Manchester: Re-inventing the local-global in the peri-urban city-region

Abstract

Some of the most populous parts of England are neither urban nor rural, but somewhere in between: a new kind of peri-urban landscape emerging in the fringes and hinterlands of cities and city-regions. Such peri-urban areas reflect both a more networked, mobile, globalised society, and also one which increasingly values local character and quality of life. The Manchester city region is one of these areas, a poly-centric agglomeration of several large towns and cities, between which an extensive peri-urban zone flows, linking them together like a form of connective tissue.