The Outdoor Life

The fact that the original architects of the city of Manchester had not provided outdoor recreational space in their street plans soon became obvious when the indoor smoking ban was introduced in 2007. Gangs of smokers appeared on the streets, huddling in whatever nooks and crannies would accommodate them: nor did they bring their ashtrays. Manchester's limited street space is once again under pressure because of the unusual and extended spell of exceptionally warm weather which has cafes, bars and coffee shops all competing for whatever scraps of pavement they can find to set out their chairs and tables among the discarded fag ends. There are no elegant piazze such as they have in Italian cities.

 

Manchester ceased to be a nice place to live once the cotton industries were fully established at the beginning of the 19th century. The area became an ecological disaster zone devoted entirely to the mighty business of making money out of manufacturing. Rich people moved out to the countryside, leaving the poor working classes to live in the slums they had created. One rich man, Thomas Horsfall, felt conscience bound to redress the situation by establishing a museum, art gallery and craft workshop in a working district. He wanted to bring the beauty of art and nature to those who had no access to it - despite the pessimistic view of his mentor, John Ruskin, who believed the vast scale of industrial squalor in Manchester put its population beyond such help.
 

Some things have changed for the better since the 1850s.The population is wealthier and the countryside is well within its reach. The slums have been cleared. Redundant factories, mills and depots have been either flattened or adapted to facilitate different economic activities. Debate rages over whether we should demolish some of the remaining redundant buildings, especially the grander ones, and there is a nice metaphor that likens that process to "tearing pages out of the history book". It is easy to sympathise with this view but much that remains of the old built environment harks back to a previous way of life and, in so doing, stifles progress.

 

Last night I went on a mini pub-crawl (in the interests of research) and noted that all four of the places I visited were converted premises i.e. they had not been built originally as pubs. It is a clear case of changing lifestyles. When industrial cities began to expand, thousands of pubs were established on streets full of dwellings where they served the purpose of providing a comfortable haven for men to escape squalid domestic environments. Changing circumstances have led to the closure of many of these places and the subsequent concentration of the 'entertainment industry' in city centres where the decline of retail business has left plenty of premises available. The experience of sitting in a shop window to drink beer may not be quite the same as that of being enclosed within the ornate splendour of a Victorian "gin palace" but the essential purpose is being fulfilled: socialising in an agreeable environment. In any case, it beats shopping.

 

I walked past two semi-ornate 1930s buildings that (to use the emotive language of objectors) are to be "torn down" to make way for the modernisation of a prominent square. Although this will certainly 'tear a page from the history book' we should balance that against the benefits of adapting our environment to suit our present living needs. Non-human life-forms do not have the power to do this - they must adapt to changed habitats or die out. But we humans have the ability to fashion our environment and, if we are careful, improve it. We may even choose to accommodate such refined lifestyle habits as al fresco smoking and drinking – weather permitting.