Camilla Lewis is a Research Associate in the Sociology Department at the University of ManchesterJessica Symons is an Urban Anthropologist at the University of Manchester

• Foreword by Kevin WardIntroduction: tackling the urban through ethnography – Camilla Lewis and Jessica SymonsPart I: Realising urban organisations1 Inclusion without incorporation: re-imagining Manchester through a new politics of environment – Hannah Knox2 Nurturing an emergent city: parade making as a cultural trope for urban policy – Jessica Symons3 Lounge Manchester: the new politics of loungification – Damian O’DohertyPart II: Realising urban spaces4 Under the surface of the village: public and private negotiations of urban space in Manchester – Michael Atkins5 Making and enabling the commons: shared urban spaces and civic engagement in North Manchester – Luciana Lang6 Urban futures and competing trajectories for Manchester city centre – Elisa PieriPart III: Realising urban communities7 Urban transformation in football: from Manchester United as a ‘global leisure brand’ to FC United as a ‘community club’ – George Poulton8 ‘People want jobs, they want a life!’ Deindustrialisation and loss in East Manchester – Camilla Lewis9 ‘Don’t call the police on me, I won’t call them on you’: self-policing as ethical development in North Manchester – Katherine SmithAfterword: the tension in making and realising a city – Jessica SymonsSelect bibliographyIndex

'The city always reinvents itself. Manchester’s contemporary playbook of this script is famously shaped by a new mayoral governance of the city region. But in the shadow of the grand plans, in the interstices of political drivers and economic imperatives, social invention driven by necessity and creativity generates alternative cities. Through vivid ethnographic snapshots that range from the new city commons to the emergent urbanism of the twenty-first century lounge this volume provides unique insights into the new Manchester and a vindication of the ongoing value of contemporary ethnographic scholarship.’Professor Michael Keith is Director of COMPAS, Co-ordinator of Urban Transformations (The ESRC portfolio of investments and research on cities), and Co-Director of the University of Oxford Future of Cities programme