Cities 29 (2012) 244–251

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Cities

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Climatic city: Two centuries of urban planning and climate sciencein Manchester (UK) and its region

Fionn MacKillop ⇑Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development, University of Southern Queensland, Springfield, QLD 4300, AustraliaManchester Architectural Research Centre, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M1 9PL, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 26 May 2011Received in revised form 15 August 2011Accepted 10 October 2011Available online 13 November 2011

Keywords:ManchesterIndustrial ecologyUrban regimeUrban climateEcological modernisationGreen cities

0264-2751/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.cities.2011.10.002

⇑ Present address: Australian Centre for SustainablUniversity of Southern Queensland, Springfield, QLD

E-mail address: Fionn.mackillop@usq.edu.au

This paper traces the history, and current challenges, of climate science and urban design in Greater Man-chester, UK. The Mancunian metropolis is a remarkable example of a ‘climatic city’, one that shapes itsclimate as much as it is shaped by it. From the efforts to control smoke and clear slums in the 19th cen-tury, to today’s race to be at the forefront of ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ cities, climate is a central actor inManchester’s history and will likely be so in the near future. We analyse the continuities and inflectionsof this history of climate science and urban planning in the metropolis by drawing on historical materialand interviews with key local stakeholders, to understand the natural, social and political construction ofthis singular ‘industrial ecology’. Ultimately, we ask whether stakeholders in the Greater Manchester areacan overcome existing challenges to go towards a greener, more resilient and sustainable city.

� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

This paper traces the history, and current challenges, of climatescience and urban design in Greater Manchester, UK. The Mancu-nian metropolis is a remarkable example of a ‘climatic city’, onethat shapes its climate as much as it is shaped by it. From the ef-forts to control smoke and clear slums in the 19th century, to to-day’s race to be at the forefront of ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ cities,climate, in relation to planning, is a central actor in Manchester’shistory and will likely be so in the near future. We analyse the con-tinuities and inflections of this history of climate science and urbanplanning in the metropolis by drawing on historical material andinterviews with key local stakeholders. Ultimately, we ask whetherstakeholders in the Greater Manchester area can overcome existingdivisions regarding what actions to take.

We are indebted to Williams’ city profile in Cities (Williams,1996), and we aim to build and expand on this foundation, by look-ing at how Manchester, as a metropolitan area and not just as acity, is addressing the challenges of the 21st century. Williams’ pa-per described the city at the end of a phase of painful de-industri-alisation, highlighting efforts to harness the service economy andreshape the image of Manchester as a dynamic, post-industrialcity. We pick up from there and analyse how the city-region is

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e Business and Development,4300, Australia.

moving ahead with this post-industrial agenda, and how strategiesfocusing on the climate-planning nexus are at the heart of visionsof the future.

We draw upon a combination of urban regime theory and eco-logical modernisation to frame our understanding, developed infour sections. Firstly, we situate Manchester’s approach to urbanclimate and design within its wider historical and contemporarysocio-political and natural context. Secondly, we look at the pro-duction of climatic knowledge in the city by government and pri-vate sector actors. We then look at the outcomes of this researchin a third part, before moving onto a conclusion in part four.

Shaping the climatic city: a socio-natural sketch

Manchester is commonly known as the cradle of industry, butless so as one of the birthplaces of a scientific understanding of ur-ban climates. As a ‘shock city’ (Platt, 2005), emerging from theindustrial revolution, Manchester generated high amounts of pol-lution. Tocqueville spoke of a ‘new Hades’, Engels of its ‘satanicmills’. Many other cities have shaped their climate through indus-trial emissions, but Manchester’s specificity resided in the combi-nation of this manufactured climate, political regime, and a rangeof innovative responses. We draw here on the concept of urban re-gime (Lauria, 1997; Logan & Molotch, 1987; Molotch & Logan,1984; Mossberger & Stoker, 2001) to describe the socio-politicalstructure of government and governance of the city, whereby theboundaries between public and private interests are fluid, and

F. MacKillop / Cities 29 (2012) 244–251 245

coalitions are formed between these in order to drive an agenda of‘city grandeur’ and economic growth. This takes the shape ofboosterism, grand public works projects, and more generally of adiscourse of propaganda and mobilisation of the ‘masses’, as wellas attempts to silence dissent regarding the social, political andenvironmental consequences of growth.

The laissez-faire city regime, characteristic of Victorian Britainas a whole, was geared towards low-cost government and personalenrichment. Authorities were reluctant to intervene to enforcewhat little regulation there was. As a result, industrial Manchestergrew fast, from 77,000 people in 1801, to 316,000 in 1851. In 1901,the population of Greater Manchester had reached 2,149,000, notfar from today’s 2½ million, with a much changed distribution:the original city centre had a population of only 30,000, but layat the heart of a sprawling metropolis (Douglas, Hodgson, & Law-son, 2002, p. 239). While the population increased fourfold in thefirst half of the 19th century, the urban area grew sevenfold.

By 1880, a modern, essentially metropolitan city, had emerged(Williams, 1996, p. 204), with a relatively compact core (Manches-ter, Salford and adjacent districts), and an outer ring stretchingabout 16 km from the centre, defining a complex, polycentric con-urbation (Geddes, 1915; Freeman in BAAS, 1962; Barlow, 1995;White, 1980, pp. 380 and 390). This conurbation scale makes sensewhen looking at the nexus of climate and planning in Manchester,as it forms an integrated economic unit and a coherent ecologicalarea, for instance from the point of view of watershed dynamics.This scale also introduces another fundamental element: the ten-dency towards administrative fragmentation and complexity in apolycentric conurbation (Fig. 1).

Air, water, public health and the science of sanitation

From the late 18th century the coal and textile industries tookoff, the latter availing of the humid climate and soft water (Malet

Fig. 1. Growth of the built-up ar

in White, 1980, p. 17), and the city’s location on the Mersey–Irwellriver basin. Coal was transported by barge to serve growing needs:by 1840, a million tonnes were being burnt in the city every year(Platt, 2005). Combined with humidity, this caused deadly smog,especially in the crowded tenements of Ancoats, the world’s firstindustrial slum, already affected by water-borne diseases such ascholera. Nearby Salford would come to be described as ‘the classicslum’, giving its name to a respiratory disease, ‘Salford chest’ (Mal-et in White, 1980, p. 21). As late as 1935, inner-city Manchesteraveraged little more than 2½ h of sunlight per day, (Crowe in Brit-ish Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), 1962, p.36). In contrast, wealthier citizens moved to airy, green inner sub-urbs such as Didsbury, then with the advent of rail travel, VictoriaPark (1837), and further afield Altrincham and Alderley Edge. Therich also settled upwind of industrial emissions on Eccles Old Road,quickly dubbed ‘Millionaires’ row’ (Malet in White, 1980, p. 22).The difference in mortality rates, from 1 to 4, between these areas,seemed to prove the validity of this approach.

Alongside tainted air, water features prominently as a threat inthis early history. The gradual paving over of the Mersey–Irwellriver basin, the dumping of waste in the watercourses by mill own-ers, combined with instances of faulty dam design led to a succes-sion of increasingly devastating floods. In 1852, the Holmfirth damgave way, causing massive destruction, essentially in working classdistricts. Destructive floods increased in frequency, leading thepublic to realise that these were not simply ‘acts of God’, butman-made disasters, with socio-spatially specific effects (Platt,2005, p. 57).

Manchester’s very existence as an industrial city was linked toits climate, both as a benign influence and advantage, on the onehand, and a force for destruction and disruption on the other. Inturn, the city shaped these climatic givens, by channelling and pol-luting watercourses, and filling the air with smoke. Manchesterwas the first city to witness such an intricate merging of ‘natural’

eas of Greater Manchester.

246 F. MacKillop / Cities 29 (2012) 244–251

and ‘manufactured’ climates. This seems of little originality today,but was a shocking novelty at the time. This industrial ecology wassoon dubbed ‘the unhealthiest in the nation’ (Platt, 2005, p. 76),prompting a local approach to climate science and town planningthrough the lens of the public health and sanitation movements,and the first attempts at a regional response. This can be read bydrawing on the literature of ecological modernisation (Mol, 1996;Mol & Sonnefeld, 2000; Mol, 2001; Buttel, 2005), whereby themanagement of natural resources, including the climatic elementsof air and water, gradually comes to be seen by a wide variety ofactors, but specifically in the business and political communities,as an integral part of economic growth and development. In thissense, air and water stewardship can be seen as concerted policiesto stimulate and consolidate growth and profits (Hajer, 1995). Assuch, policies and practices oriented towards ameliorating theseclimatic realities, including the development of a science of the ur-ban climate, in order to improve labour productivity and safeguardcapital investments, became part and parcel of the urban regime’sdiscourse and actions, although they did not necessarily originatefrom the heart of the regime.

Action emerged within a strong local tradition of civic activism.Salford saw the country’s first free public library (Malet in White,1980, p. 23), and individuals, such as the Egertons, devoted to fur-thering human well-being. Public health advocates Percival andFerriar, or Kay and Chadwick, campaigned for and achievedimprovements: most cellar dwellings had gone by 1874, and mostof the unhealthy back-to-back houses by 1915 (McKechnie, 1915).A key figure was Robert Angus Smith (1817–1884), who devisedexperimental methods to make pollution visible. First AlkaliInspector under the 1863 Alkali Act, he contributed greatly to ‘san-itary science’, comprising aspects of public health and environ-mental studies. His methods included the use of litmus paper tomeasure acid rain, as well as more surprising approaches, like tast-ing water samples throughout the city and grading them from‘oily’ to ‘acidic’ (Smith, 1852, p. 213). Although Smith expendeda lot of energy, he lacked method, being famously described as‘ramblingly verbose’ (Farrar, undated; Gibson & Downs, 1992); inmany ways, his ambition to fashion what he called a ‘chemical cli-matology’ failed. However, Smith was important locally in the pro-cess of objectifying climatic data, and drawing attention to theproblem of climate and human influence on it. A similar but morerigorous enterprise of quantification and objectification of climaticdata occurred with water. Bateman’s measurements of runoff andprecipitation from the 1840s formed the basis of a national net-work of weather stations (Platt, 2005, p. 203). Since water supplywas very important to the city’s welfare, all valleys ‘quickly hadtheir reservoirs and rain gauges’ and ‘rainfall was mapped verywell’ (Crowe in BAAS, 1962, p. 27). A move towards some degreeof regional governance, if not government, happened around watermanagement and flood control, first with agreements betweenManchester and Salford, followed by the Longdendale water sup-ply works, and then the more comprehensive 1878 Bateman–Lynde plan for the river Medlock. Thus, one of the first cities witha significantly human-altered climate was also one of the first tolay the milestones of a scientific approach to urban climatology.Indeed, the only force that could counterbalance that of laissez-faire in Victorian Britain was the logic of science and objectiveproof, especially when it could be showed to benefit businessand the city’s growth.

Although 1842 saw the emergence of a Society for the Preven-tion of Smoke, followed by the country’s first anti-smoke law(1844), urban atmospheric pollution did not improve. Water-bornedisease was the priority. Such was the degree of inaction that pro-gress on air pollution related diseases, such as bronchitis, was vir-tually non-existent before 1900 (Douglas et al., 2002, p. 246). Butpioneering efforts by pressure groups would place Manchester at

the forefront of air pollution abatement. In 1852, the Manchesterand Salford Sanitary Association (MSSA; Gibson, 1972) took thelead in trying to enforce the (limited) legislation on smoke where-by factories could emit no more than ‘3 min per hour’ of ‘thickblack smoke’ (Platt, 2005, p. 453). MSSA also brought the successfulLondon Smoke Abatement exhibition, a display of ‘smoke-free’ de-vices for the modern home and factory, to Manchester. R.A. Smithjoined the association in 1853, where, in an interesting linkage ofair and water research, he investigated water quality in the Med-lock and was also a member of an air pollution commission. MSSAsoon became the Manchester and Salford Noxious Vapours Abate-ment Commission (MSNVAC), illustrating a re-definition of the‘sanitary’ away from the visible ‘thick black smoke’ to the ‘invisibleevils’ of coal burning. MSNVAC became the main vehicle of city re-form, diffusing ideas on energy technology, public health, townplanning and environmental justice (Platt, 2005, p. 453). It alsoformed an organisation covering all of Lancashire, the LancashireSmoke Abatement League (Platt, 2005, p. 457). The transforma-tions of climate caused by human activity were thus linked tothe construction of a regional scale of environmental thoughtand action. MSNVAC joined forces with the Manchester field natu-ralists’ society. Through planting experiments, such as theirbedecking of Albert Square with flowers in 1891 that soon wiltedin the city’s noxious climate, they illustrated the harm caused tolife by acid rain, a term coined in the city, proving the interdepen-dence of health, city and nature, and linking this to new technolo-gies that could reduce the impact of burning coal (Platt, 2005, p.459). The commission also linked with Dr. Barclay, a chemist fromthe University of Manchester, an early example of the central roleacademic institutions of the city acquired in addressing climateconcerns. Barclay, in public lectures, projected graphs charting par-allel lines of climatic and health conditions: the rising mortality infog and smog, and the links with the reduction in sunlight andheightened levels of bacterial infection. The Manchester Officer ofHealth, Dr. John F.W. Tatham, concurred: ‘the fog and smoke mustbe regarded as the most important element’ in the general unsan-itary condition of the city—a marked shift from the earlier focus onwater and sanitation (Platt, 2005, p. 460). These scientists andorganisations set up a network of substations to measure microbes,acid rain, and sunlight, proving that rain samples, the focus of R.A.Smith’s work, were not a reliable indicator of the level of harmfulfumes in the city (Platt, 2005, p. 461).

In November 1911, Manchester held another smoke abatementexposition. Reformers had little to celebrate: the death rate frompulmonary disease was still high (Platt, 2005, p. 464). Incrementalprogress was more than offset by a rise in overall disease until the1930s, when a campaign for clean air and smokeless zones was ledby the National Smoke Abatement Society, based in Manchester.However, as the famous paintings of Salford’s very own L.S. Lowry(1887–1976) show all too well, Manchester remained a metropolisof chimney stacks and soot, and after the war, the city ‘was stillblack with coal dust’ (Malet in White, 1980, p. 26). The smokelesszone status would only be achieved in 1949, still ahead of nationallegislation (the National Clean Air Act was passed in 1956). Pollu-tion from smoke and sulphur dioxide declined steeply, accompa-nied by a marked increase in sunshine of 50% in the city centre(Douglas et al., 2002, p. 248). By 1980, commentators noted ‘a dra-matic reduction in air pollution’, epitomised by the cleaning of ci-vic monuments. Symbolic of this was that a variety of trees couldfinally grow, whereas ‘only plane trees could survive in the heavilypolluted environment’ that preceded (Ashworth in White, 1980,pp. 178–182).

The ideal of a city of light and air had come a long way since thedark, smoky days of Victorian Manchester. Legislation, researchand activism all played a role. However, planning was also mobi-lised to help engineer a more wholesome climate. From the

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1910s onwards, and especially in the context of post-war recon-struction, Manchester embraced a philosophy of dispersion. TheGarden City movement saw the multiplication of estates coveringvast areas of farmland, one of the most ambitious of which wasWythenshawe, south of the city, a satellite town of over 100,000,developed during the 1930–1950s. These estates emerged fromthe belief in the wholesomeness of space, greenery, light and airas a remedy to the evils of industrial climates and housing. Atthe same time, trends towards spatial dispersion were acceleratedby the massive programme of demolition of old housing stock inManchester and Salford, accompanied by the wholesale buildingof council housing estates beyond the city limits. In effect, the‘heart’ of the compact Victorian city was ripped out, laying the ba-sis for future social problems, but also issues related to transportand climate in a diffuse, sprawling city.

Post-industrial Manchester: the accentuation of a boosterist cityregime

Manchester was always about ‘making it happen’ (Hebbert inPunter, 2009), displaying a ‘can do’ attitude that goes beyond theusual civic pride that can be witnessed in other cities. This playeda key role in its success in the industrial revolution, and then itsrise as a global centre of the textile industry into the late 20th cen-tury. With the first industrial canals, passenger railway service, fol-lowed by atomic fission and the computer, Manchester accrued aproud reputation as a city-region of ‘firsts’. This has permeated lo-cal attitudes and discourses on the part of the elite, defining aboosterist urban regime.

Manchester was also the first city to experience large-scalede-industrialisation from the 1960s (Peck & Ward, 2002, p. 2).Although upheavals had occurred on many occasions in the city’seconomy, with cotton famines for instance in the 19th century,the city was in a position to weather such shocks, as it contin-ued to occupy a dominant position in textile manufacturingand various heavy industries. Employment in textile halved be-tween the wars, and was in further severe decline in the1950s, before taking a bow in the early 1970s. Industry followedthis trend over the next two decades, leaving a resolutely ser-vice-centerd economy, ‘spatially localised, occupationally selec-tive and the product of public rather than private sectorexpansion’. Between 1962 and 1980, unemployment grew four-fold (Rogers in White, 1980, p. 26). Manchester was now typicalof the older cities whose future ‘appears to depend on capturingthe financial, informational and managerial functions that deter-mine the world’s capital flows’ as well as ‘high-tech and lower-order services’ (Barlow, 1995, p. 392).

How was the pioneering industrial metropolis, now cut down tothe status of a second-tier Northern England player, to achievethis? The answer was, in typical Manchester style, by talking loudand thinking big. This has taken many shapes, to leverage publicand, increasingly from the 1980s, private funds. As Graham Strin-ger, leader of the city council, put it in 1993:

‘Cities, like sprinters, can’t stand still. They have to make progressor go into decline. The great days of heavy industry won’t return.We have to find new ways forwards’ (MEN, 17 February 1993).

Climate, especially in relation to planning, would become one ofthese new avenues. First, though, Manchester would become ‘thecity of self-promotion’, aggressive about manufacturing a post-manufacturing future (Peck & Ward, 2002, p. 3). From the 1970s,Manchester ‘experienced the full range of national policy initia-tives towards the cities’, with massive redevelopment pro-grammes, such as Hulme and Moss Side, and the government’sUrban Programme (1979–1993), whereby Salford and Manchester

inner-city areas were designated ‘partnership areas’ with £20 mil-lion per year in funding. A strategy of ‘cultural rebranding’emerged, typical of post-industrial cities, with for instance theregeneration of the Castlefield area. ‘City Teams’, ‘City Challenges’,‘initiatives’ and ‘City Pride’ sprung up around town. Manchesterwas to become ‘a European regional capital’ and ‘an outstandinginternational city’ (Manchester City Council, 2009). By the end ofthe 1990s though, ‘a strategy largely based on service industrieswithin the context of a rapidly declining manufacturing base’ had‘failed to renew itself for the technologies and trading patterns ofthe next century’.

Municipal activism has been particularly visible since the citycouncil, under Graham Stringer’s leadership (1984–1996), fol-lowed by Richard Leese (1996-present), broke with Labour ortho-doxy, instead of expecting government handouts from an initiallyhostile Tory leadership in London. Town Hall developed a reputa-tion for putting together ‘grant coalitions’ of private and public ac-tors (Cochrane, Peck, & Tickell, 1995). A tightly knit elite,sometimes dubbed the ‘Manchester mafia’ (Peck & Tickell, 1994),drawing on local business talent, coalesced around the Labour-dominated council. This was in many ways redolent of the ‘Man-chester Men’ of the 19th century industrial metropolis, the drivingforce behind the Free Trade movement, when the city was ‘theforemost commercial, banking and transport centre in what wasthe most economically advanced country in the world’ (Kidd,1993, p. 103). Manchester adopted the turn of phrase of the Con-servative government, ‘replete with terms that describe new pro-grammes and initiatives’ (Barlow, 1995, p. 395). For some, thiswas the advent of ‘privatised governance’ (Peck & Ward, 2002, p.4).

One such venture was the Urban Development Corporation(1988–1995), which focused heavily on commercial real estate ina tightly defined city centre. The Central Manchester DevelopmentCorporation, one of several active in those years in the country,expedited the planning process, often bypassing community input(Barlow, 1995, p. 396), which as we have noted is typical of urbanregimes. Other similar initiatives followed, such as City Pride,MIDAS (Hebbert & Deas, 1999, p. 87), all showcasing a Manchesterthat was ‘up and coming’, on its way to being a world class city, or,in other terms, ‘talking up, making over, trickling down’ (Peck &Ward, 2002, p. 11). Recently, examples of attempts to leveragefunds include the failed bid for the 2000 Olympics, which sawthe injection of £55 million by central government, followed by awinning bid for the 2002 Commonwealth games. Nevertheless,the Olympic bid was the coming of age of a pragmatic, pro-growth,partnership-oriented city regime (Cochrane et al., 1995).

Challenging the regime

However successful at attracting funding, the city’s regime isnot without opponents, who have seized on a number of issues,especially climate and environment related. It is important to bearin mind that these are still contested issues, although the councildominates.

Tensions between growth and environmentalism came to ahead in 1997 around the plans for an extension of ManchesterInternational Airport (then headed by Graham Stringer, also leaderof the city council), and flared again when the city council rejectedthe Local Agenda 21 strategy, prepared by an independent forum,in favour of a group hand-picked by the city (While, Jonas, & Gibbs,2004, p. 557). More recent examples are around vehicle traffic andcongestion in the city, with the defeat of the congestion chargeproposal in 2009. Reeling from this opposition, the local urban re-gime ‘has tended to insulate itself from environmental opposition’(While et al., 2004, p. 558).

248 F. MacKillop / Cities 29 (2012) 244–251

The city’s relatively strong environmental organisations havebeen pushed aside into an opposition role on an issue-by-issue ba-sis. The now defunct Manchester Climate Fortnightly, edited by MarcHudson, voiced many opponents’ arguments in terms of climatepolicies. Salient in his critique were the strong focus on green infra-structure and not enough on the existing and future building stockof the city. Furthermore, there are profound contradictions be-tween the city’s outspoken green agenda, and the heavy invest-ments in, and reliance on Manchester International Airport bothas a source of revenues and a pivotal part of the project to makethe city more attractive to investors and more globally connected(interview with Marc Hudson).

Having set out the natural, social, political and economic contextof the links between climate and planning in Manchester, we now fo-cus on research programmes aiming to address these issues, andespecially the role of the city’s academic institutions in this regard.

Researching the climatic city: academia, the private sector andmunicipal government.

1 Quotes are not always directly attributed in order to respect requests fornonymity where they have been expressed.2 http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/architecture/research/ecocities/.

Academic research: a significant number of projects

In the 19th century already, R.A. Smith and other climate scien-tists had ties to Manchester University. In the 1940s, distinguishedgeographer Gordon Manley coined the phrase ‘urban heat island’and presented Manchester as typical of an ‘urban climate’. Thekey founding figure in this involvement of academia in climateand planning, though, was Professor Tony Chandler in the post-WWII years. With the presence of such a respected figure, urbanclimatology, for a time, became synonymous with Manchester Uni-versity. Chandler, a member of the World Meteorological Organisa-tion, had a strong international reputation, and contributed to thediffusion of urban climatology, for instance with groundbreakingfieldwork using motor vehicles to obtain transversal climatic data.

More recently, there have been a significant number of projectsoriginating from within Manchester’s research community, in closecooperation with the city council and in some cases with major pri-vate sector actors. This research occurs within a national and glo-bal framework, downscaled to the city level, as documented inthe literature on ecological modernisation and the new global–lo-cal environmental politics. In a context of national governmentretrenchment, while environmental pressures accumulate, ‘agrowing volume of international environmental commitments –and the resolution of potential conflicts with other priorities [suchas growth] – is being passed down to the sub-national level ’ (Whileet al., 2004: 549), cities in particular.

We start with ASCCUE (Adaptation Strategies for ClimateChange in the Urban Environment), carried out under an Engineer-ing and Physical Sciences Research Council grant between 2003and 2006. ASCCUE laid out the data, tools and methodologies ofsubsequent projects. ASCCUE analysed the impacts of climatechange on cities through three ‘exposure units’ of human comfort,urban green space and the built environment. ASCCUE looked be-yond an assessment of impacts to underpin the development ofconurbation and neighbourhood scale adaptation strategies. A riskassessment methodology was developed (Lindley, Handley, Theu-ray, Peet, & McEvoy, 2006; Gwilliam, Fedeski, Theuray, Lindley, &Handley, 2006; McEvoy, Lindley, & Handley, 2006) using a set ofurban morphology units as its spatial framework.

A project named SCORCHIO (Sustainable Cities: Options forResponding to Climate Change Impacts and Outcomes) followed.Also EPSRC-funded (2007–2010), SCORCHIO modelled the urbanheat island in Greater Manchester, through measurements takenby car and air, complemented by a network of sensors placed onlampposts in strategic street canyons. The aim was to provide

decision-support simulation tools in a GIS format for a wide rangeof stakeholders (cities, architects, engineers, public transport,health professionals...), addressing human comfort in buildings,building vulnerability to overheating, and heat emissions frombuildings.

Since 2008 the EcoCities project has been sponsored by localreal estate heavyweight Bruntwood, who controls a significant pro-portion of the city’s office real estate, and have shown concern in‘climate-proofing’ their building stock. According to many intervie-wees1, Bruntwood has been more proactive than the city council.Based at the University of Manchester, the EcoCities website statesthat:

The overarching aim is to create a climate change adaptation blue-print for Greater Manchester, based on the analysis of climatechange scenarios and the proposal of appropriate adaptationresponses. A research strategy has been developed, which estab-lishes a framework to achieve this aim, organised around fourkey areas: impacts, responses, engagement and dissemination.2

Drawing on data from UK Climate Impacts Programme 2009(UKCP), and the Manchester Local Climate Impact Programme(LCLIP), EcoCities is devising scenarios for adaptation to climatechange, and extreme climate events, focused on the possibility ofheat waves and floods in the 2050s and 2080s. Simulations are car-ried out using the weather generator designed by UKCP09, withoutputs on a 5 � 5 km grid. Two scales are taken, that of the Great-er Manchester conurbation, and the Oxford Road Corridor. Theoverarching conclusions are that there will be ‘a consistent patternof warming’, an ‘intensification of seasonal rainfall patterns’, and‘uncertainty surrounding extreme events’. This will have impactson health (rising death rate from heat waves), infrastructure (vul-nerability to floods), and human wellbeing and productivity (EcoC-ities website and interviews). EcoCities aims to provide a‘blueprint’ for Greater Manchester by the end of 2011 (EcoCitiesproject vision information sheet).

Green and blue space adaptation for urban areas and eco towns(GRaBS), another research project at the University of Manchester,feeds directly into the EcoCities ‘blueprint’ for Manchester. Thesame team as EcoCities, in cooperation with eight other Europeancities, carries out research. A particularly interesting aspect of theproject is that it addresses the potential benefits of ‘blue spaces’,i.e. moving and static urban water, as a contributor to a more sus-tainable and adapted city.

Also active in this research agenda is the University’s Faculty ofLife Sciences, active in a number of projects related to climate andurban planning (Interview with R. Ennos). The i-trees project seeksto investigate and demonstrate the contribution of green cover toclimate change resilience and adaptation. I-trees led to the map-ping of trees and canopy cover in the city. The proposals includethe creation of a living laboratory in Manchester, incorporating aseries of experimental plots close to the Oxford Road corridor, usedto measure the impact that trees and greenery can have on groundsurface temperature, capture of dust and fine sooty particles andwater retention and use. Roland Ennos has been driven by a wishto quantify the thermal effect of green space within climate changescenarios (Lindley et al., 2006; Gwilliam et al., 2006; McEvoy et al.,2006).

Spatially, much of this research revolves around a geographicalarea extending from City Hall to South of Oxford Road, the majorthoroughfare that links many of the most important higher educa-tion institutions in the city (UMIST, the University of Manchester),as well as important civic resources (hospitals, the BBC). In total,

a

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12% of the city’s workforce is concentrated in this heavily built up2.37 km2 area (Kazmierczak, Cavan, Carter, Handley, & Guy, 2010),known as the Corridor. The Corridor combines research and dem-onstration projects to produce recommendations relevant to cityplanning. It is, as mentioned above, a demonstration ground forthe i-trees project, and was also chosen for the SCORCHIO mea-surements campaign. GRaBS is looking at green space scenariosfor the Corridor, and their potential impacts in view of the ex-pected changes in the city’s climate. Research on the Corridor iscoordinated through a ‘Low Carbon Lab’ project, piloted by Man-chester City Council together with the University, whilst also fit-ting into a Department of the Treasury-driven ‘Low CarbonEconomic Area’ scheme.

A strong private sector involvement and weak municipal capacity

Another source of knowledge for the city council is provided byconsultants, in particular Drivers-Jonas-Deloitte (DJD), who havebeen commissioned a number of times to carry out research andprospective on city planning and climate in Manchester (DriversJonas Deloitte, 2009). DJD contributed to a major Manchester CityCouncil document, A Certain Future (ACF), which is the city’s ‘roadmap’ for adaptation to climate change, bringing together all the in-puts on climate and planning that we have described in this sec-tion. Corin Bell, from the city council’s Green City team,explained in an interview that ACF had decided in early 2009 to‘unite the climate change action plans for the city’. Participants,from academics to corporations and ordinary citizens, were askedwhat action the city should be taking. A list of 150 actions, later cutdown, was produced in what was ‘essentially a conversation’ to de-vise ‘the art of the possible’. Corin Bell emphasised that the topicsof green infrastructure and the perspective of adaptation took cen-tre stage. Apart from DJD, other major consultancies, such as BDPand ARUP, are also active.

The overall lack of municipal and regional institutional capacityin urban and climate planning is linked to the dissolution of theGreater Manchester Council (GMC) in 1986. Created in 1972 onthe model of the Greater London Council, GMC featured many in-house research and planning departments, from transport, wildlifeand nature conservation, historic buildings and heritage, to air andrainwater pollution management. With the move to Association ofGreater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) in 1986, a much morelow-key, decentralised, and voluntary system of regional govern-ment was inaugurated, with the disappearance, or at least the out-sourcing, of many of these functions. Services and consultancy arelikely to be contracted out rather than produced in-house, whichmay be a weakness in terms of maintaining a coherent historyand practice. It also means a costly necessity to periodically callon these outside providers.

Discussion: what are the outcomes of this research?

The value of these projects is multiple. In particular, a lot of datais being collected through observation and measurement cam-paigns, models used in the UK Climate Impact Programme (UKCIP) are being discussed and refined, supplying the basis for GIStools at the local and neighbourhood scale. These projects, andthe work of bringing them together under the aegis of the Corridorinitiative, are a powerful way of attracting funding and puttingManchester on the map in the field of urban climate research,whilst producing locally relevant solutions.

However, there are equally important limitations to these ini-tiatives. The first one is an old problem in the field of urban clima-tology and planning, namely the lack of communication betweenpractitioners from different fields. Planners and climatologists donot speak the same language, leading to lack of communication be-

tween them. There is also a lack of a common language betweenmany of the disciplines involved in research on climate and plan-ning in the city. To take the case of green roofs, for example, usingthe wrong kind of plants results in a lack of cooling effect; plantphysiologists know this, but not the people who work on greenroofs, and the public even less so (Interview with University ofManchester researcher). Likewise, planners know little about thephysics of materials in relation to climatic variables. A third prob-lem is the lack of communication between these different projectswithin the university itself, where several projects are being car-ried out without necessarily developing synergies.

What we see is a crystallisation of recommended actionsaround certain ‘tropes’ and spaces, the green roofs and extensivetree planting being a clear example. Just as the ‘renewal’ of citiesworldwide has translated ‘in the endless repetition and recyclingof very similar regeneration landscapes based on waterfront devel-opments, heritage and theme parks, concert halls, shopping cen-tres, prestigious office complexes and other flagshipdevelopments’ (Quilley, 1999, p. 186), the ‘greening’ of cities re-sults in a palette of topoi that end being applied regardless of localcharacteristics. This stands in contradiction with the findings of ur-ban climatology, which emphasises locally specific solutions.Sometimes, it is just a case of doing what other cities do, as withgreen roofs:

The city council are very keen on green roofs, but do not seem to beable to come up with proper numbers, to quantify. It’s difficult toactually experiment, mostly they look at what other people havefound (Interview with University of Manchester research scientist).

The actual effects of trees on air pollution reduction are un-known, most figures come from modelling (Quilley, 1999). Otherpotential avenues, such as blue roofs (which use water for its cool-ing effect), are neglected, although they existed in the past in Man-chester in the cotton industry. This vernacular practice is left asidein favour of globally accepted practices.

Thus, the question that logically follows pertains to how repre-sentative and relevant all this research activity is: in what way isthe Corridor representative of climate and planning challenges inthe whole metropolis? The focus on specific urban spaces leadsto the potential for ‘shadow’ effects (Barlow, 1995, p. 396): the tar-geted area is surrounded by an area that loses potential investmentbecause it is all attracted to the shiny, bright exemplar put forwardby authorities. Plans to make the Corridor more pedestrian andpublic transport oriented, while certainly laudable, make littlesense without an overall vision of how this will translate into hea-vier vehicular traffic, and therefore pollution and GHG emissions,on adjacent thoroughfares. Also, why is it acceptable to go aheadwith green roofs and tree plantings when these are not always nec-essarily effective, or at least quantified, approaches? This in turnleads to questions about the degree of public participation, beyondthe academic partners and the consulting firms paid by the city,and ultimately, to a necessary reflection on the socio-politicalmanufacturing of ‘greening’.

The city council has a Green City (GC) team. GC is not consti-tuted of scientists or experts in climate and planning: having setin motion a public debate, they collate expert data in order to ‘takeforward a delivery plan’; there are some who regret that the sci-ence base is not used to the fullest: managers have to ‘dip in andout’ (Interview with a municipal executive). Another level is super-imposed, that of the ‘climate change executive’, headed by MikeRiordan. The picture gets more complicated when we add the con-urbation level to this complex municipal one: the AGMA commis-sions for the Built Environment, Housing and Planning, the NewEconomy, the Environment and the Green Infrastructure Group.Also at Greater Manchester level is Manchester Enterprises, the

250 F. MacKillop / Cities 29 (2012) 244–251

economic development agency for the area, which has a ‘low car-bon’ economy programme, the Manchester Corridor being a dem-onstrator for the low-carbon economy area, itself a Departmentof the Treasury (i.e. national) initiative. This superposition, addedto the size of the metropolitan area and its administrative frag-mentation, do not help in focusing the message and the actionsin relation to climate and city planning (Interview with Universityof Manchester research scientist). This fragmentation can be anobstacle to implementing research projects, such as in the case ofSCORCHIO, where Salford imposed different conditions than Man-chester for the installation of sensors (Barlow, 1995). Indeed, afterthe dissolution of GMC in 1986, the emergence of AGMA heralded acertain degree of coordination, but no significant influence ‘on thepolicies of any of the joint authorities’ (Norris, 2001, p. 543). Forsome, ‘voluntary cooperation is the least satisfactory response’ tometropolitan problems. Others view Greater Manchester as ‘themost fragmented British conurbation’ (Peck & Ward, 2002, p. 48).Although there are signs of cooperation today through AGMA onclimate and planning related matters, there remains a tendencyfor city councils to go at it alone, and therefore a disparity of atti-tudes and policies. Thus, the municipality of Manchester, which is‘first among equals’ within AGMA, often emerges as the most ac-tive entity in this regard.

Conclusions

Today, a technocratic, pragmatic Labour party rules over thecity of Manchester, to the extent that some call it a ‘one party city’(Interview with an environmental activist). Since the ‘entrepre-neurial turn’, the city has witnessed ‘a shift away from a concernwith the political process in favour of an executive shift thatemphasised top-down managerial prerogatives’ (Quilley, 1999, p.203). The city of Manchester is often the driving force withinAGMA on a number of issues, and remains the centre of the regio-nal services and office bases. Initiatives such as MIDAS, City Pride,the airport expansion and the Commonwealth Games stemmedfrom Town Hall. In climate matters, Manchester has a desire tobe, once again, a city of firsts.

Manchester, as a municipality, and, through AGMA, as ametropolis, has taken to climatic urbanism, and especially the dis-course of the ‘green city’, as a way of enticing footloose capital tolay anchor in the city. Far from conflicting with growth, environ-mentalism (whether the internalisation of negative externalitiesassociated with urban growth or the promotion of positive urbanenvironmental externalities) is a key component of the entrepre-neurial city, which markets itself as clean and attractive: ‘ a placefor business yet devoid of factories’. This is typical of the processof ecological modernisation, both in terms of its achievementsand shortcomings. In this field, the Manchester elite is particularlyadept at showcasing its actions. Just like the city’s ‘regeneration’into a supposedly cosmopolitan, ‘premier league’ European city fol-lowed a certain script (Quilley, 1999, p. 190), ‘sustainable’ Man-chester does too.

Manchester’s elite may be relatively united, but it faces opposi-tion, both for its interpretation of what it means to be ‘green’, andwhat some see as a lack of engagement with stakeholders in favourof a top-down approach to decision-making. This is not new inManchester politics, as some observers have noted:

As the growth machine began to cohere and gather momentum,there were signs that potential obstacles such as planning policyor community involvement became increasingly marginalizedwithin the Town Hall’s neo-Gothic spiral staircases of power(While et al., 2004, p. 556).

Manchester is by all accounts a boosterist urban regime focusedon growth. This can in certain circumstances lead to a decision pro-cess whereby dissenting voices may be excluded. There is much re-search going on, but its degree of present and future applicationremains unclear. However, one has to keep in mind the constraintsfaced by the city and the region; that of fragmentation first,although this seems to be evolving with pressures towards bettermetropolitan government, but also of increasing budgetary strainsin the current context of recession and centrally-imposed fundingcuts. To put it in other terms, Manchester city council, and sur-rounding boroughs to some extent, are not anti-environment butthey are, by necessity, pro-growth.

Manchester can lay claim to being the first ‘climatic city’, wherea combination of climatic givens and industrial emissions was his-torically identified and analysed through scientific research, andthen actions were taken in order to mitigate its most negative ef-fects on human and natural health and wellbeing. In this sense,the city offers an interesting and encouraging example of the con-tribution of urban climate science to urban planning.

However, actions on this climate, from the point of view ofemissions control and city planning, led to their own consequencesand new problems, hence a turn, in the late 20th century/early 21stcentury to an elite-led discourse on manufacturing a ‘green city’.This appears as another way devised by an enterprising city regimeto induce inward investment in a city hollowed out by the collapseof its industry and an over-reliance on the service sector. Despite aheavy academic involvement in producing knowledge and possibleforms of intervention on the urban fabric, the city seems to havebarely grappled with the issues at hand, and has also succeededin alienating a segment of the population that feels left out ofthe debate.

Interestingly, hope may come from private enterprise, with theproactive approach developed by Bruntwood and the EcoCitiesproject for instance. This however will not address the problemsfaced by the city-region as a whole, and is resolutely business-oriented.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the financial support of the UK Eco-nomic and Social Research Council, Grant RES-062-23-2134.

The author thanks Tim Cadman, Julie Cotter, Michael Hebbertand Heather Zeppel for helpful comments on draft versions of thispaper.

Thanks to Vladimir Jankovic for pointing me towards the papersof R.A. Smith and other early climate scientists.

The comments made by two anonymous Cities reviewers, andhelpful suggestions of editor Ali Modarres, are also acknowledgedwith thanks.

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Interviews

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Carter), November 2010.Interview with Roland Ennos, November 2010.Interview with Alison Gillespie and David Hodcroft, AGMA, January 2011.Interview with Alan Goodman, April 2010.Interview with Marc Hudson, November 2010.Interview with Geoff Levermore, April 2010.Interview with John Pickstone, December 2010.Interview with Claire Smith, April 2010.