Hulme Crescents

In October I attended a meeting about the regeneration of Hulme and the possibility of mapping the changes and developments of the topology itself and also the residents reactions to this. The main subject up for discussion was Hulme Crescents, and how it  had effected the atmosphere and development of Hulme itself. It is strange to think how the design of a block of flats can affect the behaviour of those that live in or close to it, but history speaks for itself. Hulme was originally home to Manchester's cotton weaves, until in 1960 it became the site of the biggest slum clearance in Europe. The terraced houses there were declared inhabitable and a new housing scheme was needed to rehouse the residents. 

During this time the Le Corbusier style of Brutalist architecture was very popular amongst blocks of flats, and the proposed Hulme Crescents were influenced by this whilst being based on the crescents in Bath. At the time, the Crescents won several design awards, but quite soon the ideology of vehicles and pedestrians being separated by elevated walkways, and green spaces being created for families, turned the Crescents into an unsafe place live, with many 'dead areas' where gangs began to gather. Quite soon families began to leave. The flats had no defensible space, the only heating was via air ducts which soon posed damp and pest control problems. This, on top of the fact that the Princes Parkway runs through Hulme with around half a million vehicles on the road every week all culminated to give Hulme the accolade of the worst ward in the United Kingdom. Rates of drug addiction and crime soared in the neighbourhoods and local reports suggest that as the City Council almost completely lost control of the properties on the estate, it was reduced to handing out keys to properties to anyone who would take them, in order to ensure the use of empty properties. Any sense of community had, by this point, disappeared. Despite this, in the 1970s many punks, musicians ad artists took advantage of the cheap urban housing available and the a club on Royce Road called The Russell club (which was owned and run by Factory Records) featured the first ever performance of Joy Division and various other bands which would eventually become household names, such as Iggy Pop. The epicenter of all the action however was a club called The Kitchen, which consisted of three flats on the third floor of the Crescents, which had been knocked through with a pick axe into one giant squat/club. There was a massive sound system in the front room, and the downstairs kitchen had been turned into a bar selling Red Stripe. 

Finally the decision was made in the 1990s to demolish the Crescents. They were replaced by a mix of council and private low-rise housing and now the area is much more successful. Old and new residents live side by side, and it has been a desirable place to live for the new generation of city dwellers.