ABSTRACT
We have three connected purposes in this chapter. We want, first, to provide a brief account of the topography and geographical situation of Manchester and Sheffield and also some sense of the ‘material reality’ of the cities (the configurations of buildings and streets that have historically made up their urban form). The provision of this account, of course, involves us in writing something of a local industrial history of the two cities and their larger regions, since the colonisation of space and terrain in these two areas was overwhelmingly driven by the massive expansion of manufacturing, especially throughout the nineteenth century.
