Manchester

[holyzombiejesus]

There's a really good book just come out on Repeater - The Rentier City: Manchester and the Making of the Neoliberal Metropolis by Isaac Rose - and it covers a lot of the stuff I've mentioned upthread. Decent interview with the author at the link down there...

https://statmagazine.org/its-not-just-you-manchester-is-shit/

[The Culture Bunker]

I agree with a lot of what the writer says there, but I did chuckle at the line "Someone was saying to me that the smart thing to do now in Manchester if you can't buy a house is to buy one in Wigan because there's good train links and Wigan will pop up in ten years". Not because of the Wigan part, but because the train links (from there and other GM towns) are fucking shite in terms of cost and reliability. 

[holyzombiejesus]

Yeah, I live on the Calder line and have occasionally been on the verge of tears due to the horrifying shitness of public transport in and out of Manchester.

[The Culture Bunker]

I guess the question I would have asked to the interviewee would be: what other choices, realistically, were there? Did it have to be this way?

[buzby]

I guess the question I would have asked to the interviewee would be: what other choices, realistically, were there? Did it have to be this way?

In the mid/late 80s Liverpool's council tried to go a different way and got crucified for it by the government. It wasn't until the end of the 90s when 'Smiling' Mike Storey and his Lib Dems came into power that that we started going down the same regeneration/gentrification path as Manchester, rubber stamping any luxury/student apartment development opportunity that came across their desks and selling swathes of publically-owned land in the city centre to private investors.

[tookish]

Having lived in small-town bollockville, I find Manchester a much better place to live than there. It's got a lot of problems but I have made other trans/queer friends and haven't been duffed up for being queer for years, though obviously it does still happen here. I hate the tourist crap but I love being able to go to little gay book clubs and writing groups with my friends, that shit just didn't exist where I used to live. And yeah, not being duffed up is good.

The homelessness in Manchester is something else though; I've got a mate in Gorton who has been waiting ten years for a flat.

[The Culture Bunker]

In the mid/late 80s Liverpool's council tried to go a different way and got crucified for it by the government. It wasn't until the end of the 90s when 'Smiling' Mike Storey and his Lib Dems came into power that that we started going down the same regeneration/gentrification path as Manchester, rubber stamping any luxury/student apartment development opportunity that came across their desks and selling swathes of publically-owned land in the city centre to private investors.

Then I suppose Manchester followed what Liverpool had done before, perhaps to a greater degree with the added advantage of a bigger airport (as much as it's a complete dump these days). Does make me wonder whether eventually the investment round here will dry up when another city (ie Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle) makes themselves more attractive to investment.

[Captain Crunch]

Is it my imaginaysheeeeun, or has the pretty mirror building near the HOME gallery just been pulverized:

[BJBMK2]

Is it my imaginaysheeeeun, or has the pretty mirror building near the HOME gallery just been pulverized: