Don’t let the Northern Quarter look like Miton Keynes!

I read with horror that Stevenson Square – the only real potential candidate for a proper square in the Northern Quarter, is to be developed by Argent, the people who brought a little bit of Milton Keynes to Manchester with the No.1 Piccadilly building.
As I’ve already said previously in this blog, they did a great job of encouraging the right kind of local businesses into the building, but its a real low point in terms of appeal and appearance showing that we haven’t really learned any lessons from the 70’s or the Arndale Centre. It really concerns me that the same people are going to be allowed to develop such an important part of our historic and unique Northern Quarter.
Lets take a look at the plans and voice any concerns as a community before its too late – tbc, watch this space…..

City life, the next generation…

It strikes me that many of the problems with city living requires new bold solutions, its really about how we get on with eachother, and is hard to legislate for. For example, when smoking is banned in public buildings, perhaps the only time non-smokers will be subject to cigarette smoke is in their apartment buildings, through the ventilation systems. I know that in the same way I can smell whats cooking downstairs, I may only be exposed to smoke in my own home….its an odd thought. How do we deal with problem neighbours, in apartment buildings its possibly to have 5 other dwellings that have an affect on your life in terms or noise pollution…
And what about problems with noise and disruption from ongoing development and building. I have a neighbour who has made me aware of a voluntary code of conduct for developers (which her company belongs to) in order to protect residents, however the developer next to me isn’t part of it and seems to have ZERO interest in considering the people who live around their building site. For weeks now I’ve been fighting to have pedestrian access next to our building after the last year or so of actually seamlessly being part of their building site. (B S Construction – how aptly named!) Never mind that they’re robbing one side of my apartment building of natural light by building a 23 storey building an arms length away from our Grade 2 listed building, how that was ever approved I can’t imagine, clearly a planning comittee with no interest in the city residents of Manchester.
How can we police developers better, should the code of practice be voluntary? Afterall, we’re suffering inconvenience in order for them to make a lot of money, and the more that developers inconvenience city dwellers, the more they are alienating their market!
My point is that we live in a different way to only a few years ago, and we need new structures and regulations in order to operate better simply to retain the population we have, and hopefully to increase it.

CF Dinner

Thanks to Adele Douglas for a well organised and fun CF dinner. It was very interesting meeting Manchester CF members, and seeing the cery different world they are living in in many ways.
Its great that there is so much support among students, I hope we can convert that into campaigning support and start winning some seats in Manchester!
The food at the Stanley Casino was good, and I really enjoyed it, although the next day I was rather wishing that Peter and I hadn’t been at ‘235′ until 6am as it made the following day’s concert I had to play at the MEN rather painful!

Recycling – again!

I’d be really glad if people could get in touch and let me know if your apartment building has recycling facilities. There are targets (and have been for some time) for councils to reach levels of recycling for residents, and I can only guess that Manhcester’s levels must be balanced out by areas outside the city centre.
How many buildings in the city centre have recycling? 5%, 7% 10% ,15%? Lets do a survey and find out, my building certainly doesn’t, although I do know a few which have acquired it recently. Apparently they are going to organise recycling for the newer buildings first….thanks to all you city residents who’ve been paying your council tax for years!