Stoke-on-Trent is an unsettled place, figuratively and literally. The ground under the city is riddled with shafts from coal and ironstone mining. Some of its most beautiful buildings are propped up by metal supports to prevent subsidence and the council once worried that homes earmarked for demolition would instead demolish themselves, collapsing into the mines below. The ceramics industry has retreated, leaving a moonscape where pottery kilns used to fill the city with smoke and glow.
When I visited Stoke as a housing reporter in 2011, shortly after the demise of the housing market renewal programme, it was clear that the city felt abandoned by all politicians. There were families stranded, living in streets full of boarded-up homes that were one week due for demolition and the next left without a plan. Residents frowned angrily as they talked of what ‘they’ (the special pronoun reserved for people in power) were planning to do next with Stoke.
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