Manchester has grit, it has texture, it has life in abundance. Walking the city’s streets, you are channeled along corridors of magnificent architecture, erected from the proceeds of becoming the world’s first industrial city. While once again a thriving metropolis, there is still plenty of the past, with more than palimpsest of that manufacturing and trading might that established Manchester.
I have written before about my love of the urban. My relationship with Manchester is as layered as the great city itself. As a child I remember visiting a few times, but more often recall heading west to Liverpool on days out with my dad. That choice of destination being in spite of his proud support of Manchester United. I’m not sure whether the Manchester bomb played any part in my parents decision on where to head, itself added to by Warrington’s own tragic act of terror. Perhaps the sense that Liverpool was a safer option, given its incredible ties to Ireland, maybe leant itself to me going for more trips to the port city than the former factory powerhouse.
Growing up between Liverpool and Manchester, having the privilege to regularly visit both and also teach about the two cities has given me some insight into each of their pasts and their colorful relationship. Both cities were beneficiaries of their geography. In Liverpool’s case, they took advantage of Chester’s inability to keep up with burgeoning maritime trade, not least to the River Dee becoming unnavigable due to silting up. Liverpool became the mercantile power and, as the Industrial Revolution sparked in the north of England, became the trading conduit for the workshops of the world including Birmingham, Leeds and its nearby rival Manchester.
While Liverpool became one of the great cities of the British Empire, becoming so important that it was and remains the only British city to have had an entire government department solely dedicated to its administration, Manchester was doing well itself. Manchester’s factories were making cotton and also millionaires (albeit not at the same rate). Those with newfound wealth often took the opportunity to show their gratitude to the city that gave them their riches, no doubt also enjoying the chance to immortalize themselves in a legacy of bricks and mortar.
If you walk around Manchester today, you are frequently confronted with buildings funded through philanthropic action and civic pride: art galleries, Manchester’s multiple town halls, museums, schools and so on. In many cases, it is not the original building which remains and if the building does, it is often now used for a different purpose. Manchester is not a city living in the past now. Part of that texture, those layers, is the interweaving of the old and new. Skyscrapers are springing up beside buildings erected at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Walk down any of Manchester’s main thoroughfares and the architecture will offer a timeline of the city’s phases of growth, decline and rebirth.
Manchester’s industrial power and pride, which also gave rise to many radical political traditions, not least The Guardian newspaper, fueled an ongoing contest with Liverpool. Situated only thirty miles or so apart, Liverpool was able to top slice Manchester’s wealth by virtue of being an outlet to global trade. To get some sense of how much Liverpool was extracting from Manchester, you only need to consider the latter’s radical plans to build their own route to the sea in the late 1800s.
Rather than continue to trade via the Port of Liverpool, enough Manchester merchants figured that the cost of building the world’s first and, at the time, longest ship canal was an economically sound plan. In 1894, the 36-mile Manchester Ship Canal opened. At the time it was the world’s largest navigation canal. To give some sense of viability, the canal made the Port of Manchester the third busiest in the UK, despite being over thirty miles from the coast.
Coming at the peak of Manchester’s industrial heydays, it could be argued that the Ship Canal missed much of its chance to add to the city’s wealth. Less than a century after opening, the Port of Manchester was closed. Perhaps of some solace to proud Mancunians, the Port of Liverpool wasn’t faring much better. Shifting global patterns of manufacturing and the growth of cargo ship sizes resulting from containerization meant that the historic docks of Liverpool were no more viable than the Manchester Ship Canal and its terminal port. Both cities suffered from deindustrialisation, port closures and depopulation. Arguments over which city suffered more are somewhat academic, as tens of thousands of people in both cities were left wondering what their future held after generations of job security offered by the buzz of trade and industry.
There is still evidence of that late 20th century decline in both cities. Nowadays the mercantile rivalry is replaced with competition over which city can attract new investors, businesses and residents. Every time I visit Manchester there are new buildings springing up. The same is true of Liverpool, but I don’t think the volume of building is on a par, or at least the height of Manchester’s new buildings make it much more visibly noticeable.
Alongside the bragging rights for which city is regenerating better, the two cities’ relationships are dominated by their sporting rivalry rather than economics. With four Premiership soccer teams between the two, they are both footballing powerhouses. Add in thriving music scenes which, while innovative, offer some sense of throwback to both cities producing a string of successful artists in the 190s, and you see cultural powerhouses as well as economic big-hitters.
Mirroring trends across Britain and much of the western world, Manchester and Liverpool are refashioning their built environment around a new urban economy. While by day they are homes to growing number of service companies, by night they cater for new patterns of consumption with an unprecedented quantity and range of bars, eateries and activities designed to part company from their disposable income. The hospitality sector adds to the buzz; buzzing by day and buzzing by night. Where in the relatively recent past the city centre’s streets would empty with evening rush hour as commuters evacuated to their suburban homes, now a mixture of students and young professionals navigate the short and option-laden journeys between work, play and home.
The rejuvenation of the built environment is palpable in Manchester. The newly rising buildings have an almost organic quantity, shooting up into the sky with almost chaotic incidence. Those new buildings bring people and in turn more businesses serving the growing population. Visiting Manchester gives you the best of both worlds: enjoying the hospitality but without the perils of living amidst a seemingly perpetual building site. It really is a pleasure to visit the place and see what the next chapter in the city’s history involves.
Commonplace 