Buccleuch debuts in Manchester with Little Peter Street win

I am from Manchester , we do live in one ugly city you must admit!!!!

Hope better than the joke that is HOME across the road…Looks like a kid has had a go with some leggo.

It is an ugly city – and not just due to a hangover of decades past (like Birmingham), but strongly due to the current/recent generation of development. Its the elephant in the room of the NW development industry. Can’t we agree on this and conspire to do something better?!

There are some spots uglier than others, as in all cities. but to say Manchester is an ugly city is disingenuous.

There is a lot of beauty in Manchester, despite the drizzle.

I am growing increasingly concerned however that this beauty has come about more through luck than judgement.

A high proportion is ugly and a very small proportion is attractive. The balance needs addressing.

Is the strategy to “finish” it by filling in the gaps with cheap quick builds, and then knock some down and try to make it nice later? Serious question.

If all of the undeveloped sites are simply developed and then left, with no demolition of the rubbish already there, the city’s going to really, really grim in 10 years. Bit sad really.

Its far from ugly, really don’t understand the mentality of some of the people who ‘contribute’ to these pages.

If that’s your standard of quality, then fair enough.

Phildered- whilst beauty is in the eye of the beholder, City Road is massively disappointing. It’s the no.1 road access into Manchester and the buildings along there by and large show a lack of quality and coherence. Manchester planning used to have strong leadership and an identifiable vision. That’s now been replaced by “is the development team one of our favourites?” and “let’s have tall / dense wherever the market wants it, not where it makes sense in urban design terms”

Concur with Phildered. Some people need to change the record and be a bit more positive.

It’s true. As a Mancunian I have to admit that the majority of the recent development spate is ugly.

The problem is our planning department appears to have no taste. Their only acceptance criterion seems to be “tall”. I love tall buildings but 90% of the towers going up at the moment are right munters.

People will change the record when/if the quality of developments gets better. Why are we accepting such rubbish in Manchester?

Zebith, yes that’s my opinion and I like to think I have high standards, I’m honest, a realist and very much an optimist.
Gene, understand your view and there are other areas that are disappointing – but ugly, me thinks not.
Apollyon2 – well said, I obviously agree and don’t you get the feeling that those who go out of their way to be negative get some kind of satisfaction out of it.
It appears I’ve the advantage of age and recall well how Manchester looked when I first worked there in the 1970’s, I would have agreed with you then that it was ugly but not anymore – as mentioned already , far from it. There are numerous examples, St Peters square for example. Although not completed it will look fabulous when completed. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to look forward to.

Phildered – there are a lot of scousers that post under Manchester news items so I’d take a lot of the comments with a bucket of salt.

Why so many of our friends from down the East Lancs are so openly hostile and abusive towards the city is unclear but it appears to be in their nature.

Another Car Park gone – where will people park?

Yes, I feel slightly stupid for falling for that one. JOAN or should I say John from Liverpool started the ‘debate’ and in my keeness to respond I fell for it ! Maybe it’s something to do with two articles I read yesterday ie we are now 43rd in world rankings for city living and once again was mentioned positively in the lonely planet guide for 2016.

I have to say that St Peters square is starting to look pretty special. The problem with Manchester and Liverpool too, to an extent are the arteries, which lead into the city. Your views are already tarnished by horrible thoroughfares, like Oldham, Rochdale and City roads. These need sorting out. Upper Brook street is full of Car show rooms, Wilmslow road, take aways. The best entry to Manchester city centre in my view is Chapel street Salford.There is some stunning stuff already on this road.

Friday – surface car parks have been a scourge on our city’s streetscapes for too long. For Manchester to urbanise and for public transport options to be quicker, more frequent and more viable the majority of these temporary/low-capacity car parks need to be removed. The potential for these spaces to house our population, provide space for business and bolster retail/commercial spend is huge!

There are other car parks in the south of the City Centre such as the Q Park First Street, Manchester Central, Great Northern, Great Bridgewater Street and the new car park which is going up as part of Circle Square.

TfGM has invested into a fantastic park and ride system. There are now 50 locations which are mostly free. You just pay for the transport fare which will inevitably be cheaper than your city centre parking cost. The excuses that lazy motorists use for driving into town are diminishing rapidly.

I think the comment from Friday re parking was a joke, sorry Saturday.

A lot of developments are ugly in all cities – there are fantastic old buildings which are being knocked down to make way for not so nice ones. I think it was only last year that the Heaps Rice Mill was saved in Liverpool – but now has to be incorporated into the proposed development. I really think that there should be more encouragement and perhaps incentives to make it easier for developers to work with some cracking old and industrial looking buildings – rather than it being cheaper for them to demolish them. After all they are a lot more pleasant to look at! But appreciate that is subjective!

@Joan ..Is in the eye of the beholder..MOST of us LOVE the place..Move?

‘Most of us’… source?

Developers have an interest in making stuff cheap, not necessarily beautiful, so its reasonable to assume ‘most’ people think it looks what it is: cheap and functional. In absence of hard evidence either way, you’re best not to speculate.

Personally, I think Manchester city centre feels like a dustbin to live in.

Manchester has some great locations and agree with Mary about saving the industrial buildings of which Manchester has plenty. Ancoats is the most interesting area in that regard. And yes, St. Peter’s Square is gonna look good, although the old civic buildings, library etc. are looking a little diminished by the scale of the buildings opposite. But I agree with Elephant about Chapel Street / The Crescent; this is definitely Manchester’s best approach. Most of the rest are awful Rochdale Road, Princess Road, etc… And yes, Liverpool has a similar problem with several of its approaches, although Liverpool city centre does merge well with districts to the Georgian Quarter, and Derby Road / Great Howard Street are now undergoing vast improvements with the north docks area hopefully set for improvement through Ten Streets initiative.
Liverpool does have an advantage in that at least two sides are taken up by the Waterfront and therefore the only approach is via rail or road tunnels. Manchester has to work a bit harder to get all its approaches up to scratch. A bit easier for Liverpool but quite a task nevertheless.

Unfortunately as MCC conducts so little real planning aside from very broad-brush frameworks, prospects for improving the approaches are determined by whatever the market puts forward. Thus you get massive apartment blocks and a short distance away cheaply built dreary suburban boxes with front gardens and fencing fronting onto a major highway. They’ve produced a housing design guide but there’s no sign they’ll hold developers to its principles and no sign they’ll consider how individual schemes contribute to the wider neighbourhood.

Planning in Manchester is broken.

I think Manchester is a beautiful city with many fantastic buildings (having lived in liverpool and london before). It certainly isn’t a dustbin and comments like that simply serve to show commentators up.

Describe to me the beauty of walking from Piccadilly Station, down Station Approach, through Piccadilly Gardens, down Market Street, into the Arndale.

You could say I’m being selective, but that is a major route for visitors to Manchester.