Is heritage holding back progress in Liverpool?

Sep 18 2007 by Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

Larry Neild asks if city is striking a balance between past and future

LIVERPOOL boasts of having more iconic buildings than any other provincial town and city. Most of those listed buildings owe their very creation to the ambitious dreams of the city’s leaders of yesteryear, when Liverpool was hailed as the world’s greatest seaport, the second city of the British Empire.

That very built environment earned the city a coveted World Heritage Site from Unesco.

Such titles are not handed out like confetti. The World Heritage Committee mull over potential applications for years, and most never get off the starting block.

The very title imposes on holders the responsibility to be the guardians of those sites.

Unesco, following concerns raised about some new developments in 21st- century Liverpool, sent a mission here to see what was going on.

As a result of that mission, the city council has been instructed to draw up a new set of planning rules so that everybody, including developers, planners and architects, will know what is allowed in design terms within the World Heritage Site and the surrounding buffer zone.

The issue has fuelled a debate between the heritage lobby, who want to ensure the city’s historic buildings are properly respected, and the modernists who want to ensure that Liverpool is not preserved in aspic, that the city moves forward in the 21st century.

The solution seems to be finding a meeting of minds, so that Liverpool’s historic maritime heritage can be properly managed, while at the same time the door is left open to new developments that project the new face of an emerging European city.

So today the Daily Post asks: Is heritage holding back progress in Liverpool?

larryneild@dailypost.co.uk

NO: The Case Against - ‘We are at risk of making irreversible mistakes’

by Wayne Colquhoun, Chairman, Liverpool Preservation Trust

ALL of my life, I have waited for Liverpool’s renaissance.

From the slum town I was born in, surrounded by the ravages of the Blitz, I have waited for us to get back on centre stage. Nobody wants the regeneration of Liverpool more than I.

I have watched false dawns with irksome regularity, I know Peter and Paul so many times I have watched them rob each other. I have heard it all.

That Liverpool FC anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone, really means something to me; it’s not just football but for my sense of character and the troubles we as a city have endured, those words touch my heart. Always, I have believed at the end of our storm there is a golden sky . . . until now. I have watched patiently from the cultural sector while we as a city have been knocked from pillar to post by the national press, I have sold 20th century art and design through the bad times, through thick and thin, never given in.

Every city wants to be the new Bilbao . . . yes, if it was that easy. Then, we get the chance to crawl up the greasy pole – we get some investment coming in.

And we make all the same mistakes of the 1960s, creating slums of the future with buildings already out of date with little or no architectural merit, that erode the values of what our predecessors left for us, because they had the finesse to build them well.

It wasn’t just about money.

The Oligarchs with their marketing budgets promise us world-class architecture and what do we get instead, a Trafford Park in the city and thousands of empty apartments, hurrah!!

And our city, descends into a feeding frenzy that produces hardly any jobs. With a degeneration of our best assets . . . our World Heritage Site, our Pier Head, our Icons, and next to, our three gently ageing Edwardian beauties, they plan to stick a trashy tart. Behind it three monstrous granite carbuncles, and steal from us, our sense of pride, that kept us going through all those lean years, taking away my right to own heritage and culture and relieve me of the pride that I share with all who are lucky enough to be able to enjoy those majestic visions of the early 20th century.

These are free. You don’t fix them they’re not broken.

We are at risk of making irreversible mistakes with our culture, we could lose the very essence of what the soul of this city is, of what our history means to us, become bland. In order to be cultured you have to understand where you have been in order to know where you are going. We are undermining the very foundations of our World Heritage Site; it’s not theirs to give away.

Peter robbing Paul again, being ignored by Johnny come lately who won’t be around to carry the can.

A true conservationist knows the true value of what his forebears left us.

YES: The case for - Are we never again to have bold ideas and vision?

by Michael McDonough, Trustee, 21st Century Liverpool Society

SHOULD Liverpool prepare for the 21st century or should it cling to the 19th? Without a doubt, Liverpool should now grasp what is an unprecedented period of change in its history and start moving towards becoming a truly world-class 21st-century city.

We have to step back and truly look at what the heritage "tag" on our city is actually providing us with? Any advisory panel or organisation in this city, including ourselves, 21C Liverpool, cannot afford to be anything but pro- heritage as our city has some of the finest historical buildings in the world.

However, all too often those who find the need to attack new development and ideas in Liverpool, will always also manage to lose themselves in their criticisms and fail to be in any way constructive. The 21st Century Liverpool Society was first formed in a bid to not only offer another point of view to a local media flooded with negative anti-progress pro-heritage rant, but also to look at each proposal on its merits and should a design or proposal be unreasonable, call on member expertise to offer constructive debate.

To simply dismiss a new proposal due to its height, position, design or simply because Mrs Jones on the Wirral will no longer be able to see the Anglican Cathedral is a sorry state of affairs, and, furthermore, to feed the people of our city with the notion that all development is in some way going to end their way of life or take something away from them is irresponsible and counterproductive.

What we as a city need to ask is when did the legacy of "all our yesterdays" suddenly slam the breaks on the ambition that created it? At what point in history did our city lose the forward thinking attitude? If you walk through Liverpool, there are a number of buildings that most cities envy. St George’s Hall, the Royal Liver Building and the Anglican Cathedral alone manifest the ambition and power of the Liverpool that was. Can you imagine if we tried to build those today amidst a climate of heritage mania? They would be torn apart for being too tall, too grand, too ambitious etc.

Are we to now stand still and never again have the bold ideas and vision that created these landmarks? What is it that some people in the city fear so much from modern architecture?

We have seen a number of projects amended, watered down due to their proximity to buildings of historical significance, or simply due to planning agenda’s regarding tall buildings. Brunswick Quay, Central Station, Chieftan/Skelhorne St to name but a few.

This city is a commercial city, built on ambition, innovation and forward thinking.

There are those today who would see our city simply stop. Become a closed shop. Job done. A museum piece to the 19th and 20th centuries. Is this the way forward? The 21st Century Liverpool Society strongly disagrees.

The built environment is key to our new economy, a new Liverpool. Are we to jeopardise that for what could be argued is a romanticised notion of a few for a city that no longer exists?

If ,100 years ago, Liverpool were to have taken an attitude that new development was damaging to the city, we would not have the very same icon buildings and structures certain groups and bodies locally and nationally feel so compelled to protect.

We are enjoying an amazing period of positive change in our city, where the eyes of the world are increasingly looking to Liverpool as a city that has finally turned the corner and is ready to welcome the world and its ideas once again. Liverpool should embrace this change. Liverpool’s past has no right to strangle its future.