Mapping Residential Differentiation in Nineteenth Century Manchester

Emily Chung , University of Cambridge

Nineteenth-century cities in Britain have developed along the ‘slums and suburbs’ model, characterized by stark geographic segregation and class inequality. Industrial Manchester serves as a quintessential case study, yet the reliance of urban historians on qualitative sources has compromised the precision and comprehensiveness of this area of research. Recent developments in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the digitization of historical documents have created new opportunities for studies of the city and its patterns of segregation. This paper presents the development of a geodemographic methodology used to visualize residential differentiation at an unprecedentedly specific scale for this period — that of the building. This approach makes use of individual-level data from the 1851-1901 censuses of England from the Integrated Census Microdata database in conjunction with cadastral and commercial maps of Manchester in this period. Using occupational variables from the census coded through HISCO, a set of class clusters are defined and subsequently mapped onto the urban landscape. The results of this process illustrate patterns — and lack thereof — of residential differentiation and occupational structure, which consequently undermine traditional assumptions about class dynamics in Manchester and highlight the importance of a scale-specific analysis of urban segregation.

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 Presented in Session 59. Migration and Spatial Dynamics over Time and Space