09-02-2025
The extraordinary plan to level Manchester city centre and start again
Tree-lined boulevards, vast railways stations, acres of green space and fresh air.
That was the post-war vision of the Manchester city centre of the future. But there was one minor obstacle - it involved tearing down almost everything and starting again from scratch.
Under the remarkable proposals published in 1945 only around 20 buildings would be spared the wrecking ball. They included Kendals, the cathedral, Central Library and Sunlight House. Not even the town hall would be safe from demolition.
The idea was to free Manchester from its 'perpetual smoke pall' and build a city where 'every inhabitant [could] enjoy real health of body and health of mind'. And it was one of - if not the - most ambitious plan for the redevelopment of a city centre in British history.
"Even while the war was going on a lot of cities were thinking 'After all this is over, what are cities going to look like?'," says Ollie Thompson, who runs the Bee Here Now YouTube channel about Manchester history. "And a lot of planners were idealistic enough to say we can probably improve lives for people while we are doing this.
"It's an idealistic version of Manchester and it's great, but it's almost fantasy land."
Written by city surveyor Rowland Nicholas, the 300 page plan was a wildly ambitious reinterpretation of what the city of the future could be. Conceived during the Blitz amid the possibility that large parts of Manchester could be razed to the ground on any given night, it's perhaps not surprising planners seemingly relished the opportunity to imagine what it would be like to wipe the slate clean.
"If at every stage this process of reconstruction is made to conform with a master pattern of the kind suggested in this book, the Manchester of 50 years hence will be a city transformed; if not, it will still be as ugly, dirty and congested as it is today," wrote Nicholas in his introduction.
The planners imagined a city centre of European-style-boulevards with zoned areas for commerce, housing, industry, education and leisure. But to achieve that the soot-covered mills, warehouse, banks, offices and housing of the Industrial Revolution would have to be swept away en masse.
To create more space the Irwell, Medlock and almost all the city centre's canals would be covered over. Piccadilly station would be rebuilt on a huge scale, several times larger than its current size, while another equally giant rail terminus dubbed Trinity Station would be built roughly where Salford Central currently stands.
Piccadilly Gardens would become a new entertainment centre, which 'might incorporate a cinema, a theatre, dance halls, a skating rink, a boxing stadium, restaurants, buffets and a variety of other entertainments', while clearing the area around the cathedral and Chethams would create a peaceful and much-needed green space.
And at the heart of the plans was the construction of a grand 'processional way' creating a focal point for the city. Roughly following the path of Brazenose Street, it would lead from a rebuilt town hall, across Deansgate, to a gigantic new law courts.
But the car also loomed large. A 'new and scientifically designed highway network, capable of giving safe, smooth and speedy passage to a volume of motor traffic far in excess of that which before the war had already begun to choke prosent streets' was also planned alongside new bus terminals and plentiful car parks.
Most of the work should be done by 1975 and completed within 50 years. And while it would be 'virtually impossible' to accurately predict the cost Nicholas felt that, in that in any event, such an estimate wouldn't 'serve any useful purpose'.
"We are entering upon a new age: it is for us to choose whether it will be an age of self-indulgent drift along the pre-war roads towards depopulation, economic decline, cultural apathy and social dissolution, or whether we shall make it a nobler, braver age in which the human race will be the master of its fate," he wrote in his stirring conclusion.
And while the plan was undoubtedly utopian, large parts of it did come to pass in one form or another. It foresaw many of Manchester's major developments in the second half of the 20th century - including the construction of Mancunian Way and the slum clearances and overspill estates of the 50s and 60s.
But, obviously, Nicholas's dream of the widespread demolition of city centre never happened. And, says Ollie Thompson, that's probably a good thing.
"It was a top down, paternalistic view," said Ollie. "We all know Manchester as a bit chaotic and a bit ugly. That's because the city centre has grown organically and our history is locked in that.
"People need to feel a connection to a place to truly love it. There are good intentions there. But the idea of wiping away the city and building an idealistic version of that detaches the city from the people.
"The energy that Manchester has now I don't think that would be there. It's hard to love a city if it feels like a giant museum."
