What price civic pride?
Article published: Monday, April 27th 2009
As the recession begins to bite public bodies face some severe belt-tightening. Nonetheless, Manchester City Council recently announced it will spend nearly £25 million on primarily aesthetic improvements to the Town Hall and its surroundings, to boost “civic pride”. This comprises a £3.8 million glass walkway between the Town Hall and Central Library, and a £20 million facelift to St. Peter’s Square, as part of the £165 million Town Hall Complex Refurbishment Programme.
Manchester remains one of the UK’s most deprived cities. Recent studies by Save the Children and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discovered that 54 per cent of children in Central Manchester live in poverty, the highest rate in the UK. Local social justice campaigners feel the money could be better spent.
The Council’s own reports admit that the expenditure will have no anti-poverty impact. However they express their hope that the money will create “a high-quality setting for the proposed new developments around the Square”. An international design competition will be held to ensure the developments are suitably impressive. The announcement comes on the heels of the admission that the £1.7 million ‘B of the Bang’ sculpture – built next to Sports City to commemorate the 2002 Commonwealth Games – will be dismantled and melted down for safety reasons, at a further cost of £300,000.
The City Council claims, in its 2015 vision document, to be creating “a World Class City that meets and exceeds the needs of all residents, with particular regard to those residents who have been socially excluded”. There is certainly a long way to go. Asylum charity the Boaz Trust asserts that homelessness remains a major problem.
Speaking to MULE, David Smith of the Boaz Trust commented: “Some things cost a lot of money. But we don’t need to spend more money on Manchester’s image; we need to spend more money on things like affordable housing. There are thousands of flats that have gone up for yuppies that don’t exist, and thousands of homeless people that cannot afford them.”
Andy Bowman
More: Manchester, News
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