Introduction

This chapter contributes to a critical understanding of the production of Manchester space through an exploration of notable spatial moments in the 1980s and 1990s. In overall terms it explores the production of new public space in the Castlefield area focusing mainly on the decisive interventions of the Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC 1988–96), a third generation urban development corporation (UDC). This is not so much a case of the revisiting CMDC, but bringing a fresh perspective and a different theoretical lens to bear on a fascinating and vital moment in the production of space. In so doing the chapter argues that archival networks allow the further revelation of key moments in production of space histories. In order to contextualise the CMDC, a brief review of the 1980s reorientation of British urban policy is presented which explores the so far unproblematised emergence of British UDCs. One consequence of CMDC's intervention, the chapter argues, was the creation of the potential for the inadvertent production of differential space. Furthermore, this chapter explains why ‘Castlefield’ needs to be interrogated ontologically rather than accepted under this or that homogenous banner, for example privatised consumption (Mellor 1997), heritage tourism (Schofield 2000) or aesthetic exclusion through public space formalisation (Degen 2008; Kazimierczak 2014).

This chapter in common with the other empirical chapters weaves together the influence of alternative representations of space on spatial practice. Some of the counter-representations of space, which moved into the mainstream of city planning and urbanism in the post-industrial transition of the 1970s, are seen in this chapter to have continuing influence.