Chips

This building, designed by Will Alsop and developed by Urban Splash, is not everyone's cup of tea but I like it. The development has commercial space on the ground floor and apartments above. It has water on three sides - the Ashton Canal and some new mooring areas.

This is a view in the opposite direction, over the Cotton Fields inner-city moorings, off the Rochdale Canal, towards Ancoats. The mills of Ancoats, now an "Urban Village," were the world's first heavily industrialised suburb, built between 1790 and 1820. The nineteenth century industrial "golden age" is often romanticised but living and working conditions were atrocious, with child labour, poverty and disease. Ancoats had the highest death rate in Manchester which in turn had the highest death rate in England.

On a lighter note, here are people in the Northern Quarter putting their best foot forward near to an unusual light combination by a proper shop.