The Spirit of a City

Let me tell you why they shouldn't rebuild New Orleans.  It'll suck.  Trust me.  It'll suck so hard you could use it to clean gum off a carpet.

I was out last night with a few friends in Manchester, a city that was devestated by an IRA bomb in 1996.  One friend, Chris, made an interesting point that I never considered.  That is, Manchester looks a hell of a lot like London these days. 

The thing is that the whole central shopping area of the city was more or less gutted by the bomb, and a lot of buildings were simply torn down in the aftermath instead of renovated.  The result of this was that lots of big, shiny glass and steel monstrosities were crapped out into the middle of a city that's best known for its industrial roots.  Remember the Industrial Revolution?  It started here.  We were home to a thriving textile industry that left us with dozens of huge Victorian cotton mills, most of which have now fallen victim to gentrification - overrun by camp media types in their luxury apartments and clothes seemingly made entirely from pink. 

You can still see evidence of industrial Manchester in the back streets, in shopping arcades such as Affleck's Palace and the Coliseum (now closed, sadly).  Look up beyond the plate glass windows of the ground floor shops and you can still see the architecture and adornments of a thriving city, flush with cotton money and the belief that the good times would never end.

That's why I've always loved Manchester.  Along with nearby Leeds and Sheffield it reeked of history.  It was impressive.  It was grand.  Until now.  In the years following the bomb, the modern architects moved in with their new ideas and materials.  With no regard for the mood of the city, no effort made to seemlessly meld the old with the new, they built a miniature London.  Modern glass-fronted buildings and bloody neon lights everywhere. 

Old Manchester

New Manchester

New Manchester is one that - well, OK, it looks impressive, and it wins all sorts of architectural awards and gets people cooing at all the glass, but it isn't grand.   It's meaningless.  There's no sense of history.  While it all looks very nice, it just isn't Manchester anymore.  You could be anywhere.

And that's what will happen to New Orleans.  It's nice to think that we can simply drain away the water, tidy up a little and move back in, but that isn't possible.  Many buildings, if not already destroyed, will need to be razed to the ground and replaced.  The new city will be bereft of it's former charms.  If the planners are skilled, if they remain sensitive to the mood of the city, and if they can manage to avoid the mistakes made in my home town, it may look nice.  But it won't be New Orleans.  All it will ever be is a poor copy.  It just doesn't work that way. 

Part of the Beltway Sunday Drive, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy's Weekend Reading Assignment and Mudville Gazettes Open Post.

Comments

[David Gillies]

On the other hand, if they bombed the shit out of the centre of Bradford and rebuilt it, it couldn't be anything other than an improvement.