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Disruption, destruction and the creation of ‘the inner cities’: the impact of urban renewal on industry, 1945–1980

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2016

ALISTAIR KEFFORD
ALISTAIR KEFFORD*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
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Abstract:

This article examines the impact of post-war urban renewal on industry and economic activity in Manchester and Leeds. It demonstrates that local redevelopment plans contained important economic underpinnings which have been largely overlooked in the literature, and particularly highlights expansive plans for industrial reorganization and relocation. The article also shows that, in practice, urban renewal had a destabilizing and destructive impact on established industrial activities and exacerbated the inner-city problems of unemployment and disinvestment which preoccupied policy-makers by the 1970s. The article argues that post-war planning practices need to be integrated into wider histories of deindustrialization in British cities.

Type
Special section: Communities, courts and Scottish towns
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 492 - 515
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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22 Some of these southern industrial estates are referred to explicitly in Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan, 98.

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24 Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan, 83. The term ‘trading estate’ was used interchangeably with ‘industrial estate’.

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35 Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan, 148.

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56 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industrial renewal and rehabilitation’, 1973, 7.

57 Ibid ., 5.

58 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industry and urban renewal’, Sep. 1972, 1.

59 GMCRO, slum clearance and rehousing progress sub-committee minutes, vol. 1, 64, report, 31 Jul. 1967.

60 Ibid .

61 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industrial renewal and rehabilitation 1972–1991’, 1972, Appendix E, 2.

62 WYAS/LLD 1/2/817155, ‘Abbey Printing Works’, town planning and improvement records, 1956–57, 14.

63 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industrial renewal and rehabilitation 1972–1991’, 1972, Appendix E, 3.

64 Ibid ., Appendix H.

65 GMCRO/EMC, vol. 13, 571, ‘Progress report on industrial relocation’, 8 Sep. 1966.

66 Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan, 97.

67 WYAS/LLD 1/2/833240, ‘Hunt Committee on the Problems of the Intermediate Areas: evidence submitted on behalf of the council’, n.d. c. 1968, 3–4.

68 GMCRO, Manchester Development Committee minutes, vol. 1, letter from T.H.G. Stevens, 13 Oct. 1953.

69 Ibid .

70 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industrial renewal and rehabilitation’, 1973, 3–4.

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73 Ibid ., 238.

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75 WYAS/LLD 1/2/817150, letter from Dixon Powner and Sons to town clerk, 20 Nov. 1946.

76 Ibid ., 23 Jan 1952.

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78 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industrial renewal and rehabilitation’, 1973, 7.

79 GMCRO/EMC, vol. 13, 568, ‘Progress report on industrial relocation’, 8 Sep. 1966.

80 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industry and urban renewal’, 1972, 2 and 6.

81 WYAS/LLD 1/2/847649, ‘Industrial renewal and rehabilitation 1972–1991’, 1972, Appendix E, 3.

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85 The development of ‘urban policy’ as a centrally orchestrated state response to inner-city decline is well-covered in the literature and thus not repeated here. See, for example, Lawless, Britain's Inner Cities; Cochrane, Understanding Urban Policy; Atkinson, R. and Moon, G., Urban Policy in Britain: The City, the State and the Market (Basingstoke, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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