Publicado em Places / History of
the Present: Cities in Transition
2020-07, por Richard J. Williams,
Professor de Culturas Visuais Contemporâneas na Universidade de Edimburgo.
Manchester After Engels
 |
Beetham
Tower, viewed from
Castlefield Urban Heritage Park,
November 2019. [Richard
Williams]
|
(..) Manchester, whose collapse in the mid 20th century rivaled that of Detroit, is busily, loudly rebounding; the city is now constructing a cluster of skyscrapers on the edge of its downtown core, the scale of which dwarfs all existing buildings. Not all that long ago, a big building here could perhaps boast 100,000 square feet; today “big” means half a million. The new South Tower of Deansgate Square, a collection of mostly residential towers, rises priapically to more than 600 feet, and it might soon be overtaken by the 700-foot-tall Trinity Islands. There were at the end of last year an unprecedented 80 construction sites in the city center, including 14,000 future apartments, many of which are underwritten by international investment. (Continua)
