The short, controversial document that changed the face of Manchester

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.

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.