‘Views Grim But Splendid’ - Te Urban Image of North-West English Industrial Towns A Roberts PhD 2016 ‘Views Grim But Splendid’ - Te Urban Image of North-West English Industrial Towns Amber Roberts o 2016 Contents 2 Acknowledgements 4 Abstract 5 21 01 Literature Review 53 02 Research Methods 81 Region’ 119 155 181 215 245 275 298 1 Acknowledgements 2 3 Abstract ‘What is the urban image of the north- western post-industrial town?’ 4 00 Introduction This research focuses on the urban image of North West English historic cultural images, the built environment and the growing the towns in art, urban planning and the built environment throughout case of Stockport. Tesis Introduction 5 urban development that has become a central concern in the towns. 6 the plans also engage with the past through their strategies towards interest in urban image has led to a visual approach that interrogates This allows a more nuanced understanding of the wider disseminated image of the towns. This focuses on the represented image of the and the wider rural areas of the Lancashire Plain and the Pennines. Tesis Introduction 7 restructuring the town in successive phases and reimagining its future 8 development of urban image now that the towns have lost their Tesis Introduction 9 Figure 0.1, showing the M60 passing the start of the River Mersey at Stockport, image author’s own, May 2013. 10 of towns in the North West. These towns have been in a state of utopianism. persistent cultural images of the North which the towns seek to is also something which is missing from the growing literature on Tesis Introduction 11 to compare the homogenous cultural image to the built environment models to follow. 12 change. Tesis Introduction 13 Urban images and imagined) visual ideas about the towns have been constructed, Urban plans which do not address the image of the town as a whole. The urban knowledge about the towns has been presented therefore covering domain.