Urban Transformations Research Cluster

The urban transformations research cluster brings together researchers who have carried out numerous projects on:

  • changes taking place in cities (notably in areas of urban regeneration)
  • identity, experience and sensation
  • popular cultural forms and practices
  • regulatory processes
  • networks and flows

These various approaches intersect through collective and individual research projects to foster an interdisciplinary approach to the scholarly investigation of urban transformation.

In the context of globalising processes and flows, we aim to identify historical processes of urban transformation and spatial and cultural variations between different cities, including postcolonial and post-socialist cities. This work is producing new critical insights and ways of theorising the city, informing policy and creative practices, and provides a dynamic basis for the MISST Masters programme in The Contemporary City.

Urban regeneration and city branding

Research in this area critically explores:

  • the effects of regeneration upon social exclusion in housing markets and consumption practices
  • the knowledge-economy relationship and the rise of the creative industries
  • the use of GIS techniques to identify the re-distribution of poverty
  • selective notions of creativity and forms of cultural capital
  • development policies in cities of the South of England
  • the tension between the local and global in place promotion.

The ESRC-funded project on Housing and Urban Research is currently underway.

Urban identities

Our research focuses on

  • the expressive spatialisation of class identity in the city
  • ways in which different subcultural and managerial groups contest space
  • the emergence of particular cosmopolitan and ethnic identities in the city
  • the gender and sexual politics of urban change
  • the application of queer theory to the city
  • contemporary urban migration
  • practices of religious groups.

The Institute is working with Urbis, Manchester's museum of city life, across these areas to explore potential collaborative projects.

Feeling and experiencing the city

MISST members are investigating the ways in which the city is sensed and affectively experienced. Accordingly, research has examined how the city is apprehended through movement and rhythm, as well as through a range of tactile, olfactory and aural sensation. Other work has focused upon the memoried nature of the urban realm, the spectrality of the city, the flow of matter into and through the city and the relationships, sensations and aesthetics this produces. The Institute hosts a two-day ESRC-funded seminar on Mobility, Rhythm and the Senses in the City in 2008.

Urban cultural forms and practices in the city

The Institute is building upon the work of Manchester Institute for Popular Culture in developing research around the production and consumption of popular music, football, fashion and TV drama in Manchester and beyond. This focus also encompasses the study of forms of vernacular creativity, the experience of heritage and tourism, and subcultural and suburban cultural practices. These themes serve as the focus for the MISST conference in 2007, Everyday Life in the Global City.

Regulating the city

One process that has been transforming our cities has been an intensified regulation of urban life and space. Accordingly, research has focused upon the contestations between different groups over the meanings and uses of particular spaces of regeneration and who might be marginalised by such strategies. This work includes examining the urban politics of regulation and more recently, the ways in which the governance of terrorism and risk is emerging. This work is linked to the British Sociological Association's Urban Theory and Research study group.