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DAN HILL
Institute for Popular Culture
Manchester Metropolitan University

The Northern Quarter is an area of Manchester city centre characterised by paradox, ambiguity, and contradiction. The central thoroughfare, Oldham Street, embodies the peculiar nature of the surrounding area, incorporating decaying boarded-up pubs, sex shops, and choking traffic-fumes, alongside designer bars and cafes, nationally-recognised record shops and fashion outlets, and 'regenerated' office space. Shabby, with stylish next door. The area juxtaposes the only city-centre council housing in Manchester alongside the Manchester Craft Centre - an artist's studio/shop complex. It combines world-wide-web-weaving microbusinesses with more traditional textile weaving. Designer hairstylists and barrowboys. Architects and curry houses. A suggestion of urban parkland alongside municipal car park.

Similarly, the NQ is both old and new. It was the historic central trading area in Manchester, home to bustling activity in the city's Smithfields food produce markets from dawn 'till dusk, and, before the retail explosion of the 60s and 70s (particularly the arrival of the Arndale Centre) Manchester's major shopping site. And yet the Northern Quarter is also a recent creation. The geographically-defined area of the NQ is the result of a virtually arbitrary decision by the City Council in order to provide a coherent single identity for regeneration purposes. The name 'Northern Quarter' was similarly chosen in almost random fashion for a previously unnamed area - was it Eastside, Smithfield, beginning of Ancoats or back of Piccadilly? Now, however, the area is a principal target for Manchester's urban regeneration. The primary angle for this regeneration is as Manchester's 'creative quarter' - not necessarily as a subsidised generator of culture, but more as an area of innovation, experimentation and risk-taking. The area is intended to evoke a sense of cultural activity - a buzz of creativity - to enable new formations of networks between cultural industries; to allow emerging businesses to initially flare into life, take shape and perhaps move on, to be replaced by another seedbed business idea; to promote cultural animation and cultural expression; to enable cultural activity marginalised in other city spaces to flourish within a dynamic atmosphere of creativity. The focus is certainly on economic regeneration capitalising on the increased economic importance of the cultural industries, but increasingly incorporating the new models of urban regeneration which value quality of life, and urban milieu as a creative, supportive environment. This is city centre liminal space, a marginal buffer zone between urban and suburban culture. Yet these areas are perceived as vital to the success of city centres as fertile ground sprouting seedbed industries, for enabling networking amongst small businesses, which in turn helps to create synergy, allowing development within and then beyond the area, whilst vividly expressing varied urban culture.

The area can be defined as 'mixed-use' - another keyword in contemporary models of urban regeneration. Both in the sense of a composite of residential, commercial and industrial spaces, and also in the mixture of old and new industry - textile production, unusually surviving in a city centre location largely because of the low rent, alongside examples of new tertiary sector business and even newer exponents of the information economy. Other classic urban regeneration issues are also slightly ambiguous in the Northern Quarter. Perhaps the slow regeneration of the area has saved it from previously observed problems of gentrification - rejecting the existing tenants and residents. The regeneration drive in the NQ is as much from the Northern Quarter Association - a consortium of local traders and residents - as from City Council dictate or property developers free-marketeering.

The two major employers in the area are the textile industry, and a second sector: the cultural industries. Various research by the Institute describes around 140 small businesses in the cultural industries situated in the NQ. The definition of the cultural industries is here taken to be inclusive rather than exclusive, incorporating consultancy, retail, cafes / bars, and the new digital media businesses, alongside the usual definition of non-subsidised arts, recording, publishing, broadcasting, applied arts, graphic design, advertising.

For more detailed analysis of the recent history of the Northern Quarter region, the development of the Northern Quarter Association, and an analysis of options for the future regeneration of the area, consult Justin O'Connor's work on behalf of the Northern Quarter Association. This document will now move on to consider the Institute for Popular Culture's research interests in the Northern Quarter Network project, and this project in general.

Part II

Part III

Part IV

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Send email to: d.p.hill@mmu.ac.uk and j.oconnor@mmu.ac.uk