15 Years On: Manchesters Regeneration Game.
June 15th 1996:
Sitting in my nannas back garden, a fresh faced eleven year old boy sipping ice cold, fizzy lemonade, enjoying the early morning sunshine before getting ready to head off on a new days adventure on the local estate. Little was we to know what was to come…
On this hot, Summer Saturday morning, Manchester was hitting high levels of shoppers getting their last bits for Fathers day the following day. At around 10:00am Granada television received a phone call off a man claiming to be part of the IRA, giving an officially recognised codeword. Over the next hour and twenty minutes or so the police tried to clear Manchester’s bustling city centre of its shoppers… I imagine a lot of shoe shopping women weren’t too happy with this!
Having been informed of this threat by the television company, the police had called for the bomb disposal squad from Liverpool to deal with the situation.
At around 11:20am, just as the bomb squad were preparing to send in a robotic bomb disposal device, the Ford van parked on Corporation street which contained a 3,000lb bomb, exploded, destroying most of the 75,000 square metres of office and retail space in the surrounding area and causing damage to buildings within a half mile radius.
Over 200 people were injured in the blast, mostly due to flying glass and debris, but fortunately for the early warning the police had managed to clear the area and ensure no deaths were to come from this tragic day…
Image from BBC News©1996
Image from BBC News©1996
Corporation Street 2011
Image from BBC News©1996
Famous Postbox: This box withstood the main blast and still stands defiant and proud to this day.
Image from BBC News©1996
Corporation Street 2011
Image from BBC News©1996
Regeneration:
After the mass destruction caused on that day it took around four years to complete the demolition and reconstruction of the surrounding areas affected by the bomb.
A few buildings that were well established in that area didn’t make it for reconstruction, whether they were deemed too dated or just simply weren’t in the councils plans to bring Manchester into the modern age is unclear.
The modernisation of the city is thought to have cost around £600 million, raised by both public and private sector investors.
It begs the question that if they didn’t plant that bomb, how far would Manchester have come in the past fifteen years? I think we would have been well on the way to getting the Manchester we all know and love now, the bomb may have just stuck a rocket up the backside of time and made it make things happen more quicker.
One thing is for sure, fifteen years on and Manchester is a well established, vibrant, trendy and cultured city attracting people from all around the world to see just how well it has been brought into the twenty first century...
The work I have produced here is more along the documenting of change and time rather than documenting single artefacts as Gill did in Off Ground. I think to further this work as a series I need to visit the science and industry museum in Manchester where there are some remains from areas affected by the bomb. I'm going to schedule a visit in for some time this week and get all my work prepared and out of the way.
The results of which shall be up in a new post when they've been presented at uni. Until then, take care and try not to freeze!! Oh and Merry Christmas...
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