If you like it, you should fight for it

Jul 9 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

Two new splendidly illustrated books about Liverpool alert us to the visual wealth around us, but their author worries it may all change too quickly. Peter Elson reports

THERE is an obvious message in Tony Moscardini’s fine new sketch books of the buildings of Liverpool and its suburbs: look up and enjoy.

But there is a profounder theme as well, for, while the city’s landscape looks so permanent and special, it is, in fact, very fragile.

With Liverpool undergoing such dramatic change from redevelopment, this former city council head of planning makes it clear that, if you like what you see, you must fight for it.

He is deeply concerned that the links have been severed between what ordinary residents want for their city and the cocktail of change driven by the local authority and developers.

“After conducting numerous big planning inquiries, what I realise is that the public can tell a lot more about what makes a city tick than any numbers of councils, quangos and their members,” he says.

“I found the whole Fourth Grace episode bizarre. Here was a building proposed for no other purpose than the council wanted a shiny new landmark building on the Pier Head.

“In those circumstances, inevitably the architect becomes the client and starts telling you what they’re going to do, rather than following a brief.

“Now we have massive development on a highly sensitive site at the Pier Head and, in spite of many finding this worrying in the city centre context, it’s going ahead anyway.”

The Princes Dock redevelopment looks like “an office block exhibition at Earls Court” with different designs plonked down in no relation to one another, he thinks.

“And that horrible multi-storey car park next to the Malmaison Hotel – couldn’t that have been hidden away? There’s no attempt at any cohesive design.

“It depresses me when I look at the Liverpool suburbs and see how impoverished they are. Hunts Cross’s centre is like barracks for the East German Stasi.

“We hear about eco-towns, but how about spending the money instead on sorting out previous messes, rather than using up valuable green field sites?”

The real tragedy is the seemingly prevalent attitude of those in charge, which is that if you let Liverpool go to pot it will all regenerate. His opinion is that this is the policy of despair.

“I can’t believe it when I go along Wavertree Road into town and there’s rows of boarded-up shops and dirt and dereliction everywhere – and this is 2008! No-one seems to care.

“Community leaders in Kensington Fields are in despair as all the help they were promised has disappeared. The council attitude is if we want your opinion we’ll give it to you.

“The difference is the real talents who shaped this city – like the chief planner Lancelot Keays, the city engineer James Brodie and the architect Herbert Rowse – spent their careers here.

“They didn’t go on a Cook’s Tour of jobs, they were in for the long-haul and, as importantly, lived here in the city,” says Tony. In stepping out with his sketch pad, he has fed around 45 years of observation of the city into his work. That warmth of appreciation comes shining through.