The state, in its many forms, is ever present in this particular account of Manchester. Following recent scholarship on post-war reconstruction, this book has eschewed a broad nationwide survey in favour of detailed and specific case studies of one city, focusing on the buildings and the individual planners and architects involved in its renewal. The use of the terms ‘welfare state’, ‘warfare state’ and ‘nation state’ all point to the idea that some form of centralised force touched most production in the renewal and modernisation of cities and society after 1945. In each chapter here, the magnitude of state influence on architectural production varied and moved generally from Whitehall to Manchester, dependent upon the context. At the National Computing Centre and Market Place, the arms of the state via local government planning officers showed a palpable relation between policy, plan and architecture; in the cases of UMIST and Central Station, more complex outside forces informed siting, mass and form; in other case studies, such as Ferranti’s Wythenshawe factory and ICL in West Gorton, the architecture was much more in the hands of the architect, but the sponsorship and funding were bound up with central government administration.

There were two key political conditions that engendered this level of control. First were the surviving regional government structures, created to disperse political power during war. Second was the sweeping nationalisation of huge sectors of British industry and services. The creation of policy, not exclusively that used to inform the built environment, touched every architectural case study here in some way.

Like the structure of the chapters, conclusions about both the role and impact of the state, and conclusions about the shape of the city, should be drawn at different scales, as well as being drawn together. Such an interdependency, between state influences and morphology, was also signalled by the momentum towards regional government and the creation of the metropolitan counties. As the 1960s came to a close, a vast amount of planning work by Millar’s department was concluded. The political landscape was shifting too. Twenty-seven authorities were asked under the terms of the 1968 amendments to the Town and Country Planning Act to prepare structure plans. This included the County Borough of Manchester.¹ Implicit in the direction was the demand to take broader account of the ways in which urban agglomerations, rather than demarcated townships, were planned at a regional scale. The pending 1969 Redcliffe-Maud Report would recommend the establishment of unitary authorities to govern city regions, and among these was SELNEC.

In its report of 1962, the SELNEC transportation committee, characteristic of the continuing importance of transportation in shaping the city and its governance, crystallised the composition of what would become Greater Manchester. The transport needs of the conurbation were telling the politicians what shape of governance was required – the city of Manchester was indisputably the regional hub and was served by satellite towns which were subservient to the economic centre. Derek Senior, a specialist freelance journalist trained as a planner and a member of the Royal Commission on Local Government, made public calls for the creation of a new county authority in the mid-1960s. He believed that the dreams and ambitions of the 1945 Plan called for such and that without it the city would struggle to realise the comprehensive development set out.² Leslie Green’s book, Provincial Metropolis had established what Senior considered an irrefutable argument for the creation of a city region authority.³

Such calls were not new; as early as 1915, Patrick Geddes made reference to ‘Greater Manchester’.⁴ In April 1935, the Manchester Evening Chronicle brought to the fore the issue of ‘regional unity’ under the headline ‘Greater Manchester – The Ratepayers’ Salvation’. It reported on the ‘increasing demands for the exploration of the possibilities of a greater merger of public services throughout Manchester and the surrounding municipalities’.⁵ Following the Local Government Act (1972) the wheels were set in motion for the inauguration of the new county and subsequently a new set of municipal structures that would be forced to re-imagine the city in a transformed political and economic climate. The formal switch to a new joint planning committee headed by Millar was made in February 1973 and Greater Manchester formally constituted in April 1974 [Figure 7.01]. The fact that the majority of the boroughs of Manchester were Labour governed meant that the operability of the GMC was not hindered by inter-party squabbles. After eighteen months’ work the assembled team of planners from each of the boroughs of the new county had ‘satisfied the Secretary for the Environment that it [was] capable of producing a plan setting out policies for providing houses, jobs, shops, transport systems, amenities and recreation areas’.⁶ This shift, contrary to Derek Senior’s forecast, brought to a close the detailed physical planning for the city seen in the 1945 Plan and in the work of the planners in the 1960s: for this reason, and amidst difficult economic circumstances, renewal was over.

Figure 7.01 Greater Manchester.

Urban renewal in Britain involved complex scenarios, where ideas were instituted in legislation, were alive in a population and required architectural mediation to achieve material form. In post-war Britain, planning and architecture were subject to increasing forms of legislation. The awarding of new powers for local authorities to determine their own physical shape paralleled increasingly centralised legislation, administered by the surviving regional offices of government. Amidst this political realignment was a bigger apolitical force – that of finance – which fed and helped to create the commercial property market. The work of planners and architects was interwoven through the growth of statute and guidance concerning the built environment. The state exerted forms of control in overt ways, such as the pursuit of rearmament and the race for technological supremacy, and in latent situations via the mechanisms of the planning machinery. To understand such complexities requires this reading, of central government policy filtered through a local lens, influenced and informed by other external forces, often beyond the control of any sole party. The actors and networks in these relations had varying degrees of agency and certain situations favoured the demands of a particular organisation or individual – central government, local government, architect, public, developer etc. – but the local interpretation and materialisation of ideas and words into form was an inevitable act of these relations.

There are obvious cultural contexts and architectural precedents that inform design generally and traditional forms of critique provide access to these influences. However, in schemes at all scales political, economic and legislative forces are at play too. One of the core aims of this book has been to explore, in depth, the range of forces acting on renewal cities during a very specific period in British history. In the introduction a series of questions established the themes of this exploration: the status of private practice and its relation to the state; the capacity to usefully critique mainstream modernism; the effects of statutory instruments on form and material; the role of the architect in commercial development and the locally nuanced states of each of these.

An extended study of a building’s commission and creation, through an examination of its social, political, cultural and economic contexts also provides the means to look outward and reveal the broader conditions involved in renewal. The impact of the Cold War, for example, was instrumental in the sponsorship of new technologies and technological education. In analogous fashion, the shrinking Empire created some of the conditions for speculation around the massive development of Central Station. Such an approach can also turn inward and show how policy played out in detail in one particular city and among one particular group of actors. Renewal is important here as a historical term and as one that describes a certain group of cities with quite distinct characteristics. The periodisation of this term, between the loosening of building restrictions in the mid-1950s to the local government reform and economic collapse of the mid-1970s, is one that is particularly meaningful to the planning and architecture of cities that became centres of the new metropolitan counties in 1974. It is no accident that the majority of construction discussed across these pages falls within these limits.

Mainstream modern architecture cannot be usefully judged stylistically, nor read as art. It can, however, reveal much about the external forces that help to shape a city. In the case of building for new technologies, central government objectives effectively overrode any powers of the local authority. In terms of technological education, the joint interests of Whitehall and Manchester created significant interplay between these tiers of government in the creation of UMIST. The story of Central Station revealed how international finance usurped local ambitions and showed a certain ambivalence of central government towards the commercial renewal of centres. At Market Place a lack of financial support via the War Damage Commission meant that the local Labour Government formed public–private partnerships to deliver reconstruction. This was demonstrative of the political consensus towards renewal and typical of how other renewal cities rebuilt their centres.

This spatially informed inquiry has deliberately obviated political binaries and has acknowledged consensual policy objectives. Such an approach, enabled by mainstream modernism, is useful for studying a period that is often viewed through the lens of the welfare state, typically viewed as a socialist undertaking. As demonstrated in the case studies of the architecture of the technology, higher education and commercial sectors, there was an overarching political consensus in reconstruction, renewal and rearmament during the post-war period. The detailed case studies here support this notion and challenge the generalised view of the time. Whether legislation was designed to construct new social ideals or to dismantle existing statute by alternative administrations is not critical – nor is the political orientation of its authors. Legislation for the built environment emerged in the early twentieth century, as construction engaged with policy regulation. The eventual impact on architectural form was most palpable in the visual, three-dimensional planning and architectural proposals of 1960s renewal. This is extremely evident in the cases of Central Station and Market Place. As this type of planning faded from view in the mid-1970s – the local architect-planner ceded to the regional economic and strategic-planner – the qualitative properties of design were less visible in the reports and guidance of the state, either nationally or locally. The impact of planning upon architecture was less visually discernible, but the interplay between local and national legislative conditions continued, albeit more focused on quantifiable statistical measures – employment, traffic, investment returns and so on. These changes to statute and guidance in the planning sphere effectively mirrored those in society generally and those heralded by the rise of neo-liberal approaches to planning and development.

As we read in the opening chapter, the shape of the city of Manchester was founded first on its geography and then rapidly configured by its infrastructure. Within these limits, the major planning visions of the mid-twentieth century also left their palimpsestic traces. That these mid-twentieth century layers of the city are visible, but partial, attests to the difficulties of enacting total visions on existing cities. Expansion of the city during the industrial revolution gave little in the way of public space and was almost entirely unplanned. Manchester’s rapid growth at the hands of wealthy industrialists occurred unchecked before the creation of any form of municipal authority. In many respects, the free-market or laissez-faire approach to development may be seen as the salvation of the Victorian city, but it was also the frustration of the many modern visions laid out through the course of the twentieth century. The Corporation did not own most of the land within its jurisdiction, which created difficult conditions for land assembly.

Only after the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) did local authorities have the necessary powers to design and affect change in the interests of the municipality. The 1945 Plan and the work of the 1960s constituted the most creative period of planning in the city. Yet the role of the architect-planner soon faded from the public sector in much the same way as the role of the City Surveyor had given way to the Chief Planner before. As the political structure expanded to regional governance in the creation of the GMC, so planning followed suit. The defined formal visions of the 1960s faded, as strategic diagrams superseded traditional representation in the canon of the planner [Figure 7.02]. Nonetheless, whilst the visions of Millar’s team in the 1960s were bold, influential and assertive, they were not necessarily autonomous and not as authoritative as they might appear. Planning is as reactive as it is proactive. In Manchester’s case, this is best understood through the genesis of the CDAs and their dedication through the statutory approvals of 1967 and 1968.

The sixteen-year gap between the publication of the 1945 Plan and the approval of its proceeding statutory counterpart meant that most buildings, up to 1961, were realised outside of any legal development framework or master plan. Fortunately, there was relatively little new central development in the 1950s and certainly nothing that would overtly prejudice the main features of Rowland Nicholas’s vision. However, as the Development Plan was ratified in 1961 the economy began to boom and an overwhelmed department did all it could to cope with the influx of planning applications.⁷ The predominant architectural production of the 1960s was actually realised within planning parameters defined in 1945 and the preceding decades. The fact that the shape of the city in 2021 can be directly attributed to the CDAs established through the mid-1960s demonstrates a similar cycle of policy implementation and a clear layering of ideas. Similarly, the sequences of ideas and their eventual realisation can be seen to be fragmented, rather than comprehensive, and bound to economics as opposed to planning. Often the seeds were sown generations earlier, and not always by professionals in the employment of the City Surveyor’s office or the Planning Department.

Provisions were made within the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947 for the creation of CDAs, but it was not until 1964 that Manchester began to designate such zones. The fledgling Civic Trust was faster than the local authority to suggest the powers of the CDA, when they proposed and designed a plan for the area around Knott Mill in 1963.⁸ As well as being overwhelmed by pressing private sector development, Millar’s new planning department was behind the pace of campaign groups. In fact, all six of Manchester’s CDAs were effectively constructed by external agents, prior to their designation by the local authority. Piccadilly Plaza and St Andrew’s Tower were already under construction in the Mosley Street Area before it was named as the cultural and entertainment quarter. In 1961 private developers began negotiations for a comprehensive scheme for the area between Cross Street and Deansgate and W.S. Hattrell proposed a scheme for the Corn Exchange (Cathedral Area) in 1962; both of these were reflected in the formal characteristics of the Planning Department’s subsequent framework.⁹ The Civic Area was a legacy of the 1945 Plan and was subject to redesign at the demands of the developer of Brazennose House; the ‘processional way’ [Figure 7.03] was dropped in favour of the passages and squares model.¹⁰

Figure 7.02 Greater Manchester Structure Plan, 1975.

Figure 7.03 Designs for the beaux-arts boulevard of Manchester’s processional way from the Town Hall to Deansgate. It was intended to continue to Crown Square, where the axis would be terminated by the symmetry of the Crown Court (L.C. Howitt, 1962).

Such acquiescence is one indicator of the lack of financial resources of the local authority and their need to enable the private sector to develop. The relationship of the lead party in the development of the Arndale Centre (Market Street Area) is distinctly unclear. Informal discussion to ensure ‘conformity’ with the city’s development plans took place as early as 1964, though Phase 1 of the development did not commence construction until 1972.¹¹ The Education Precinct was proceeding apace, driven by the institutions themselves in response to national policy, not the design of the Planning Department. Central Station was created by circumstances beyond the control of the local authority and its major elements were again driven by private sector interests, albeit never realised.

Most evident, through the 1960s, was the relationship between economic conditions and the production of architecture. Whilst the expansion of the universities may be directly attributable to policy shifts in the post-war years, the city centre and its form continued to be dictated to by the commercial sector. Civic projects were rare. The reconstruction of the Free Trade Hall in the 1950s [Figure 7.04] was important to the pride and recovery of the public psyche, but not emblematic of wider civic and cultural provision. Precious little cultural content was to be found in the schemes developed in the city centre during the 1960s and 1970s. The only civic aspect of the Corporation’s plans actually built was the Crown Court – Mosley Street never witnessed the promised transformation into a vibrant cultural quarter.

Figure 7.04 The Free Trade Hall. Rebuilt to designs by L.C. Howitt in the 1950s.

Private enterprise flourished and a considerable amount of commercial and retail space was developed – between 1943 and 1964 there was a 62 per cent increase in available office space.¹² This was visualised in the telling diagram shown in the last chapter [Figure 6.22] illustrating new and pending commercial development in relation to the traditional core and the route of the city centre ring road. The diagram revealed is a citadel pattern with the largest and tallest buildings developing at the edge of the centre: this is due to the path of the proposed carriageway. This was not, however, about building near to the new road to attract greater revenue potential; it was attributable to the authority’s focus on the delivery of the ring roads. Without the wholesale delivery of the ring road that would connect and service the CDAs, all of the mid-century plans appeared piecemeal. Each development had its own cut-off bridge link, anomalous blank facade or unfeasibly long stair – places where the total vision was arrested and never recommenced.

Such urban oddities, as we have read, attest to the complexities of urban renewal and the networks influencing manifold aspects of their conception, design and creation. Moreover, at different scales, these case studies show outward and inward influences. Manchester’s role in the Cold War, for example, is an example of both. The race for rearmament drove the development of the computer, of new weaponry and the buildings associated with them. Subsequently, the technological innovations realised inside these buildings had global impact. This study of the renewal of Manchester has enabled discussion of a range of political, geographical and architectural scales and exposed their interrelation across an extended time period. Inwardly, it has permitted a close scrutiny of the effects of state policy and provided one way of answering the question: ‘[h]ow are we to address the differences between the exceptional and the everyday productions of the welfare state?’¹³ This, and other questions, emerged from symposia and conferences that ran parallel to this research. Others include: ‘Are there advantages in concentrating upon one scale of activity rather than another? Is it more productive to attend to the “territory”, the region, the city, the dwelling or to the very smallest artefacts?’¹⁴ Again, throughout this book I have provided a framework within which to consider this range of scales and what they have to say about the built environment more broadly.

Through the assembled case studies, I have shown the qualities of certain networks and accounted for cultural influences and the impact of assembled expertise – the mutually constitutive power of territory and networks in the coproduction of space. I have demonstrated how global and political forces shaped our built environment and shown local action as reacting to the invisible powers of globalisation and the legislative layering of shifting political structures regionally, nationally and internationally. The planner, the architect and the state were among many agents influencing the shape of renewal cities like Manchester. In viewing the architectural project as a continuum, architecture as negotiated practice and using mainstream modernism as a device, the complexities of urban renewal are revealed.