Dislocation and Uncertainty in East Manchester: The Legacy of the Commonwealth Games

Abstract

In 2002, the Commonwealth Games were championed as a win-win solution for Manchester. The sporting event would bring worldwide attention and investment to the city and offer a unique opportunity to kick start social regeneration, transforming the fortunes of some of Manchester's poorest neighbourhoods. This paper explores experiences of urban change, from the perspective of long-standing residents in the neighbourhoods of Beswick and Openshaw, which lie in East Manchester. Despite promises of legacy, these localities remain dislocated from the rest of the city and the future continues to be defined by uncertainty by the area's residents. In order to understand some of the tensions and difficulties that arise in projects of urban transformation we need to pay attention to the practical ways in which people make relationships to place ( Massey 1995 , 2001 ) which tend to be erased in dominant narratives about ‘legacy’. It argues that we must go beyond drawing simple conclusions of the ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ implications of regeneration processes in order to investigate the social effects of urban change for local populations.