The soulless bit has to be seen…yet understand the apprehension. It would be ideal to keep both, and people/staff/installations make the atmosphere.
What irks me is the planning that goes into ‘identi-kit’ cities, all are becoming homogenised into recognisable safe zones …not about criminal activity….but of corporations and brands, I know that so I will go there.
Manchester has enough property areas to build on or in without reclaiming the cornerhouse, it should be remember that the cornerhouse reclaimed the area from
I’d just like to point out that I remember the Cornerhouse as a furniture shop and that cinema building as the place to see crap mucky films
and to escape from the mall/maul of the arndale
the opportunity to do that in these days are much harder and a greater loss to the vibrancy of the city
There was an initiative started in the early 90’s, as part of generally turning Manchester’s fortunes around, of making the city more lived in and of creating a ’24hr city’. I was actually at the launch of several of the strands for it back then and it was very much an across the board – conferences and seminars where you had planners,the education authority, arts organisations, DJs, environmentalists, and so on, all at the same table figuring out how the city should move forward.
agreed and was happening after Leeds really pioneered this late 80s/ but failed to capitialise on the initial thoughts and possibly now needs to happen again in Manchester to see how the city wants to develop in the next twenty years.