This was interesting from Mike Emmerich about the ‘institutional hole’ at the heart of Manchester. He contrasts Manchester to Cambridge where “the number of places in which people who want to get involved in the city can bump into each other, at lectures, at dinners, at conferences, at business summits, at community this and community that is extraordinary compared to a city of this size”. In Manchester he says that “it’s hard to know where to meet people and do really interesting stuff on most nights of the week”. He suggests this is a lasting consequence of deindustrialisation even after the city has otherwise been rebuilt economically.