The Rentier City: Manchester and the Making of the Neoliberal Metropolis

by Isaac Rose

How did Manchester became the poster-child of neoliberal urbanisation, and what can the people that live there do about it?

As the crane capital of Europe, Manchester's transformation since the financial crisis has been profound. Capital has flooded into the city, transforming its skyline and rocketing rents. At the same time, it remains a city of stark inequalities – home to some of the poorest wards in the country. Yet this didn’t come out of nowhere. Rather, its roots lie in the long story of the city’s political journey since the 1980s, and the defeat of municipal socialism and the embrace of urban entrepreneurialism which saw Manchester become the model neoliberal city.

In The Rentier City , tenant organiser Isaac Rose traces the contemporary history of Manchester, examining how and why it became the poster-child for neoliberal development. Exploring the cultural commodification that Manchester pioneered in its pursuit of the "creative class" and the rise of the rentier, Rose lays bare the results of this experiment. Tracking the triumphs and failures of those who have sought to fight back, he shows us what life is like for those who make a home in the shadow of the towers.

Bursting the bubble of the boosters and giving renters a toolkit for reclaiming their homes, communities and cities from Big Capital, The Rentier City punctures the hypocrisies that surround the "Manchester miracle", showing how everyone can fight back against rising rents, gentrification and the financialisaton of the places they live.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Politics

326 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2024

Reviews

[Hector Norris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fire. I saw Isaac Rose speak about it twice in Manchester, once with a Q and A with some of the tenants union figures who appear towards the end of the book, and knew I had to read it. It presents an incredibly rich and radical history of housing in Manchester and its many crises, repetitions and discontinuities. It is also a very effective argument that Manchester has become the model city for the housing crisis and its engineered manifestation in the UK.

Rose paints a clear picture of Manchester’s organisation throughout its history, both the changes brought upon it from the top down (for better and worse at different stages in its history) and the responses and resistances of its inhabitants. This is interwoven with interview excerpts of residents, impressions of the city from literature, and academic theories of gentrification and urban planning.

The most testing part of the book is the middle third, on the urban left, but this is perhaps the most important in understanding the changes to the city that bring us to our current destination: a city with a seemingly left wing council and mayorship that has abandoned the postwar commitment to social housing and largely handed over its powers to private capital. The section closely follows the ways in which this has come about, first through force from neoliberal Thatcherite policy which was resisted as much as possible, and then through acceptance and entrepreneurship by the council, seeing private partnership as the only way out of the city’s many problems brought about by deindustrialisation. It was only less engaging to me because it was about policy which tends to send me to sleep, but in context with the extremely readable but tragic final third it is indispensable.

Reading this has given me a much greater understanding of a city I am not from and have only lived in for a year. I had half expected it to make me feel more uneasy about my place in it, but it’s tone and its tone is such that I feel more inclined to join the tenants union than to sulk. Maybe I will.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in draft form, but was much more impressed with it reading it as a finished book; the title does it a slight disservice. This is really three cleverly interlinked books, one on working class resistance to (and sometimes alliance with) bourgeois Manchester in the city's industrial age; one on the New Left's response to the collapse of the industrial city; and the third on the mutation of that New Left into the ruling cadre of a ruthless, brutally unequal city built largely on property development. It is beautifully written with a cold Brechtian irony, and a refusal of sentimentality that goes alongside the excavation of some still very inspiring political moments for some very dark times. A major achievement.

[Polly Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone who rents in Manchester - we do not live in this city, we consume it

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm from Manchester, so I was interested in adding to my knowledge (and anger) at the state of the city today. Rose does a very good job at that and I definitely learned a lot of new things here. A lot of information is packed into this book, primarily focusing on central Manchester and inner-city areas such as Hulme and Moss Side.

Rose presents a theory of the rise of the rentier class and its emergence from industrialisation and the urban squalor that it created, towards its temporary 'death' from housing regulations, improvements to sanitation, slum clearances and ambitious, yet flawed, housing projects in both the inter-war and post-war projects. Now, in the age of the Manchester Model, the consequences of neoliberalism and the financialisation of housing have brought about the return of the rentier class.

Although Manchester is not unique in this phenomenon, I think using the city as the focal point works because of how the city has become this strange phenomenon over the past few decades. Other cities today are trying to emulate this, as if they're desperately trying to catch up on something that is clearly failing everyone but rich investors and landlords. I think Rose also helps demonstrate that the radicalism of the city was juxtaposed with the immense wealth of the city (mostly built from the slave trade and the Empire) - there is nothing 'innate' about this city in that regard. Still, the moments of radicalism and community organising are inspiring at times, but their losses and displacements are heart-breaking to read.

Very engaging and full of fascinating insights into Manchester's history and current struggles today. Recommended for people who already have an awareness of the state of things in Manchester (and other northern cities) today who want to learn about how we got into this mess and how people have always responded (positively and negatively) to these spatial shifts. This book leaves you with a sense of hope and awareness that this situation won't last forever and ideally, something better will be built on the ruins of Urban Splash.

[Oscar Jelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally good. The first two parts provide essential historical background, but it's in the third part (focused on the last thirty years or so) that the book really comes into its own - a granular analysis of the way that the great city of Manchester is being used as a 'growth machine' by a small but powerful class of property developers and landlords, with poorer working-class people routinely dispossessed by schemes for 'urban regeneration' that are sometimes bungled anyway. Very Manchester-specific, but with obvious implications for other cities where similar things are happening. A very angry book written in a precise and dispassionate way, and an object lesson in how to think critically about the place where you live.

[Steven R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of Manchester and Rentierism. The middle section on Modernism from above and below is very good and paints the city in a very different light. This makes the revelations of modern clearances in the final section even more devastating as the multicultural working class Manchester is bulldozed and replaced with student accommodation, built to rent apartment buildings, and car parks.

The idea of the rent gap is very useful for understanding gentrification and I have come away with a far better understanding of the forces shaping the modern British city than I had before.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional, and depressing. We are truly only able to combat the forces and brutality described in this book by organising, so join your local tenant's union!

[Martin Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply superb. One for everyone who has ever had the indignity of renting, in Manchester or in any other British city, and wants to understand how the right imposed such an unsustainable model of housing on the working class. Eloquent and funny, this is a book of our times. Let's hope it leads to a fight for social housing and renewed cities for people, not profits.

[Gregor Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saw Isaac at a promotional event in Edinburgh to launch this book - fast forward a year or so and I was moving to Manchester. I picked this book up upon leaving Edinburgh knowing it would be a great introudction to the city, It did not disappoint.

This book's primary focus is housing, but many other aspects or urbanism are woven in. it's in a chronological format - the beginning discusses Manchester's Industrial heritage, leading into the first suburbs, a deep dive into the many slum clearances, unmasking the 'Manchester Model', impact of national policy, historiographies of minorities and the influence of wider Labour and Tory leadership on development in the city. There is also some light urban theory and discussions of recent housing research around inequalities - good if you're a student of the built environment.

This all combines to create a solid explainer of why Manchester looks the way it does. It's been great to walk around with new eyes on the skyscraper-laden centre, and to have a guidebook that's acted as a sort of grounding agent for a frightened rat in a new busy urban space.

Added bonus is a hyper-awareness of my role as part of the gentrification wave.

[Corey Schuck]

"The forces of the state have been deployed over a period of decades to engineer a housing crisis. The relative weight of build-to-rent and corporate landlordism is greatest here [in Manchester] and set only to increase as more rental apartments come online over the following decade. The city has become a byword for cynical accumulation by dispossession - and it prefigures the wider transformation of our cities over the coming decades, should the broad balance of class forces remain as they are."

"If they continue to not spend any money in the area, leave it to look like a rubbish tip, it gives them a reason to blight the area and say look at the state of it. It's going to have to go, we are building all these swazzy properties that are going to be x number of hundred thousand pounds and these are the type of people you're going to move in. And it doesn't really matter that you have a community spirit, it doesn't really matter whether it affects you mentally if you are carted out of your home. There has to be change and there has to be development, but it's not necessary that it has to be at the price of completely ripping an existing community apart."

[Sam Evaskitas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An all too brief tour of 2 centuries of history of Manchester and it's working class residents' battles for livable and affordable housing against the overwhelming forces of capital. Rose makes skilled use of the literature around this continuing struggle. Some choice contrasting quotes lead each chapter, revealing the disconnect between city leaders and the people they claim to represent, while the regeneration hype machine is deflated with solid analysis of the numbers including the chaos of rapidly increasing rents and the rent-gap economics they drive. Worth a read for anyone interested in housing (it should be in everyone's interest), or living in or with connections to Manchester.

[Max Feng · Rating 5 out of 5]

really really enjoyable read. well-written, concise, well-chosen use of language/vocabulary?
super interesting!