When I was a planning officer in Manchester in the 1980s, my patch included Moss Side. It is a neighbourhood of two halves.

On one side is the Alexandra Park estate, built in the 1970s, and on the other the Victorian terraced streets north of Manchester City’s old Maine Road football ground.

Back in the 80s, a few years after the riots, neither was quite as bad as their reputations suggested. But they were not far off. As planning officers, we were told to do site visits in pairs.

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