The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part IV: Tactical Filters
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Doreen Massey
lishment of Bagguley Sanatorium (for the treatment of tuberculosis) was a
testament to “the healthy, non-polluted air” south of the Mersey. 6 From the
very beginning of plans for the estate, smoke control was insisted on, as was
low-density housing and preserving trees and ponds from the area’s previous
incarnation. The vision was both social and physical. Alf Morris, longserving
Labour MP for Wythenshawe, recalled his first visit, in 1936, when
building had begun: “Even now I can still vividly recall the striking contrast
between the old Manchester and the new. After what seemed a
marathon journey, I was amazed by what I saw. It was summer and sunlit.
This new Manchester was green and pleasant, spacious and memorable.” 7
Wythenshawe is green and spacious still; the clarity of the air, the
freshness of the (constant) breeze still strike me each time I arrive.
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But other embodied social practices today make of this place something
rather different. Practices more daily and more micro level in their encounter.
The place goes on being made. That open spaciousness of the fresh
air can be closed down in a myriad of daily ways. Because of public-sector
cutbacks, paving stones are broken, or tip at angles that crisscross each
other. It makes for a bumpy wheelchair ride, hard on frail and aching bones.
It’s a mini version of the Alps if you’re not steady on your feet. And it restricts
your field of spatiality. You (my father, say) have to keep your eyes
down as you walk. The spatiality of the very ordinary practice of walking to
the shops is utterly transformed. And with it, your construction of this
place. Your knowledge of it shifts. You don’t look up to see the trees, or walk
briskly through the bracing air: you’re having to concentrate on your feet.
Your spatiality is closed down. Place is experienced, known, and thus made
by embodied practices such as these.
But “one place” can be known in numerous ways. There are daily
battles over the physical appropriation of space and place: sometimes hostile,
sometimes just mutual maneuverings to find an acceptable compromise.
Children on bikes and skateboards claim the freedom of the streets and
pavements—and make going out a hazardous adventure. My father devised
a spatial tactic, never walking in the middle of the pavement but always to
one side (the inside edge was best)—that way you know which side of you
the bikes will go. Skateboards may embody “countercultural practices,”
but they can also enable acts of spatial appropriation from others. Differentiated
demands on space come into conflict; differential spatial powers
confront each other on the streets. And sometimes that confrontation is
more clearly hostile: public seats are vandalized, in despair the bowling