Photo by Chris Bethell
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.
While the City Devolution Bill announced in today’s Queen’s Speech doesn’t actually accede to the demands of that petition to make the North secede from the South of England, it does devolve some powers to cities. It kicks off in Manchester, which will get a mayor and some money. But while Manchester is reclaiming some power from London-centric politicians, the move might lock it into a model of development that makes it look more like the capital—a thrusting, prosperous place with rampant inequality and dispossession for those on the losing side.
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In response to the nationwide calls for devolution that the Scottish independence referendum brought about—it was announced back in November that Greater Manchester was to be trusted with $1.5 billion of its own money to spend on transport, housing, policing and planning, which has been Whitehall’s domain until now. Since then, in a surprise announcement from the government, it has also been given charge of its $9 billion NHS budget, a national first. In exchange all it needs to do is agree to have an region-wide elected mayor.
Unfortunately, not many people in the region actually want an elected mayor. The deal disregards the democratic will of the residents of the City of Manchester, who voted against having one in 2012. At the time housing minister Grant Shapps said that no one was “forcing” mayors on cities. Government policy seems to have taken a U-turn, however. In the rush to kick-start his dream of a “Northern Powerhouse”—a northern economic force to rival London, with Manchester seemingly the locus—George Osborne has said there won’t be a public referendum on the issue.
It’s strange to have an unwanted Mayor foisted on us by the Conservative government—ideological children of Margaret Thatcher, who took power away from local governments and destroyed the economy of the north. Ironically it is George Osborne, heir to Thatcher’s economic legacy as well as a Baronetcy and large fortune, who now seeks to resolve the issues created by her government. Where she enforced a centralism that even her acolytes are now acknowledging wasn’t healthy, Osborne is enforcing localism that local people don’t want.
The problem with the devolution plan proposed by government is that it doesn’t effectively set out to tackle the social issues in Manchester. A large proportion of the planned spending is on science and the arts. That’s all well and good, but the idea seems to be to attract investment and people to the city in the hope that some new wealth will trickle down, rather than tackling problems head-on.
And the problems are many. Greater Manchester is one of the poorest areas in the country; the City of Manchester has the fourth-highest level of child poverty in the UK, with figures as high as 49 percent in some inner city areas. The worry is that the current deal will just lead Manchester down the same path as London. The capital is a global cultural center, but also suffers from rampant inequality and poverty, with 14 London boroughs making an appearance in the top 20 authorities containing highest levels of child poverty.
Some of the funding could be positive—the $460 million for housing, for instance—but while one hand gives, the other takes away. Greater Manchester will still have to adhere to Whitehall induced spending cuts, each of the ten councils will have to slash between $54 million to $70 million from their budgets whichever of the main parties gets in. The government wants to bring the Northern Powerhouse to life, but with local councils and combined authorities being lumbered with responsibility for budgets that have been slashed to the point of being unsustainable, it feels like it’s being still born. In that context, Manchester looks set to have its cultural life reinvigorated for those who can afford it, while the basic services relied on by many are stripped away and the government washes its hands of the fallout. While giving away power, the government seems to be passing the buck.
The city has also undergone a large-scale redevelopment of its center, and some of it is not so welcome. The council seems to be obsessed with regenerating the city skywards with as many nondescript hotels and office spaces as it can. The divisive Beetham Tower is a monument to Manchester’s modern new architectural direction and the mixed reviews it gets. Despite it being voted the “best tall building in the world 2007” it was described by urban design critic John Punter as having torpedoed Manchester’s chances of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Cornerhouse. Photo by Chris Bethell
A more recent example of the city’s questionable redevelopment strategy involves the fate of the Cornerhouse. The iconic arts hub is moving down the road to a new home, called HOME, and its former residence’s future has been called into question. How long before Manchester no longer looks like Manchester? With the mayor set to be selected from the city’s Labour establishment which runs the council, it’s likely that he will be a cheerleader for just this sort of development.
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No one can really argue against money being spent by the region, for the region, but Greater Manchester needs to go in its own direction and the terms of the deal don’t really allow for that. While Manchester has a long way to go before it succumbs to London style “pricing out” and the social cleansing of areas, the houses on the wealthiest street in Greater Manchester are currently worth 57 times more than the poorest—a steady increase on the price gap of previous years. Turning to city into an arts hub might bring some money in, but if we’re not careful it’ll be the kind of money that is spent pushing the price of gated communities up to a point where most local people can’t afford to live in them.
The future of our regions, as seen by the political establishment, is the conglomeration of cities and smaller satellite towns into city regions, bypassing historic boundaries and separate cultural identities and replacing them with buzzwords, like “Northern Powerhouse.” These devolved city regions might be one solution to centralization and stagnation. But while their creation might remove power from the grasp of reluctant Whitehall civil servants, they may well just be recreating problems at a localized level. The north needs to provide a counterbalance to London and stop it sucking the entire country into its vortex, but is the best way to do that copying the capital’s worst failures?
