Category Archives: Liverpool And Merseyside
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Liverpool’s Sefton Park has beautiful cherry trees, at present under contentious threat of being demolished. Why not, instead, use this situation as a way to engage local people, especially children, in ownership of their local (and often greatly under-appreciated) green space, and of the natural cycles which must always occur?
Unsurprisingly, there’s much consternation in Liverpool at present about the fate of the cherry trees around Sefton Park‘s middle lake. For some, they look like worn out relics of their former glory, due for the chop. To others (me included!), they are still wonderful, showering their landscape with gorgeous pink blossom for those special few weeks in the Spring.
But all things do come to an end, so ultimately the trees will have to go. The question is, when? Why can’t new trees be planted and allowed to blossom forth before the ‘old’ ones at last become wood chip?
An under-valued community resource
Sefton Park is situated in what is genuinely the inner city ‘donut’. It is surrounded on most sides by areas which include many children who lack first hand knowledge not only of parks, but also even of how things grow. It is also a hugely under-valued urban resource; a situation which hopefully will be much improved by the new, long overdue, proposals to revamp the park as a whole.
It’s not an especially original thought, but is there some way that the new trees could be ‘owned’ by children in different school classes or clubs? Or indeed from different surrounding streets?
Recycling trees and art?
Then, when the new trees have grown, the ones they are replacing could finally become part of the recycling process, with all this entails being explained in due course to their replacements’ ‘owners’.
Perhaps, even, some of the ‘old’ trees can be carved or otherwise used to represent aspects of our local lives? (So many trees are already being cut down, doubtless for good reason; but where are the sculptors and artists who can put their remnants to good publicly visible use? – and cherry wood, I understand, is particularly fine for this, when eventually it comes to it!)
Engaging people in change
People find it hard to accept change. Here, if there’s someone or some organisation willing to deliver it, is a way to help local folk engage positively. Why have a fight about something as beautiful as cherry trees, when so much else should be taking up our energies?
See also: Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
Friends Of Sefton Park
Liverpool Arts Media Coverage Loses Out
One of Liverpool’s most respected classical music critics has just resigned because of changes in a Liverpool newspaper’s policy on arts coverage – there is to be considerably less of it. This does not reflect well on how Liverpool values the Arts, surely an essential part of the ‘offer’ in any great city.
Hardly have we been told that Liverpool’s leading ‘serious’ newspaper is drastically to
Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital May Move To Widnes
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool has now formally announced that it may leave the city for Widnes, because of a local reluctance to supoprt plans for necessary expansion. Widnes doubtless has many attractions, but it cannot claim proximity to other internationally claimed medical institutions amongst them. Liverpool’s decision makers must wake up very soon indeed to the need to understand the critical importance of Big Science – which includes leading hospitals – to their local economy.
It’s now official: Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital, world leader in paediatric medicine, may have to move from Liverpool to Widnes because of local resistance to their plans to expand on the current site – even though there is a clear undertaking by the hospital to provide a well-planned and maintained ‘children’s health park’ within the extension proposals.
Let’s be clear. Alder Hey is NOT proposing that all the trees be cut down, and that they ruin a beautiful piece of parkland. The current park is truly nothing to be proud of; but the proposed new children’s health park would surely be. Indeed, it could, like its organisational base, be a shining example of how health, environment and education can come together.
Full marks to Widnes for spotting an opportunity which it seems has passed Liverpool by; but even Widnes itself presumably does not list amongst its attractions proximity to a world-class Medical School and the Royal Liverpool Teaching Hospital (see article on this website, 12 October).
Is Big Science also the last Big Secret, an invisible commodity which decision makers and planners at the local level just don’t see for what it is? Put together the budgets of the Royal, Alder Hey, the Medical School and, e.g., the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and you have a sum larger than that of many medium-sized towns – and an employment requirement which is hugely important to any local economy.
Let’s by all means assure local residents that they will get their trees back. (Maybe we also have to persuade the Council for the Protection of Rural England, who perhaps have a particular take here?) But let’s also show a bit of grown-up leadership.
Widnes can of course have its fair share of the deal – Alder Hey already has proposals for a number of service delivery sites around its area, called ‘Alder Hey at…’. Patient access is always a prime consideration; but that doesn’t just apply to Widnes.
In the end it’s in no-one’s interest to break up the personal and professional connections which have over the last several decades been carefully established by the practitioners working in Liverpool’s great hospitals and university.
It looks at present as though there is a lack of ‘scientific literacy’ of a very basic sort in the considerations of local decision makers. They don’t actually have to understand the science itself, but they certainly need to try very conscientiously to grasp the simple facts of scientific life: at base, there’s no synergy without connectivity – which includes opportunities on a day-to-day basis for outstanding medical scientists and practitioners to get together.
And, if this isn’t enough of an argument, who’s going to accept responsibility for the hundreds of less skilled hospital jobs which will go elsewhere, in one of the most disadvantaged parts of an already economically challenged city, when and if this absolutely unnecessary dispersal of international expertise occurs?
Where Have All The Gardens (And Allotments) Gone?
There are many unattended back gardens in cities; but there are also many people who would like to have allotments. Could these two observations be brought together to provide a sense of place and an opportunity for city children to learn more about things that grow?
If, like me, you travel on trains quite a lot, you also see quite a lot of back gardens. Some are beautiful; some are not. One striking thing however is that the beautifully kept gardens seem to be contagious – on each side there are usually tidy gardens, gradually petering out to the less tidy, and then to the frankly unkempt. I have always been fascinated about how this happens. Perhaps visible example enables achievement, just as in any other area of human experience?
It has to be said, however, that quite a lot of the unkempt back gardens tend to be inner-city. Yet at the same time there are reports in some places that waiting lists for allotments are at an all-time high. Can’t these back gardens become ‘allotments’? And maybe ‘parks’, too?
Are there areas where people might be pleased to get rid of their battered fences, at least at a given distance from their actual houses, and turn these into pleasant shared ground? Alleygating of terraced housing has in general proved to be popular. If alleyways can be shared to advantage, how about gardens?
Promoting environmental awareness through gardening
Maybe there are people who would like to have their allotment as an extended patch behind where they live, as long as they don’t mind sharing.
Are there any organisations which might encourage this sort of collective gardening activity? Could there be educational as well as community benefits? Maybe that way fewer city children would believe that peas are manufactured in tins. And maybe also those in a given ‘garden community’ who wanted to move beyond their immediate backyard into shared garden space might have a safer place than the street to meet as neighbours.
This idea naturally begs a lot of questions, and there are multiple reasons why it might not work, but perhaps there are also some why it might.
Threat to Liverpool Arts Press Coverage?
Liverpool’s leading morning newspaper is reported as intending to cut back significantly on its Arts coverage, which will it is claimed no longer only be ‘ghettoised’ on one page. How does this fit with Liverpool’s forthcoming status as European Capital of Culture 2008? And will the same rationale now be made for rescuing Sport from ‘ghettoisation’?
It seems that Liverpool is about to reduce its newspaper Arts coverage substantially. A report in the UK Press Gazette on Thursday (13 October) suggests that daily coverage in the city’s leading ‘serious’ paper is to be reduced from five to two days a week, the Friday art supplement is to be eight, not sixteen pages, and three paid columnists will be axed. The rationale is apparently that the Arts will no longer be ‘ghettoised on a specific page each day’.
There also seems to be a suggestion that this change is somehow linked with increased sales and prices.
Confusion exists about exactly how this reduction in specific coverage will be aligned alongside the claim of all concerned to be supporting Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture Year in 2008. If reporting and reviews of cultural events are cut, this must inevitably have an effect on readers’ awareness of cultural activities in and around the city – which includes a readership area reaching out to Chester, North Wales and parts of Lancashire.
It is likely that, in the possible absence of expert opinion on arts topics, only a small part of Liverpool’s cultural offering could be covered; and almost certainly those organisations which stand to lose out the most (alongside their patrons) are the smaller, specialist arts organisations.
When we also read that Sport is not to be ‘ghettoised’ on particular pages, perhaps the case for rescuing the Arts from such a fate will be more convincing.
What Priority For Liverpool Hospitals As Part Of The Northern Big Science Community?
Liverpool’s leading university hospitals are at risk of physical dispersal at exactly the same time that eight top universities across the North of England are trying to find ways to build their scientific synergies. The implications for Liverpool of the threat of dispersal seem so far not to be appreciated.
The news today is patchy. On one hand, we learn that the Northern Way has appointed an eminent cancer specialist to lead the N8 consortium, a scientific collaboration led by the University of Liverpool between eight universities from the North of England.
Called the Northern Research Partnership, the N8 consortium is a collaboration between Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York, which between them generate more than £620m per annum in research grants. N8 is concrete evidence that the three regional development agencies in the North of England are now actively getting their scientific act together.
Yet also today we read in the local paper that plans to expand the Royal Liverpool University Hospital on its present site – a project which has secured £500m of funding – may not be going ahead because the will is may not be there to find another way to take forward the local council’s £12m Hall Lane bypass scheme, which is part of the intended improvements to the City-M62 link route.
Add to this the apparent reluctance to secure huge improvements on their current site to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, and you do begin to wonder if the city understands that these hospitals are places of learning at the cutting edge of international research, as well of course as places where people can receive first class medical care.
It’s far less important for the future to allocate responsibility for who said what about these proposals, and when, than it is to find a way forward.
These hospitals need to be linked closely with the university and the Medical School; they need to nurture their community of practitioners; the ‘common room / photocopier’ effect is crucial here. If people at the cutting edge are dispersed, there is a danger that their impact will be likewise weakened; and there are also enormous implications here for investment and big business in Liverpool.
If eight universities across the whole of the North of England can recognise the benefits of getting together, surely there is a way, before it’s too late, that two hugely important Liverpool hospitals and a Medical School can be enabled in a much more intimate physical setting to do the same?
Iconic Buildings, Local Communities And Cultural Capacity Building
People ‘in the community’ often seem to have a problem with proposals for iconic cultural buildings. Could this be because they only become involved (‘consulted’) after, rather than before, ideas of this sort have been floated? Would things be different if Artists in Residence were truly just that? And would this help ‘capacity building’ for the arts, as well as physical regeneration?
What impact and ‘meaning’ should iconic cultural buildings seek to achieve in terms of cultural excellence and relevance to their local communities? And could permanently established Artists in Residences have a role in working with local people to produce iconic developments which everyone values?
Issues such as this have been much discussed in cities like Liverpool in the past few years; and if anything the debate (e.g. about Liverpool’s proposed ‘Fourth Grace’, a notion initially imposed ‘top down’ and now abandoned, which did not derive from locals and cost much in terms of time, energy and other resources) seems to be becoming more rather than less heated. Local people often do not, at least initially, like change, or ‘iconic’ buildings which may appear to be strange, or which do not appear to have a clear purpose. Yet the wider future-facing view is that regeneration and cultural development must move forward and that special / cultural buildings must be ‘different’, excellent in modern terms, if they are to be effective in their own terms.
This hiatus of understanding will not be resolved just by ‘locals’ taking a few trips to see examples of innovative iconic development elsewhere. Perhaps only a serious willingness (and ability) on the part of decision-makers, to examine what local people understand their contexts and requirements to be, will enable genuine and constructive dialogue about the future to develop.
Such a willingness and ability would require a re-emphasis even before the initial stages of proposals, away from technical considerations to a long-term commitment to the community on the part of the professionals seeking to develop landmark buildings; and it would probably therefore also require a new approach to staff training and professional skills, or possibly a new type of role, as yet undefined, for some regeneration and cultural professionals… perhaps the ideal opportunity for Artists in Residence with a broad knowledge of the issues and excellent communication skills?
Local people may find change and cultural re-emphasis more acceptable, and better understood, when there is genuine embedded involvement by regeneration leaders in community development over time. The need, for instance, to build a new concert hall or gallery will be more easily appreciated – if re / new build is genuinely a better option that the less glamorous choice of refurbishment – where there have been efforts to establish to most local people’s satisfaction that such innovation is actually necessary or practically desirable for discernable reasons. And there is always the possibility that locals might in fact have views and opinions which could actually improve what is finally proposed for development.
Cultural and regeneration professionals need to to identify and value, on an equal basis, locally-based people who are already in a position to act as ‘translators’ or go-betweens in the necessary dialogue. To have significant impact, this would require that the roles and training of those engaged to lead development be revisited, so that (a) they are more easily able to identify appropriate local people, and (b) they become comfortable in valuing what locally-based opinion leaders offer, without any feeling on the part of the developers that they are thereby under threat from others, locals in the informal setting, who also have communication and developmental skills.
Iconic choices are not just a matter of local dignitaries’ civic pride, but mean that community dialogue must actually precede proposals, not simply emerge from them. At present this rarely happens, not least because regeneration officials are frequently only brought in as the proposals begin to take shape, and much of their initial briefing will be by those who already desire the changes proposed. There are obviously cost implications, but if a more genuine engagement is to be achieved these may be inevitable.
There is a strong case for capacity / audience building for artistic and other cultural activities, which is both a necessary pre-requisite and a desired (though unfortunately not an inevitable) outcome of landmark and iconic cultural building. It would be interesting to interrogate the extent to which capacity building is influenced by physical development, and how much this is true the other way around, as well as evaluating the synergistic impact each has on the other.
In cultural contexts, the desirability of long-term on-going dialogue with local communities is yet another reason for cultural organisations in any given location to develop genuine, deep-rooted (and preferably conjoined) community programmes. As with regeneration professionals, this would require considerable training and re-emphasis of role within cultural institutions if it were to have substantial and sustainable impact. The nature of the work which needs to be done is probably at present not fully appreciated.
MondayWomen-Liverpool (Meetings & Yahoo Group) 2003 –
Monday Women is an entirely free-to-join group of women who meet together and also have an e-group. It promotes the sharing of news, views and ideas and is also a sounding board for the friendly sharing of matters of interest and concern. As such, it is a social enterprise which manages without formality or funding.
Monday Women is a social enterprise of the simplest sort. It’s free and open to all women, both as an e-group and as a meeting point. (We meet 5.30 – 7-ish on the first Monday of every month, except if a Bank Holiday, in the Third Room of the Everyman Bistro, Liverpool.)
Setting up the Group was an experiment. At the beginning, on 3 March 2003, there were about thirty ‘members’, who already mostly knew each other. Now there are some hundreds of women who have been asociated with the Group, of whom about two hundred are currently ‘members’ of it. ‘Applications’ [*] to join the e-group arrive almost every week, and sometimes new ‘members’ simply arrive at meetings, having heard about the Group on the grapevine. The fact that there are no formal costs or structures means that the Group is sustainable in its own right, without funding or other constraints.
The issues which have arisen in Monday Women discussion and e-correspondence have been really varied, covering everything from parks policy and landscape gardening (the Sefton Park plans have attacted particular interest), to requests for domestic / personal support (including the loan fo a baby car seat for a visiting grandchild!), to enquiries from researchers about people’s views on and experience of a range of things (The Mersey Partnership’s ‘Gender Agenda’ has featured in several discussions, as has the ambitious cliam that Liverpool could become the most ‘women-friendly city in Liverpool’ by 2008).
The e-group has also become a ‘notice board’, with job vacancies, concert and theatre postings, information about outings and much else.
The e-group has hosted some vigorous debates on issues of equality, health, employment etc; some of these topics have also had a full airing at meetings, to which speakers are occasionally invited – though mostly people just bring with them topics they may wish to discuss.
And, importantly, the Group has been a source of new friends, pleasant company and sometimes positive support for women of many sorts and in many situations. Surely, then, an example of how e-technology can be adapted at almost no cost (except time) to serve a genuinely social function?
To join, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MondayWomen-Liverpool/, or contact the convenor, Hilary Burrage, direct. Or just come to a Monday Women meeting!
[*] To begin with there were some ‘technical ‘problems with the e-group, which appeared to be of interest to spammers. For this reason, and no other, the Group decided it would be necessary for ‘members’ to ‘apply’ through the website to join the e-group, rather than simply joining in. This necessary decision, whilst unfortunate, has removed the spam issue and made members of the Group more comfortable.
Cultural Leadership And Vision In Cities
When and how does a Big Town become a City? And, just as importantly, how does a Great City ensure it will never seem to be just a Very Big Town?
What part does cultural leadership and vision play in this transition? We take a look at Liverpool…
Imagine all the people – and all the things they’d do….
Cities are centres of communication, learning and complex commercial enterprises; …. they focus and condense physical, intellectual and creative energy. They are places of hugely diversified activities and functions: exhibitions and demonstrations, bars and cathedrals, shops and opera houses. I love their combination of ages, races, cultures and activities…
Richard Rogers Cities for a small planet (Faber, 1997, p.15)
When and how does a Big Town become a City? And, just as importantly, how does a Great City ensure it will never seem to be just a Very Big Town?
Doubtless we all have our first-off answers to this slightly strange question; but at base we would probably agree it’s not simply Size that matters. Quality rather than just Quantity is what counts in the metropolis status stakes.
So what does lie at the heart of a city, especially a great one such as Liverpool? What exactly does define its soul?
For me, and I suspect for many others as they ponder such questions at this pivotal point in Liverpool’s development, the critical aspect of our city’s renaissance must be a focus on what is most creative: both what we already have, and what we can forge for the future.
But this is in no way just a plea in disguise for ‘more arts funding’. Rather, I want to propose that Creativity in the City be seen as the critical factor which defines us and holds more promise than anything else for what Liverpool could become.
Thus, the real challenge is to shape and nurture a vision of our future which engages the entire creative process, the arts, the sciences, the full spectrum of the intellectual infrastructure and more…… For there is also a Plus Factor in all this to which we shall return and which we neglect at our peril.
What a modern, thriving, thrusting city needs more than almost anything else is continual recharging and renewal, a culture which challenges what is already known and done – however splendid that culture may be historically.
A city which delivers well the known and acknowledged needs of its citizens will also be one which looks to produce creative synergy with sometimes unanticipated outcomes. There can be no standing still in the search for excellence in the city.
So, to formalise the initial proposition, a Great City is one which
¨ does not just celebrate its past, but works hard to create it own future;
¨ does not simply curate its history and acknowledged culture, but seeks always to support the living arts and to ensure that benefit and creative process evolve from them;
¨ does not offer handed-down knowledge alone for its citizens, but strives ceaselessly to promote and engage the processes of learning and discovery which produce new understandings and insights across the spectrum of intellectual and creative endeavour.
Put thus, we see that Liverpool, more than many other cities, is well-blessed. We have in our heartlands an abundance of internationally recognised organisations and institutions which seek insofar as their resources and vision currently permit to deliver just the requirements listed above. The fight to ‘save’ our theatres and world-class symphony orchestra has been long and hard but, after almost decades of uncertainty, it seems we may indeed have won. Our universities and colleges permit comparison with many others, and are in significant respects outstanding. Our architecture and cathedrals are world renown.
But this inventory alone is not enough. The Great City demands more of itself than satisfactory audits of institutions, however important. Great Cities engage and nurture the best creative practitioners that can be had, put together in organisations which reciprocally appreciate and enhance the skills and traditions which are thereby brought together. Great cities value their indigenous artists and intellectuals but also welcome to their lead organisations both students and distinguished visiting practitioners who will inform and challenge current beliefs and thinking. And so through these same organisations Great Cities facilitate and even thrust upon us thriving collectives of artists, scientists, intellectuals, power elites of all sorts who can and will not accept on our behalf that which is routine or can be taken for granted.
A city’s creativity must not however remain solely civic. For it to mean anything it has also to be communal. The synergy of the city’s formal creative enclaves must be engaged and by mutual consent brought to bear on the lives of the people. This is the Plus Factor to which reference was made earlier.…..
And here lies the fundamental challenge for Liverpool at the beginning of the new Millennium.
Our city, Great City though it is already in many ways, is also a fragile, vulnerable city which is only now repositioning itself after many years of decline. The poverty of experience and expectation of many of those who have grown up and live in this city is part of the urban tragedy of our times. For too many here, Liverpool is the only place they know, the small-community-defined comfort zone from which they must collectively emerge if they are to demand the standards which those with wider and more privileged experience already expect. For too many of our citizens, impoverished both materially and ‘culturally’ through accident of time and place, the leap to acceptance and engagement in creativity in its fullest sense is a step to ‘high culture’ too far.
It would be very serious act of decontextualisation and of course entirely improper to suggest that perhaps there are communities in Liverpool ‘suffering’ from a ‘cultural deprivation’ which somehow diminishes civic pride or reduces the people’s determination to see their city great again. I hope therefore that I can avoid any charge of cultural / intellectual imperialism in pointing to a number of what I see as significant discongruities in the cultural fabric of this city – discongruities which I believe must be recognised and addressed by anyone who seeks to offer Liverpool civic (and therefore cultural) leadership.
But significant discongruities there are, disconnections of understanding between civic excellence in the cultural / intellectual infrastructure and socio-economic well-being, or between artistic / creative engagement and personal fulfilment. For instance, like parents everywhere, many here regardless of their own background would dearly wish for their own children to achieve success in the formal education system; yet these same people often express considerable antagonism towards the students who live in flats and bedsits in their midst and who thereby help to keep local shops and businesses viable – and who as graduates could with the right persuasion stay on in our city and help to revitalise it.
Likewise, many would see the flagship arts organisations of our city as indispensable elements of our civic identity – yet few expect to patronise these same bodies personally. And how many people in Liverpool know that the eponymous University has to its credit impressive numbers of Nobel Laureats? Indeed, how many people know anything much at all about what goes on in the research institutions of our city’s universities, or anything about the significance of this research in the regional economy or indeed on the world scene?
And so we could go on; for there are, to put it starkly, parts of our local communities where to ask even these questions would be to understate massively the alienation from mainstream understandings of culture and creativity. There is a palpable disinclination amongst too many of our young people beyond a certain age to lose their ‘cool’, to allow themselves to become engaged, let alone excited, by positive, imaginative and exciting ideas and activities. There is a fear by those in some parts of our communities that any bending towards the mainstream will result in cultural engulfment, that others do not respect or understand their particular traditions and beliefs. Above all, there is sometimes still apathy and an unwillingness to trust in a more accepting and better future.
This then is the true challenge which now faces the Great City of Liverpool.
Our civic leaders of the future will need as an urgent priority to deliver a cultural and creative concordat, a bringing together of traditions and modes of understanding which allow the many rather than just the few to translate hope into action – and this I believe can be achieved only through the pursuit of excellence, the engagement of the very best of what is creative in all the fields of endeavour we have considered.
We need architects and sculptors who regain the public sphere for community and performance; actors, artists and musicians who draw on their many cultural traditions to bring people together and enhance their lives; teachers who capture the imagination and ambition of their charges; community workers and volunteers whose enthusiasms, local knowledge and skills are welcomed and engaged by the civic authorities; research workers and academics who build on, and see the local economic benefits which may accrue from, the distinguished record of our institutions of higher learning.
It will be a task of breathtaking proportion to sustain in their own right, and simultaneously to bring together, the historically disempowered communities of our city and the hitherto so-called ‘elitist’ cultural institutions which history has endowed to us.
It cannot be said too clearly there are many already on all ‘sides’ who seek excellence without compromise or fear, who want and will for the city a common understanding alongside outstanding achievement across the spectrum of artistic and intellectual endeavour. But individuals of goodwill can reach only so far on their own. Cultural nostalgia, lack of resources (human, material and civic), entrenched, sometimes limited bureaucracies, the inertia of years of low expectations, cannot be overcome by individual goodwill alone. All these factors are real and enormous barriers to progress.
The challenge for Liverpool’s first Elected Mayor will be to achieve a very fine balance in pursuing world-class excellence for our city across the artistic / generically intellectual board, whilst also seeking to achieve maximum creative community synergy and engagement and maintaining personal political credibility – a tall order indeed, but one which I believe those in our amazing, deeply culturally blessed, Great City will support and embrace.
(Chapter in) Manifesto for a New Liverpool, 2000 (published by Aurora, The University of Liverpool and Space)
by
Hilary Burrage
Chair, HOPES: The Hope Street Association
Hope Street Quarter Developments And Public Realm Works
At last the public realm works in Hope Street, Liverpool, are underway. This will make a huge difference to the Hope Street Quarter; but where do we go from here?
The Hope Street Quarter is at a critical stage in its development. With luck we shall soon see delivery of the Public Realm works which HOPES and, latterly, Liverpool Vision have sought for so long; and alongside that we can already perceive the evidence that the Quarter is at last becoming the vibrant destination it should always have been.
All this is excellent news, both for those directly involved, and for those whose future livelihoods may depend on such vibrancy and public visibility for the Quarter; but another aspect of these developments is the risks which, unless we are vigilant, they may bring.
The evidence that physical improvements, and even economic growth, may not be an unmixed blessing for everyone is now well-documented: we have only to look at areas such as London’s Hoxton, Newcastle, or indeed some parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh for instance, to see that ‘gentrification’ brings with it a challenge in terms of community and social sustainability. These issues were well recognised, as we know, at the recent ODPM conference, and must be core to how we see the future in taking HSQ forward.
It is a mistake (I would suggest) to suppose that inner-city areas do or should not change over time, or that somehow we should try to keep things as they are. We have, however, the advantage of hindsight in respect of other places, as we attempt to move forward in the Hope Street Quarter – like other parts of the inner city, a location with many people doing many things in many ways , but also a truly unique and very special place of itself.
This is not the time for a full analysis of all aspects of Hope Street Quarter’s past and future. But it may be helpful to list a few of the opportunities and issues which we face:
SUSTAINABILITY
There are several ways in which an area such as HSQ needs to be sustained:
· it must be managed in a way which is environmentally sound;
· it needs to have a micro-economy which resonates with the larger context, but which also enables significantly accelerated growth in terms of the particular advantages of the Quarter – its creative and high-skills base, its historic attractions, and its hugely significant arts and cultural attributes, for instance; and
· it needs to have resonance with the majority, if not all, the people who live and work in HSQ and closeby.
Hilary Burrage
Hon. Chair, HOPES: The Hope Street Association
Meeting with Liverpool Vision and other partners, 24 June 2005
Dreaming Realist 