Selling “Scousescraper” City: Geographical Networks of Power, Liverpool Waters

and the Competitive City Project on Liverpool Waterfront

A Major Paper submitted to the Faculty of Environmental Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Environmental Studies

York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Student: William Bedford (YU#211808813)

Student Signature:

Supervisor: Roger Keil

Supervisor Signature:

Submitted on:

Summer Term 2013

1 Selling “Scousescraper” City: Geographical Networks of Power, Liverpool Waters and

the Competitive City Project on Liverpool Waterfront

Table of Contents

3- Foreword

6- Abstract

7- Introduction

12- Chapter 1: Defining the Competitive City

23- Chapter 2: Establishing the Competitive City

25- 2.1 An Oppositional Space

33- 2.2 Playing the Game

41- 2.3 Local Rivalry

48- 2.4 Back on the Brink

52- Chapter 3: Maintaining the Competitive City

56- 3.1 Centralised Influences

60- 3.2 Peelʼs City

66- 3.3 The Peopleʼs City

74- 3.4 The Globalised City

81- Conclusion

89- List of Interviewees/ Bibliography

2 Foreword

The primary objective of this Major Paper is to synthesise the Area of Concentration of my MES Plan of Study: “Planning and Culture in Globalising Urban Spaces”. It also fulfils a number of specific Objectives. In relation to the title of my AOC, the Major

Paper discusses “planning” in Liverpool at a broad level, as a practice that has responded significantly, consciously or unconsciously, to imperatives shaped by the processes of “globalisation”. A central theme to the paper is the balance that urban planning has attempted to find between providing social benefits and creating an economically “competitive city”. Within this struggle, “culture” plays a key role. Culture in my POS is partly defined as the representation of local identity in the built environment, which is discussed in this paper in the form of heritage and high-rise architectural styles. Culture- against the backdrop of the urban fabric- is also discussed herein on its own terms, as a place promotional strategy, in the form of Liverpoolʼs

European Capital of Culture award of 2008.

Many specific Objectives of my POS are fulfilled by this Major Paper. Objective 1.3, within the component “Planning Practice in Ontario and the UK” is “Understand how other private and public actors affect the process and outcome of planning”. Through expert interviews my understanding of the various bodies impacting planning decisions was greatly improved. I was able to gain an understanding of how private and public bodies interact with regard to development decisions in the UK. Through this Major

Paper it was necessary to discover how national policies and initiatives have shaped the

3 varying degrees of power that local governments and private sector organisations possess in enacting development projects. Objective 1.4 “Understand the similarities and differences in the way the planning system is organised in the UK and Canada, and the effect this has on decisions surrounding development” was also fulfilled through increased exposure to the UK system through interviews and research, against which my prior education in Canadian planning can be compared.

Component 2, “Globalisation and the Advanced Capitalist City” encompasses more theoretical and political economic approaches to the study of urban development.

Objective 2.1 “Be able to provide a basic definition of “globalisation” and demonstrate an understanding of key political moments in the history of this process since the mid

20th Century” has been addressed by this Major Paper. A central element of the paper is the discussion the neoliberalisation of British politics and the economy. Some “key political moments” of this process discussed in this paper include the reshaping of

London Docklands to accommodate Londonʼs burgeoning financial sector in tandem with the national governmentʼs policies of deregulation. The later sections of this paper, in which Chinese investment in Liverpool is discussed, link global economic with the fallout from the financial crisis, an event both produced by and producing some “key political moments” of recent history. Objective 2.2 “Develop a basic knowledge of political economic theory in the tradition of Marx in relation to the processes of deindustrialization and globalisation in British and Canadian cities” has been addressed through the incorporation of many perspectives of “post-marxist” scholars into this paper as they relate to the reshaping of the UKʼs economy.

4 Component 3 “Culture and urban development” contains objective 3.1: “Be able to identify reasons for the popularity of “creative city” thesis as an economic development strategy in cities in Canada and the UK and critically assess its effects”. This objective has been addressed by the Major Paper. The popularity of the model relates to the establishment of competitive city discourse discussed in the paper, as a means of attracting investment. This is particularly applicable to Liverpool, with both a famous history of cultural production and a decline in the cityʼs traditional economic base. The effects include the physical rebranding and transformation of neighbourhoods, as well as a broader shift towards upscale development in culturalised spaces. Objective 3.3

“Explore the way globalisation has impacted architecture and urban form in the UK and gain a solid understanding of the different perspectives from academics and members of the public surrounding this issue” relates directly to this paper in the way Liverpool has emphasised its historic architectural assets to appeal to a more “global” clientele of tourists and investors, as well as the emergence of skyscrapers on the cityʼs skyline, which are central to the Major Paper.

5 Abstract

This paper focusses on the role of key political relationships influencing Liverpoolʼs pursuit of “competitive city” status since the early 1980s, drawing on interviews with local experts and actors in urban development. A focus lies on the objective of the aesthetic revitalisation of Liverpool Waterfront for the purposes of place promotion and economic development under neoliberalism. In the time period covered by this paper, central governmentʼs role in producing the terms by which regional cities compete is shown to be intimately bound up with a prioritisation of London as a global economic centre. It is argued that Liverpool Waters represents a new phase in an inconsistent trajectory of urban entrepreneurialism, distinguished by major private sector investment and appeals to localism. The relationship between Peelʼs spectacular vision for

Liverpool Waters, local political agency and processes of class realignment in the city are critically assessed.

6 Introduction

Fig 1. An image from the Masterplan for Liverpool Waters (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/ mar/05/liverpool-waters-redevelopment-green-light).

Since 2007 waves of excitement and concern have emanated from barren tracts of disused land on the banks of the River Mersey. The source of these shockwaves is the spectacular vision of “Shanghai-on-Mersey” presented by The Peel Group in their renderings for the Liverpool and Wirral Waters dock redevelopments. As word of the plans has spread into the broader national consciousness, they have provoked controversy over threats to architectural heritage at a UNESCO World Heritage Site and confusion over the scale of the development in a challenging economic climate. The decision not to call the proposals in for a public inquiry by the Secretary of State for

7 Communities in March 2013 has generated a new level of engagement with the project locally, as Peelʼs vision begins to be realised over a period spanning three decades.

Official figures put forward by Peel reveal the scale of the scheme; the organisation intends to regenerate 650 acres of redundant dockland in Liverpool and Birkenhead, at an expected cost of £10bn. This will create 3 million square metres of new building floor area for a mixture of uses, including 25,000 new homes (The Peel Group, 2013, “Peel

Waters” webpage).

This paper hopes to situate the Liverpool Waters development within a trajectory of waterfront revitalisation in the city, focusing on the agendas of local, regional and national actors to construct “Competitive City Liverpool”. The study highlights the interrelationships that have shaped the strategies and capabilities of private and public agencies in Liverpool to enact physical image-led redevelopment strategies in line with perceived imperatives of urban entrepreneurialism. Much of the focus will be on the cityʼs relationship with London as Britainʼs global city and seat of centralised power.

Two other cities in the psychological landscape of Liverpool residents will also feature;

Manchester, as the primate city of Englandʼs North West, and Shanghai, as a city whose historic linkages with Liverpool have taken on a new significance in the 21st

Century.

A focus lies on the waterfront both as the location for the Liverpool Waters scheme and as a space which physically embodies the cityʼs relationship to global economic shifts.

Lehrer and Laidley (2008) identify the paradigmatic features of waterfront

8 redevelopment practices through their study of Toronto, claiming; “many Western waterfront cities have been impacted by similar processes of ʻsuburbanizationʼ, deindustrialization and the decline of port-related activities that accompanied economic restructuring and technological change, opening up these waterfront spaces for new, highly globalized uses and associated reconfigurations of governance technologies and new (de)regulatory frameworks” (p787). As such, Liverpool demonstrates many generalizable characteristics for urban economic reinvention in a global economy. The cityʼs economic decline was precipitated by its former dependency on the docks as a node in an international industrial economy and, as shall be shown in the course of this paper, represents an essential site in current economic development objectives.

This paper is primarily constructed around interview quotes and augmented by research grounded in media reports and academic and historical literature. Interviews were undertaken with local experts and actors in urban development, drawing from academics, journalists, current and former members of the City Councilʼs planning division, leaders of community groups and members of an economic development company. A script of questions, tailored to each intervieweeʼs area of expertise, was prepared which was supplemented by flexible questioning. Intervieweeʼs perspectives vary in content and include the recounting of facts, anecdotal information and personal hypotheses, and as such should be interpreted as subjective perspectives from individuals with a great deal of personal experience and insight into urban development in Liverpool. Undertaking interviews with these individuals provided a wealth of information and helped me to ground my research in informed local perspectives. On a

9 broader level, the content of interviews also brought up themes that significantly influenced the way the paper is structured. As such, I am greatly appreciative to all interviewees for their time and for the many ways in which their input has shaped the outcome of this project.

In the process of working on the paper, the work of Henri Lefebvre came to influence my approach to conceptualising the spaces produced on Liverpool Waterfront. This study is grounded in subjective perspectives on waterfront development, from actors engaged in producing Lefebvreʼs notion of “representations of space” or “conceived space” to representatives of community groups and academics concerned with “spatial practice” or “perceived space”; the way the city is used by inhabitants. Given the nature of these perspectives, Lefebvreʼs formulation of the production of space came to provide a valuable framework. These ideas are particularly relevant given the emphasis on visualisations of the not-yet-material Liverpool Waters development, and how this environment might relate to inhabitantsʼ existing subjective interpretation of Liverpoolʼs built form (Lefebvreʼs symbolic “representational space” or the “lived space” of a city).

These ideas are not always explicit in the text, and could be brought out further in future research on the topic. They do, however, provide an invaluable link between the key concerns of this paper; political economy, urban aesthetics and social life in the city.

The titular “scousescraper” term is borrowed from a play on words coined to refer to the

1000ft Otterspool Tower, one of many large-scale projects never to come to fruition in the city. As a former resident of Liverpool, who has revisited frequently and followed its

10 physical transformations from afar, I hope the term is interpreted with the humour and affection that is intended. Here, “scousescraper” refers to Liverpool Waters, and the radical verticality of the schemeʼs proposed design in a country of traditionally low-rise urban form. Issues surrounding the significance of the emergence of the skyscraper as an architectural style in Britain are not central to this paper, however. The primary objective is to explore the discourses that have contributed to the entrepreneurial city imperative over the past 30 years. I hope to present Liverpool as a city nested in relationships, not only with other governments in different regions and at different scales, but within a differentiated psycho-geographical landscape of privileges and prejudices. In discussing these concepts, I draw from Masseyʼs (2007) identification of

“geographical imaginations”; regionalised conceptualisations of space which shape social and political relations within given geopolitical entities.

Chapter One will define the links between physical redevelopment, urban aesthetics and the economic imperatives shaping urban entrepreneurialism. Intervieweesʼ quotes regarding Liverpoolʼs relationship with London and Manchester were used to shape

Chapter Two, to form a recent history of the networked political, personal and psychological relationships shaping competitive city genesis over the past 30 years.

Hopes and concerns about Liverpool Waters in relation to the schemeʼs political and economic context form the basis of Chapter Three.

11 Chapter 1: Defining the Competitive City

“Elsewhere, particularly in England, there has been a tendency to view Liverpool as being smaller and more peripheral than it actually is, with few appreciating that the city region has some 2.3 million people. It has also been wrongly perceived as a place still locked in decline, (despite GVA growth having been exceptionally high in the past decade), and as a place with high crime, although statistics show it actually has the lowest crime rate of the biggest British cities” (Heseltine and Leahy, 2011, p44).

The RT Hon. Lord Michael Heseltine and Sir Terry Leahy are influential figures within

Liverpoolʼs recent history of urban development, and both will play recurring roles in this paper. In the above quote from “Rebalancing Britain”- a government document attempting to identify and remedy the Liverpoolʼs position Britainʼs imbalanced political and economic landscape- they identify “Brand Liverpool” as key asset for selling the city, claiming an ongoing need to displace negative images with the positive aspects of the cityʼs brand. Similarly, Liverpoolʼs “Strategic Investment Framework” iterates the language of urban entrepreneurialism, setting out an objective to “capitalise on

Liverpoolʼs distinctive profile, brand and image and its exceptional quality of place” (Liverpool Vision, 2012, p22). The document claims the waterfront, “has the potential to compete in the world premier league of destination waterfronts” (p26) and that “Liverpool Waters has the potential to add to the cityʼs existing waterfront in the same way as has been seen in Hamburg, Chicago, Toronto and Barcelona, in terms of the scale and diversity of its waterfront offer and associated economy” (p8).

12 Fig 2. A drawing of future waterfront plans from Liverpool Vision (source: http://www.sevenstreets.com/

19656/liverpools-future-this-time-its-personal/).

Both documents testify to the hegemonic status of competitive city discourse at a moment prior to the realisation of the Mersey Waters visions, but following the culmination of a coordinated spate of urban development projects in the early 2000s.

Hajer (1989) has claimed; “I define a hegemonic project as a political project which constitutes a general political-strategic programme at a specific political institutional level. It is the ensemble of (1) the ideological discourse, (2) the groups that bear and create the discourse and (3) the positions that they occupy and the practices in which they engage” (p32). Through the course of this paper, parts 2 and 3 of this definition will be explained as they apply to Liverpool. This chapter will review academic perspectives on the “competitive city”, related to part 1- “the ideological discourse”- of Hajerʼs

13 definition. It will draw on relevant literature to identify the links between physical redevelopment, image improvement and economic imperatives. A key feature of this literature is the identification of deleterious social effects resulting from the construction of consent around entrepreneurial discourse, and these perspectives will be described below. Key contributions to the debate focusing specifically on Liverpool and North

West England will be also be highlighted.

In their description of “competitive city” formation in Toronto, Kipfer and Keil (2002) describe the concept in the following terms; “an overarching (imputed or material) imperative of intercity competition that treats cities as homogenous units that compete with each other for investment and mobile segments of new urban middle classes through strategies of municipal state restructuring, and policies of economic development, finance, taxation, land-use planning, urban design, ʻcultureʼ, diversity management, policing and workfare” (p234). The authors define three components of the political shifts that characterise the competitive city; new strategies of capital accumulation (“the entrepreneurial city”), shifts in the nature of class relations (“the city of difference”), and new forms of social control (“the revanchist city”). Of these components, the “entrepreneurial city”, as an elite-defined capitalist entity, will be the primary object of analysis in this paper. Class relations are also intimately bound up with the development practices Liverpool has experienced, and can be seen to underpin many perspectives on waterfront redevelopment in this paper, both within the city and between Liverpool and more privileged places.

14 Harvey described the emergent characteristics of neoliberal entrepreneurial development strategies in “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurship: The

Transformation of Governance in Late Capitalism” in 1989. Famously employing the metaphor of a “carnival mask” to describe the role spectacular displays have assumed in hiding structural social inequalities, he claimed “the circus succeeds even if the bread is lacking” (Harvey, 1989, p14). From his late 1980s perspective, Harvey noted that the

“shift towards entrepreneurialism has been by no means been complete”(4) in Britain, with the remnants of a system prioritising Keynesian social redistribution existing alongside emerging boosterist strategies. The friction between these two modes of governance will be central to Liverpoolʼs story.

Harvey identifies the development of Haborplace in Baltimore- a city displaying similar physical effects from the decline of industrial production on its urban fabric to Liverpool- as a key moment in the genesis of the entrepreneurial city model, through its scale, prominent positioning and the increased integration of the private and public sectors in the development process. Referring to both Liverpool and Baltimore, Harvey writes;

“the construction of cultural, retail, entertainment and office centers can cast a seemingly beneficial shadow over the whole metropolitan region” (p8).

Liverpool Waters can be associated with the “mega-project” phenomenon, a large-scale component of entrepreneurial city strategies. Lehrer and Laidley (2008) identify a trend towards mixed-used large scale projects in current political and economic climate, while criticizing the place boosting qualities of “mega-projects” in broad terms. They write;

15 “The problem that we identify therein is that while these benefits, or rather the discourses forwarding these benefits, allow the new mega-projects to be more readily embraced by a variety of communities, they in fact obfuscate their major beneficiaries and ideologies — most often the development industries rather than the local populace, and the quest for urban status rather than the pursuit of urban inclusion. While these benefits may appear real, we suggest that the discourse about these potential benefits leads to an unreflective acceptance of the apparent necessity for these mega- projects” (p800).

Liverpool Waters can be seen to redefine the concept of the mega-project on

Merseyside. Many recent waterfront development initiatives, however, have harnessed the powers of image-making and profile-boosting on a smaller scale. Knoxʼs “Cities and

Design” provides an excellent overview of the particular role the aesthetics of urban design and architecture play in entrepreneurial city building. While “Cities and Design” attests to the important role image-making has played in cities throughout history, he identifies a particular resonance in the current globalised economy. Knox (2010) writes;

“Globalization has... prompted communities in many parts of the world to become much more conscious of the ways in which they are perceived by tourists, businesses, media

firms and consumers. As a result, places are increasingly being reinterpreted, reimagined, designed, packaged and marketed. Sense of place can become a valuable commodity through place marketing. Seeking to be competitive within the global economy, many places have sponsored extensive makeovers of themselves, including the creation of pedestrian plazas, cosmopolitan cultural facilities, festivals, and sports

16 and media events” (p174). The comparison of Liverpool waterfront to cosmopolitan international equivalents in the “Strategic Investment Framework” attests to this global dynamic.

The “global cities” literature highlights the role of key command and control centres like

London, New York and Tokyo in producing a globalised economy. Key contributors to this literature include Friedmann and Wolff who identified the increasing role of key cities in driving global capitalist development relative to nation states. An accompanying social polarization (the “citadel” and the “ghetto”) is described within these cities.

Sassen (1996; 2002) has refined the definition to emphasise financial and producer servicesʼ role as the driver of the global city system, while providing further evidence of the emergence of socio-economic inequalities wherever these features are most pronounced. While Liverpool is firmly placed in the “periphery” of the global cities hierarchy, within the UK, Londonʼs global city status can be seen to directly influence regional strategies and capabilities towards development. This will be a central theme in of Chapter One of this paper.

Like Knox, Zukin (1995) identifies a new alignment between the global economy and the significance of image in cities claiming; “What is new about the symbolic economy since the 1970s is its symbiosis of image and product, the scope and scale of selling images on a national and even global level, and the role of the symbolic economy in speaking for, or representing the city” (p8). Within the “symbolic economy” heritage architecture occupies an important new role with implications for place-bound class relations. Zukin

17 states; “In contrast to the slash and burn strategies of earlier urban renewal, cultural strategies of historic preservation satisfied both elite protests against mass demolition of landmark buildings and populist demands for slowing change” (p82), while gentrification is facilitated as, “the diffusion of a preservationist ethos offered legitimacy to the shifts of middle class residents from one neighbourhood to another” (p122).

In keeping with the critical tradition established by Harvey, Zukin alludes to a wholly different set of social realities behind the “carnival mask”. She states; “Few people believe that planners or developers create coherent visions of public life. But visions persuade if they suggest an escape from social decay” (p280). Katz (1998), meanwhile, expresses the relationship between image-boosting strategies and social exclusion straightforwardly in the following passage; “The sanitized visible environment creates a sense of well-being and civic pride for those who count, while public housing decays or goes unbuilt, schools and schoolyards get more crowded and dilapidated, long tended community gardens in gentrifying neighborhoods are ʻcondemnedʼ (confiscated) for luxury housing development, and parks and playgrounds in poor neighborhoods are allowed to languish, broken-down and unsafe” (p44).

Liverpool can be seen to have utilised many of the forms of “cultural strategies” of economic development discussed by Zukin. In addition to restoring and promoting architectural heritage, urban elites have focused on highlighting the cityʼs cultural institutions and famous cultural producers to strengthen the brand identity discussed by

18 Heseltine and Leahy. As a direct form of culture-based interurban competition,

Liverpoolʼs post-millennial revitalisation had its crowning moment with 2008ʻs Capital of

Culture award. In this respect, the city fits neatly into Graeme Evansʼ (2003) claim that

ʻa growing tier of peripheral and regional cities that repeatedly enter such competitions and justify major public investment in new venues and transport in terms of the regenerative benefits of branding that will accrueʼ (p427).

Cultural strategies tie into the “Creative City” concept, in which cities are deemed to compete for a range of dynamic new industries through fostering a bohemian urban atmosphere (Florida 2002; 2005). In Liverpoolʼs case, pursuing the Capital of Culture award and engineering “creative neighbourhoods” in the Ropewalks and Baltic Triangle districts, demonstrate an awareness of this model of economic development. A marked contrast can be seen with Parkinson and Bianchiniʼs identification in 1993 that a “pool of leaders who are committed to the city who might promote the city centre and its cultural institutions as a powerful alternative focus for economic development has also remained small” (Parkinson and Bianchini, 1993, p158). “Capitalizing Culture” by Jones and

Wilks-Heeg (2004) provides a more critical perspective on Liverpoolʼs embrace of culture for the purposes of economic development. The article explains the role of the

Capital of Culture award in bringing the city up to speed with the boosterist strategising of other UK cities. It also identifies the contradictions of selling the city through images of cultural diversity and artistic production while immigrant communities remain

19 ghettoised and productive artistic spaces are threatened through commercial development.

The prioritisation of the city centre as a space of representation for the wider urban area is a consistent feature of the literature on the competitive city. In the UK this phenomenon is broadly concurrent with the promotion of city centre living as a planning policy and a consumer lifestyle. In their discussion of Manchesterʼs city centre living boom, which originated in the 1990s, Young Diep and Drabble (2006) identify the exclusionary nature of “cosmopolitan city” strategies. They claim; “(a) process contributing to exclusion relates to the way that the regenerated city is conceived of, designed and promoted to certain groups who are deemed to be appropriate to the particular style of development and urban form which is favoured by elites. Thus an important part of entrepreneurial city strategies has been efforts to reimage cities, particularly to counter negative stereotypes and make them more appealing to investors, businesses, tourists, consumers and residents” (p1691). Manchester can be seen to have a significant presence in Liverpool elitesʼ perception of the landscape of interurban competition. In the UK, the city offers an important model of urban reinvention and entrepreneurialism amidst a declining industrial economy (Deas et al.

1999; Quilley 2000; Harding et al. 2004).

Savitch and Kantor (2002) include Liverpool as one of the ten cities featured in their analysis of urban governmentsʼ economic competitiveness strategies. “Look-alike mixes of history and retail trade sprout up for the obvious reasons of attracting tourists

20 and creating a new image”, which in Liverpoolʼs case, at their time of writing, took the form of the Albert Dock which “now accommodates an art gallery, a maritime museum, and a television news station. The refurbished dock gives this still grimy city a new facade” (p277). Through their comparison of cities in North America and Europe, the authors produce a compelling account of the relationship between a cityʼs “bargaining position” and local governmentʼs pursuit of social or business-led local agendas.

Economic and political strength determine this bargaining position. The concept will inform the analysis throughout this paper, particularly in the sections on Liverpool

Waters.

Biddulph (2011) has directly discussed the links between design and urban entrepreneurialism in Liverpool, claiming that; “Whilst there should be a concern for the privatisation of the public realm generally, issues such as gentrification and a more general concern for placelessness are overstated. Iconic forms of development have not materialised. Forms of over development, such as tall buildings, have been moderated by policy and guidance. Large scale projects can be designed to fit into and enhance the fabric of the city when urban design thinking is clearly embraced by partners” (p63). This paper will focus on subjective perspectives on the effects of competitive city building in Liverpool and the political relationships shaping this objective. It will also offer future-oriented perspectives on how Liverpool Waters fits into an entrepreneurial trajectory in order to contribute to Biddulphʼs assessment that; “In the case of Liverpool it seems a little overstated or simplistic to argue that the city is repositioning itself globally to attract inward investment. Instead it seems more

21 appropriate to reflect that investment has been directed to forms of development which meet or encourage the development of a range of competitive markets. Liverpool is repositioning itself locally, regionally and nationally and possibly least of all globally, making any reference to repositioning as a strategy a little ambiguous” (p98).

Fig 3. A view of the iconic Liver Building from the showroom of the West Tower- Liverpoolʼs tallest apartment building (Authorʼs own photograph).

22 Chapter 2: Establishing the Competitive City

Knowing Liverpoolʼs low numbers, low educational attainment, low enterprise level, low corporate base, no natural resources, limited geographical advantages, all the things you look at when youʼre planning a city, what assets does it have? You know youʼve got to sell them hard to survive.

(Local journalist perspective)

Liverpoolʼs position in relation to centralised power in the UK has shifted significantly since its days as the “Second City of the British Empire”, when it possessed a port and merchant economy that played a significant supporting role to the metropolitan core of

London. This chapter will discuss the evolution of this relationship over the last 30 years in both helping and hindering the genesis of “Competitive City Liverpool” through waterfront redevelopment initiatives.

Fig 4. The City, London (Authorʼs own photograph)

23 Today, as a global financial capital and Britainʼs political centre, London shapes the landscape in which the UKʼs other core cities hope to compete and thrive. In “World

City” Doreen Massey claims Londonʼs “great turn-around in the 1980s towards the booming city of today has been spurred above all by the classic measures of

ʻneoliberalismʼ: privatisation, deregulation, and liberalisation in general- processes that also contributed to the industrial collapse of the North” (p123). London also defines the terms by which these cities aspire to regenerate. As shall be shown in the following chapter, much of Liverpoolʼs success in redevelopment can be categorised as the

“grantsman” model of development identified by Savitch and Kantor, in which central government funding opportunities are primarily utilised. It should be noted, however, that the authors also identify that of the ten cities discussed in their book, “over the past

30 years Liverpool has shifted most often and is still in the process of change” (p303).

The following discussion focusses on the role of London-based central government in devising development initiatives and facilitating funding opportunities for provincial cities. Londonʼs metropolitan government is also featured, at times representing a model of urban governance for the regions, while consistently occupying a privileged position within Britainʼs urban network owing to the cityʼs physical size, economic clout and connections with national government. A short detour to Manchester will reveal some of the varying outcomes of central initiatives on citiesʼ competitiveness. As revealed by intervieweeʼs perspectives, the influence of central institutions on development in regional cities like Liverpool and Manchester is mediated by factors

24 such as personal connections, media perceptions, and their interrelations with an uneven psycho-geographical and cultural landscape.

2.1 An Oppositional Space

People seem upset that it (Liverpool) is playing the game. A lot of people in the Guardian, in London, want Liverpool to be this alternative space against capitalism... I think theyʼre projecting that onto it while they donʼt live here because they know itʼs economically failed. They couldnʼt have the lifestyle or jobs that they do, but they want to imagine an alternative space... Every time it has played the game itʼs been better for it...

(Local journalist perspective)

Since the 1980s, Liverpoolʼs relationship with “playing the game”- engaging in the prevailing practices of city governance in regard to physical and economic development objectives- has been inconstant, shaped by the parameters of tough economic circumstances and marked by maverick actions and experimental initiatives. The view put forward in the opening perspective of Liverpool as a potential “alternative space against capitalism” refers to current concerns over Liverpool Waters scheme within

London media circles. While this view misrepresents the cityʼs historic push-pull relationship with the dictates of central power, it can be seen to be shaped by a legacy of images grounded in the cityʼs post war decline.

In “Reinventing the City”, Ronaldo Munck discusses the effects of the cityʼs reputation.

The author quotes Rob Shieldsʼ argument about Liverpool that, “ʻthe myths were not simple fictions but related in a complex manner with tangible conditions. In many cases the images accentuated these conditions; in others, the images became self fulfilling

25 propheciesʼ”, before Munck adds, “This last point is essential to understanding the difficulties a city like Liverpool has in (re)presenting itself anew as an image-place given the long history of myth-making and ʻdeviance amplificationʼ” (Munck, 2003, p14).

Harvey (1996) has identified the role that perceptions of a place being “dubious” and

“dangerous” or “authentic” and “beautiful” can play in the urban process. He writes; “the political-economic and symbolic possibilities of place (re)construction are, in short, highly coloured by the evaluative manner of place representation” (p322). In Liverpoolʼs case, perceptions shape the ways in which powerful actors- often at the level of central government- respond to redevelopment imperatives, reinforcing the perceived role of the city and its place within the urban hierarchy.

The ʻ80s were something of a nadir for economic, social and political crises in Liverpool, a source of all the wrong kinds of urban images. This period represents the moment at which the city had its most rebellious and chaotic relationship with centralised power.

Against a backdrop of political turmoil, race riots and rising unemployment, the ʻ80s also mark the beginning of the reinvention of Liverpoolʼs waterfront in the post-industrial mould as a site of recreation and tourism. Relationships with centralised power in

London were instrumental in shaping this contradictory environment. The Militant

Labour council of 1983 to 1987 assumed an oppositional stance to Thatcherʼs central government, attempting to establish Liverpool as a space of resistance to the neoliberal tide. The councilʼs agenda was characterised by a commitment to increasing employment in the public sector, a suspicion of business-led development and a focus on deprived neighbourhoods outside of the city centre (Savitch and Kantor, 2002, p115).

26 Savitch and Kantor describe the city as displaying the characteristics of a “challenger” model of urban development during this phase, as the Militant Tendency deliberately pursued a strategy to drive the city into bankruptcy in protest against Thatcherʼs budget cuts.

Public opinion, including that of left-leaning interviewees, has largely come to regard

Militantʼs actions as overly ideological and irresponsible. In a recent newspaper interview, current Mayor Joe Anderson described the councilʼs leadership in the following, critical terms, while illustrating the shift in priorities of todayʼs urban governments; “It wasnʼt about promoting the city, highlighting its strength or taking advantage of its unique position in the world. They tarnished the cityʼs image – it was sacrificed for other peopleʼs images, reputations and egos” (Liverpool Echo, 2013 para.

5). At the time however, as identified by Parkinson in “Liverpool on the Brink” (1985), the city stood “at the centre of the economic, social and ideological forces facing British cities” (p10). Parkinson identifies that, at the time, “the belief that national elites do not care very much about Liverpool, has produced a degree of cynicism in the cityʼs public life. And it has encouraged, not only in the Liverpool Labour Party, what may be called the politics of frustration. The behaviour of the Labour council can only be understood in this context. Its reaction to its problems was simply ʻto have a goʼ at the Conservative

Governmentʼ. But this primitive line struck a chord with many people in the city, however much it may also have worried them”(p176).

27 The cityʼs economic trajectory, and associated outsider perceptions, has enabled it to become “a bit of a laboratory” for central government initiatives in the words of one interviewee, and the 80s were a key moment in this history. While the Thatcher governmentʼs budget cuts and dismantling of the unions devastated Liverpoolʼs economy and generated public antipathy towards the capital, central government funds had already begun to be directed towards new focussed models of urban development in the form of the Merseyside Development Corporation (MDC). Liverpoolʼs isolation from centralised power in terms of personal connections (in contrast to well-connected, largely Southern English councils) was commented on by interviewees, but an exception can be seen in the figure of Michael Heseltine, the Conservative governmentʼs Secretary of State for the Environment, who was responsible for the creation of the MDC in 1981.

Perspectives on: Michael Heseltine

• Heʼs been an advocate of the city for a long long time. He was awarded freedom of the city last year. Itʼs quite clear like so many people who visit Liverpool, heʼs fallen in love with it. (Liverpool Vision Perspective1)

• (Heseltine) walked into the waterfront after the riots in Liverpool and looked at the Albert Dock and he was the first person really to have a serious vision of saving it...and developing something that was already happening in London around St Katharineʼs Dock... Good friend of the city, even though heʼs a Tory. (City Centre Community Group Perspective)

• The respectable face of the Thatcher government. (City Council Perspective 1)

28 Heseltineʼs ongoing relationship with the city can be seen to have given Liverpool an advantage over Britainʼs other post-industrial core cities in restoring its physical assets.

Interviewees testified to the fact that this relationship is grounded in the MPʼs positive experience of the city amid the countervailing forces of negative images and regionalized development biases. The following perspective, however, describes the importance of central government relationships with the then-existing Greater London

Council in the formation of the MDC. Also suggesting agendas underlying the dismantling of existing governance structures, the quote speaks more to the London- centricism of national government policy than benevolence towards the provinces:

Merseyside County Council wanted to take the initiative on regenerating those docks and they had started to prepare plans. When the Conservatives got into power they wanted to do away with the county councils, largely because of the political battle that was going on between Thatcher and Ken Livingston in London. The best way to get rid of Livingston was to get rid of all the metropolitan authorities...as a result Heseltine decided that he wanted to redevelop the London Docklands, he wanted to create a Development Corporation styled on the New Town Development Corporation to do that task, with planning powers and resources and with skilled personnel. He was apparently told by civil servants that you canʼt create an organisation to do that in one city, because to do that would require a particular form of parliamentary legislation which was slow. So he said we will in fact go for two Development Corporations, tell me which is the most deprived, or second most deprived place in England, and they said it was Liverpool.

(Academic Perspective 1)

The same interviewee continued by suggesting a deliberate suppression of effective forms of provincial urban governance by the Thatcher government, claiming that;

“Others have since told me that the reason that the government was so keen to get rid of the metropolitan authorities was that they were actually beginning to assert

29 themselves and become increasingly effective, and thus competitors for the civil service down in London”.

Despite the persistence of a dynamic characterised by a vast disparity of economic and political power between the two cities, the acts of dismantling Merseyside Metropolitan

County Council creating the MDC displayed superficial resemblances to shifts taking place in the capital. Changes to Liverpoolʼs relatively impoverished physical environment at the time were enacted through these processes. Interviewees accounted for the effectiveness of the MDC in initiating Liverpool’s image transformation due to the range of powers and resources endowed upon it, while at the same time restricting local autonomy. One interviewee stated that; “(Militant leader Derek) Hatton was complaining that the government was starving the City Council of money and putting into the Development Corporation, which was true. Liverpool didnʼt benefit much at the time, but I think the Albert Dock kickstarted Liverpoolʼs tourist economy”.

Something of a critical consensus has been established around the Conservative governmentʼs UDC initiatives. Simon Jenkins has claimed the UDCs resemble a colonial edict 'imposing emergency rule on a defeated tribe'” (The Guardian, 2004, para.

9). Deas and Ward (1999) claim, “UDCs were created to bypass local authorities; to relinquish the redistributional remit of earlier regeneration efforts; to subordinate social regeneration to the revitalisation of stagnant local land and property markets; and to engage with local communities solely, and indirectly, through the process of trickle- down” (p114). A facet of this pro development shift can be seen in the introduction of

30 the “Enterprise Zone” model to the UK at both the London Docklands and the MDC sites. This model persists today, notably at Liverpool Waters. In “The City

Builders” (2001), Fainstein explains, “enterprise zones were designated geographic areas where firms were rewarded for investments with a variety of tax incentives, regulatory relief, and access to financing”, identifying them as part of a shift from,

“Earlier emphases in redevelopment programs on the provision of housing, public amenities, and targeted benefits to low-income people...as aggregate economic growth...became the criterion of program success” (p7).

The restoration of the Albert Dock by the MDC, which by 1988 included museums, the

Tate Art Gallery, and the Collonades apartment complex, marked the beginning of the aestheticisation of Liverpoolʼs waterfront, and its adaptation away from being a key node in the British Empireʼs industrial economy of production towards a role in a new economy of consumption. The means by which this process was implemented were intimately bound up with development priorities in the British capital, which included similar tourism-oriented dock refurbishments at St. Katharineʼs Dock and the creation of

Canary Wharf, a second financial district for a burgeoning global economic centre around which the UK economy was being restructured.

Knox (2010) describes the redevelopment of the London Docklands as, “a deliberate attempt by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcherʼs government not simply to market this part of London to global investors, but to sell the whole idea of the United Kingdom as a rejuvenated, postindustrial economy” (p155). As such, Liverpool can be seen as a

31 somewhat unwilling trailblazer within a new model of development, and an emerging consensus around entrepreneurial ideologies established by London-centric interests.

The Militant Councilʼs reaction against central government economic restructuring programme conforms to Harveyʼs (1996) claim of anti capitalist movements that, “left to themselves they are easily dominated by the power of capital to coordinate accumulation across universal but fragmented space” (p324).

Fig 5. Albert Dock before restoration (source: http://www.yoliverpool.com/forum/showthread.php?11601- Albert-Dock-1980s-Picture)

32 Fig 6. Albert Dock Today (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/14/northerner-review- newspapers)

2.2 Playing the Game

What we frustratingly and constantly find is that even now, people from the South East come to Liverpool and say “Oh, itʼs rather nice isnʼt it” and you think “what sort of place did you think it was?”. Weʼre a World Heritage Site city. What on earth did you expect? Itʼs hugely frustrating for us that we have a high profile internationally... Drive 30 miles away from Liverpool and thereʼs stigma and then that expands and expands as you get to London. Itʼs nowhere near what is was ten years ago. The Capital Of Culture did a huge amount and having Tate here means that lots of South Eastern lovies..things like that bring people from the South East here.

(Liverpool Vision Perspective 1)

This introductory perspective suggests that development strategies in the last 30 years have closed the gap between perceptions of Liverpool domestically and internationally, as associations with crime, drugs and unemployment battle visions of imperial prominence and associations with musical and sporting renown. The waterfront has

33 been a key site for this battle and by the late 1990s favourable economic and political circumstances allowed Liverpool to build on the foundation created by the MDC at the

Albert Dock. The majority of the decade was described in the following terms by an interviewee; “There wasnʼt much development happening in Liverpool in the ʻ90s. It was a real backwater, the city was declining from really bad days in the ʻ80s. Whatever the reasons you want to put for that, industrial decline, the whole economy was a mess.

The city was a basket case really”.

A shift occurred as the the Liberal Democrat Council leadership, elected in 1998, directed their priorities away from the low-income neighbourhoods that had been the continued target of Labour councils in the 1990s, and towards image improvements in the city centre and waterfront. An interviewee connected this shift in governance to the legacy of the Militant Labour council, claiming; “Something I think people underestimate in terms of the legacies of Militant is that once all those people were removed- barred from office, expelled from the Labour Party- what that actually then left was this kind of vacuum, because in a city that by that time had become solidly Labour, youʼd just removed a whole bunch of councillors... it took some time for the Labour Party locally to recover from that as a governing force which is why we had this long period of Liberal

Democrat, during a time when Labour was very popular nationally, winning elections, they couldnʼt win in Liverpool, which was a bit odd”. Interviewees spoke of the effectiveness of the Liberal Democrat leadership in countering negative perceptions of local representatives who have, in the words of Michael Short (2007), “historically, had

34 an unenviable reputation nationally for having a lack of vision about the future of the city” (p125).

Tony Blairʼs New Labour national government, elected in 1997, brought an new agenda of regionalism to the UK, and initiated a new focus on improving the nationʼs cities. The establishment of the “Urban Task Force”, led by architect Richard Rogers, produced the

“Towards an Urban Renaissance” document in 1999, which emphasised a need for quality urban design and the promotion of city centre living. The paper claims; “Since the industrial revolution we have lost ownership of our towns and cities, allowing them to become spoilt by poor design, economic dispersal and social polarisation. The beginning of the 21st century is a moment of change” (Urban Task Force, 1999, p3).

The criteria underpinning Rogersʼ vision is revealed in the following excerpt; “New urban developments, on brownfield or greenfield land, must be designed to much higher standards if they are to attract people back into our towns and cities. Urban developments should be integrated with their surroundings, optimise access to public transport and maximise their potential by increasing density in appropriate conditions.

They should seek diversity; encouraging a mix of activities, services, incomes and tenures within neighbourhoods. Land must be used efficiently, local traditions respected and negative environmental impacts kept to a minimum. Priority should be given to high architectural standards and to the design of public spaces between buildings where people meet and move about” (Urban Task Force, 1999, p7). The document can be seen to have strongly influenced waterfront development in Liverpool over the following

35 decade. A boom in the national economy and a supportive network of funding opportunities led to a dramatic period of redevelopment in Liverpool.

New Labourʼs assimilation of an agenda of local autonomy into existing models of urban development can be seen in the shift from the MDC to the Liverpool Vision organisation.

Liverpool Vision was the first “Urban Regeneration Company” in the UK, established in

1999 with a specific mandate to improve central and waterfront areas. In contrast to the

Merseyside Development Corporation, the organisation had no direct planning powers but acted as a facilitator within a partnership of a number of private and public bodies.

Unlike the MDC, Liverpool Vision included democratic local links to Liverpool City

Council while retaining a central government presence through the (now-defunct)

Government Office on Merseyside, who brought access to European funding. The involvement of individuals with significant commercial standing such as Sir Terry Leahy

(Liverpool-Born Tesco supermarket Entrepreneur) brought clout and connections, while

English Partnerships and the (now-defunct) North West Regional Development Agency possessed land, resources and powers to enact significant physical change.

A former member of the organisation described the context for urban development in

Liverpool in the years between New Labourʼs election and the financial crash of 2008 in the following terms: “The circumstances in which we did the job were probably propitious because politically the city had started to settle down...there was a lot of untapped potential... there were sites, there were things, there were actions, there were gaps. There were lots of opportunities there that had been untapped. There was money,

36 because there was money then. There was European money, English Partnerships money, Regional Development Agency money, there was private money, some money from the City Council. There was this big collective will that was kind of encapsulated in

Liverpool Vision to make use of all these ingredients and make a change. All of that was done over the course of 6,7,8 years” (Liverpool Vision Perspective 2).

On the waterfront, the effect of this propitious environment was to expand leisure and tourism-oriented spaces around the existing Albert Dock in all directions. To the South,

Kings Dock was redeveloped to become the site of a new arena, while to the North, adjacent to the cityʼs iconic “Three Graces”, public space, new office and residential accommodations and a Liverpool Museum were created. To the East, the Liverpool

One shopping development connected the existing commercial centre to the waterfront for the first time. To the West, even the ever-present River Mersey has been recently re-energised by an increasing number of cruise ships drawn to the cityʼs new attractions.

A successful bid for European Capital of Culture 2008 gave the city the national exposure to exhibit is revitalised waterfront. The report “Creating an impact: Liverpoolʼs experience as European Capital of Culture”, testifies to its tangible benefits in terms of media perception locally and nationally. It claims; “The traditional contrast between negative reporting on social issues and positive stories on city icons has been replaced by a wealth of stories on current cultural offer and economic change” and that “By the end of 2008, this has led to a much more nuanced view of the city, with a balanced

37 proportion of positive, negative and neutral coverage” (Garcia, Melville and Cox, 2011,

“Image and Perceptions” section). While Zukinʼs (1995) claim that cultural strategies

“do not reverse the hierarchies of place” (p274) certainly applies to Liverpoolʼs relationship with the broader political economic landscape, it is clear that, by emphasising its cultural assets, the city has tapped into a long dormant, but valuable resource in the interrelated objectives of economic development and image improvement.

The fact that the Capital of Culture year coincided with the opening Liverpool One shopping development testifies to the increasing confluence of culture and commerce in the city. The project was showcased to a broader clientele through the award and has subsequently significantly boosted Liverpoolʼs place significantly in the national retail rankings. An interviewee described its effects in the following terms; “I remember my daughter saying the day after Liverpool One opened that she went down to use the shops and said “it doesnʼt feel like Liverpool anymore”. She said “it feels almost like

London” and itʼs obviously attracting a wealthier clientele and a much bigger clientele”.

38 Fig 7. Liverpool One Shopping Centre (Authorʼs own photograph)

Flows of capital from a diversity of public and private sources, via a development framework prioritising aesthetic improvement, facilitated a largely successful attempt to remodel the waterfront in the image of a globalised space of consumption. The cityʼs existing stock of historic buildings has made a graceful transition into the age of the symbolic economy, complemented by some successful examples of contemporary urban design and architecture. A considerable boost to Liverpoolʼs tourist economy was one of the most significant successes of this period, with many interviewees citing the fact that the city was now the third most popular urban tourist destination in the UK.

39 Perspectives on: Tourism in Liverpool

• People did not come as tourists to Liverpool in the ʻ80s, unless they had a particularly weird sense of tourism. (Academic Perspective 2)

• London is probably the global city, Edinburgh is big...Liverpool has come from pretty well nowhere (to be the third urban destination in the UK). (Liverpool Vision Perspective 2)

• They come here because of the ambience, they come here for stag dos, The Beatles, football... but I think they think, thereʼs a lot of nice buildings here, particularly on the waterfront. (City Council Perspective 1)

• I think Liverpool is seen as one of those short break destinations for people in Spain and other places. So think there is a perception- itʼs probably real actually- there have been big improvements to Liverpoolʼs offer. Part of that, not all of it, but part of that is due to the emphasis on quality as well, itʼs a much nicer environment to be in. (City Council Perspective 2)

North of the Pier Head, the land on which Liverpool Waters will be developed remains derelict. The upward trajectory of the image of Liverpool Waterfront in a time of readily available finance, however, has attracted developers to construct a number of tall apartment buildings, set back from the river around Princes Dock. A senior former member of the cityʼs planning department claimed this space, “was going to be our “little

Manhattan”. Of these buildings Biddulph (2011) has written; “Tall buildings are controversial and frame the waterfront view of the Three Graces, but they exploit the commercial potential of their positions without being very memorable” (p99). This small but significant cluster, a symbolic product of a buoyant national economy, established a high-rise context into which Peel Holdings intend to introduce their ambitious designs.

40 Fig 8. The existing cluster around Princeʼs Dock (Authorʼs own photograph)

2.3 Local Rivalry

Itʼs almost visceral that suspicion (between Liverpool and Manchester) and itʼs amongst remarkably otherwise measured professional people.

(Academic Perspective 3)

While Liverpool and Manchester- possessing synergistic economics of transportation and production- “grew up on the backs of each other”, in the words of one interviewee, the introductory perspective testifies to the often antagonistic relationship the two cities share. This section, in keeping with a discussion of “competitive city” Liverpool, will summarise some key political relationships influencing this rivalry and identify their

41 effect on urban development practices over the past 30 years. This discussion will help portray the role of centralised power and neoliberal capitalist economic conditions in shaping the landscape of interurban competition in the UK, as well as revealing the role that chance and agency can play in determining citiesʼ successes within this framework.

It will also establish context for the next chapter, in which Manchester-based developer

Peel will play a key role.

Heseltine and Leahy (2011) describe how “Liverpool competed head-on with neighbouring Manchester for jobs and sometimes failed in that competition due to a poorer reputation as a business location and an air of being somewhere on the slide rather than on the up” (p22). Manchester, with a similar working class identity, post industrial urban fabric and “brand” associations with music and sport to Liverpool, now holds a firm grasp on being the regional centre of North West England, while possessing a strong claim to being Britainʼs second city. Stephen Quilley (2000) has described Manchesterʼs transition in the following terms; “from municipal Labourism and a traditional industrial city with a specifically working-class, northern English identity, to a more heterogeneous and less class-bound politics in a self-consciously metropolitan city with a more European perspective” (p611). As such, Liverpoolʼs near-neighbour was a frequent reference point in participant interviews when discussing city-building and promotional strategies. An interviewee claimed of Manchester:

Theyʼve managed to negotiate things with central government in terms of additional funding very successfully. Things like the tram network. The number of times people have tried to get a tram in Liverpool and itʼs failed, itʼs hilarious. The kind of economic development that you see in Liverpool in the last 20 years is quite copy cat. They look at

42 what Manchester does and try and replicate it here, whether itʼs the airport, whether itʼs the arena, ideas about a tram which never come off, trying to develop stuff around the football economy, which never quite comes off because the new Anfield stadium is never built and Everton never relocate. So there is this sense of really playing second fiddle in the region and not being able to emulate what Manchester has done at any level really and that doesnʼt really seem to be changing even now.

(Academic Perspective 2)

This disparity has some roots in the era of the Urban Development Corporations, in which Liverpool demonstrated a resistant political stance to Thatcherʼs neoliberal turn.

The Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC) was formed in 1988, in a significantly different economic environment to the early ʻ80s, when the MDC had been established. Londonʼs financial sector and the creation of Canary Wharf, was shown to be a key factor in the initial UDC experiment. The late ʻ80s fruition of the Conservative governmentʼs economic policy shifts- with associated changes to the built environment- can be seen to have produced an economic boom with a trickle-down effect in the regions at the same time as the CMDC was founded.

Deas, Peck, Tickell and Ward (1999) discuss Manchesterʼs markedly different experience with the Urban Development Corporations to Liverpoolʼs “macho disregard and defiance” and “anticommercial bent”. They write, “In contrast to the earlier waves of

UDCs economic conditions in the three mini UDCs were relatively buoyant as urban

Britain began to recover from the recession...in Manchester- and in particular, city centre Manchester- this sometimes hesitant upswing was based around the growth in

43 the financial and producer services, and a retail sector reinvigorated by credit-fuelled consumer spending” (p207).

An interviewee claimed, “In 1987 Liverpoolʼs Militant Council was being removed from office, Manchester was bidding for the Olympics and I think we saw which strategy was more successful”. At this moment, Deas et al. describe a “catalytic effect” which would have a long lasting impact on attitudes towards urban governance in Manchester. They write; “the timing of the CMDCʼs establishment, coupled with the adhesive effect of the

Olympic bid on institutional relationships in Manchester, and the judicious choice of senior personnel, helped propel CMDC with a momentum denied to UDCs established in less favourable circumstances in other areas” (p221).

Harding, Deas, Evans and Wilks-Heeg (2004, p45-48) identify three factors that shaped

Manchesterʼs regional dominance over Liverpool. The first “stability in local political and executive leadership” refers to Manchesterʼs consistently Labour-dominated council whose continuity provided solid grounds on which long-term objectives could be realised. The second factor, “Manchesterʼs superior capacity to generate and pursue

ʻthe big ideaʼ”, refers to place promotion schemes like the Olympic bid, and latterly the

Commonwealth Games bid, belatedly replicated by Liverpool with its Capital of Culture successes. Finally, “Manchesterʼs ability to adopt and realise a ʻhorses for coursesʼ approach to intergovernmental and public-private sector partnership”, refers to the

flexibility of governmental actors and their ability to establish enduring relationships with various bodies with regard to economic development objectives.

44 Pre-dating the era of the Thatcher government and the UDCs, a historic advantage for

Manchester was identified by one academic participant in the internal relationships of councils within the two metropolitan areas;

Itʼs always been more difficult in Liverpool partly because Liverpool was a less successful commercial city during a critical period of time that Manchester was. So whereas the suburbs of Manchester were sending labour into Manchester and benefitting from Manchesterʼs growth, people who left Liverpool and went to the suburbs had a much more antagonistic relationship with the city than typically in Manchester... the feeling in the smarter suburbs of Merseyside was that if you managed to escape Liverpool you turned your back on it, even if you still worked there...that is changing but itʼs changed later so itʼs only really the result of the last decade that we now see population growth in the city and decline in the suburbs. That probably hasnʼt happened for 100 years.

(Academic Perspective 3)

In the previous section, an interviewee commented, “drive 30 miles away from Liverpool and thereʼs stigma”, speaking to the deeply ingrained prejudices surrounding the city.

The above quote highlights the economic impacts of such stigma, demonstrating the potential benefits of the image-boosting initiatives pursued by Liverpool Vision and the

New Urban Renaissance fuelled city centre living boom, in establishing competitiveness with Manchester. Liverpoolʼs recent Liberal Democrat council were described in an interview as “a leadership (Manchester) could talk to”. In contrast to earlier Labour councils in Liverpool, the Liberal Democratʼs awareness of the dominant discourses surrounding place promotion put them in synch with attitudes developed in Manchester years earlier.

45 While Liverpool was generally described as lagging behind its neighbour in proactive responses to prevailing systems, the quality of the cityʼs built form and its “place value” were cited by participants as potential advantages over Manchester.

Perspectives on: Competitive Advantages over Manchester

• Our chairman in particular was pretty sure that there was no point in Liverpool trying to compete with Manchester on a purely commercial footing...it had to home in on something that maybe set it apart, that it could exploit to its advantage. One of them was Liverpool as a visitor destination with its remarkable heritage. (Liverpool Vision Perspective 2)

• Iʼm proud of our city. I love Manchester, donʼt get me wrong, but itʼs a different sort of city from ours... I donʼt think thereʼs any other city in the country apart from London, with the Thames, where you have long distance views of tall buildings like you have here. Manchester has a different sort of excitement, it seems very buoyant, more buoyant than Liverpool, but I donʼt think itʼs got that something thatʼs a bit different. (City Council Perspective 1)

Deeply entrenched historic rivalries can be seen to be compounded by an environment of interurban competition fostered by national government policies and global economic imperatives. Perceptions of a deep division between Liverpool and Manchester, however, belie traditional economic linkages and the fact that, by some measures, the two cities can be considered one urban agglomeration. In their discussion of potential forms of regional governance to effectively boost the North Westʼs economic clout,

Chape and Wray (2011) write that; “The idea of linking the two great cities of Liverpool and Manchester is not a new one but has never been successfully achieved. The separate brands of Manchester and Liverpool are recognised worldwide, so why not bring them together as a super brand?” (p79). Central to their discussion is the issue

46 that, “competition is potentially unhealthy... the real competitor is the South East and the magnetic force of Greater London” (p82).

While Labour and Conservative governments have demonstrated various approaches to boosting regional economies, something of a divide-and conquer dynamic can be seen to have emerged in Londonʼs favour through the imperative of interurban competition becoming dominant within the discourse of urban development. An interviewee identified strong linkages between Liverpool and Manchester based on economic, if not political forces, describing the potential for a regional system of governance in the following terms; “I think the market is doing it in a way, and if Peel had their way the land in their ownership would be built up between here and Manchester”.

Fig 9. Peel Project Media City in Salford, Greater Manchester (Authorʼs own photograph)

47 2.4 Back on the Brink

(Mayor Joe Anderson is) basically trying to cultivate a relationship with government and those that can influence government... this is my opinion... this is why he volunteered to be city Mayor, which is a conservative idea basically, he said to himself “whatʼs the best way of getting in with these people and influencing them so they donʼt completely decimate the city, Iʼll run with their ideas”...Liverpool is going to be incredibly hard hit by a very unsympathetic right wing government and it has no political clout or influence in this government because there arenʼt any Conservative seats in Liverpool, so the mayor has had to be extremely pragmatic. In my view youʼve got to save the city from collapse, itʼs as simple as that.

(Academic Perspective 1)

Joe Anderson is the first Labour leader of Liverpoolʼs council since the election of the

Liberal Democrats in 1998 and, in keeping with the cityʼs status as a laboratory for political experiments from central government, represents the UKʼs first directly elected mayor outside of Greater London. While Andersonʼs position can again be seen as an example of Liverpoolʼs unique relationship with London in the rapid transfer of policy ideas, the role is markedly different from that of Boris Johnson in London, which was created in 2000. Andersonʼs powers and resources are significantly fewer than his

London counterpart and his jurisdiction covers only the core city of Liverpool- a population of 466,000 within an urban area of 2.3 million. Heseltine and Leahy (2011) discuss this imbalance stating; "in marketing terms Liverpool is a world class brand" and

"it would be perverse to do other than embrace the wider area within an identity recognised across the globe" (p5).

Liverpoolʼs pioneering involvement in current Prime Minister David Cameronʼs “Big

Society” initiative was cut short due to concurrent funding cuts which were perceived to

48 have undermined the schemes intentions. Withdrawal from the initiative- intended to increase volunteer and community involvement in city service provision- suggests that, while the chaotic days of Militant are long behind the city, Liverpool retains an independent spirit from central government. Potential cuts of 52% to the councilʼs budget (Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services, 2013, “Liverpool City Council Budget

2013-14” webpage) under the Coalition government have accompanied the dismantling of institutions like the Northwest Regional Development Agency, leaving the political geography of the UK starkly imbalanced. Liverpool Visionʼs role has been dramatically scaled back, becoming an “economic development company” in tandem with the cessation of regional and national representation in the organisation. Employment gains in the period of the cityʼs transformation were largely in the public sector, despite the semblance of entrepreneurialism in the Liberal Democratʼs economic development strategies. Chape and Wray (2011) cite the high level of 39% presently in public sector employment in Liverpool (p77). These employees will be hit hard by central governmentʼs austerity measures in a post-financial crash economic landscape.

49 Perspectives on: The Impact of the Financial Crisis

• As usually happens in the UK, the boom started in the South and gradually ripples out to more provincial centres. It was late coming to Liverpool, but in that period it certainly did. I think it coincided with probably a slightly more effective leadership of the City Council than it had had for quite a long time. So good market conditions, reasonably good leadership produced quite a lot, in terms of physical development in the city waterfront, the city centre. Weʼve since had the crash of course and Liverpool in particular has been extremely badly hit, probably as badly hit as anywhere in the country by public expenditure cutbacks. (Academic Perspective 3)

• I think cities had a great time under the last administration...all the right buttons were pressed on making cities advance, bringing people back to the cities, putting money into cities, good design and now I think itʼs going in completely the opposite way. (City Council Perspective 1)

• Thereʼs councils down in the south that have so much money they donʼt know what to spend it on, the Government turned round and said, this is because theyʼre well run councils, itʼs because they donʼt have the problems that Liverpool and big cities have to cope with...thereʼs a lot of money being taken out of the cities in a number of ways...Iʼm getting increasingly angry about it. (City Council Perspective 1)

• Itʼs much more difficult (to attract investment) but itʼs much more difficult for everyone other than London Iʼd say. It may as well be another continent there. (City Council Perspective 2)

In conclusion, Liverpoolʼs physical transformation over the last 30 years testifies to periods of integration with central governmentʼs London-centric project of economic restructuring. The physical reshaping of Londonʼs Docklands through the mechanism of the Urban Development Corporation created spaces to facilitate a newly-deregulated global finance economy which helped spur Britainʼs economy to a briefly sustained boom. Massey (2007) describes this transformation in the following terms; “the current victory of neoliberalism both represents a victory of (a part of) London/the South East over the rest of the country and, for that very reason, means that the conflict over

50 London, and what kind of city it was to be, was (and remains) crucial to the national outcome” (p74).

In Liverpool, connectivity to national and international sources of funding have been deployed towards a focussed agenda of image improvement, as pioneered at central governmentʼs behest in the case of the MDC, and as demonstrated in the more locally responsive model of development facilitated by Liverpool Vision. The cityʼs ongoing relation of dependency to macro-economic conditions in revitalising and reframing an impressive architectural legacy left by its former role in the global economic system, however, demonstrates an ongoing struggle to attract a sufficiently productive post- industrial economy. The context in which Liverpool Waters will be built is markedly different from the “Urban Renaissance” years under New Labour as it is argued that political connections and an appropriate configuration of governance are once again lacking under a new Conservative-led regime.

Liverpoolʼs periodic integration with flows of public and private capital has bestowed the city with an improved perception in the national imaginary and the infrastructure to connect to a national and international aesthetic economy. The city will hope to maintain the development of its tourist economy and attract inward investment as a consequence of its improved image, finally transitioning from the “grantsman” model of urban development, to a private investment driven model. The next chapter will discuss how Liverpool Waters might fit within the challenging new economic and political context.

51 Chapter 3: Maintaining the Competitive City

Peel came in a time when it was, “whats going to happen next, whereʼs the new money coming from?”. All the grant funding was stopping and Peel came in with a £5bn scheme.

(City Council Perspective 1)

Liverpool inhabits a markedly different economic and regulatory context to that described in the early years of the 21st Century. In contrast to the cocktail of public and private funds that shaped the cityʼs recent development history, Peel alone are responsible for continuing the project of redeveloping the waterfront and furthering the cityʼs pursuit of “competitive city” status. Entrepreneurial rhetoric is on full display in

Peelʼs Development Director Lindsay Ashworthʼs statement that; “All cities in the UK have to compete with each other and each has to compete with rival European Cities.

Liverpool is now well placed to be alongside the best of the best...For Central Docks securing this planning permission is the end of the beginning and the start of another exciting phase of its life that will add to the beauty of Liverpoolʼs Waterfront and the economic strength of the Liverpool region” (Seven Streets, 2013, para.18,19). Liverpool

City Council have supported the project, hoping to continue the successful transformations of the cityʼs recent history. Compatible with the vision of Joe

Andersonʼs recently established Liverpool Mayoral Development Corporation, the plans will help “create a distinctive global city” and “develop a competitive edge both nationally and globally” (Liverpool City Council, 2013, “Mayoral Development Corporation” webpage).

52 This paper frames Peelʼs spectacular project as a continuation of the aestheticisation of

Liverpool Waterfront as an entrepreneurial city strategy, though it should be noted that conflation of the high-rise plans of the near future with heritage refurbishments of the recent past is problematic. Most of the controversy surrounding the plans has been surrounding the perceived opposition of high-rise architecture and heritage sites. Here, a focus lies on the redevelopment and reorientation of Liverpoolʼs waterfront away from being a node in an industrial economy towards playing a role in an economy of consumption. At both the Albert Dock and Pier Head sites and the northern Liverpool

Waters sites image plays, or is hoped to play, a significant role in attracting tourism, in- migration and investment. In this regard, heritage can be seen to have been assimilated into urban actorsʼ entrepreneurial development strategies alongside a counterpart that clashes with preservationist attitudes. As is identified by Zukin (1995);

“The conflict between producing symbols through historic preservation and producing space through speculative development makes strange bedfellows” (p124). This chapter will argue that, in the current economic climate, “selling the city” is the dominant motive for local elites behind both heritage promotion and spectacular new development.

Savitch and Kantor identify three tendencies, driven by the imperative of economic competitiveness, leading to the convergence of cities in the international marketplace.

At this point in time, Liverpool can be seen to have adapted to conform to all three. The authors observe a tendency towards “a withering away of development controls”, a

“radical shift away from social toward market centered policies” and “greater

53 concentration of power in the hands of a single leader” (Savitch and Kantor, 2002, p269-270). These phenomena will be central to the discussion that follows, assessing the significance of the Liverpool Waters scheme in the current political and economic context.

Of the northern docklands, an interviewee commented, “thereʼs no place in the country where youʼve got that amount of land in such a fantastic location, itʼs to die for really.

And they (Peel) have got ambition”. The spaces adjacent to the already redeveloped docks possess the alluring qualities of iconic appeal and relatively low market value, which Peel will be able to capitalise on. Chapter Two showed how the foundation was laid in reorienting waterfront spaces towards and consumer culture, and revealed how, in doing so, funding was redirected funding away from the social agenda of local Labour

Councils. Today, a struggle between wider social gains and dominant practices of redevelopment remains. The fact that the docklands are located adjacent to some of the UKʼs poorest wards raises questions about the beneficiaries of Liverpool Waters, particularly given the skepticism surrounding mega-projects and image-led entrepreneurial strategies highlighted in the academic perspectives in Chapter 1.

This chapter will ask the question; who is this vision of the competitive city for?

Following a section updating Chapter 2, on the role of centralised institutions in shaping the planning process for the scheme, this chapter will present three different visions of

Liverpool Waters, drawing on participant perspectives regarding practical considerations

54 of how the scheme will come to fruition as well as hopes and concerns surrounding the project.

Fig 10. Signage for Mersey Waters Enterprise Zone, indicating Liverpool Waters location north of the

Three Graces (Authorʼs own photograph)

55 3.1 Centralised Influences

English Heritage is driven by people based in London, Iʼve spoken to some of these people, I know one or two people on their advisory board and they take a dim view of Peel. There are some people who donʼt like to shop at Tescoʼs (imitates posh snobbery). Well the attitude of English Heritage advisory board to Peel is exactly the same “They are awful. Manchester? Northern property developers?”. So thereʼs an element here of British snobbery. Can you believe the class system might be at work?!

(Academic Perspective 1)

This perspective speaks to some of the same concerns as the purported “space against capitalism” that introduced Chapter 2; a projection of privileged attitudes, with a lack of understanding of harsh local realities. The same interviewee protested the furore over heritage objections to Liverpoolʼs high-rise plans given the ability of London to erect the

Shard, the latest aspirational beacon of global city status, in close proximity to heritage sites. The interviewee claimed; “If you go to the tower of London and look across the river at the Shard building, which is the highest new building in Western Europe, it stares in your face. Thereʼs been no objection to that, funny isnʼt it? I can only assume that English Heritage lobby thought it was a battle they could not win, because ranged against them would have been the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and the funders of that development, who I think are the Qataris who have an enormous amount of money they want to invest in the UK. So they thought theyʼd have a battle somewhere else”.

While other interviewees contested this argument, claiming English Heritageʼs involvement in protecting and refurbishing the waterfront as a public asset had fostered a close bond with the city (“they thought theyʼd done well for the city and they didnʼt

56 want to see what was increasingly, their city (be negatively impacted”), the claim reveals an us-vs-them mentality and a resentment towards interference from non-local actors.

As is identified by Michael Short (2007) in his discussion of tall buildings in Liverpool, the World Heritage Site has subjected Liverpool to a wider network of actors contributing to development decisions. Short writes; “ICOMOS UK are involved heavily in the impacts of development projects on the World Heritage Site and as such, comment on all large planning applications, which may be relevant. The input of this international organisation appears to be strongly resented in the city as an unwanted intrusion” (p127). As the author identifies; “The local conservation-planning regime can be characterised by a generally pro-development focus, which sees the need for physical regeneration to proceed even when there are significant built heritage issues and concerns” (p126), and cites a potential economic disadvantage in comparison to neighbouring Manchester through development restrictions related to heritage.

Peel, a Manchester based developer, has cast itself as a benefactor for the larger North

Western region, and has stated an objective of boosting local civic pride. Of Liverpool

Waters, Peel claim “...it is a totally unique scheme, quite befitting for a unique city.

Most importantly we believe in Liverpool and its people” (Exurbe, 2013a, p49). While the organisation may be resented by London-based English Heritage, greater forces in central government have aided the companyʼs mission to regenerate the northern docks in spectacular style. In March 2013 Eric Pickles, the current Secretary of State for

Communities and Local Government, decided to not call in the planning application for

Liverpool Waters for a public inquiry.

57 Peel have been granted outline permission for the docklands, giving them the power to plan the site and secure tenants, although individual buildings will be subject to the City

Councilʼs approval prior to development. The outline permission grants them flexibility in developing the site over the next 30 years, so it remains possible that “Shanghai-on

Mersey” will not materialise. However, Peel remain committed to tall buildings, claiming

“(W)ithout tall buildings, it is difficult to see how the numbers of jobs and new homes and the increased activity needed to transform the site can be created. Tall buildings are also beacons of regeneration, symbols of success. They inspire investment confidence.

We think they are essential for Wirral Waters and Liverpool Waters” (Exurbe, 2013a, p146).

Despite the concerns of English Heritage, the public and the media over the project, it was waved through in accordance with national governmentʼs newly deregulated, pro- growth National Planning Policy framework of 2012. Of changes to the national planning system, Prime Minister David Cameron has stated; "This government means business in delivering plans to help people build new homes and kick-start the economy. We're determined to cut through the bureaucracy that holds us back. That starts with getting the planners off our backs, getting behind the businesses that have the ambition to expand and meeting the aspirations of families that want to buy or improve a home" (BBC News, 2012, para.14,15). The Peel Group have identified their involvement with the governmentʼs policy shift claiming; “the planning system has moved to a much more positive place with the introduction of the National Planning

Policy Framework. Peel contributed to the governmentʼs initiative to bring a positive

58 attitude to the system and is pleased to see a document which has a presumption in favour of development embodied within it. The planning system has a fundamental role to play in the economic recovery for the country and we welcome this move” (Exurbe,

2013a, p202).

Perspectives on: The National Planning Policy Framework

• The new planning guidelines, or the ripped up guidelines... are certainly making sure that all planning is market driven. All of it. You canʼt refuse anything now on the grounds that itʼs badly planned or badly designed, or isnʼt sustainable. You canʼt refuse it. The only grounds on which a planning application has to be judged is its economic value...how about it being environmentally viable? To be honest itʼs frightening. We are in a frightening situation. (City Centre Community Group Perspective)

• The Secretary of State has made it his policy to pull back from involvement in local issues, heʼs espoused this canon of localism, heʼs an advocate of laissez faire, just withdrawing and has largely reduced the amount of government planning policy and guidance. Which is probably a good thing. (Academic Perspective 1)

Interviewees, even those supporting the scheme, generally had hoped a public enquiry would transpire, in order to facilitate a dialogue with the famously non-communicative developers (I was unable to get an interview with Peel). In Exurbeʼs critical report entitled “Peel and the Liverpool City Region: Predatory Capitalism or Providential

Corporatism” (2013a), the think-tank argue that; “we are appalled – if not surprised – by the Secretary of Stateʼs decision not to initiate a public inquiry into Peelʼs Liverpool

Waters application. For such a huge and contentious scheme (with such potentially far- reaching, long term impacts) not to be subject to full, open and inclusive examination is, in our view, patently undemocratic” (p213). The report offers a thorough dissection of

59 Peelʼs power and practices, from which key issues pertaining to this paper will be highlighted in section 2 of this chapter. A member of the City Council commented on

Peelʼs planning permission in the following terms, revealing the cityʼs weak bargaining position in relation to offers of substantial private sector investment;

We havenʼt tied down the permission as we would have liked to have done. Weʼve given them (Peel) permission for 30 years. Thatʼs a long bloody time. Ordinarily we wouldnʼt have done that. Ordinarily weʼd have put much more difficult conditions on for them which ensured, for instance, that heritage refurbishments happened... but generally I think weʼre OK with Peel.

(City Council Perspective 2)

3.2 Peelʼs City

There are 6.8 million people in the North West, 5 million of them donʼt have any county council above their heads, they simply have a little district council. If you look at a map of Southern England youʼll find everyone has a county level authority above their heads, with just one or two exceptions... So really the North of England has been stripped of institutions and leadership institutions, thereʼs no question about that. The only leadership institution weʼve got left at a regional level is Peel...in a sense itʼs almost taking us back to the 19th Century when big planning initiatives were taken by private companies and individuals. It was private companies and individuals that built the railways and the Manchester Ship Canal.

(Academic Perspective 1)

Liverpoolʼs official planning documents reflect Peelʼs important role in the city.

Liverpoolʼs submission draft of its “Core Strategy” (2012), which sets out the key principles and objectives guiding development in the city until 2028, identifies Liverpool

Watersʼ central role in regeneration of North Liverpool and meeting housing targets.

The Atlantic Gateway scheme- an initiative linking Peel assets in Liverpool and

60 Manchester to create a North Western hub for the North American shipping trade- is also identified as being crucial to the cityʼs development. Liverpool Visionʼs “Strategic

Investment Framework” (2012), the successor to 2002ʼs “Strategic Regeneration

Framework”, also has a strong focus on Liverpool Waters, with a greater emphasis on urban image and investment than the social and environmental concerns of the Core

Strategy.

In “Rebalancing Britain...” (2011) Heseltine and Leahy can once again be seen to be steering approaches to development on Merseyside in a neoliberal, entrepreneurial direction. They advocate for a reflexivity of the public sector to Peelʼs goals, which can be read into the “Core Strategy” and “Strategic Investment Framework” documents.

The authors claim; “There are many companies investing and supporting the long-term growth of the Liverpool regional economy, but of particular significance to the next wave of development will be Peel Holdings. They have invested in strategic infrastructure, for example investing £100m in moving Liverpool Airport from one handling half a million passengers a year to one handling over five million people a year. Their investments will be critical. Planning policy in particular needs to be responsive to the opportunities and imperatives of new growth” (p34).

The airport cited by Heseltine and Leahy as reflection of Peelʼs positive role in economic development, however, was “sold to Peel for peanuts” by the City Council in the words of one interviewee, creating a competitive disadvantage in relation to Manchester, where local councils co-own the airport and recoup revenues for public investment.

61 Peelʼs singularly powerful presence in the region has spawned the nickname

“Liverpeel”, and as reflected by interviewees (“oligopoly and monopoly is not a particularly good thing”), is a cause for significant concern. While, a full critique of the scale and power of Peel on Merseyside is beyond the scope of this paper, some of the applicable findings of “...Providential Corporatism or Predatory Capitalism” will be highlighted in the remainder of this section. Tellingly, since the report has been published, a member of the Exurbe team told me; “despite much positive feedback from interested parties around the country, the report has been received with deafening silence locally and that Liverpool City Council actively voted not to invite us to speak to its regeneration committee about it (reportedly on the grounds that Peel is the 'only game in town' - surely all the more reason for rigorous scrutiny?!) which perhaps tells you something about the politics behind it all!” (E. Wraight, Research Assistant, Exurbe, personal communication, Apr 11, 2013).

The Exurbe report demonstrates that Peel possesses a “quasi-political role” has “a strategic territorial finger in every City Region ʻpieʼ” (p98), many of which- like the airport- were formerly owned by the city. The companyʼs “labyrinthine” corporate structure leading to parent companies in the tax haven of the Isle of Man is explored, which sits uneasily with a history of effective public subsidisation through tax breaks. A history of disregard for environmental concerns and community engagement is documented and a “jack of all trades” approach to delivering all manner of projects with disputed success is identified. Ultimately, the company shaping the waterfrontʼs continued revitalisation is portrayed as a combative and self-interested corporation.

62 An alignment of interests between Peel and the national government in facilitating large scale development was demonstrated in Peelʼs relationship with the new national planning framework. Exurbe also reports; “The Governmentʼs decision to award Peel

Waters Enterprise Zone status, with all the attendant commercial advantages, said much. And although there is no record of the Prime Minister commenting publicly upon the conglomerate and its plans, his visit to the Wirral Waters site in January 2011 clearly served to endorse the project and to boost Peelʼs credibility and profile” (p102). They also claim, “Much of Peelʼs burgeoning status has had to do with effective marketing and spin... This allows it to cultivate and control a very powerful image which has clearly been bought into by movers and shakers across the sub-region and in

Westminster” (p102).

As a Manchester-based organisation, Peelʼs presence has gradually encroached on

Merseyside following a number of high profile and profitable development projects in their home city. Glossing over petty rivalries in favour of a broadly shared regional outlook, Peel identify strongly as a local organisation, having claimed of the North West that, “If we all pull together we can create the most dynamic and economically sustainable region in the UK” (Manchester Evening News, 2010, para.7). In the report,

Peelʼs benevolent local ties as a Northwestern organisation are questioned: “On

Merseyside, Peel is generally regarded as a ʻlocalʼ company committed to the local economy and local regeneration. This is the intention - an important part of The Groupʼs branding is to cultivate this impression” (p49).

63 In addition to the fact that Peel boss John Whittaker is from Greater Manchester and lives in the Isle of Man, Exurbe argue the organisation displayed a wholly tokenistic approach to public participation among the people they claim an allegiance with: “The people of Liverpool had had no say.... The compounding effect of the mayoral model of governance, however – which concentrates power into the hands of one individual – meant that Peel had only one person, ultimately, to win over – Joe Anderson. The rest, as they knew, would follow”. Pointing to the fact that the Local Economic Partnership, a body guiding economic development strategies in the city, is led by a Peel man, the success of the proposal, it is argued, was a foregone conclusion. They conclude; “the strength of the Liverpool Waters case had little to do with ʻlocalismʼ” (p165).

Perspectives on: The Peel Group

• Peel are very good at arming themselves with professional planning opinion when they need it, probably better than the local authority! (Academic Perspective 3)

• When you look at the Liverpool Waters proposals, what was really striking is that there were no objections from any of the other Local Authorities on Merseyside, and what weʼve had for years is too many objections, they object to everything. (Academic Perspective 2)

• One of my criticisms of Peel is, I donʼt think they build good architecture. I think theyʼre very clever planners, I think theyʼre innovative and radical, but (Manchesterʼs) the Trafford Centre looks bad, Liverpool Airport looks like itʼs made out of plywood, (Salfordʼs) Media City is better than those developments but itʼs still mediocre...but the fact that they have delivered so much against the odds gives me more faith in them than I would with a lot of people. (Local Journalist Perspective)

64 Liverpoolʼs weak economy and governance structure relative to Manchester in the North

West can be seen to factor into Peelʼs acquisition of many important infrastructure assets on Merseyside. Peel were able to capitalise on Manchesterʼs burgeoning economy, and faced little resistance reinvesting this capital on Merseyside. Liverpool, however, was argued to possess the competitive advantage of quality of place and iconic appeal in comparison to Manchester in the previous chapter. As such, Liverpool

Waters is well placed to serve as a monument to the power of a private sector organization with a coordinated economic development strategy unifying two rival cities.

Therefore the diversity of public perspectives regarding the appropriate image and design of the city of Liverpool in relation to issues of heritage and place value, may obfuscate the fact that the high-rise development should perhaps not be seen as reflective of civic values, but rather as an icon of Peelʼs corporate identity and aspirations. As one participant commented:

They almost seem to come across as a vanity project at times, as though someoneʼs trying to leave an enormous memorial to themselves and they donʼt really have a great air of realism.

(Academic Perspective 1)

65 Fig 11. Some of the vacant dock spaces Peel intend to develop (Authorʼs own photograph)

3.3 The Peopleʼs City

People who have lived here a long time remember just how busy the waterfront was...loading and unloading ships, that really was the economic heart of the city and it hasnʼt been that for a long time. So people, to some extent, might romanticise that historical version of Liverpool, in a sense and see this as a way of bringing it back. The thing about cruise ships coming in, people come in on these great big ships and theyʼll get off into this magnificent new city. It does create the sense of recreating Liverpoolʼs glorious past.

(Academic Perspective 2)

66 Recreating grandeur and vibrancy on the waterfront is an objective likely to be shared by the City Council, Peel and the people of Liverpool. This section will discuss how such a vision may benefit two different populations proximate to the Liverpool Waters site with different forms of allegiance to the city; post “New Urban Renaissance” city centre dwellers attracted by convenience, culture and image, and longer term inner-city residents. Couch et al. (2009) have claimed of the former group; “ʻexperientialʼ residents prefer the central core and Waterfront” (p331), referring to people seeking a lifestyle with an emphasis on culture and nightlife. An interviewee, meanwhile, described the latter group, in the wards of Kirkdale and Everton, in the following terms;

“Liverpool...has got a lot of communities that didnʼt really see much change as a result of that mini boom in the early ʻ90s. Parts of North Liverpool donʼt look an awful lot different now than they did in the 1960s. If youʼre on the wrong side of the tracks itʼs a pretty desperate place”.

Liverpool City Councilʼs “Core Strategy” submission draft proposes that Liverpool

Waters will regenerate adjacent local residential communities of entrenched poverty.

The document states; “It will be essential that the proposal is integrated effectively with the wider area, including enhanced east-west links, to ensure that the economic benefits for the local communities in North Liverpool are maximised. The provision of new local retail facilities to serve the needs of new residents, and environmental improvements to green space provision and the public realm, will assist in extending the benefits of this development to a wide area north of the City Centre” (The City of

Liverpool, 2012, p31).

67 Mayor Joe Anderson was generally perceived by interviewees as attempting to continue the Labour tradition of pursuing social gains for these inner-city neighbourhoods while pragmatically continuing the Liberal Democratʼs city centre image boosting agenda to broaden Liverpoolʼs appeal to outsiders. The former objective has an uneasy relationship with his support of the Liverpool Waters plans. While boosting the depressed economy of surrounding neighbourhoods is cited as a key objective of the scheme by City Council planning documents, Exurbe (2013a) suggests that these locations primarily facilitate the developerʼs ability to effectively implement large scale schemes. They claim; “By using its vast wealth, actual or perceived, to wield power and influence – and by focusing upon key regeneration and infrastructure projects in often deprived areas - Peel is effectively (if not consciously) holding local and national government to ransom” (p212).

An academic interviewee echoed these sentiments; “Anything that Peel or anybody else is involved in, any projects that size, theyʼll always cite the numbers without work in the neighbouring areas and the opportunities that this will create. They did the same for the airport...Levels of worklessness are pretty much identical to what they were in the middle of the 1990s... in North Liverpool, the areas closest to the Liverpool Waters site, half the households in that area have nobody in work. Iʼll be astonished if that changes”.

Harvey identified this dynamic in 1996, claiming, “coercion arises through inter-place competition for capital investment and employment (accede to the capitalistʼs demands or go out of business, create a “good business climate” or lose jobs) or more simply, through the direct political repression and oppression of dissident voices” (Harvey,

68 1996, p299). The latter point can be seen to relate to The Peel Groupʼs careful calculated, and often uncommunicative media presence.

Even interviewee perspectives from within City Council often contrasted with the “social benefits for impoverished communities” put forward in official discourse. An indistinct definition of whether the scheme is categorised “city centre” (as Peel conceive of it) or

“North Liverpool” (as the Core Strategy defines it) reveals the competing agendas behind the scheme, corresponding to the two different demographics. Referring to regeneration, a former City Council member told me; “thatʼs partly what itʼs all about, unless Lindsay (Ashworth of Peel) is saying that itʼs part of the city centre”. Concerns abound around the issues of creating appropriate jobs for nearby communities and a lack of affordable housing at the scheme. Perhaps unsurprisingly given Peelʼs clout, affordable housing provisions were “never on the table” according to a City Council informant. The same interviewee explained; “We wanted developers to make things happen and we didnʼt think we were in a position- not like London, is it 40%?- of having the economic basis for doing that... which is another reason that made Liverpool very attractive because thatʼs a big blow to their profits”. Here the established necessity of

“competitiveness” plays out very differently between dominant urban centres and less privileged locales.

The areasʼ physical separation from existing neighbourhoods also poses a serious challenge in terms of diffusing potential benefits to a wider area. Liverpoolʼs inner-city areasʼ historic structural disconnection from city-centre focussed economic

69 development, is now embodied by a 5.5m World Heritage Site protected dock boundary wall that encloses the Liverpool Waters site. Arguments associating the modern fetishisation of heritage with elitism, such as those put forward by Zukin in Chapter One,

find a symbolic representation in this structure. To the west of the wall, on the River

Mersey, is the disused dock space Peel will transform. Heading east, a run down warehouse district must be negotiated, and a train line must be crossed before entering a social housing area. Eldonian Village, the social housing in question, is in fact one of the countryʼs more successful schemes and has attracted private residents, its quasi- suburban streets further blocking access to Liverpool Waters from some more seriously challenged areas. In light of this location, and the fact that gated refurbished warehouses already exist nearby, a strong possibility of creating “some yuppie enclave...posh people in there on the other side of the road youʼve got these run down warehouses” was claimed by one interviewee.

In the case of the dock boundary wall, Peel are able to take advantage of controls around heritage to separate Liverpool Waters from the surrounding fabric. Young, Diep and Drabbleʼs (2006) discussion of millennial Manchester identifies the duality shaping

Peelʼs motives; “certain areas of the city are encoded as ʻcosmopolitanʼ and as property investment ʻhotspotsʼ. However, the production of these cosmopolitan spaces invokes

ʻotherʼ spaces which are deemed non-cosmopolitan, backward and undesirable” (p1702). The wall, while signifying the cityʼs proud history as a working port, is drawn into the processes of social exclusion through its potential to demarcate profitable “cosmopolitan” spaces from economically inert “backward” ones.

70 Fig 12. The Heritage Protected Dock Boundary Wall (Authorʼs own photograph)

Perspectives on: The Heritage Wall

• English Heritage wanted to keep the wall and Peel wanted the wall actually because they thought, “we just want to keep an enclave here”, so that was the one thing they were in cahoots over and it was us that thought it was a barrier to movement across and to regeneration. (City Council Perspective 1)

• Weʼre not going to have a situation in which, in a car you could drive through Liverpool Waters and turn off at the point where you want to engage with the main city again. Itʼs always going to be that north-south linear movement. I suppose Canary Wharf is like that, itʼs not as though itʼs unique but the wall is an issue...Lots of people will love it...as an investment, as a place to live, where you want to be secure, where youʼve got control over your environment, yes, everybody will love it. But what weʼre aiming to do here is to capture the benefits. (Liverpool Vision Perspective 1)

• I think we need to appreciate the heritage of the area and what that contributes to place making in the city... not having boundaries is what we want, but also. dealing with the heritage side of things, itʼs part and parcel of the World Heritage Site, part and parcel of what Liverpoolʼs about. (City Council Perspective 2)

71 The aesthetisised spaces of a less locally rooted population, at the refurbished central waterfront, will be more readily accessible to Liverpool Waters. The inward migration of out-of-town residents into Liverpoolʼs city centre accommodations has been noted, and can be attributed in part to the cityʼs image improvement agenda. As the ECOTEC

Research and Consulting company describes; “The city centre market can be seen to be having a positive impact by attracting households to make long-range moves into

Liverpool” (ECOTEC, 2007, p8). Given the fact that Liverpoolʼs population only just stabilised after years of decline, Peel will hope Liverpool Waters will continue this trend of attracting new out of town residents to fill its many housing units.

The trend for British cities to encourage city centre and waterfront living can be traced back to the “New Urban Renaissance”, discussed in the last chapter. While these policies have allowed the city centre has become a privileged space, Richard Rogerʼs stated aim to diminish social polarisation has not been realised. The concerns that remain about the Liverpool Waters schemesʼ ability to provide benefits for low income communities testify to shortfalls of this vision in a liberalised market-driven economy.

An interviewee also claimed that a profit-centred planning regime in Liverpool, had produced many substandard accommodations within new, “desirable” city centre developments. Short term economic gains are all the more alluring in a city with the highest unpaid council tax bill in England. The interviewee argued:

The real problem with encouraging a more stable demographic (in the city centre) is the planning department and the planning committee, who historically havenʼt seen the city centre as much more than a cash cow, where people are paying Council Tax and not taking any services for them because they donʼt need them. And theyʼre high level

72 Council Tax payers, and they pay. So itʼs a fantastic situation for the council to be getting in that money.

(City Centre Community Group Perspective)

The “image” of living in a refurbished warehouse or high-rise structure was argued to be a short lived attraction, rendering “experiential” residents a fragile demographic to plan cities around. An absence of community and a lack of accommodation for families were identified as historic problems in Liverpoolʼs waterfront apartments that Liverpool Waters should attempt to remedy. The same interviewee had plans to engage Peel in a public forum, to facilitate dialogue with the developer to ensure public concerns were heard from both groups discussed in this section. The interviewee downplayed the significance of physical barriers to regeneration, however, identifying broader forms of exclusion as a more important consideration within Peelʼs plans:

Im not sure connectivity- if we took the wall down- is what really matters...you talk about connectivity, but look at York, look at Chester, look at Avignon, looking at medieval walled cities, thereʼs very little connectivity but people canʼt wait to get inside them. I donʼt really have a problem with the wall, I think itʼs the mentality. The connectivity is around; do you think that youʼre in the city, and therefore act and behave as if youʼre in the city or do you think youʼre separate and therefore act and behave- even plan- as if youʼre separate, nothing thatʼs going on around you really matters.

(City Centre Community Group Perspective)

73 3.4 The Globalised City

Europe is still an obvious market, but that is shifting again to South America, to China and weʼre on the right side of the country again.

(Local Journalist Perspective)

While confusion remains about the need for Peel to have produced such an extravagant masterplan for Liverpool Waters, the renderings may represent a catalyst for the economic strategy which situates Liverpool Waters at the centre of Peelʼs many regional assets. Peel hopes to secure Chinese investment in developing the docks north of

Liverpool city centre, while the Wirral Waters side of the scheme will host an international trade centre, in which Peel is hoping to secure Chinese businesses as tenants. Interviewees from within Liverpool Vision spoke of having representatives stationed in strategic global locations on the criteria that the locations possess sufficient surplus capital to invest and regard the Liverpool “brand” in sufficiently positive terms.

These locations include China as well as select metropolitan centres in the USA.

Members of Liverpool City Council were accompanied by Peel on a trip to the 2010

Shanghai Expo in a city marketing drive. Again, Liverpool can be seen to be making use of historic assets, as the city has twin city status and imperial ties with Shanghai, making it the only UK city except London to exhibit at the event. Peelʼs presence attests to both the significance of the developers as figureheads for the city of Liverpool and the importance of China within their plans.

Some interviewees commented on the use of images reminiscent of Shanghai in the renderings as being significant in marketing the site to Chinese investors (as Peel were

74 quoted as claiming earlier in this chapter, tall buildings “inspire investment confidence”), suggesting that the thought of creating domestic controversies may be balanced against the imagesʼ international appeal in the companyʼs decision making process. With the domestic economy in a weak condition, Liverpool via-Peel hopes to open up its development market to global investment, in a marked shift from the cityʼs traditional use of central government funds and local investment. Here Liverpool perhaps has the opportunity to bypass London governmentʼs paternalistic influence and domestic investorsʼ negative stigmas (Heseltine and Leahyʼs description of perceptions of “a place locked in decline”) in favour of connecting with sources of capital who may be more cognisant of the cityʼs positive associations. While development in Liverpool can be seen to have adopted the dominant competitive city model of designing spaces in line with global notions of cosmopolitanism (as was shown in Chapter 2) preconceiving the urban form of future developments to attract international capital- should this be

Peelʼs intent- represents a new manifestation of globalisation in the city.

The 50-storey Shanghai Tower has long been proposed to be one of the first buildings completed at Liverpool Waters, as a high-rise statement of intent. A member of

Liverpool Vision commented, “Inevitably theyʼre only going to build that if theyʼve won some major tenants from elsewhere in the world. So yes, massive statement of confidence”. Should this building be developed and other structures start to materialise, the site may come to resemble a small scale version of the Chinese metropolis, due to the similarity of the juxtaposition of imperial heritage buildings at the Bund and the tall modern district of Pudong in Shanghai and the Pier Head and Liverpool Waters. These

75 sitesʼ urban form both embody two moments of the global political economy; representing Britain's historic colonial power in both the core and periphery, and

Chinese economic clout as an emerging superpower. The two citiesʼ differing approaches to heritage can perhaps be seen to reflect the dynamics of this relationship in the present day. This relationship between urban form and global power structures can be interpreted through Knoxʼs (2010) statement that, “design can be seen as reflecting the zeitgeist of the prevailing political economy while serving...as one of the means through which the necessary conditions for the continuation of the system are reproduced” (p36).

76 Perspectives on: Liverpool and China

• I doubt that Liverpool is alone in seeking Chinese investment. But what it does have is a range of contemporary and historical linkages with China... you go to the new museum and the first exhibit that hits your eyes is something about the Chinese in Liverpool, which is fascinating, that wouldnʼt have happened ten years ago, but somebodyʼs planning that. This university has got incredible numbers of Chinese students, just astonishing, so weʼre not on our own but weʼve got some advantages in terms of courting the Chinese. (Academic Perspective 3)

• Why they (Peel) wanted an outline without too stringent phasing conditions was that if the Chinese come along and say, “well that bit looks good for this, weʼll start on that” it makes it more sellable from their point of view, theyʼve got the flexibility which I can well understand and times are different now. (City Council Perspective 1)

• I think the vision (for Liverpool Waters) is China. Shanghai-on-Mersey (City Centre Community Group Perspective)

Fig 13: A rendering of the Shanghai Tower (source: http://www.afl-uk.com/projects/mixed-use-tower- concept)

77 As a project of Liverpool Watersʼ scale begins to materialise, the impact on the existing city will be considerable. An interviewee revealed that the threat of “churn” for the old

Commercial Quarter, created by the vast quantity of office space at Liverpool Waters, is planned to be remedied by converting the old offices into apartments. The interviewee evoked cosmopolitan global visions of these potential spaces, suggesting, “think of them in an New York, in a Manhattan context. Iʼve got a Woody Allen film in my head”.

This contingency plan is sound enough, and fully consistent with competitive city strategising, however, it seems Peelʼs Mersey Waters and Atlantic Gateway economic development strategies will have to be a spectacular, if not miraculous, success to create sufficient demand for residential and office space old and new.

While Peelʼs economic development strategies are substantial enough to hold the promise of restoring some of the cityʼs economic base, an issue the organisation will be fully cognisant of is the threat of geographical isolation Liverpool faces with the connection of London to Manchester with high speed rail link HS2. Many actors in the city believe this infrastructure plays a critical role in Liverpoolʼs economic future, and therefore the success of Liverpool Waters. Liverpool, after all, is all too aware of the effects of shifts in connections to economic flows, since the decline of its status as a globally connected shipping node. An interviewee from within City Council spoke of the existence of disused tunnels arriving at Liverpool Waters site which could potentially serve as a connection to HS2. Should this materialise, Liverpool Waters will become connected to an economic network that matches its aspirational image. Locked inside a

78 5.5m dock wall, the intercity connectivity of this space will throw concerns about integration with more isolated communities into even shaper relief.

Peelʼs contribution to the rebranded waterfront represents one prominent facet of the ways in which the cityʼs fabric is being reorganised. While the central waterfront refurbishments were being completed, the national governmentʼs Housing Market

Renewal initiative was being pioneered in Liverpool, controversially clearing inner-city housing stock where renovation costs would exceed resale value. The process has been described as, "the social cleansing of an area not only currently occupied, but very much in demand” (The Guardian, 2013, para.3) by George Clark, “empty homes advisor” for the scheme, who ultimately withdrew his involvement on principle.

The reshaping of the “cosmopolitan” waterfront and the erasure of “backward” inner-city communities has been shown to have unequal repercussions within Henri Lefebvreʼs

(1991) enduring notion of “the right to the city”. Harvey (2008) has defined this concept in the following terms; “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanisation. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights” (p23).

79 Lefebvreʼs ideas have loosely informed the organisation of this chapter, in its discussion of the various claims of Liverpoolʼs future plans being “Peelʼs City”, “The Peopleʼs City” and “The Globalised City”. Lefebvreʼs notion of “conceived space” -visions and plans of city spaces as generated by elites- has been shown to be drawn from a number of sources in Liverpool, from Manchesterʼs example of the “cosmopolitan” Northern

English city, to Shanghai as a high-rise symbol of economic growth. The social negotiation between these visions and the “perceived space” of how the city is used by inhabitants has become increasingly one-sided in Liverpoolʼs current political and economic climate and, it can been argued, fall well short of fulfilling the “right to the city” ideal.

Urban image has been shown to play a key role in the bluntly defined economic development strategies of elite actors, assimilating the seemingly disparate forms of both “local” heritage structures and “global” high-rise architecture for the purposes of attracting inward migration and investment. These elites, in the UKʼs economic and political landscape, are formed by a nexus of both local and national interests. Playing the localism card has been beneficial for the Peel Group, legitimising their claims to a place in this power network. Ultimately, however, through the weakening of local political agency- the means through which the most pressing needs of local people, and their “right to the city” can be met- competitive city imperatives have served to reinforce hierarchies of place. Liverpoolʼs position, at the mercy of central government dictates and increasingly powerful private sector organisations, remains peripheral.

80 Conclusion

We want to make sure that the whole city can be proud of what happens here. I know I wonʼt be proud of what happens in Liverpool Waters if the quality of life isnʼt demonstrably than what weʼve got at the moment... I want it to be so good there that Iʼll have no choice but to move from where I am to go and live in Liverpool Waters.

(City Centre Community Group Perspective)

A central theme in Liverpoolʼs history of development and revitalisation over the last thirty years has been the struggle between traditional local values of municipal socialism and the rising tide of neoliberal entrepreneurialism. In comparison to Manchester, which smoothly assimilated this logic into a newly cosmopolitan sense of place, Liverpool- prone to erratic political lurches and slow to gain confidence in its own marketability- has had an uneasy readjustment. This trajectory can be seen to be shaped by

Liverpoolʼs worldview. In the city, a sense of disempowerment and injustice at the external forces that have precipitated its decline accompany a fierce sense of civic pride and independence. These qualities shaped the cityʼs resistant stance towards change in the Thatcher era. It can also be assumed these attitudes also make grand statements of intent appealing to local residents and elites in the present day. Peel are well aware of local mentalities and cognisant of the power of image- both of their own brand and that of the city- and as such they have cast themselves as local benefactors and offered an enticing vision of future prosperity in difficult circumstances.

Liverpoolʼs dependency on Peel to enact physical redevelopment is the latest of three phases discussed in this paper, each characterised by connections to different sources

81 of power and capital. In the first phase, the national governmentʼs Merseyside

Development Corporation enacted changes to Liverpoolʼs physical fabric from afar. By identifying the commercial potential of place value on the waterfront, they also began to shift the definition of how these spaces could function economically and who they should function for. A rubric of local autonomy and a diversity of largely public funds characterised the second phase under New Labour nationally and the Liberal

Democrats locally. At this moment, local leaders accepted the established discourse on the competitive city and made it work to the cityʼs advantage. Today, as Peel redevelop vast tracts of the city on their own, a stark contrast can be seen to the diverse and relatively publicly accountable milieu of the early 2000s. Given the institutional and ideological shifts that have taken place over the last 30 years in the city, the political and economic landscape of next three decades- for which Peel have been granted outline planning permission for Liverpool Waters- contains all manner of possibilities. A great deal of power and responsibility has been placed in the organisationʼs hands.

After 30 years of Liverpool negotiating its position in relation to the entrepreneurial city model, today interviewees were largely in agreement that the Liverpool Waters scheme is necessary to maintain any hope of maintaining the tangible progress in economic development of the last 15 years. Harveyʼs identification in 1989 that “well-intended and benevolent coalitions of class forces find themselves obliged to be "realistic" and

"pragmatic" to a degree which has them playing capitalist accumulation rather than to the goals of meeting local needs or maximizing social welfare” (Harvey, 1989, p16), has

finally become set in stone in Liverpool as Joe Anderson, a mayor from the old-school

82 Labour tradition, leads a council who can be seen to have sought limited social concessions within Peelʼs highly profitable scheme so far. Hajer (1989) describes how hegemonic discourses are founded on “the naturalisation of the present, where a specific discourse presents the existing social relations as a kind of natural, immutable law” (p42). This contributes to the “ideological domination” of an idea, which in this case is the apparent necessity for incongruously vast, high-end development projects.

As urban aesthetics have become more integral to an emerging “symbolic economy” which the competitive city inhabits, the quality of design in the built environment has become an important currency of urban stature. Londonʼs status is marked by a preponderance of notable works of modern architecture. For regional cities that strive to compete on the capitalʼs terms, replicating the scale, if not the style, of these buildings may seem a viable option. Major concerns, however, surround Peelʼs ability to produce spaces that are as valuable to the public realm as they are lucrative to themselves. Their flagship Manchester project The Trafford Centre has attracted much derision for its appearance and the BBC headquarters of Media City in Salford has divided opinion over its design. Only if the quality of the built environment is high- and sufficiently accessible to all- will Liverpool Waters contribute to the place value that has allowed Liverpoolʼs Waterfront to thrive in the Twenty First Century.

In “World Cities: Some Cultural Comments” (2006), Anthony D. King refers to a

Guardian article which proposed that the construction of skyscrapers in the UK, “would confirm the status of Britain as a Third World country” (p323). Whether or not this

83 dynamic transpires directly -as Chinese capital reshapes the northern docklands in its own image- the aesthetics of the scheme must provide a substantial boost to Liverpoolʼs collective self-perception in order for Liverpool Waters to move beyond being a symbol of Peelʼs own localised corporate colonialism. As well as fostering of generalised civic pride, a well designed environment with an enduring sense of place will help remedy the historic problem of losing the transient “mobile middle classes” crucial to entrepreneurial strategies.

While the discourse surrounding “the competitive city” evokes notions of self-reliance and self-improvement for cities, in Liverpoolʼs case entrepreneurial strategies have been both necessitated and facilitated by external forces. Via development frameworks shaped by central government policies, London and Manchester have provided influential models in Liverpoolʼs path along this trajectory. A cautionary note is provided by Harding et al. (2004), who identify that, “polarization between households on the highest and lowest incomes has actually grown rather than shrunk in Liverpool and

Manchester as economic performance has improved” (p37). Crucially, they also identify polarization as being worse in “competitive” Manchester. London, meanwhile, plays a starring role in the global cities literature regarding the correlation between social exclusion and a competitive urban economy (see Massey, 2007; Fainstein, 2001b;

Sassen 1996).

City officials and local populations will hope to avoid the path London and Manchester have trail-blazed, and realise the objectives of revitalising inner-city areas put forward in

84 the discourse of official planning documents. Liverpoolʼs relatively small middle class, particularly in relation to London but also to Manchester, means substantial in-migration will diversify economic demographics significantly in any eventuality. At present however, in terms of “capturing the benefits”, and realising the cityʼs stated objectives, all evidence suggests that, should the scheme be an economic success on Peelʼs terms, little will change in the surrounding neighbourhoods of North Liverpool.

While the heritage debate has had a high profile in national media coverage, protestations wholly in favour of heritage preservation hold little sway among actors locally. One interviewee argued, “Liverpool is not Venice, itʼs not Bath. Theres a huge variety of eras of construction styles, huge variety of quality in some of the structures.

Itʼs a dynamic city with a huge variety of good and bad, beautiful and ugly and a city like that needs to constantly shift”. Turning the city centre into a museum to Liverpoolʼs former glories for the benefit of the (much improved) tourist economy, will not fill the economic void in a city built for bigger and better things. In the course of the research process, several interviewees cited the cultural heritage of Liverpool as a dynamic, enterprising city as more important than the fixed heritage of the built environment when evaluating new contributions to the cityʼs built form.

This paper has shown how many of Liverpoolʼs historic assets, such as its impressive architecture and its imperial global connections, have been reused effectively in the new economy. In the case of the heritage protected dock boundary wall, reuse directly reflects the less desirable dimensions of the broader political economy, facilitating in its

85 own small way the processes of social polarisation. Liverpoolʼs greatest reusable asset, however, is its proudly independent culture, forged in the relatively cosmopolitan environment of the cityʼs shipping heyday and solidified through the challenging course of the 20th Century. This distinctive local identity has produced the “brands” the city is marketed by today. To call upon scouse cliches, it can be found in the cocksure inventiveness of The Beatles or the the intense collective passions that have defined

Anfieldʼs Kop end. Opening up the city to broader influences, migrations and investments are necessary and positive steps given the liberalised global climate of the day, but prioritisation of a purely “global” and “cosmopolitan” vision above communities threatened with permanent exclusion could destroy a vital resource in the very system in which Liverpool hopes to compete.

While the city may have a weak “bargaining position”, the leverage it does have- which has been fought for by local people and their elected representatives against the odds- must not be allowed to be swept away in the short term interests of accumulation. The difference between sustainable, inclusive competitiveness and failure lies in the conceptual slip between “selling the city” for its unique culture and built environment, and “selling (off) the city” for the cold currency of exchange value.

86 Fig 14. Newsagent just west of the Liverpool Waters site April 2013. Dock Boundary Wall visible on right (Authorʼs own photograph).

87 List of Interviewees

Academic Perspective 1 Academic Perspective 2 Academic Perspective 3 City Centre Community Group Perspective City Council Perspective 1 City Council Perspective 2 Liverpool Vision Perspective 1 Liverpool Vision Perspective 2 Local journalist perspective

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95