Manchester: Shaping the City

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ISBN 0415252628

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The re-making of Manchester: two perspectives, reviewed by Brian Goodey

Ian McDonald ed.(2004) Manchester: Shaping the City, London : RIBA Enterprises with Manchester City Council, 2004, ISBN 1 85946 157 3 (£19.95).

Gwyndaf Williams The Enterprising City Centre : Manchester's Development Challenge, London : Spon Press,2003 ISBN 0-415-25261-X (hb) & ISBN 0-415-25262-8 (pb)

It may have been the slower pace of urban change, or the belief that a planned, accountable, design for policy and implementation was essential? Whatever the reason, there was a time when we wanted to know why and how things happened, rather than just that they had and what spin was being put on the implications.

Williams' detailed and, once you're into another world, enthralling text is not for our age. The subject, Manchester's development and post-bombing reconstruction is a key issue in British urban design. After all, where do you send students after the bulk of London and the comfy suburbanism of Birmingham? Well, Manchester, of course.

Go see the new public spaces, the re-statement of an urban core, the detail of public space design and the ambition for zones of purpose after the early hit at Castlefields heritage village.

In a more leisured age (1970s to 1990s, perhaps) we used to learn about urban design by going to see what others had achieved. Not just a quick 'looks nice, shame about the detailing', but a real attempt to understand how a particular site had evolved, how decision-making, shifts in national and local policy, attitudes and perceptions - together with the almightily funding element - had shaped a particular scheme.

Visiting the former bombed area of Manchester today, one is struck by both the speed of change and the diversity of elements integrated into the reconstructed city. As of 2005, this may mean nothing to the visitor who, properly perhaps, judges the result by convenience, transitory pleasure and retail opportunity. Never has the urban user been more distant from the process of urban construction, even when it comes to Manchester's interpretive Urbis, the structure which, it might seem, was meant to link user and city.

Williams' is a rigorous and therefore somewhat ponderous text. With a record of focus groups and interviews, as well as a committed and prolonged experience of Manchester, Williams has produced an outstanding record of recent change in the city centre. Unfortunately, however, the text fails to reflect the vitality of its subject.

This, regrettably, is the problem with the process-focused texts of urban design change that we urgently require. They are academically sound (certainly so in this case) but dull for the practitioner, and certainly for the public. Around 25 per cent of Manchester's population should know how their city has changed in the past 20 years - here's the record, but how many will read it?

Nevertheless, if you are Manchester-bound (as you should be) then this text (together with the revised, new shining Pevsner-based buildings study) should be your guide.

I admire Williams' scholarship, have drawn much from his precision and insights, but am left with an ebbing and flowing street scene that does not connect with the symbolic scarlet covers and the knowledge they contain.

Being Manchester, it was naive of me to believe that the city might have missed the chance to provide a permanent, published record of its recent changes and success. As George Ferguson, RIBA President 2003-2005, and an astute urban design commentator, observes: 'Manchester has earned the right to be held up as an example to others of the way that integrative master planning, fine contemporary architecture and an entrepreneurial culture can make such a spectacular contribution to environmental or economic revival.'

Superficially, at least, my concern that the crucial research of Gwyndaf Williams might remain on the shelf would seem to be resolved by the well-designed and attractive RIBA study, edited by Ian McDonald, which beams with promotional success and is, indeed, sponsored by a long list of key property and development concerns.

Both images and text communicate in a language of uncluttered success, with past challenges - even those of a Marx-less Engels - well met. 'Manchester today is a city of bold individuals who come together, as partners, to deliver innovative, and frequently ground-breaking, projects for the city.' (p10).

The broad sweep of such recent projects, and the policies and frameworks within which they sit (or help reconfigure) are summarised in chapter 2. This offers a seamless image of linked initiatives that might not always be evident to the resident on the ground.

The rapid and well-received Manchester riposte to the 1996 'terrorist' bombing is summarised, as is the success of the 2002 Commonwealth Games and its extensive legacy. The chapter allows Manchester to reflect on events and impacts, and the 'Manchester Model' for regeneration which local geographer Brian Robson has suggested.

The majority of the text, chapter 3, is dedicated to a building-by-building record of 'transformations' in the eight key central city zones - Castlefield, Hulme and the rest.

Each building, or public space, description appears to have been provided by the design firm responsible, pursuing a standard set of headings - 'Description', 'History', 'Client's Brief' and 'Design Process' - with an iconographic or 'architectural' full page plate supported by details and (often inadequate) plans. The descriptions, set within area contexts that are full of hope and expectation, are uncritical of the purpose, product or use of the schemes recorded. Several rely on artistic 'impressions' as they have not yet been completed.

This latter text is a valuable guide for the potential professional visitor or investor, although many might wish for a more critical appraisal that offers information to advise a personal judgement. The Urbis building, an innovative form of urban museum or urban studies centre, is presented as architecture achieved, with little discussion as to the way in which it represents the contemporary city or urban development process.

From their offerings, it seems inconceivable that the two authors discussed here - an academic and a corporate body - might come together to explain how Manchester seems to have achieved so much. There is so much to learn. Not every innovation can be successful, but an honest evaluation would be so useful for other cities, students and informed residents.

Read, go, look, judge and try and find out why. The 'why' is still caught in the crack between books as disparate as these.