Week Ending: On ‘old bones’, Gazza and Pussy Riot
Don’t forget the ‘old bones’
A number of new developments in Manchester, and one in Liverpool, require the demolition of old buildings but maybe both cities should heed the words of Bruce Katz, a former adviser to Barack Obama.
He was in Manchester promoting his book The Metropolitan Revolution which argues cities, and their relationships with each other, will drive global growth this century.
He spoke about the “quality of place” contributing to a city’s prosperity – all the things that make people want to live and work in a certain location – and said English cities ooze this quality compared to those in the US, and this is partly down to the old buildings.
“What we don’t have is the vibrant, vital core – the distinctive, historic buildings, what I call the old bones,” said Mr Katz at an event at Manchester Town Hall.
He added: “In the US you get the sense that everything outside London is not functioning. Then you arrive at Piccadilly and you get this buzz, and you walk through the city and you get the same feeling. The narrative of England doesn’t pick up on what’s happening here, and in Sheffield, and Liverpool and Newcastle. These are incredible places with special legacies.”
Earlier this year three Victorian buildings on Whitworth Street were knocked down to make way for a 300-bed budget hotel. One of them was the former home of the Twisted Wheel Northern Soul nightclub. Around the corner on Aytoun Street the Employment Exchange, a rare post-war building in the city centre, is to make way for another hotel, subject to planning. Over in St Peter’s Square an approved plan from Fred and Peter Done for an office block will see the end of Century House, the 1930s home of the Friends’ Provident & Century Insurance Company.
In Liverpool the council’s decision to approve Langtree’s plan for an office block on the site of a derelict Georgian terrace in Duke Street has been criticised by the heritage lobby. Griff Rhys Jones, the president of Civic Voice, the national body for English Civic Societies, told the organisation’s annual meeting in Liverpool: “Obviously the thing to do if you’ve got derelict Georgian buildings in a World Heritage Site is to restore them. If you don’t, Liverpool is doomed to be a place which people don’t want to visit and doomed to work its way out of being a new tourist destination.”
Gazza the wedding planner
FORMER Football Association PR man Steve Double recalled his time with the England team in the 1990s as he hosted guests at the Manchester City v CSKA match on Tuesday.
Reflecting on how pampered the modern-day footballers are, with an army of PAs, minders, drivers and officials to carry out even the most menial of tasks for them, he said this wasn’t the case back in the day.
He related: “I remember during Euro 1996 going down to the hotel lobby and finding Gazza talking on the phone for ages. When he finished I asked what it was all about and he said he’s been ordering the flowers for his forthcoming wedding because he couldn’t trust his pals to do it. You’d never get that these days.”
Man City censorship
THE ‘beautiful game’ has become unquestionably more corporate and uptight than it was. Hence the amusing “Free Pussy Riot” banner displayed by some City fans at the Moscow Champions League game, was swiftly confiscated by UEFA lackeys, on the grounds that ‘political statements are not allowed’. It’s a good job Nelson Mandela is not still in clink.
