In the foreword to Touching from a Distance (© Deborah Curtis, 1995)
Jon Savage describes Manchester then as 'an environment
systematically degraded by industrial revolution, confined by
lowering moors, with oblivion as the only escape.' At the time others
saw Manchester as a closed city where, as you walked around the dark
streets, the houses all seemed to look the same.

Unknown Pleasures, released in the summer of 1979, defined not only
the city of Manchester but a moment of social change. Writer Chris
Bohn asserts that Joy Division 'recorded the corrosive effect on the
individual of a time squeezed between the collapse into impotence of
traditional Labour humanism and the impending cynical victory of
Conservatism.' (Quoted in Ibid, p12).

I haven't been to Manchester recently, however, I suspect it's like
most other cities in the UK. I tend to agree with Darren and see the
city I live in as also a 'lifeless facade of pretensiousness. Hollow
and without any real substance.'