IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Commercial urban vacancy and the decline or transformation of landmark retail environments pose significant challenges for contemporary cities, particularly in post-industrial contexts shaped by repeated cycles of economic and spatial restructuring. This paper argues that interiors expertise offers a critical yet underutilised perspective for addressing these challenges within broader urban discourse. While urban design, architecture, and planning commonly frame vacancy at the scale of streets, buildings, or districts, interiors knowledge is frequently confined to individual commissions and consequently marginalised in strategic thinking about city-making. This oversight has contributed to the perception of existing building fabric, especially in industrialised cities, as a liability rather than a latent asset, though recent shifts in policy and practice suggest emerging change. The research draws on a systematic survey of contemporary and historical ‘vision’ documents, alongside planning, policy, and heritage guidelines, to trace how vacancy and reuse have been conceptualised over time. This documentary analysis is aligned with ongoing empirical work that records commercial vacancy as an inventory of urban symptoms in the post-crisis city. Building on this foundation, the project proposes the development of 2D, 3D, and 4D representational strategies to spatialise vacancy and interiors potential across temporal and urban scales. The first phase of the research has resulted in a peer-reviewed paper which established the conceptual and methodological framework. The concluding phase extends this work through the production of physical and digital models of vacant retail units, drawing on traditions of the miniature, tableau and perspective machines. These models operate as speculative tools, demonstrating how interiors-led thinking can inform adaptive reuse strategies and contribute meaningfully to discussions on the future shaping of cities.