ABSTRACT
The presence and articulation of official representations tell us little about the ways in which urban transformation processes are perceived, evaluated and lived in the everyday of ‘ordinary practitioners of the city [of those that] live “down below”’ (Certeau 1984: 93). While the ‘concept city’, the city of theoretical constructions, can be captured in the form of representations portrayed in planning documents or panoramic postcards, the movements and experiences of those living the ‘practised city’ create a much less unified picture or easily legible city: ‘The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely other’ (Certeau 1984: 93). Despite the lived city standing in contrast with the representation of the city, the two are in constant dialectic with each other. Representations, mental conceptions of spaces, organize perceptions. Representations of space ‘constitute “stocks of understanding” via discourse . . . They help make “facts” about people and processes as representations of reality lodged into narrative’ (Wilson et al. 2004: 1174). To put it simply, representations inform people’s understandings of cities (Shields 1991, 1996). So, for example, a common trait in many of the interviews held with locals in Castlefield and El Raval at the beginning of this study was a self-reflexive perception of the historical and touristic unworthiness of their neighbourhood. As a Castlefield tourist guide states, before the regeneration there was a general disbelief by Manchester’s citizens that Castlefield’s or Manchester’s built environment could offer anything valuable for outsiders:
When I used to say in 1980 that I’m a tourist guide, I’ve had people fall over with laughing! ‘Tourist guide’! What do we want one of those for in Manchester? There’s nothing here.
