Comments on: The Madness of Cityco http://manchestermule.com/article/the-madness-of-cityco News with a Kick Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:42:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the 21st Century City « Broken English http://manchestermule.com/article/the-madness-of-cityco/comment-page-1#comment-717 Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the 21st Century City « Broken English Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:43:38 +0000 http://themule.info/?p=492#comment-717 [...] Taken in a rather naive and literal sense this could be seen to practically amount to keeping the area clean, safe and attractive. However there’s a subtle but profound conflation at work here; good business conditions for the sort of retail outlets usually dominating BIDs amount to circumstances which engender consumption and remove obsticals to consumption. As Anna Minton  reports a BID manager telling her: “high margins come with ABC1s, low margins with C2DEs. My job is to create an environment which will bring in more ABC1s” (pg 45). If you fall into the most desire socio-economic groups and are coming into the BID in order to spend money then the BID represents a proactive attempt to shape the area to your immediate needs. This becomes progressively less true as the people concerned become less socio-economically desirable and less intent on consumption to the point where those who are uneconomical, or even anti-economic, become subject to outright harrasment. [...] [...] Taken in a rather naive and literal sense this could be seen to practically amount to keeping the area clean, safe and attractive. However there’s a subtle but profound conflation at work here; good business conditions for the sort of retail outlets usually dominating BIDs amount to circumstances which engender consumption and remove obsticals to consumption. As Anna Minton  reports a BID manager telling her: “high margins come with ABC1s, low margins with C2DEs. My job is to create an environment which will bring in more ABC1s” (pg 45). If you fall into the most desire socio-economic groups and are coming into the BID in order to spend money then the BID represents a proactive attempt to shape the area to your immediate needs. This becomes progressively less true as the people concerned become less socio-economically desirable and less intent on consumption to the point where those who are uneconomical, or even anti-economic, become subject to outright harrasment. [...]

]]> By: @ http://manchestermule.com/article/the-madness-of-cityco/comment-page-1#comment-716 @ Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:04:42 +0000 http://themule.info/?p=492#comment-716 Unbelievable! How petty can you get? I think it's important people know that this is happening to 'public' space in our city's as private investors like city co slowly take over - essentially anything which isn't shopping, isn't tolerated! Freinds have told me about similar things like this happening in Liverpool with the new Liverpool One complex there. There needs to be some organised mass rule-breaking inside corporate fiefdoms like the arndale centre and printworks! Unbelievable! How petty can you get?

I think it’s important people know that this is happening to ‘public’ space in our city’s as private investors like city co slowly take over – essentially anything which isn’t shopping, isn’t tolerated! Freinds have told me about similar things like this happening in Liverpool with the new Liverpool One complex there.

There needs to be some organised mass rule-breaking inside corporate fiefdoms like the arndale centre and printworks!

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