Mapping Manchester project

Introduction
We are researching the complex cartographic histories of Manchester. The aim is to understand the nature of cartographic representations, how they are enrolled in managing complex urban practices, and their work in envisioning the city and city life. Some of the core themes that interest us include:

mapping engaged to plan and manage 'hidden' urban infrastructures like water supply and sewage disposal,
mapping enrolled to imagines future urban developments and provides rhetorical tools to promote new planning strategies,
mapping that is fun and playful,
mapping for governing people and policing their behaviour and moral character,
mapping in everyday contexts, for all manner of mundane tasks,
mapping as part of scientific inscription practices that seek to make 'problems' of city management soluable (e.g., health, pollution, etc).

Through the first half of 2009 we did primary research in various archives and map collections in Manchester to develop the themes for an informative and intellectually-driven public exhibition, Mapping Manchester. Research is now continuing and more cartographic materials are being gathered for several academic and popular articles and a comprehensive book in the near future. We hope the book will appeal to several audiences - those interested in Manchester, in the nature of mapping and visual representation and how urban histories are made real through certain representations that circulate and work in the world. The research is certainly turning up a range of fascinating maps and plans.

Who is involved
The research is being undertaken by Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge, within the Department of Geography, University of Manchester. The research is also benefiting from the help of two experienced professional cartographers (Graham Bowden and Nick Scarle) in the Cartographic Unit at the University of Manchester and ready access to the largest map library in the region in the John Rylands Library which is helpfully staffed by librarians Morag Robson and Donna Pope.

Research is presently drawing on the major historical resources available within Manchester City Council's Central Library in their Archives and Local Studies sections, Chetham's Library, as well as the vast collection in the John Rylands University Library.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome, please email Martin at m.dodge (at) manchester.ac.uk.

Major outputs

Public exhibition Mapping Manchester: Cartographic Stories of the City. Rylands Library, Deansgate, 24th June 2009 - 28th March 2010:

Brief details on the exhibition are given on this promotional leaflet;

An exhibition e-catalogue gives much more information including a full listing of items on display and also reproductions of a range of the maps and plans from the exhibition;

Version of the exhibition e-catalogue with higher resolution images (warning, this pdf is 30 meg in size);
Online exhibition created on the Rylands Library website;

Some of the press coverage of the exhibition: Manchester Evening News, 26/06/09 and 26/08/09; The Guardian, 26/08/09; Daily Mirror, 27/08/09 (scan of the printed article); Daily Express, 27/08/09; The Sun, 27/08/09;

Much of the media interest in August about the exhibition focused on a Soviet era 'invasion' map of Manchester. You can download a scanned image of the central portion of this map from here. Scans of the 4 map sheets that cover the whole Manchester area can be browsed on the Rylands Library Luna image portal. (You can also buy your own reproduction courtesy of the cartographers at the University of Southampton.)

Papers and articles:

Maps, Memories and Manchester: The Cartographic Imagination of the Hidden Networks of the Hydraulic City. Paper presented at Mapping, Memory and the City: An International Interdisciplinary Conference, at the University of Liverpool, 25th February 2010.
Mapping Manchester and its Hidden Hydraulic Engineering. A short article published in the professional magazine, Civil Engineering Surveyor.
Mapping the Imagined Futurity: The Roles of Visual Representation in the 1945 City of Manchester Plan. A draft paper submitted to the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library (11th April 2010).

Cartographic resources on Manchester:

Manchester ship canal maps, plans and cartoons,
Manchester waterworks maps and plans (coming soon)
Manchester city historical directory mapping sequence (coming soon)
The City of Manchester Plan, 1945 (coming soon)
................

A small sample of Manchester maps featured in the exhibition.


Time Zone Map, 1914. Produced by Manchester City Council tramways department. (Courtesy of Manchester City Archives and Local Studies Library)		Small portion of a detailed housing condition map. It was published in this book: T.R. Marr, Housing Conditions in Manchester and Salford (1904, Sherratt & Hughes at the University Press). You can browse a nice scan of the full map usefully layered onto Google Maps base from here. The full text of Marr's book is also available from the Internet Archive.		The Drink Map of Manchester, 1889. (Courtesy of Manchester Geographical Society)

Last update: 19th April 2010.

Copyright: Creative Commons license.
Mapping Manchester webpage and materials by Martin Dodge is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 United Kingdom License.