ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century cultural geography has been fascinated with fantasies of urban order, with forms of situated subjectivity or with the constitution of and conflict over behaviour in specific spaces. During the nineteenth century, the underlying physical geography of the city formed the base for cartographic imaginaries. As the city spread, for example, the extended valley of the River Irk which wound north-eastwards from the centre, and Medlock Valley which ran east–west to the south of the centre, became recognised locations of deteriorating housing, falling away to the river itself. Housing was by far the most important preoccupation of social reformers from the 1840s through to the 1890s. Prior to this, there was a tendency to concentrate on the state of the street, but the reduction in the number of unpaved and unsewered streets, and the deterioration in the housing stock shifted the focus.
