A TALE OF TWO CITIES The future of cities cannot be understood in terms only of the emergence of the post-modern metropole. A large proportion of citizens of Western society will continue for many years to inhabit the old industrial conurbations—from the rust belt in the United States to the originating centres of the English industrial revolution—and will experience contemporary economic and social change in those locations. A Tale of Two Cities is a study of two such cities in the North of England, Manchester and Sheffield, and of the texture of every-day life within them. It explores the hopes and fears, the memories and folk-beliefs, and the present pre-occupations of young professionals, the unemployed, children and young people, the elderly and ethnic minorities and gay people in these two cities. It offers a detailed sociological analysis of two defining activities of life—shopping and daily travel and transport. The book draws on an international range of theory from Raymond Williams to John Logan and Harvey Molotch to identify and interpret the trajectory of change and development in different old industrial cities. And it provides a series of connected essays on the meaning of different levels of crime and levels of fear in different cities, on begging and homelessness in the city, on the demonisation of racialised enclaves, and on women’s adaptive strategies; as well as an investigation of urban redevelopment and extended enquiry into the different futures available to post-Fordist cities in the North of England and in similar regions elsewhere in the world. A Tale of Two Cities, the product of two years of extensive focus group enquiry, is a demonstration of the importance of locality, even in these ‘globalising’ times; and, in its theoretical and empirical exploration of local specificity, this study constitutes a vital contribution to the developing sociological and geographical literature on post-Fordist transformations. Ian Taylor is Professor of Sociology at the University of Salford. Karen Evans is Research Fellow in the Institute for Social Research, based at the University of Salford. Penny Fraser is Research and Policy Development Officer with the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, based in Manchester. INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF SOCIOLOGY Founded by Karl Mannheim Editor: John Urry University of Lancaster A TALE OF TWO CITIES Global change, local feeling and everyday life in the North of England. A Study in Manchester and Sheffield Ian Taylor, Karen Evans and Penny Fraser First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London, EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1996 Ian Taylor, Karen Evans and Penny Fraser All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Taylor, Ian R. A tale of two cities: global change, local feeling and ever[y]day life in the North of England: a study in Manchester and Sheffield/ Ian Taylor, Karen Evans and Penny Fraser. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-13828-0 (hardback: alk. paper).—ISBN 0-415-13829-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Manchester (England)—Social conditions. 2. Sheffield (England)—Social conditions. 3. Manchester (England)—Social life and customs. 4. Sheffield (England)—Social life and customs. I. Evans, Karen, 1961– . II. Fraser, Penny, 1966– III. Title. HN398.M27T39 1996 306′.09427′33–dc20 95–37938 CIP ISBN 0-203-43753-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-74577-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13828-0 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-13829-9 (pbk) CONTENTS List of figures ix List of tables x Preface xi Acknowledgements xvi Part I Past and contemporary contexts 1 RECOGNISING LOCAL DIFFERENCE IN NORTH OF ENGLAND CITIES: THE ‘STRUCTURE OF FEELING’ IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 3 Introduction 3 Locality: Raymond Williams and the ‘structure of feeling’ 5 The global unimportance of locality: Lash and Urry and international political economy 6 Locality: television and a global sense of place 9 Local allegiance and population loss in the North of England 12 Theorising space, sensing place 13 The question of ‘the quality of life’ 15 Deconstructing ‘Manchester’ and ‘Sheffield’ 16 All in this together: the common fate of the North of England 17 Making a right mess of the town 18 Material landscapes of the industrial North 19 Different folks 23 The measurement of local difference 24 Popular common sense on local difference: Manchester and Sheffield 27 Signifying local identity 29 Local class structures and urban competition 30 2 DIRTY OLD TOWNS: THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORIES OF MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 34 Sheffield 36 Manchester 45 v vi CONTENTS 3 ‘THIS RUDDY RECESSION’: POST-FORDISM IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 60 The local crisis of the Greater Manchester regional economy 61 The catastrophic decline of Sheffield’s industrial district 63 Commonality and difference 72 Manchester: revival in the 1990s 75 The world that was lost: everyday life in the urban North 79 Part II Getting to work and getting about: a realist sociology of everyday life in the North Introduction 91 4 GOING TO WORK: THE DAILY STRUGGLE 95 Getting about 100 Different locales, different provisions 110 5 SHOP ’TIL YOU DROP: THE ‘NICE SHOPS’ AND THE MARKETS IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 115 Shopping in the North: past memories and present context 117 Shopping in Manchester: physical form and symbolic boundaries 122 Shopping in Sheffield: physical form and symbolic boundaries 127 ‘I’ve got my route’: Northern shoppers in Manchester and Sheffield 130 ‘You get two cups of tea there, for the price of one’ 131 The department store and ‘the crisis of the city centre’ 133 In search of the big breakfast: retired men in the Northern city 137 Disabled people and the shopping round 139 Mall life in the North of England: Meadowhall 141 Shopping to survive in Sheffield 147 The local shopping of the poor 147 Out-of-town shopping: race, city, country 149 The markets 150 ‘Getting in the rations’: social inequality and discount supermarkets 155 Flâneurs in the High Street 156 Concluding thoughts 158 Part III It takes all folks: different publics in Manchester and Sheffield 6 ON OUR UPPERS: POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 163 The poverty of England and Wales, Manchester and Sheffield in the mid–1990s 163 ‘There but for fortune’: fear of falling in the North of England 166 Sharing the city with the poor: Manchester and Sheffield in the 1990s 170 Mental maps, maps of poverty and urban spectatorship 172 The material character of urban space in the North of England 177 CONTENTS vii 7 ‘OUT ON THE TOWN’: MANCHESTER’S GAY VILLAGE 180 The history of Manchester’s Gay Village 182 Urban space and sexual preference 186 The Gay Village in the larger Manchester 190 8 ‘WHITE CITY’: ETHNICITY AND RACIAL DIFFERENCE IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 198 Immigrants in the industrial North 198 Moss Side: in Manchester, in the North and in England 205 Our research sites 210 Setting up the discussions 211 Shopping around 213 Time out 215 Having ‘a place’ in white Northern cities 218 Fears of the white city 220 Avoidance in the white city 221 9 MEN’S TOWNS: WOMEN’S ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 225 A woman’s city? 229 Gendered perceptions of urban change and decline 232 Pursuit of personal safety by the women of Manchester and Sheffield: problems and contradictions 235 Adaptive feminism in the de-industrialised North 238 10 PENSIONED OFF: THE SENIOR CITIZENS OF MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 242 Prisoners of space? 250 11 THE URBAN OTHER: CHILDREN AND YOUNG MEN IN PUBLIC SPACE IN MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD 262 Nowhere to go 265 Teenage culture in the North of England in the mid–1990s 268 ‘Madchester’: the cultural industry in Manchester in the 1980s/1990s 272 The survival culture 273 Young people and local anxiety 275 Young people’s daily and nightly struggle for ‘the city’ 279 Part IV Conclusion 12 CONTESTED VISIONS OF THE CITY AND DIFFERENT LIFE PROJECTS IN THE DE- INDUSTRIALISED NORTH 289 Residualisation: the ‘estates’ 290 ‘Housing choice’ in post-industrial Manchester and Sheffield 292 Manchester’s and Sheffield’s ‘prospects’: a reprise 300 Local economic prospects and local crime 306 viii CONTENTS A final word: North of England cities and the direction of social and urban theory 312 Notes 315 Bibliography 358 Name Index 377 Place Index 382 Subject Index 387 FIGURES 1.1 Very old towns: cotton mills of Manchester and the North West 21 3.1 Attempted rescues of the city centre: the Orchard Square shopping arcade, Sheffield 72 3.2 Memorial to modern industry: the Trafford Park mural 78 3.3 Industrial nostalgia and hegemonic masculinity: Sheffield steelworker wall mural (1986) Castle Street, Sheffield 78 4.1 Landscape of fear: interior, the Arndale Bus Station, Manchester 111 5.1 The department store as local icon: Kendals, Deansgate, Manchester 134 5.2 The department store as local icon: Cole Brothers, Sheffield 134 5.3 The local shopping of the poor: Asian