‘Don’t call the police on me, I won’t call them on you’: self-policing as ethical development in North Manchester

This chapter explores self-policing of urban violence in Harpurhey, Manchester. Arguing that ethical decision-making is practiced regularly in the process of policing the actions and behaviours of others. The author addresses the questions of, what does self-policing in the city actually look like? How does one determine what one ‘ought’ to do in the face of illegal or unethical actions in this part of the city? It concludes by arguing that the act of judgment of the behaviours and actions of others, and the assessment of where, when and whether or not to draw upon the services of the state to fulfill the role of policing, suggest that self-policing is not simply an outcome of neoliberal ideologies of self-management, but is an ethical engagement with the quotidian aspects of everyday life on this Manchester social housing estate.

Nurturing an emergent city: parade making as a cultural trope for urban policy

This chapter argues for an ‘emergent city’ urban policy, inspired by organisers of civic parade in Manchester which involved over 1,800 participants from 90 community groups. The analysis compares the top-down, command-and-control process of cultural strategy development in the city with the nurturing emergent approach of the organisers commissioned by the council to produce a civic parade. Drawing on parade making as a cultural trope, the chapter describes how the parade makers held back, allowing the parade shape to develop rather than over-directing it. It suggests that city decision makers can learn from this restrained approach.

Urban transformation in football: from Manchester United as a ‘global leisure brand’ to FC United as a ‘community club’

This chapter analyses urban economic transformation through fieldwork among a group of football fans, who in 2005 formed a breakaway club ‘FC United of Manchester’ in response to a transnational debt-leveraged buy-out of Manchester United Football Club. Notions of locality and community had become increasingly politicised amongst these fans in recent decades. With Manchester United’s ability to trade in many different markets and with a fan-base across the country and internationally, it was perceived that Manchester United no longer necessarily needed a relationship with its local fan-base. In response, these fans increasingly articulated a moral claim about Manchester United’s responsibility to its local ‘community’ which the analysis relates to anthropological theories of gifts and commodities. This analysis contextualises the subsequent formation of FC United and its enduring reciprocal obligations to its ‘community’.

Urban futures and competing trajectories for Manchester city centre

This chapter focuses on Manchester city centre to argue that exploring the futures that different stakeholders envisage for the city centre reveals tensions that are otherwise glossed over. Critically engaging with urban futures as they are mobilised by institutional stakeholders, and eliciting those that other actors envisage, highlights whose interests are currently being prioritised and whose are traded off. Engaging in an analysis of these urban futures reveals not only important tensions connected to future developments and imagined uses of the city centre, but also opens up to scrutiny the present experiences and uses of the city centre, and the competing interests that a range of actors currently have.

Making and enabling the commons: shared urban spaces and civic engagement in North Manchester

This chapter explores three different interventions on public land in Cheetham Hill, an area of north Manchester which is characterised by cultural diversity, high rates of unemployment and often regarded as a place of community disengagement. Amid cuts to public services and austerity measures, the author argues that the ‘commons’ are made as people adjust to new scenarios brought about by historical disruptions, collapse of work opportunities, and breakdown of state support. ‘Commoning’ provides a space for productivity and in the process, people’s sense of belonging emerges as they envisage, realize and retrieve their right to the city.

Afterword: the tension in making and realising a city

A city is realised through the accumulative efforts of everyone who engages with it. It comes into being and is transformed instantly. Following Deleuze on events, cities are the ‘becoming of becoming’ – forever in their realisation; never realised (Badiou 2007: 38; Deleuze and Guattari 1987...

Introduction: tackling the urban through ethnography

In 2006, a magnificent oak table with fine Indian ink drawings sat in an artist’s studio in Manchester in the north-west of England. Three metres in length, it displayed a relational network diagram of key decision makers in the city. The art piece, called The Thin Veneer of Democracy...

‘People want jobs, they want a life!’ Deindustrialisation and loss in East Manchester

Despite millions of pounds of urban regeneration funding, high levels of unemployment and welfare dependency continue to characterise East Manchester. The rapid disappearance of industry not only brought about a dramatic reduction in jobs, but also, a deep sense of uncertainty about the future, and a strong sense of loss for former ways of life. This chapter argues that the industrial past continues to shape older people’s sense of place, through physical reminders in the material environment and also discursively, through sharing memories of previous places of employment. It reveals however, that place attachment has become ruptured for long-standing residents, who are highly conscious of the discontinuities between their own experiences and those of previous generations.

Under the surface of the village: public and private negotiations of urban space in Manchester

Combining narratives of success and community with imagery and maps characterises and regulates Manchester’s Gay Village as a distinct, bordered, hedonistic and particularly tolerant place. This chapter describes the use of collaboratively produced graphic stories, created using combinations of drawings, text, photographs and found images. These 'ethno-graphics' describe lived experiences of men seeking sex in public and engaging in exchanges of intimacy, money, goods and services that challenge the master narratives of that are openly recognised and spoken about in the village.

Inclusion without incorporation: re-imagining Manchester through a new politics of environment

We know from recent work in urban studies that the role of local government in administering cities has changed significantly in recent years. The provision of local public services has gradually been moving out of local government control, becoming the responsibility of networks of charities, volunteers and private organisations, which now have to work in partnership with local authorities to deliver metropolitan public services. This chapter explores the effects of this shift in urban governance on political practice by exploring ethnographically the experience of governing a city under such changing conditions. The analysis takes as its focus environmental policymaking and approaches this set of practices from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective. Building on this ethnography the chapter illustrates how the work of doing politics in Manchester hinges on a tension between a desire for inclusion in decision-making and a parallel resistance to incorporation into specific political networks and regimes.