Geographer | Deputy Director
@Urban_Inst
| author of ‘The Infrastructural South’
@MITPress
| Working on ERC funded GlobalCORRIDOR + ESRC funded Centripetal City
‘The Infrastructural South’ is published + now out w/
@MITPress
You can buy it (or ask your library to) but also freely read it through the amazing
@MITPress
Open Access platform
You can find it here 👉
Enjoy 🙏
Manchester
Artist spaces ❌
Rehearsal rooms ❌
Underground clubs ❌
Michelin star restaurants ✅
All those ex-ravers shuffling off to a £150 a head dinners w/ their mates while the city's cultural spaces disappear under a relentless juggernaut of real estate finance
Fantastic
What's going on at the Manchester Evening News?
Our public interest report on the deal between Abu Dhabi + Manchester City Council featured in national + international media
But nothing from the city's own newspaper (yet)...really concerning
@MENnewsdesk
. Why not cover?
I got some actual physical copies of my book through in the run up to it’s release by
@mitpress
on October 10th. After all that effort it’s very satisfying to see it in real life
Manchester United Take-Over and the £1 Billion +
Real Estate Factor 👇
Whoever purchases United will also be holding what I estimate is approaching at minimum 100 acres of land around the stadium after a series of acquisitions over last few decades
This is a big deal...
The Univ of Manchester are forcing out the Whitworth Gallery director after complaints by UK Lawyers For Israel directed at Jewish Israeli
@weizman_eyal
An extraordinary attack against art, freedom of expression, open debate + solidarity w/ Palestine
Just released census data shows the concentration of wealth in central Manchester
This is the result of a strategy undertaken by a coalition of council officials/politicians + developers over the last few decades to build a segregated 'new town' with no social/affordable housing
The architecture of late capitalism in British cities
A 3-part story in Ancoats
1. Take a historic building (Smiths Arms, 1775) + smash it to pieces
2. Replace w/ new apartments
3. Polish the doorway/display/name new building 'Smiths Yard'
Thanks to
@MCRLifeUK
4 'placemaking'
Really excited that along with the WHOLE catalogue for 2023 my
@mitpress
book ‘The Infrastructural South’ will be available open access upon release in Oct
Superb initiative reinventing academic publishing for the better!
Thanks to the support of 322 libraries participating in Direct to Open (D2O), we're publishing our complete list of 2023 scholarly monographs and edited collections
#openaccess
on the MITP Direct platform.
Learn more and browse all the titles here:
🚨 New report 🚨
'Manchester Off-Shored’
We investigated the partnership between Manchester City Council + Abu Dhabi United Group
@AdamLeaver1
,
@richmg_
+ I raise questions about transparency, accountability, ethics & economic governance
Read here 👇
More from the census…
Manchester has 31% of residents born outside the UK
This compared to 16.6% in England + Wales
The most successful cities in history have been those that welcomed people from elsewhere bringing ideas, cultures + new eco opportunities so good news for MCR
Labour run Manchester Council give the thumbs up to more unsustainable skyscrapers from Renaker - this time nearly 1000 apartments, no on-site affordable housing and a paltry £90,000 contribution for some off-site
What type of city is being built?
What a failure of policy in Manchester to allow these urban developments to be built without capturing public value or creating sustainable, mixed communities.
A once a century chance to make a new city and this is the best they could come up with…
** POST-DOC JOBS **
I am hiring x3 researchers on 3 yr contracts for my
@ERC_Research
project GlobalCORRIDOR based
@Urban_Inst
Investigating corridor urbanization in East Africa, South Asia + the Med
Please share widely >>
A reminder that the climate crisis is a product of colonialism, a global system of racial capitalism + the enrichment of the metropole through the long history of natural resource extraction in the periphery. Reparations as climate justice are the only way to address this moment
Shame the producers of Manctopia did a snide edit of the walking tour + didn't allow me to explain what was going on w/ the Abu Dhabi housing deal. Basically a massive give away by our Labour Council of our public land to one of the richest regimes on the planet...
"The leases on the council’s land are held by Abu Dhabi via Loom Holdings an offshore company...the site of a block called Weavers Quay was sold by the council in 2015 for £420,000 to...Loom on a 999-year lease. The plot is now worth £44m"
#Manctopia
Why doesn't Manchester have a museum of Cotton Capitalism?
Could explore the global geographies of cotton that made the modern world + the city
From the industrial proletariat/slums of Mcr to the slaves/plantations of the new world via imperialism, capitalism + colonialism
Urbicide;
A term which describes the deliberate wrecking or "killing" of a city, by direct or indirect means. literally translates as "city-killing"
See ‘Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics’
Stephen Graham (2007)
Apartheid in Cape Town lives on through the ways in which infrastructure is governed, financed + maintained by the Democratic Alliance. These socio-spatial inequalities have to be decolonized before the city can claim to be a 'city for all'
Councillors REJECT both co-living schemes worth £400 million+ 👏👏
Fantastic that attempts by developers to extract profit at the cost of the city can be stopped
Well done
@JonConnorLyons
@CllrMarcus
Planning officers will try to ignore so not over yet. The city has said NO
Next week the First Street co-living development returns to the planning committee.
We have written to all members of the committee, urging them to reject the development.
You may read this open letter, with our reasoning, here.
This is not a parody!
A developer is telling campaigners in Manchester to shut up about 17,000 apartments being built with only 13 of those affordable....because otherwise the very people profiting from the boom/causing a housing crisis won't throw a bit of money to charity😂
When the Manchester public have to turn to the New York Times to find out what is happening in their own city because the local newspaper cannot/will not cover a high profile story involving powerful local + international people 🙃
Airbnb and the short-term rental revolution – how English cities are suffering
My article for
@ConversationUK
The ways the sector is transforming regional cities, impact on popular neighbourhoods (using the Northern Quarter) + what we can do to respond
KAMPUS, a £250 million develop by Tim Heatley. ZERO affordable housing units despite local planning guidance of 20% required. It means the developer has played the system to get out of the obligation....
Consider how much rental income 500 units will make each month. Disgraceful
This is the most senior elected official in Greater Manchester defending an authoritarian state + it’s sport washing project because of…
“What they do to improve life here”
Extraordinary. Try telling me the city has not been captured by Abu Dhabi
Stunning picture....Parts of Manchester are now a dislocated space of global capital as a built, dense form of speculation that offers little to the wider city.
This image conveys so powerfully how politicians + planners have transformed housing into an asset for the capital
I'm doing a few book talks next week or so for my
@mitpress
book 'The Infrastructural South'
Tues 30th Jan - Sheffield
Tues 6th Feb - Dublin
Wed 7th Feb - Manchester
Details below + book available Open Access:
"Councils can demolish contaminated buildings under new powers to stop second coronavirus wave"
Incredible. This was actually a tool of colonial planning in which the coloniser used fear of contagion + plague to expel 'problem' populations from cities.
Excited for our GlobalCORRIDOR field trip.
We will be travelling along the Northern Corridor, experimenting with what it means to 'follow the corridor' + how a series of infrastructure investments are reshaping urban life in East Africa
I'll add some reflections in motion here
Manctopia: Billion Pound Property Boom part I on tonight
We documented out of 17,000 new apartments in recent years only 16 on-site affordable units (instead of 3,400)
The city council has been captured by the real estate industry at the cost to us all
My paper out now in
@envplane
Decaying infrastructures in the post-industrial city: An urban political ecology of the US pipeline crisis
Based on research in Camden, New Jersey over last few years
(Let me know if you want a copy)
New Paper!
‘Cities on the new silk road: the global urban geographies of China’s Belt + Road Initiative’
In
@urbgeog
w/
@EliaApos
,
@HanCheng446
+
@alanwiig
We look back over last 10 yrs of this world transforming project from an urban perspective
We don't want 76 story skyscrapers in the city
Time to end the Manchester Model
We want housing + climate justice, not developer profits!
"Salboy unveils plans 76-storey Viadux phase two"
Between 2012-20 MCR gave planning permission for 25,077 housing units to be built in central areas
Only 151 of them classified as affordable.
If the Labour run council had enforced its own planning guidelines the city could have had over 5,000 affordable units.
This is just PR
Manchester Labour has always been by your side. We're building affordable and social housing, investing in new libraries and leisure centres, and campaigning on the issues that matter to you. Check out our track record below 👇
Welcome to Manc-hattan: how the city sold its soul for luxury skyscraper
Great work
@ollywainwright
Happy to contribute my thoughts. Mainly depressing but having councillors like
@Piccadilly_Lab
fighting back is a positive shift in past couple of yrs
The bulldozers + diggers are on site
New Islington Green is down!
Our Council allows the commons of the city, our public land to be transformed into private profit to be extracted out of MCR by the capitalists
How it started How it will end
The housing movement in Manchester is on 🔥 at the moment and having a real impact on the politics of urban development in the city. The last couple of weeks have seen so much happening...
New
Interactive map of all foreign entities holding English real estate
From Tax Policy Associates
Manchester with hundreds of properties showing scale of financialisation in city
HomesNotAssets!
New £741 million skyscrapers proposed in MCR but...
"the scheme as supported w/in the enclosed viability cannot support further s106 /affordable housing contribution"
Not one penny for public housing!
Shame on the developers + the City Council!
A true story...
London property developer
@generalprojects
sees there is lots of money to be made in Manchester. Gets train up
Council sells them land below market price (£0.6 million per acre compared to paying £3.2 million nearby)
Land is currently a green space 4 community
The battle of Great Ancoats St
On one side: the people, local councillors, experts/activists on enviro/cycling/heritage/climate/pub space
On the other: Richard Leese, his planners + exec member Angeliki Stogia carrying on insisting they are right
My book The Infrastructural South shifts beyond urban Africa via the fractured pipelines + real estate frontiers of US/UK post-industrial cities to relationally think again about western urban modernity
'Postcolonial Presents in The Metropole'
Free here
The leader who made a controversial deal between MCR council + Abu Dhabi United Group is now an honorary president of the football club owned by... ADUG
Seems interesting🤔
Come to our event next Tues to hear more about the deal
Do you want to explore the surge of international real estate finance into Manchester?
We developed this interactive map of data from our Centripetal City project w/
@ColinLorne
@OpenUniversity
to show how these flows are shaping MCR
Wrote this for
@tribunemagazine
on the Newcastle take-over + its implications for the wider city based on the experience of Abu Dhabi in Manchester and the growing entanglement of Middle Eastern state capitalism, football clubs and British cities
More historic buildings in Ancoats/New Cross demolished today to maximise developer profit.
Might not be architectural significant but they brought character and history + could've been repurposed
Manchester is becoming blander by the day
We'll be providing more info on our
@urbgeog
workshop 'Speculative Infrastructures: Cities-in-the-making' soon.
Super excited to broaden debates we've been having in Sheffield.
In the meantime we have an event poster designed by
@victoria_okoye
A sneak peak of our 'Speculative Infrastructure' workshop magazine which will be released on the
@urbgeog
website soon
Superb design from
@_danfarley_
+
@victoria_okoye
And contributions from a stellar cast of urban scholars working in and around infrastructure issues
Build the Museum of Cotton Capitalism!
Given the Guardian's Cotton Capital series () I'm re-upping this and suggesting that Manchester needs to get its act together and create a space of learning, healing, reparation and future thinking...
Why doesn't Manchester have a museum of Cotton Capitalism?
Could explore the global geographies of cotton that made the modern world + the city
From the industrial proletariat/slums of Mcr to the slaves/plantations of the new world via imperialism, capitalism + colonialism
Coverage of our report on 'Off-shored Manchester' in the
@nytimes
from
@RorySmith
A real estate joint venture has been profitable for the soccer club’s Gulf owners, researchers contend, but less so for its English hometown.
Thinking Palestine/Israel through infrastructure…
Will make a thread of useful articles
Starting w/ this f/
@jabarysalamanca
+ I on ‘excess’ + racialised political economy of infrastructure
Please add any you know 👇
Update
Zero affordable housing units despite tens of millions of profit for greedy developers
..meanwhile the new planning chair doing media interviews going on about a passion for affordable housing
You can’t take these Labour councillors seriously + the city suffers for it
Big test today for Labour led Manchester City Council at the planning committee.
Will they stand up to developers amid the housing crisis?
NQ1 – Tariff Street | 267 units
Ancoats Works | 193 units
Albert Bridge House | 367 units
Total = 827 new units | zero affordable
CFP!
How to be an Anticapitalist city in the 21st Century -
A gathering in Sheffield in July
I’m excited to be co-organising this with
@qurbanist
,
@TheUrbanBeth
@marthamingay
Info here>>>
Pleased to see my edited book w/
@InfraGeography
is now out with
@routledge
in paperback and at a decent price
Energy, Power and Protest on the Urban Grid: Geographies of the Electric City
I see the YIMBY, pro-cycle sometime racist lobby cheering on skyscrapers in MCR but
Towers are v. unsustainable, other ways of doing density
Promises of 'affordable' units mean nothing
Produce private profit not public value
Supply of high end units reinforces housing crisis
We don't want 76 story skyscrapers in the city
Time to end the Manchester Model
We want housing + climate justice, not developer profits!
"Salboy unveils plans 76-storey Viadux phase two"
I'll be having a book launch for my
@mitpress
'The Infrastructural South' in Sheffield, 30th Jan chaired by
@Lindzilia
And some further book talks coming up this year...
More Info:
Book is open access:
Manchester Evening News are the mouthpiece of the real estate industry.
Big fail for local democracy.
Every wk they celebrate an urban develop model reinforcing housing crisis + uncritically echo the voices of the developers - bad for the city!
This 250 year old pub was smashed to pieces and demolished so that Abu Dhabi United Group could have a car park for their Manchester Life apartment scheme
Publication day!
You can read our edited book with wonderful contributions through
@BrisUniPress
Open Access at this link👇
Or purchase a copy (or ask your library) here 👇
New
@antipodeonline
paper
"When the Abu Dhabi United Group Came to Town: Constructing an Organisational Fix for State Capitalism through the Manchester Life Partnership"
W/
@richmg_
+
@AdamLeaver1
Open Access here .
Interested in comparative urban research + worlding theories of urbanization?
Then you want to read this superb new book by Garth Myers. So good!
'Rethinking Urbanism
Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South'
(Also available on JSTOR for free!)
I am v. concerned as an academic that Durham student/British citizen Matthew Hedges is held in solidarity confinement for 5 months in Abu Dhabi on charges of spying after trying to conduct Phd research. Need to use all diplomatic means to secure release
How can
@ManCityCouncil
plan to open a 400 space car park on Great Ancoats Street next to primary school?
As my daughter might attend the school I had a quick look at the impact
It is not pretty... a rough estimate of exposure to 1000 kilograms of Nitrogen Dioxide over 5 years
Somebody tell the council leader + all those Labour councillors claiming to care about the city that the Manchester model is broken + will not solve the housing crisis
“There is no affordable housing proposed in the scheme.“
Great to see the ClimateStrike march to Ancoats People's Park in support of
@TreesNotCars
to challenge city leaders such as
@AngelikiStg
to address the climate crisis. Deeds Not Words!
This site will be beautiful, full of low carbon council housing + greenspace
@mcrLabGND
@MrTimHeatley
@RegenBrainery
You don't follow planning guidance to build 20% affordable/social units in your existing schemes
Campaigners have every right to (politely) point that out
But you want us to shut up + leave our city future to the charitable whims of developers + landlords?
Ain't happening
Renaker, happy to borrow public money to build ridiculous glass skyscrapers in Manchester, unwilling to provide any financial contributions towards affordable housing..
..the system is rigged and the wealthy developers are making tens of millions of profit while inequality grows
Do people know how much public money is behind Manchester's changing skyline?
There's a fund for projects that struggle to get finance
But half of it - £400m - has gone to one city developer, Renaker
@PlaceNorthWest
@InvisibleMapper
I did an FOI
Excited to be working on my new
@ERC_Research
funded project:
#GlobalCORRIDOR
Investigating corridor urbanization across East Africa, South Asia + the Mediterranean
From ports + railways, to high-tech enclaves + industrial zones, hinterlands + new centres of power
More to come
The 2000+ room ‘co-living’ horror show being developed by Downing is now well under construction. This could be the biggest planning mistake of the last decade in Manchester. Will become a world class case study in how now to build a city
I see another public space in MCR has been cluttered w/ fenced off, pricey booze related c**p
All that moral panic a few weeks back about rowdy teenagers but if you ask me this is the real anti social behaviour that stops families from enjoying the city…+ in the summer hols!
Great to see our paper in the latest issue of
@economyandspace
journal
“From homes to assets:
Transcalar territorial networks and the financialization of build to rent in Greater Manchester” w/
@richmg_
+
@AdamLeaver1
🏠💰
I am particularly keen to see papers in this workshop that use postcolonial urban theory to rethink the infrastructure futures of global North cities
How can we bring to bear work from the South to rearticulate the experience + geographies of infrastructure in urban life?
CFP for our
@USForg
funded workshop
'Infrastructural futures across cities of the global north'
Taking place in Manchester in Sept 2019
Deadline for abstracts 19 April
An interesting May day weekend in Manchester;
Mancunians are organising against the state/capital
- Kill the bIll (pic
@sistersuncutmcr
)
- Union members rally against Hire + Refire (Pic
@salfordstar09
)
- United fans fight the Glazer ownership (
@RedIssue
)
If your teaching online classes on housing/capitalist urbanization you might find this explainer I did for
@EconomyAsks
on housing financialisation useful.
Based on what is going on in Manchester but could easily apply to other cities
“A new place to live, a new way to rent”
That’s one way to describe the co-living model that has housing units below minimum space standards, monitors who visits you + is a cash cow for a billionaire taking advantage of a housing crisis…
The Labour run Manchester City Council have handed over one of the main public squares to a luxury sports car showroom...in the middle of a pandemic.
Not often I'm lost for words 😬
Put aside MCFC. It's extraordinary a Labour run city became so politically/economically entwined w/ Abu Dhabi - in order to launder its image - even as it committed war crimes in Yemen + imprisoned rights campaigners - terrible municipal geo-politics!
Many UK cities are full of increasing social tension/antagonisms
The decay of our social infrastructure is all around us
Meanwhile, luxury apartments get thrown up next to, or into communities starved of investment
Inequality/segregation across the built environment
Co-living developments are the perfect embodiment of our times; sub-standard rental housing built by tycoons for the graduate probably already loaded with tens of thousands of university debt and built wilfully ignoring the climate crisis those same young uns will face head on
Shame Manchester Life took all our public land + privatised it by giving it to Abu Dhabi for 999 years.
Would be really useful for local residents to have access to green space rather than see it get sold off for more apartments but that's not profitable so there we go...
As the days get brighter, it won't be long before our tenants can start enjoying their outside spaces again!
Those sunset views over the marina are worth the wait though.
Maybe the Manchester Evening News could run less glorified adverts for developers + spend a little more time investigating how they play the planning system, the flows of £££ involved + how these developments contribute to the housing crisis 🤔
Big test today for Labour led Manchester City Council at the planning committee.
Will they stand up to developers amid the housing crisis?
NQ1 – Tariff Street | 267 units
Ancoats Works | 193 units
Albert Bridge House | 367 units
Total = 827 new units | zero affordable
No car day at the school today - nice experience but just reinforces how bad it normally is to walk through exhaust fumes.
Why by 2022 haven’t the council worked out a city-wide plan to protect our children?
For to long info on public land in MCR has not been easily accessible, even as the council sells/give-away land to developers.
This map
@t_a_gillespie
+ I did w/
@gmhousingaction
starts to democratize the data, allowing the public to claim land for common good not private profit
🚨NEW:
Building off research into public land disposals by
@t_a_gillespie
and
@InvisibleMapper
, we have produced an online map, plotting public land & disposals in our city.
➡️