The short, controversial document that changed the face of Manchester

How the city moved away from suburban development

Dear Millers — welcome back. We haven’t seen you for a few days because of the Easter Bank Holiday, we hope you had a lovely break.

In today’s edition, we’ve got a spicy update on the saga over Night & Day, a great Theatre Diary marking your card for what to book this Spring, and a fantastic piece by the urbanist and former city planner David Rudlin about the “design code” that changed Manchester. For once, this isn’t a story about the city centre — it’s about what gets built in all the other neighbourhoods. It’s a fascinating read that helps to explain how Manchester moved away from a “suburban” form of development (newbuild semis on curving cul-de-sacs, with lots of focus on the car) towards higher-density living. And why that shift was so controversial.

Daniel’s Easter Sunday read about one of Manchester’s most significant objects — a 1,800-year-old papyrus stored at the John Rylands Library — was described as “fabulous”, “fascinating” and “brilliant” by readers in the comments. Do catch up on that one if you missed it.

And please tell us: who would you like to see at our next Mill Members’ Club event? We like to interview authors and other interesting people on stage, and we’re just planning our calendar of events for 2024, so let us know any names you’d like to see.

---

Your Mill briefing

🇵🇸 More than 300 actors, artists and writers are calling on HOME to reinstate an event featuring a Palestinian novelist. “Voices of Resilience” was cancelled last week, with the venue saying in a statement: “Our concern for the team at HOME, our audiences and artists, and their safety is paramount.” That decision prompted protests outside HOME this weekend and an ongoing backlash on social media. The open letter, which has been signed by Maxine Peake, says: “As theatremakers, film-makers, artists and cultural workers, many of whom have had work staged at Home, we condemn this cowardly decision to silence the voices of Palestinians and to contribute to their erasure during an ongoing genocide.” We’re working on a story about this controversy — if you have any information or insights, please drop Mollie an email by this evening.

💥 Our story last week about the fallout from the Night & Day saga (read it here — members only) has had its own fallout, with Mark Davyd — CEO of the Music Venue Trust — claiming online that he was never contacted for comment. When provided with evidence that we had texted and called him in the days before the story went out, Davyd promptly blocked us on X/Twitter and began suggesting to his followers that some of the quotes in the article might have been fabricated. The Even The Stars blog has also responded, arguing that if you deduct members who have died or left since the website was last updated, a majority of the Greater Manchester Music Commission did sign the statement about Night & Day (“54% - higher than the Brexit vote,” to quote the blog). Read our story.

🛩 Virtual Aerospace Limited, a digital flight simulator based in Stockport, entered liquidation after a “huge backlog” of vouchers purchased over the pandemic were cashed in. The vouchers were designed to support the business over lockdowns, but “massively affected new sales” said the company on its website.

💩 The River Irwell — or the Croal Irwell catchment area, to be specific — saw 11,974 sewage spills in 2023, according to the Guardian. That’s the highest rate of all English rivers, factoring in the river’s length. It clocks 95 sewage spills per mile. 

---

This month’s Theatre Diary: What to book in April and May

By John Tucker

One of many things to admire in A Taste of Honey, currently showing at the Royal Exchange (until 13 April), is Jill Halfpenny’s commanding performance as Helen, a single mother living on the fringes of 1950s working-class Salford. Halfpenny seems to relish every moment on stage portraying this character — a damaged and vulnerable woman, who is also a glammed-up bigot and a bully who tears into anyone not prepared to centre their world around her own chaotic desires.

Next up at the Exchange is Sweat by Lynn Nottage (26 April-25 May). A 2021 article in the New York Times drew attention to the finely crafted nature of Nottage’s plays — to their accessibility, humanity and humour. Sweat is her meticulously researched exploration of the yearnings and resentments of Americans living in cities beset by rising crime, unemployment, racial tension and other problems associated with post-industrial decline. At the end of his five-star review of the 2018 London production, critic Michael Billington wrote: “I can’t think of any recent play that tells us so much, and so vividly, about the state of the union.” There seems a very good chance that, by analogy, this Manchester production will also tell us much about life in parts of our own city.

Sweat at the Royal Exchange

Factory International promises us that Robin/Red/Breast at Aviva Studios (15-26 May) will provide what they call “a chilling adaptation of a cult classic”. This looks to be very much the sort of innovative production that Manchester International Festival likes to commission, and even if that thought makes your heart sink, any play that continues the artistic partnership between Maxine Peake and Sarah Frankcom should be worth considering. 

Some Millers may remember their 2015 collaboration on Caryl Churchill’s controversial The Skriker, enthusiastically reviewed in The Observer. If you found that production to be powerful, angry and enigmatic, rather than shouty and baffling, you may be tempted by the local Red Brick Theatre’s forthcoming production of A Number, a short Caryl Churchill play which explores the implications of cloning, on at 53Two (22-24 May). 

Bolton Octagon will surely be hoping for big audiences for Little Shop of Horrors (24 April-18 May). Will this new production say anything interesting about the addiction to house plants said to afflict millennials and Mill editors, or about the dire state of dentistry in Greater Manchester? No. Might it be a very entertaining night out for the citizens of Bolton and beyond? Quite possibly.

Of the touring fringe-type shows on offer over the next couple of months, two may be of interest. Black is the Colour of My Voice, showing at HOME for two performances only (26-27 April), is based on the life and songs of Nina Simone. With Dante or Die: Kiss Marry Kill at The Lowry (10-12 May), we’re promised an insight into prison life by means of “an electrifying and intimate story of love and redemption” featuring two homophobic murderers.

---

The short, controversial document that changed the face of Manchester

By David Rudlin

When I first approached The Mill’s editors about writing this piece, I worried that it might be too geeky. I’ve been working in the world of urban planning for decades and I write a column for one of the national architecture magazines, but I think the subject of today’s story might interest a wider audience. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that it’s a story that shaped the city we live in today. If it is indeed too geeky, you can tell me in the comments.

Let’s start with two buildings, neither of them particularly attractive, in the boundary land between Moss Side and Hulme.

The first is the probation office on Moss Lane West, a single-storey structure hunkered down behind landscape mounds, its back turned to the street. You have to walk all the way around it to find the entrance. It was constructed at the beginning of the 1990s. I know it well, because I was the young planning officer who granted it planning permission.

The second building is the former Job Centre on the opposite corner, which has since closed down. Again, it is not the prettiest building in the world — but it is revolutionary, in its own way. It’s built at the back of the pavement, facing the street, its entrance unmissable on the corner.

The probation office peaks out from the grass mound to the left of this view while the former Job Centre is straight ahead. Image: Google Street View.

This change in the way things are built in Manchester can be traced back to the Manchester Guide to Development, a little-known policy document adopted in 1996. This is the story of how it came to be written.

The Manchester Guide to Development resulted from a fractious process involving senior politicians, council leaders, many of the city’s leading architects, a couple of developers, a highway engineer, an academic from Salford University specialising in crime — and a planner (me). The discussions boiled down to the question: what sort of city do we want to live in?

Before the Guide, most development outside of the city centre was suburban in character. New housing was semi-detached and built on curving cul-de-sacs. New shops were in retail parks, offices were in office parks, and both were set behind a sea of parking. Other buildings, like the probation office, were low-rise and set back behind landscaping.

Reeling from the perceived failures of the modernist development built in the 1960s and ’70s, British planners had retreated into a safe, suburban space. This wasn’t just in Manchester — under the Thatcher government, consumerism and middle class values ruled, and planning policies were designed around the idea of low-density, car-based, zoned towns and cities.