The Lowry Outlet Mall, Salford Quays...

I’d planned to spend the day at Old Trafford football ground, attending seminars about ‘website optimisation’ and ‘developing an online presence’. But the moment I arrived, and collected my delegate’s badge, I felt out of place amongst the stands offering hi-tech ‘business to business solutions’. Plan B was to escape from Old Trafford and spend a few hours photographing Salford Quays instead.

Signs point the way - to the Lowry Centre, the Imperial War Museum North, the Lowry Outlet Mall, etc - though I’d swear that one or two of the signs were pointing the wrong way. No matter... you can see these iconic buildings from wherever you are.

The only people who might get disorientated are those who used to live and work around Salford Docks... which is what The Quays used to be until this grandiose scheme was planned and realised. This is urban regeneration on a vast scale, though the docks haven’t been regenerated - building-by-building, or street-by-street - so much as re-imagined entirely. Salford Docks were wiped clean off the map, leaving just the Manchester Ship Canal, along with its spurs and canal basins. The rebuilding began in 1985.

According to their effusive website (written, no doubt, by people who’ve attended seminars on writing online ‘copy’), the Quays create a “wonderful mix of culture, retail and leisure around a continually evolving waterfront destination”. ‘Retail‘ and ‘leisure‘ are almost synonymous in this brave new world of waterfront living and “world class” urban regeneration. However you won’t find anything as common as a shop at Salford Quays, just the sprawling ‘outlet mall’.

It’s a soulless place, as most of these grand urban gestures tend to be; even on a sunny day in May there were few people about. ‘Signature’ buildings overlook windswept concourses, offering ‘exclusive waterside apartments‘ for well-heeled people prepared to pay a premium to live in close proximity to the Manchester Ship Canal. Like the stately homes of previous centuries, they are meant to be admired... and viewed from afar.

The effect of wandering around this “leisure destination” was curiously uninvolving. I wondered what L S Lowry (whose name was requisitioned for the project) would make of it all. He would have painted it, I’m sure. Instead of being dwarfed by the old mills of Salford, belching smoke from mill chimneys, his stick figures would scuttle around The Quays, being dwarfed by office blocks, retail outlets and city lofts.

Having wandered around taking pictures, I fancied a pint and a sit down. As the website suggests (“from smart restaurants to trendy cafes and friendly bars”) there’s nothing as common as a pub at The Quays either. I settled for a glass of Stella in a ‘diner and bar‘ offering a panoramic view of cranes and building sites. I realised what the euphemistic phrase “continually evolving” actually meant: “it looks like a building site”.

Access is never straightforward in these private/public places. As I was photographing the Victoria Harbour Building, my tripod-mounted camera attracted the attention of a ‘community policeman’. He mentioned “privacy laws” and said “they” weren’t too keen on photographers wandering around the Quays, without specifying who “they” might be. I suggested he should wait until I’d broken an actual law, and not just a fantasy law he’d made up.

The official line seems rather different: on the website’s home page is a photographic competition called Capturing The Quays. Winners will get "an ‘all expenses paid for’ weekend at The Quays and the opportunity for their image to be used to promote The Quays around the world"...