From a sprawling listed building whose occupiers say they’ll pursue the city council to the European courts, to a poky night shelter run by rough sleepers for rough sleepers directly opposite the Town Hall, to the stately rococo Hippodrome Theatre, there are now half-a- dozen prominent squats open across the UK’s second-largest city Manchester.
Citing police figures showing 40 squat evictions across the last three years, Manchester’s pugnacious grassroots media are talking about “an explosion” in squatting. Visiting two very different occupied spaces shows how our urban topographies are mutating under intense the pressure.
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