The City of Manchester: Why so shunned ?

[WNRH]

It's a great place to live but a shit place to visit. All you can do in Manchester when visiting is drink and go to the football.

The rainy city tag has stuck, it's not rained too much this winter and when it does all you hear even from locals is "raining in manchester, shock".

We get less rain than most major cities around the world but it always rains in Manchester.

I've been to alot of cities around Europe and there are all very much the same. We will never be a New York, London or Paris so we should never aspire to be but we are a good city in our own right.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree we shouldn't aspire to be NYC/London etc and I don't think we do. We are very much our own place. This city has achieved so much over the years it's unbelievable. There was a similar thread some time ago about Manchester and someone listed all the firsts/discoveries/inventions etc and the list would have made a small European nation proud, let alone a city.

I'll see if I can dig it out. Proper good post it were.

 

[johnmc]

Lack of bonafide tourist attractions. There are some fantastic buildings don't get me wrong but there is nothing that someone in a far fetched country would want to come to see. There is the football which a lot of people come for (mainly the rags) and a lot from elsewhere in the country come for the nightlife on things like stag and hen do's.

Also, I dont think enough has been made of what we do have here. If you go to most major cities the river is the focal point - I've been London, Paris, Prague, Dublin, Budapest, New York etc etc. All of them have their river at central to where a lot goes on. Restaurants and bars line the Senne, the Danube, the Liffey etc. They all have bridges over that are famous, interesting, historical or both. They all have boat cruises taking passengers on site seeing tours or just commuting. Obvious it is too late for this to change and the Irwell marks a boundary as such of Manchester and Salford for the most part.

If you look at the canal though and areas like Deansgate locks and Canal street, it just shows how the most popular places usually have water nearby.

 

[pominoz]

I left Manchester 26 years ago and every return visit reinforces that i made the right decision. Don't get me wrong it is a great place to visit, but after 2-3 weeks, i am ready to move on.

I always say it is a great place to have come from, but live there?, no thanks.

 

[ell]

I know Im biased but I have never been to another place in the UK better than Manchester I love it. I also detest London so find it amazing when players want to move over there

 

[AlgarveBlu]

I just got back last week (Have been going on and off for the last 20 years) and I'm still on a downer from being back home... Christmas Market was a great effort by all...I thought the restaurants on a whole were very good and the chat in the pubs were tops (I go to London in equal measures and there's no comparison on the friendliness side)...

Alwasy brings a smile to my face seeing the girls in the shortest skirts in Europe when the pemperature is -2 outside...

Good do with a pint of original Hyde in the Greyhound just thinking about it :-( at least the weather is warmer here...

 

[Chrisja1000]

I think even Brummie's consider Manchester the 2nd city!!

 

[Irwell]

Below is a list of the populations in the following council districts.
London isn't in there because it covers so many different boroughs.

Birmingham 1,074,300
Leeds 750,700
Sheffield 551,800
Bradford 523,100
Manchester 502,900
Liverpool 465,700

Manchester is third behind London and Brum when you include Salford and other outlying towns in the figure

So you are saying that Manchester is only the borough itself and so is smaller than some other cities, but as London would be one of the smallest cities in the country by that measure you are letting London cover 32 boroughs? This being despite the fact that this measure of London contains another city (Westminster) and this measure of Manchester doesn't contain all the city centre (Chapel Street)?

What a city offers to people who live there is usually fairly directly proportional to the number of people living within the areas of the urban area that are economically dependent on the centre. These are what the EU and UK Government call "primary urban areas" and are widely used as definitions of a city for economic purposes. At the 2001 census the populations of the PUAs with populations above 500,000 were:

London - 8,294,058
Birmingham - 2,293,099
Manchester - 1,741,961
Liverpool - 830,112
Newcastle - 794,500
Nottingham - 667,218
Sheffield - 656,160
Leeds - 596,027
Bristol - 558,566

Since then Manchester has been the fastest growing urban area outside London by a significant margin, as can be seen by the local authority populations from the 2011 census. PUA figures for 2011 should be available within the next 12 months.

 

[laserblue]

You can fly to more places from Manchester than any other place in the UK.

I'm afraid this is a myth Rasc. Apart from flights to many destinations from Manchester being only seasonally operated, Manchester Airport claims many destinations which you can't get to directly. Heathrow, on the other hand, lists only those destinations with direct flights from Heathrow.

As an example. Minsk (Belarus) can only be reached from Manchester via places like Milan or Paris but is classed as a destination. Heathrow doesn't count Minsk as a destination because you'd have to change in Hanover or Amsterdam. Better still, Manchester counts Kavala (Greece) as a destination even though you'd have to make two connections, in Athens and, er, Heathrow. Despite having to make just the one connection in Athens Heathrow doesn't consider Kavala as a destination.

 

[Anonymous]

best city in the UK.

it's better to live near it than an inner city estate though.

so everyone else can fuck off.