ABSTRACT
The maintenance of the provincial city centres as symbolic cores to their regions has been a consistent strand in British urban policy. The demands of an ageing infrastructure, inefficient transport system, a dependent population, falling revenue, rising costs, and, as well, a pattern of spending inherent in regional status, are not peculiar to Manchester. The 'Manchester script' has now been honed to perfection by the journalists and public relations consultants, and is articulated freely by politicians or other advocates of the 'cool' city experience. The promotion of the arts, the heritage industry itself, the alternative lifestyles of artists, media professionals and the young, all presume new canons of cultured living in the cities. Unemployment levels in the inner city neighbourhoods are high, as are welfare dependency rates. The economic development officer for the local authority suggested in 1988 that the city was to revert to 'how it had looked before the industrial revolution'.
