Contrasts.....

Manchester isn't one of those cities that has a homogeneous architectural styles like Georgian Bath. It was a Georgian market town at one point but the Victorians swept most of that away as they built Cottonopolis. We might have been the perfect Victorian city but Hitler and the 1960s town planners did for that idea.

We are a mishmash of styles ranging from fake Ancient Roman to 21st Century skyscrapers and a bit of everything in between. I have to say I like this, I love that you can span 2000 years of architecture in a 2 minute walk up Liverpool Road.

This is a new place where the contrast is happening. The old is provided by the Victorian chimney of Chorlton Mill, once a cotton warehouse, now a block of trendy apartments. The city's well-to-do living in great style and comfort where their great, great grandparents struggled to earn enough to keep body and soul together. The new is a complex of apartment buildings being squeezed into a tiny piece of wasteland between Chorlton Mill and a bend in the unloved, almost ignored River Medlock where Cambridge Street disappears under the railway viaduct before emerging into what was once the city centre. The edge of the city centre has pushed further down Cambridge Street to the Mancunian Way as the city expands and grows. Pieces of wasteland in central Manchester are few and far between and very expensive. I wouldn't mind having a few square metres with planning permission. The tallest of the towers here will be one of the tallest in the city when complete. I still don't know what this development is called. I must find out.