Jamie on what urban regeneration really meant for Manchester:
That really changed with the IRA bomb in 1996, when it was decided to build a new Manchester within the shell of the old and populate it with new people: not necessarily non Mancunians, but ate any rate people reborn to fit in with a municipal vision of half-baked world-classness; funky folk frolicking amid fancy architecture. Cultural industries. The Design Community. Things describable as cutting edge, and possibly somehow mixed up with the internet. The city centre would become the city as a whole, the subject of discussion when the word Manchester was mentioned. The rest of the city would tag along as, basically, a management problem.
Pat, let me tell you something. This nonsense has become incredibly fucking tiresome. I live halfway between Manchester and Bury, and despite the fact that there is little to buy in Bury that doesn’t consist of hot meat in a pastry case or congealed pig’s blood, when people talk about going to town it is Bury that they mean. People just feel more comfortable there.