Wythenshawe: a concrete "beautiful nightmare"

An impoverished Manchester suburb highlights post-war urban planning problems

As I left the concrete retail area for my van atop the multi-storey car park, the “plastic pop” sound of Beyoncé’s lyrics emanated from one of the low-end shops, announcing the “beautiful nightmare”, which summed the place up well. I hadn’t known quite what to expect from Wythenshawe, a location recommended to me by a newly-released convict from Hull on a previous “deprivation tourism” walk.

While suffering from obvious economic hardship, and somewhat marooned travel-wise in an awkward spot near Manchester airport, the residential areas around were perfectly pleasant and habitable. Modernity has delivered us “comfortable slums” of relative poverty.

The superficial is easy to describe: an “inorganic” town centre without a real historic core that is filled with shuttered-up shops and low-end retail. Behind this is a story of how Britain transformed with WW2, and changes to the cultural geography that were previously unthinkable came into being with the rise of the administrative and welfare state.

I have a fancy education to hone my skills, corporate-friendly experience, and plenty of drive to achieve, so I have never had to claim a welfare benefit in my whole life. I have lived in posh parts of London (Hampstead) and Edinburgh (Morningside), and generally don’t have to think twice about affording some coffee and cake when out. This is a place I would have no reason to come to see if it wasn’t for making an active effort to go beyond the “Waitrose and National Trust” zone of Britain.

The security guard did come up to me to ask what I was up to. It is one of those strange hybrid public-private spaces where your rights as a photographer can be difficult to discern. Apparently when the gates are fully open in the daytime it counts as a public thoroughfare.

I have a backlog of a dozen of these kind of photo walks to process. Unlike my “pretty” art, which is fun and easy, these places wear heavily on my heart. People deserve better than this, and once you understand how our society was hijacked by usurers, eugenicists, and warmongers, it is almost unbearably painful to see fully.

Sickness seems to be the leading industry.

I used to do temping work (VDU data entry, photocopying, hospital kitchen) as a student in the late 1980s, and there were agencies everywhere and work galore. I doubt I would appreciate going back to a life before the Internet, but still, this is not the world I had anticipated as us bringing into being.

Buildings that might have housed administrative staff have been automated away.

People who love their country look after it.

Signs of our times.

Many of the surrounding areas are quite pleasant social housing; it would be a false impression to state this place is undesirable to live in. There is also a tram into the city centre, which doubtless is a major boon. I grew up next to Heathrow — I have literally walked home from Terminal 5 when landing with just a backpack — so this kind of place a mile or two from the runway is familiar terrain socioeconomically.

Still a town with hardly a tree and only harsh straight lines in brick and concrete is a vision of barbarity.

We can do so much better than this, surely?

Wythenshawe — beautiful northern people, nightmare modern aesthetics.