Vast raised freeways would have been carved through swathes of Manchester had 1960s town planners had their way, new research has revealed.

Enormous concrete motorways would have sailed over the city under a masterplan that never came to fruition.

The network of highways – modelled on the freeway system in Los Angeles – would have extended out from the Mancunian Way , cutting through Hulme , Moss Side and Longsight in an inter-linking ‘spiders web’ of roads.

Academics at Manchester University have unearthed sketches showing how the freeways, part of the 1960s SELNEC plan, would have looked as they bulldozed their way through the south of the city.

They show a raised motorway cutting down Grafton Street – now at the heart of the university and hospital district – to meet another huge raised road on the footprint of Upper Brook Street, complete with huge American-style intersections.

Lloyd Street North in Hulme, which runs parallel with Oxford Road, would also have been a raised freeway.

Pictures: Some of the plans for Manchester from the 1960s

Dr James Hopkins, the university’s historian, said it was the equivalent of having lots of Mancunian Ways criss-crossing over the south of the city.

“The Mancunian Way is left as this kind of marooned bit of motorway that was intended to be the central spine running through the city - and going out in a kind of spider’s web of motorways that would whisk people from the outlying districts into the city,” he said.

“It was intended to create a kind of freeway system that cities like Los Angeles have. They were looking at North America to see what had happened there.”

The network was part of SELNEC – the South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire masterplan for motorways right across Greater Manchester.

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Each part of the conurbation was studied in detail by planners who saw Princess Parkway, built in the 1920s and also inspired by American planners, as just the start of a much bigger project.

“The next generation was these big concrete structures that cut through and were more about efficiency than anything else,” added Dr Hopkins.

Some of the roads would have been raised up like the Mancunian Way, but others would have been ‘cut in’ to the ground.

It never came off, however, partly because of the huge cost – £300m in 1962 – and the feat of engineering required.

Had it been built, Manchester would look very different today.

“It would have involved wholesale reconfiguration of the street network of Manchester,” said Dr Hopkins.

“That level of destruction was already happening – in the clearance plan around the university, rows and rows of houses were destroyed.

“Huge numbers of people were displaced as part of that plan, so that’s what was going on anyway.

“But the highway plan would have meant that the environment we have now south of the city would have been radically different.”

The M.E.N. revealed last year how a separate vision – drawn up at about the same time by the university – would have linked up huge parts of Hulme and Ardwick with raised walkways, part of a utopian dream to link students with the surrounding neighbourhoods.

That didn’t happen either, partly because all of the plans were being drawn up separately – and everyone was waiting for someone else to agree their own.

Meanwhile fashions were changing.

While planners in the 1960s wanted to build things simply on the grounds of efficiency – regardless, often, of ugliness – in the years that followed people started to become more concerned about how that made cities feel for people who lived there.

“In the 60s they were just really intent on using these theories and models of town planning to make cities efficient,” Dr Hopkins added.

“Often it was hugely numerical – rather than appreciating things like public spaces, liveability, well-being, these things that now the competing values we are juggling today.”

For more information, including Manchester University’s heritage tours, visit www.manchester.ac.uk/heritagetours .

Picc-Vic - the underground link plan that never took off

Plans for a futuristic Manchester drawn up in the 1960s also included an underground connection – the so-called Picc-Vic line – which was later shelved because of the £100m cost.

The remnants of what would have been the ‘Picc-Vic tunnel’ were recently rediscovered 30 feet below the Arndale Centre.

Experts say it would have been the centrepiece of a ‘brave new world’ of helipads, tunnels and moving pavements in 1970s Manchester .

They have identified the forgotten void, below Topshop, as the beginnings of a station which would have been at the heart of a 2.3 mile-long electrified line. It would have linked Piccadilly and Victoria stations for the first time.

The details were revealed in a book containing architects’ drawings and previously unseen maps.

The long-forgotten project would have had four major routes and two tunnels, each 18ft wide. Trains would have run every two-and-a-half minutes at the centre of the network and every 10 minutes further out.

Moving underground walkways would have linked Piccadilly Gardens, St Peter’s Square and Oxford Road station.

Do you think this could have worked? What drastic changes would you make to the city centre? Tell us in the Comments section below