclusion at the London School of Economics, based this study on an in-depth assessmentof unpopular neighbourhoods in Manchester and Newcastle. Power’s and Mumford’s
analysis of causes and effects of abandonment in British Cities had great impact on anational policy discussion triggered by New Labour’s establishment of the Urban Task
Force in 1997.The book questions traditional planning methods such as tabula rasa demolition of deprived wards, arguing that neighbourhoods of acute decline may become theurban centres of tomorrow. The book is followed by an update report Boom or
Abandonment — Resolving housing conflicts in cities (2003), in which the authors point
towards the great resilience and vitality that can be generated by the personal experience of decline. Key elements of the ‘fightback’ of local communities include the emergence of local leaders, improved co-ordination and delivery of local services, co-operation between police, housing providers and residents and new approaches to marketing
empty homes and the area overall, which could inform a revision of tools and instruments of planning for regeneration.
Ronaldo Munck (ed.) with a foreword by Saskia Sassen, Reinventing the City? Liverpool in
Comparative Perspective, Liverpool University Press 2003
This collection of essays mainly authored by well-known Liverpool scholars represents
the most recent attempt to assemble a sociological and socio-political overview of current research conducted on the city of Liverpool.The book discusses the city of Liverpool
as an example that can challenge preconceived notions about the global post-moderncity. At the same time, it is the best scholarly overview of the most recent urban transformations of the city to date. All contributors examine specific aspects of the cultural,social and economic legacy of the city, with particular emphasis placed on its people.
Michael Parkinson, Liverpool on the Brink, Policy Journals Hermitage 1985
Michael Parkinson’s book is a well-known classic written during a period when Liverpool’s
Local Council militantly opposed the imposed neo-liberal reforms of the Thatcherite
Central Government. The period marks what is now remembered as perhaps the city’s
darkest moment, when unemployment had skyrocketed, poverty and crime was widespread, the municipal finances were close to bankruptcy and the city lost population by
the day. Parkinson’s analysis goes beyond disaster analysis and addresses the tension
between local democracy and imposed neo-liberal ideology, which remains relevant to
the present day. He charts the background of Liverpool’s financial and political crisis which
pushed the city ‘to the brink’ and situates the struggle led by the Labour Council and theTrade Unions within a longer British tradition.
Jamie Peck and Kevin Ward (eds.), City of Revolution, Restructuring Manchester, Manchester
and New York 2002
Confronted with increasing job losses, social problems expressed in violence and theLondon government’s apparent lack of interest in their situation, many large British cities
have undergone an ‘entrepreneurial’ turnaround in the last two decades. Few communi-

MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL | Bibliography

II | 172ties have realised this strategy as radically as Manchester. Once a bastion of socialist policy, the city has enthusiastically taken up the new economy of highly qualified services,
conspicuous consumption, and aggressive self-marketing. In twelve essays by qualified
urban geographers, this book examines the entrepreneurial strategies and metropolitan
ambitions of the ‘New Manchester’ and provides a critical analysis of the urban transformation. Has Manchester undergone a Renaissance? Or is it merely caught in a swamp of
post-industrialism, characterised by economic instability and social polarisation?
Tom Wood, Bus Odyssey, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001
This photographer, born in Ireland in 1951 and living near Liverpool for more than 20
years, finds his sujets almost exclusively in the big city on the Mersey River. Tom Woodworked on the series of photos titled Bus Odyssey between 1978 and 1998.The colour
photos were taken during countless bus trips outside of rush hour. One sees wrinkled
and relaxed faces staring into space or out the windows; one sees grumpy bus drivers,
friendly children playing, and changing fashions. The volume accompanied the exhibitionof the same title through several large West German cities.
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II | 173

AUTHORS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MARK BAKER Senior Lecturer
School of Planning and Landscape, University of Manchester. m.baker@man.ac.uk
ADAM BROWN, Dr.
Senior Research Fellow, Manchester Institute of Popular Culture
a.d.brown@mmu.ac.uk
SARA COHEN, Dr.
University of Liverpool,
Institute of Popular Music, sara@liv.ac.uk.
NICK GALLENT Senior Lecturer
The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. n.gallent@ucl.ac.uk
LISA GOODSON, Dr.
University of Birmingham, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies Research Fellow
l.j.goodson@bham.ac.uk
LINDA GRANT Novelist and journalist
Winner of the 2000 Orange Prize for Fiction, lg@lindagrant.co.uk
DAVE HASLAM, writer and DJ
Manchester, dave@davehaslam.com
ED FERRARI, Dr.
University of Birmingham, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies Research Fellow
e.t.ferrari@bham.ac.uk
PATRICK KEILLER, architect
AHRB Research Fellow, Royal College of Art, London
ALAN KIDD, Professor of Social and Regional History
Manchester Centre for Regional History, Manchester Metropolitan University
A.Kidd@mmu.ac.uk
PETER LEE
University of Birmingham, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies Senior Lecturer
p.w.lee@bham.ac.uk
RICHARD MEEGAN
European Institute for Urban Affairs, Liverpool John Moores University,
R.A.Meegan@livjm.ac.uk
PHILIPP MISSELWITZ, Architect and Urban Researcher
Local Co-curator of Shrinking Cities team Manchester / Liverpool
philmisselwitz@aol.com

II | 174

KATHARINE MUMFORD Researcher
Centre of Analysis for Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, University of London
JON MURDEN, Researcher
University of Liverpool, J.E.Murden@liverpool.ac.uk
ALAN MURIE, Professor
University of Birmingham, School of Public Policy Head of School, a.s.murie@bham.ac.uk
BRENDAN NEVIN
Renew North Staffordshire (Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder) Director,
renew@civic1.stoke.gov.uk
JUSTIN O’CONNOR, Dr.
Director of Manchester Institute of Popular Culture, j.oconnor@mmu.ac.uk
JENNY PHILLIMORE, Dr.
University of Birmingham, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies Lecturer,
j.a.phillimore@bham.ac.uk
ANNE POWER, Professor of Social Policy
Deputy Director of the Centre of Analysis for Social Exclusion, London School of Economics,
University of London, anne.power@lse.ac.uk
JONATHAN ROBERTS
University of Birmingham, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies Research Assistantspprobertsj@bham.ac.uk
CECILIA WONG Professor of Planning
Co-Director of Policy Evaluation and Analysis Research Laboratory, Department of Civic
Design, University of Liverpool. ylcwong@liv.ac.uk--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II | 175

WORKING PAPERS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I IVANOVO ............................................. I.1 Studien / Studies 1 (rus/dt)
I.2 Studien / Studies 2
I.3 Ausstellungsbeiträge / Exhibition Contributions
II MANCHESTER / .............................. II.1 Studien / Studies 1
LIVERPOOL
II.2 Studien / Studies 2
II.3 Ausstellungsbeiträge / Exhibition Contributions
III DETROIT ............................................... III.1 Studien / Studies 1
III.2 Studien / Studies 2
III.3 Ausstellungsbeiträge / Exhibition Contributions
IV HALLE / LEIPZIG .............................. IV.1 Studien / Studies 1
IV.2 Studien / Studies 2
IV.3 Ausstellungsbeiträge / Exhibition Contributions
V STÄDTE IM VERGLEICH / CITIES BY COMPARISONVI KULTURELLE STUDIEN /CULTURAL STUDIES...... VI.1 Musik / Music
VI.2 Film
VI.3 Literatur / Literature
VI.4 Vandalismus / Vandalism
VI.5 Eigentum / Property
VI.6 Rechtsextremismus / Right-wing Extremism

VII VERMISCHTES / MISCELLANEOUS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shrinking Cities: Complete Works 2, Interventionen/Interventions, a documentation of thesecond phase of the project, will be published in spring 2006.

WORKING PAPERS is a series of print-on-demand publications from Shrinking Cities designed to supplement
the project’s book publications. It provides public access to studies, research, and discussion carried out forthe project. These publications are available as hard copy at the project’s exhibitions and events and as pdf
documents from the homepage www.shrinkingcities.com. Individual issues will be updated as needed and willthen appear in a revised and expanded edition. These contributions do not necessarily reflect the opinionsof the editorial staff. Data and visual representations are published without guarantee; the authors are
responsible for the accuracy of the information. Articles, tables, and visual representations may not be reprinted without written permission from the editor.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Colophon-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Manchester/Liverpool – No. II of the series WORKING PAPERS of the project Shrinking Cities.
© / Editor: Philipp Oswalt, Editing: Philipp Misselwitz and Doreen Mende, Graphic design:Tanja Wesse.
Berlin, March 2004.

© Crown Copyright Ordnance Survey. An EDINA Digimap/JISC supplied service. Scale 1:507,814

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

APPENDIX: PHOTOGRAPHS MANCHESTER--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo 1:

Ancoats, north-eastern Manchester, vacant tower block awaiting demolition

Photo 2:Disused pub — Cardroom Estate, East ManchesterPhoto 3:

Rochadale Canal, Warehouses being demolished for redevelopment

Photo 4:Beswick East Manchester, remains of tabula rasa demolition in 2002

Photo 5:

Ancoats; 19th-century Cotton Mill and Warehouse complex; most buildings are earmarked forre-development as luxury apartments

Photo 6:

New office complex, Rochdale Canal area

Photo 7:

Hacienda complex; luxury flats opened in 2003 on the site of the demolished Hacienda clubbuilding that was closed in 1997

Photo 8:Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North, opened in July 2002 alongside the Lowry Centre,

transforming the former Salford Quays, two miles from city centre Manchester, into a prestigious leisure andentertainment centrePhoto 9:

Billboard advertising the 2002 World Commonwealth Games attached to an Ancoats tower block,earmarked for demolition

Photo 10: Hulme — 19th-century pub remains after tabula rasa demolition programmePhoto 11: Billboard advertising the 2002 World Commonwealth Games in Manchester

Photo 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 by Philipp Misselwitz
Photo 10 by Philipp Oswalt

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

APPENDIX: PHOTOGRAPHS LIVERPOOL--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo 1:

2003 housing scheme, Sheil Road area, replacing 1960s tower blocks

Photo 2:

Norris Green, 1930s Boot estate earmarked for demolition

Photo 3:

Liver Building, erected in 1910 as one of The Three Graces; one of the world's first multi-storey

buildings with a reinforced concrete structure, marking the height of the city’s power

Photo 4:Everton, Netherfield Road area, 1960s tower blocks being replaced by lowrise housing

Photo 5:

Informal market in Break Road area, Everton

Photo 6:

Public space furniture in Duke Street area, central Liverpool, subsidised by EU Objective One

fundingPhoto 7:

Billboard advertising the 2008 Cultural Capital festivities

Photo 8:

Royal Albert Dock, constructed in 1846 as a warehouse complex the buildings became obsolete

in 1972, re-opened as tourist attraction alongside Central Government funded Tate Gallery in 1988
Photo 1 by Anke Hagemann
Photo 2,3,4,6,7 and 8 by Philipp Misselwitz
Photo 5 by Philipp Oswalt