The Mancunian Way: Manc-hattan 2100 A.D.

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Here's the Mancunian Way for today:

Hello,

The changing face of Manchester city centre is a running theme in this newsletter. But you have to admit, it is endlessly fascinating to see vast modern towers shooting up from the floor of a once shabby post-industrial city.

To celebrate ‘Skyscraper Appreciation Day’ (yes, it’s a real thing), Adobe partnered with landscape photographer Andrea Asteria to imagine how the city could look in 2100.

As our chief reporter Neal Keeling writes, the resulting AI image could be a ‘city of the future from a 1960s Eagle comic through which American superheroes weave. A place where towers dominate and thousands of tiny lights shine’.

It doesn't represent current plans, but rather provides a snapshot into what the future could look like. Interesting stuff.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll be looking at the local ban on asylum seeker accommodation which could be lifted, why police are being investigated over a fatal fire and a very lovely tribute to Corrie’s Gail Platt. Let’s begin.

As the government tries to cut the use of asylum seeker hotels and begins to move people onto the Bibby Stockholm barge (and then off again), a row is brewing over accommodation here in Manchester.

It looks as though a ban on housing asylum seekers in north Manchester - agreed in a deal made more than 20 years ago - could now be lifted.

The moratorium on asylum seeker accommodation in the M8, M9 and M40 postcodes was put in place during the last Labour government. But local democracy reporter Joseph Timan has