Derry - a resilient city

The Academy of Urbanism (AoU) had its annual Congress in Derry this year.  

In his introduction to the first AoU Journal, the Academy chairman Kevin Murray argues that “better places tend to be more tolerant of a diversity of people and backgrounds, making people feel comfortable and providing them with positive stimuli for creativity and collaboration”. This hardly sounds like the Derry of the popular imagination, but the Congress provided an opportunity to explore the new and infinitely complex reality.

Aerial view 1970s

Shipquay Street (Mark Lusby)

In his brilliant book, Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson calls the city a “great engine of supercreativity”, a crucible of innovation and creativity.[i]  No one could describe Derry as an engine of supercreativity, although it is generating a few sparks. Even the ever-optimistic ONE Regeneration Plan for Derry – Londonderry acknowledges that the city has a small, fragile economy, heavily dependent on the public and third sectors.  The same document contains a “Summary of Key Inequalities” which reveals that, in the most deprived parts of the city, the mortality rate is exceptionally high; the economic activity rate is alarmingly low (below 50% in places); about three-quarters of the adult population have no educational qualifications; and more than half of all primary school children qualify for free school meals. This is depressing, although hardly unique: much the same might be said about parts of Grimsby, Dundee or Oldham.

  

One might argue that, even a generation after the worst of the Troubles, Derry is in many ways the antithesis of the ideal city. It is too small to pack an economic punch, its traditional industries have collapsed, the private sector is weak, there is a low-skilled workforce (despite some great schools) and poverty is endemic.  It is hard to imagine a modern European city that is less diverse, and Derry remains segregated by religion and obsessed with its dual identity and its contested history. In some parts of the city, rough justice is administered by armed terrorist gangs, and one Congress delegate challenged official self-congratulation by highlighting the risks still faced by young people who choose to cross the community divide.

Above: The Fountain, below: Bogside

The Derry-based Nerve Centre is leading the Divided We Stand project which uses GPS technology to track the movements of school children in Northern Ireland as they go about their daily lives. Provisional findings suggest that religion continues to have a profound impact on the geography of everyday life for young people in Derry. The city centre appears to be more or less neutral territory, but the home, school and social life of young Catholics and young Protestants is often confined to mutually exclusive territories. Indeed, the subtext of the ONE Plan is an apparent acceptance of separate development. There is much talk of equality of opportunity, respect, cooperation and coordination but the inevitable Wordle diagram of key terms and phrases doesn’t mention integration.

So is Derry a model of good urbanism? Scarcely. The riverside, once a busy port and a centre of industry, is utterly miserable. Crass developments like the Foyleside Centre and the Millennium Forum have trashed the scale and character of the historic city; much of the rich industrial heritage has been allowed to wither away.  The regeneration model posited by the ONE Plan is based on heroically optimistic demand projections, and the Congress was given a glimpse of a laughably awful “masterplan” for the Fort George site.

But, for all these disappointments and challenges, Derry survives, albeit by the skin of its teeth. In a 1961 essay, the great Ian Nairn celebrated the city’s “fighting spirit...Derry is one of the proudest places I have ever been”.[ii]  Fifty years on, after decades of conflict and tragedy, the theme of the AoU Congress was resilience, and it could not have been more appropriate. 

The ONE Plan may be a series of clunking clichés (“Derry-Londonderry’s key assets remain the place and its people”) framed in fractured syntax (”...a compelling and exciting opportunity for delivering transformation for regeneration through sustainability”) but what matters is the fact that it was written at all, and that so many people were engaged in the process. Thankfully, the new Peace Bridge isn’t a crass “iconic” gesture, but an elegant structure which makes crossing the river Foyle a real pleasure; by linking a divided city it has created something of practical as well as symbolic value. The restoration of the Ebrington Barracks will raise the quality bar, although it is not entirely clear where the demand for the new spaces, indoor and outdoor, will come from. The city’s cultural renaissance is real, as exemplified by the Playhouse, the Nerve Centre and the Gaelic cultural centre Cultúrlann - though it is heavily dependent on the subsidised sector and the creative economy remains small and fragile. The winning 2013 City of Culture bid was an unqualified triumph which provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to attract new investors and high-spending visitors. The latter will be delighted by a place that is thrillingly distinctive, despite the indignities inflicted on it by bombers, planners and developers, and the welcome will be warm and generous.

Above: Peace Bridge, below: Ebrington

If the purpose of the Academy of Urbanism is to learn from place, Derry was an outstanding choice for the 2012 Congress. Difficult, ambiguous, admirable and infuriating in equal measure, the city falls short of the European benchmark for good urbanism in all kinds of ways. But Derry has triumphed over adversity to become a better, happier and more optimistic place than it was ten years ago. It is salutary to read the account of the city in the 1979 Buildings of Ireland volume, with the walls occupied as a military camp and the bombers – and planners – wreaking daily damage on the urban fabric.[iii] Derry is still a difficult and troubled place and the wounds of the recent past are, understandably, still raw but it has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. Now the city needs to translate its proven resilience into a credible plan for sustainable prosperity. It will be a huge challenge but Derry has made a brave start.

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[i]         Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: the natural history of innovation, Allen Lane, London, 2010

[ii]        Ian Nairn, “Proud Derry”, The Listener, 21 December 1961

[iii]       Alistair Rowan, The Buildings of Ireland: North West Ulster, Penguin, London, 1979

Cultural regeneration in Sussex & Kent

I seem to have crossed the boundary from not blogging enough to not blogging at all, but a journey around the south of England provided so much food for thought that I've decided to give it another go. The principal purpose of our trip was to attend the premiere of my brother Pete's fabulous new film, The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists, now showing (in 2D and 3D) at a cinema near you - http://www.aardman.com/ . But we prefaced this glittering occasion with a visit to Oxford, followed by a look at the new cultural attractions of Sussex and Kent: The Towner in Eastbourne, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, the brand-new Jerwood Gallery in Hastings and Margate’s Turner Contemporary.

Pallant House Gallery

To complete the set, inevitably dubbed the “string of pearls”, I’d already seen the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. It is a very beautiful showcase for 20^th century British art in new galleries added to the original historic house by Colin St John Wilson and M J Long. The new Pallant House cost £8.6m and opened in 2006. Both the permanent collection and the exhibitions programme are exemplary and the building is a delightful addition, skilfully inserted into the fabric of the old city: http://www.pallant.org.uk/ .

Towner, Eastbourne

The Towner Museum of Contemporary Art, an £8.5 project designed by Rick Mather, replaced a much-loved but outdated gallery and opened in 2009: http://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/ . It’s hard to appreciate the building just now because the Congress Theatre, to which it is attached, is currently under wraps. I have to admit it didn’t do much for me, but I was more concerned about content and management than the architecture. Only a miserly selection of the Towner’s wonderful permanent collection is on display, with much larger areas of gallery space devoted to community projects and temporary exhibitions. I felt short-changed, even though admission is free, and I was depressed by the state of the building: the cafe was unkempt, circulation in the shop is impossible even though there is plenty of spare space, and every available surface seemed to be covered with notices printed on A4 paper. An investment of that scale and ambition deserves better.

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill

Heading east, and another £8m has been spent on the restoration of Bexhill’s wonderful De La Warr Pavilion, Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff’s modernist masterpiece which opened in 1935. This investment is being complemented by an ambitious programme of improvements to the sea front, the Next Wave. The individual elements of the Next Wave, designed by HTA, are very nice, but so much has been thrown at a narrow strip of land – seating, shelters, showers, play equipment, lighting – that the effect is a bit chaotic, but there’s no doubt that it’s a change for the better: http://www.next-wave.org.uk/article/5564/Home . The Pavilion, meanwhile, looks sensational – as it should, because it’s a building of international importance. The current exhibition, sculpture by Cerith Wyn Evans, was designed specifically for the building and is exceptionally good: http://www.dlwp.com/ .

Jerwood Gallery from the beach

There’s been a bit of a to-do about the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings mostly, as far as I can tell, because the new building at the Stade (HAT Architects: budget £4m) and the adjoining public space have replaced a coach park: a depressing but familiar gripe. A fellow guest at the B&B – the excellent Black Rock House http://www.hastingsaccommodation.com/ - told me that her taxi driver claimed that the gallery had been paid for by the Jedward brothers, which is an excellent idea. I suspect that, when the fuss dies down, everyone will be very pleased with it. The gallery was wholly funded by the Jerwood Foundation to provide a showcase for its collection, and it sits very comfortably between the town’s famous net shops and at the back of the wonderfully chaotic section of beach which is home to the fishing fleet. The first selection from the collection is a treat: not exactly challenging or ground-breaking, but thoroughly enjoyable and likely to please a lot of people: http://www.jerwoodgallery.org/ .

Turner Contemporary, Margate

So finally to Margate to see David Chipperfield’s Turner Contemporary, at £17.5m easily the most expensive of these projects when it opened in 2011. Visitor numbers so far have far exceeded expectations, and they should get another boost when the Tracey Emin show opens in May 2012. I thought the building – plain, bordering on austere - was a huge success, with beautiful, calm gallery spaces.

But visiting Margate brings you face to face with the rationale for projects of this kind, because – despite faint stirrings in the Old Town: galleries, studios, smart shops et al – the evidence of poverty and deprivation is daunting. Will the gallery help? Probably, yes. But the scale of the problems facing Margate is startling. There are huge tracts of sub-standard property, “entrenched and interlinked cycles of deprivation, ill health and incapacity, and worklessness”, and large numbers of children in care and other vulnerable groups. An excellent report by Shared Intelligence (2008-09) tells the story. The problems are profound and systemic; as in many seaside towns, they date back to the 1970s and 80s when surplus holiday accommodation was converted into low-cost housing for the benefit claimants. Two council wards, Margate Central and Cliftonville, are among the 1% most deprived in England; and more than a third of the shops in the town centre are empty: http://www.thisismargate.co.uk/pdf/Margate_Renewal_Study.pdf

“There are boarded-up kebab shops, a 99p shop, fish and chips and independent fast-food outlets of every description, derelict pubs and grotty amusement arcades where the feckless and witless are encouraged to gamble their dole money. It is a hellhole. It's so bad that Marks & Spencer packed up and left some time ago. The Primark shop front is tatty and letters are missing from the signage.” (Independent, October 2011).

Margate is a reminder of both the limits to what cultural regeneration can be expected to achieve and how long it will take. Turner Contemporary will bring more visitors to town, and there is already evidence that they are spilling out into the still fragile, but improving, Old Town. Decent restaurants and cool hotels and B&Bs, like the wonderful Reading Rooms - http://thereadingroomsmargate.co.uk/ - will, in all probability, follow. A new fast rail link to London may encourage more entrepreneurs and creatives to take the plunge, as they have in Folkestone. It is reasonable to anticipate at least modest economic growth and diversification.

But it is not at all clear that the benefits of growth will reach the town’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, and there is a real fear that changes to the housing benefits system will drive another wave of migration from London and other more expensive markets to the benefit ghettoes of Thanet, Folkestone and Hastings. With the exception of the Old Town, the centre of Margate already belongs almost exclusively to the troubled and deprived: their marginalisation has been compounded by the development of a huge new shopping and leisure complex at Westwood Cross, between Margate and Ramsgate.

I am an enthusiast for, and consumer of, cultural regeneration. It has made a positive difference in Folkestone, where the emphasis has been more on enterprise than on infrastructure, and it should help to strengthen the modest but measurable turn-around in the fortunes of Hastings and Margate. Conditions are very different in Bexhill and Eastbourne – two thoroughly respectable (and rather dull) resorts – and in the prosperous cathedral city of Chichester. But the smart new or refurbished galleries fit very well with their image and quality of life and should help to attract more day and overnight visitors. All this is fine, but it’s not a cure-all. In Margate, especially, but in almost every traditional seaside town, we encounter deep poverty, stretching back over 2 or 3 generations. Breaking that cycle of misery and indignity will require much more than a string of pearls, boutique hotels and fine dining.

I'd welcome your comments. Have a look at my pictures on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowbookltd/sets/72157629625582193/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowbookltd/sets/72157629252942268/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowbookltd/sets/72157629628587971/

Fringe Benefits

I'm determined to put my reputation as regeneration's Mr Grumpy behind me. Several friends have suggested that the splenetic tone of some recent posts does not accurately reflect my usual sunny disposition, and they're concerned that too much indignation isn't good for me. It's true that I've allowed Donald Trump and Sir Ian Wood's Joint Strategy for the Despoliation of North East Scotland (JSDNES) to upset my equilibrium. It's also true that there is no shortage of fresh targets. Scotland's Housing Expo, for example...but don't get me started.

So in order to cheer myself up, I thought a few reflections on Edinburgh's festival season might be therapeutic. The Fringe Festival closes today; the International Festival has a week to go. The city has been teeming with visitors all summer and I have never seen it as busy as it was in mid-August. Everywhere I went, shows - especially on the Fringe - were sold out. It seems a fair bet that last year's record 1.86 million ticket sales (for the Fringe alone) will be matched or even exceeded.

This year the Fringe offered 40,250 performances of 2,450 shows in 259 different venues. The scale of it is extraordinary and a carefully thought-out Fringe campaign can yield some remarkable experiences. With so much to choose from, a high proportion of dross is inevitable so it makes sense to start by cutting out high risk events. In my case, this means discounting anything involving tap dancing, drumming, burlesque acts and amateurs. Some people like shows that involve the audience in the action, but I'm very cautious about that. It can be OK, but the general principle that you pay, they perform is a sound one. These are defensive measures but on a more positive note, everyone has favourite performers and you can look out for production companies and writers that you've enjoyed in previous years. Some venues are a recommendation in themselves. I know I won't like everything in the Traverse programme, but it's reliably the best bet for contemporary drama as well as a nice place to be. There's always interesting stuff happening at the Forest Fringe.

It's true that doing the Fringe properly means abandoning work, family and friends for 6 weeks, including an intensive planning period. And it will cost a king's ransom. In fact it's best to think of it as a special holiday, pricey but worth it. Anyway, applying these principles produced a rich crop in 2010:

Daniel Kitson's new piece, It's Always Right Now, Until it's Later, was outstanding. So was Enda Walsh's play, Penelope and the Frantic Assembly/NTS production of Beautiful Burnout. David Leddy's dark Sub Rosa was performed late at night in a creepy masonic lodge in Hill Street. Pants on Fire's Ovid's Metamorphoses was very enjoyable and inventive. Tim Vine, Edward Aczel, Paul Foot, Jeremy Lion (the alcoholic children's entertainer) and Ian D Montford, the Sunderland Psychic were excellent comedy acts. The artist Martin Creed was a ubiquitous presence with his show at the Fruitmarket Gallery, performances of his ballet piece at the Traverse and an entertaining appearance at the Book Festival. Also at the Book Festival, David Kynaston spoke brilliantly about his history of the early 1950s, Family Britain.

The International Festival has had a rather mixed reception critically, but the Cleveland Orchestra were fabulous, the Brazilian dance company Grupo Corpo were sensational, and Meredith Monk's Songs of Ascension was simply the most beautiful and moving thing in the whole month.

Apart from the welcome chance to indulge myself does any of this have any connection with the promised themes of this blog, economic development and regeneration? Definitely, yes. A report by SQW calculated that, in 2004, the Fringe and the International Festival generated between them £89.2m of economic output and created 1,750 full time equivalent jobs. Attendances have increased dramatically since then and it seems likely that the new study now under way will show an impact in the order of £125m.

Set against the modest amount of public money spent on the festivals this represents exceptional value. The International Festival, which showcases expensive, high-end productions, does require significant subsidy (a total of £4.7m from the City Council and Creative Scotland in 2010) but these costs are far exceeded by the economic benefits and the EIF also attracts a lot of sponsorship. This year, the Edinburgh Fringe Society received a grant of just under £100,000 from the City of Edinburgh Council: vanishingly small for an event which must be worth close to £100m to the city. And these are not one-off benefits, like those from sports events or the Tall Ships. The festivals happen every year, the effects are cumulative and, despite the annual ritual of gloomy forecasts about their future, the evidence suggests that they are continuing to thrive.

Whisper it quietly, but the Fringe can be seen as an example of the Big Society in action, with minimal public funding and bare bones bureaucracy oiling the wheels of an enormous creative network. Predictably enough, the members of that network bicker quite a lot, but the thing works. And, more important even than the economic benefits, it contributes enormously to the well-being of everyone involved in this amazing, unique event.

As always, I'll miss it when it's over. The week after the festivals is as anti-climactic as the week after Christmas when you were a child.

STOP PRESS: It's just been announced (31st August) that Fringe ticket sales were up 5.2% on last year's record to a total of 1,955,913.

Bon Accord

By accepting Sir Ian Wood's jaw-dropping proposals to destroy Aberdeen's historic Union Terrace Gardens and replace them with a car park topped by a "city square", the politicians of north east Scotland have cemented their already formidable reputation for credulity and deference. Aberdeen City Council's support for this megalomaniac scheme comes hot on the heels of Aberdeenshire Council's pathetic capitulation to the Trump organisation's formidable PR machine. It all adds to the impression of a city-region which is hopelessly in thrall to big money, but lacking the skills and confidence to make the big decisions. The leaders of a city with much-vaunted global aspirations are revealed as naive and provincial.

Aberdeen is a truly remarkable place. Jonathan Meades' recent Off Kilter TV series included a touching essay on the city: its villages (Old Aberdeen and Footdee), the neo-classical city, the extraordinary legacy of Archibald Simpson, and so on. Aberdeen is inevitably associated with sparkling granite, but its dormer windows and wonderful white-on-black street signs are equally characteristic. City-boosters are constantly whittering on about "distinctiveness", but Aberdeen really is different.

Nothing about Aberdeen is more remarkable than the view north from Union Bridge - "the finest panorama of Aberdeen architecture" according to Bill Brogden. The green bowl of Union Terrace Gardens, created during the 19th century in the Denburn Valley, is framed by some of the city's most notable and best-loved buildings. No one could pretend that the gardens are in great shape: they are a bit tired, dowdy and under-used. But the survival of this landscape, with Union Bridge leaping across the valley, is unique to Aberdeen. And if the municipal gardening is a bit uninspired, the presence in the centre of the city of green space and mature trees is priceless.

For the proponents of the City Square the heritage, natural history and all-round quirkiness of Union Terrace Gardens are, of course, an affront. Marching under a banner inscribed with portentous gibberish - "This Time, This Place, This Generation" - they have revived the idea, which has surfaced at intervals over the decades, of filling in this anomalous and inconvenient valley and using it to store cars. They may not have heard that encouraging more people to drive into the centre of the city is a bit passé but, hell, this is Aberdeen. Just as the Trumpsters always talk about the golf course but never the luxury houses, so the City Square propaganda machine talks up the (generally rather elusive) wonders of this new civic space but is silent on the subject of parking.

Northern Light - a new centre for contemporary art in Union Terrace Gardens

One of the most objectionable features of this wretched project is that is has wrecked plans - carefully developed over a number of years - to create an elegant and sensitively designed Contemporary Arts Centre in the gardens (see above). The centre would provide a new home for Peacock Visual Arts, who have nurtured the scheme, while leaving the historic landscape and the mature trees intact (http://www.peacockvisualarts.com/). Combining this project with the restoration of the gardens and decking over the road and railway would be the ideal solution. But the essential modesty of the Peacock scheme and the affection and understanding of the city that it reflects are of no interest to the people gagging for "a truly radical transformation of our city centre...[and] an accessible, safe, connected and vibrant public space".

The new scheme is uncosted, although its supporters put the price at £120-140 million, including Sir Ian Wood's pledge of £50 million. We can safely assume that the real costs will exceed £200 million, and we know that for a fraction of that amount this wonderful piece of historic townscape could be restored and improved, and the city would gain a much-needed cultural centre. But this would deny Sir Ian and the city fathers their legacy project, and the opportunity to trump the visionaries who designed the heart of Aberdeen in the 19th century. The City Square scheme is a crass, hubristic gesture: there is every likelihood that it will fall apart as the costs mount and the public protests intensify. But that won't save the Peacock project or Aberdeen's reputation.

One final thought. Earlier this year, the scheme's supporters, Scottish Enterprise and Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future, commissioned a consultation on the City Square proposals. Although the terms of the exercise were disgracefully biased in favour of the Wood scheme (the Peacock alternative was not presented as an option) there was "a huge response rate" and the result was a clear 55-45 vote against the City Square proposals. The report can be accessed via http://www.thecitysquareproject.com/, but the result of the consultation is not mentioned on the website. The conclusion, shamefully confirmed by the city council yesterday, is clear: the people have spoken, but they have got it wrong.

Trump's Carbuncle, Glenrothes, Chimney Pot Park

Donald Trump's megalomaniac scheme for a golf resort (and a load of luxury houses) at Menie on the Aberdeenshire coast has won its first official accolade - in Prospect magazine's Carbuncle 2009 Awards. It romped home in the Worst Planning Decision category. Surely a unanimous decision: congratulations to all concerned.

The big award - for Scotland's most dismal place - goes to Glenrothes in Fife. The town centre is certainly grim, but whether Glenrothes is any worse than 15 or 20 other down-at-heel towns in Scotland is a moot point, and I must admit to some reservations about the whole idea.

With something like the Menie scheme you know exactly who to blame - and the Carbuncle is an excellent opportunity to name and shame the guilty men and women. But a whole town? The reasons why Glenrothes, Stranraer, Bathgate, Kilbirnie and umpteen others are down on their luck are complex and hard to fix: they are the victims of history, industrial restructuring, changing fashions and lifestyles and other factors. That is no excuse for inaction, lousy planning or the pervasive culture of pessimism and low expectations in so many small towns in Scotland, but we should recognise the powerful and unforgiving forces ranged against them. And I'm not sure that it helps places where morale and civic pride are so obviously low to subject them to public denigration.

On the other hand, if it calls attention to the fact that millions of people in the UK live in ugly, graceless, cheerless places - and that these conditions sap self-esteem and lower aspirations - it may be a price worth paying, especially if the award is followed up by practical action to make things better.

Talking about making things better, I saw Chimney Pot Park in Salford the other day - a very ingenious reworking of a grid of traditional Coronation Street terraces. It's an Urban Splash scheme (architects ShedKM) and it's a real treat. Follow the link below.

http://www.thecarbuncles.co.uk/
http://www.urbansplash.co.uk/chimneypotpark/

Academy, Le Corbusier, Liverpool

To Liverpool, for the Academy of Urbanism’s international symposium. Any rail journey to Liverpool from the north requires a change of trains, usually at Wigan, where the hapless traveller boards a dirty, smelly and grossly overcrowded two-car train operated by Northern Rail. According to their website, Northern was voted Public Transport Operator of the Year at the 2007 National Transport Awards, which proves that someone has a sense of humour.

More excitement on arrival. The symposium was supposed to take place at Rick Mather’s new Design Academy, but the building wasn’t ready on time – not even close, to judge by the state of the building and the number of builders on site. So the Academicians were forced to decamp to the legendary Adelphi Hotel, every bit as shabby and chaotic as I remembered it. There was something rather gratifying about the conjunction between the cream of British urbanism and the Adelphi’s daily round of old folks’ parties, Weight Watchers' meetings and the rest.


Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture

The event was co-hosted by the RIBA Trust, which is currently staging the excellent Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture exhibition in the magnificent Lutyens’ crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral, and a Corb theme ran through the event, which culminated in a session (heroically facilitated by Kevin Murray) which attempted to scope out a Liverpool Protocol on Urbanism, 85 years after the publication of Vers une architecture. Predictably enough, we ended up with umpteen principles, many of them mutually contradictory, but it was an interesting and stimulating exercise, not least because the session chairs, to their great credit, stuck to their brief of drawing out themes and issues.

There was a debate – which I missed – about the Le Corbusier legacy, which concluded (by a 2:1 margin) that he is still a hero, but the tenor of much of the discussion at the main session suggested that a “great architect/terrible urbanist” consensus was emerging. Murray and Sarah Chaplin contrasted the ideological severity of Le Corbusier’s rhetoric (rationalist, orderly, top down) with today’s more reflective and responsive approach.


Liverpool

The other theme of the event was, of course, Liverpool itself. I’m still haunted by the powerful, beautiful and terrible images of the city in the 1960s and 70s in Terence Davies’ extraordinary film, Of Time and the City. Davies describes his childhood and teenage years in Liverpool, at a time when the city was slipping into its long post-industrial decline. The best account of the architecture and townscape of the city at this time is Quentin Hughes’ book Seaport, first published in 1964, with fabulous black and white photos by Graham Smith and David Wrightson recording the gloomy, sublime romance of a tired old city.



For decades, Liverpool was typecast as Britain’s urban basket case: dysfunctional, angry, self-pitying and sentimental. The stereotypes were not fair and only half true, but they stuck, and Liverpool drifted into a long economic decline, reflected in deep and enduring social deprivation. The quality of development in this dark period was predictably awful: the St John’s Centre and its banal neighbours trashed a large area at the heart of the city, and Liverpool’s Georgian heritage was neglected and abused. After Toxteth, Michael Heseltine’s mission to rescue Liverpool rediscovered the waterfront, saved the Albert Dock and restored pride in the city’s remarkable history and heritage. But economic regeneration continued to prove elusive, and Liverpool has had to live in the shadow of its resurgent neighbour Manchester. Manchester is now a successful regional capital, with a core of high-level jobs in business and finance, and a strong creative economy, but Liverpool is typically performing lower-order functions and is still heavily dependent on the public sector.

Capturing the crown of European Capital of Culture 2008 was therefore an important breakthrough. It was a chance to mobilise yet more public money and, critically, to persuade the private sector that Liverpool’s time had, finally, come. Buoyed up by a 10-year long-boom, the market has responded with a welter of schemes, most (to quote the Architectural Review) “a triumph of commercial vigour over civic and architectural subtlety”. The fact that many of these projects are coming to market just as the economy dips into recession is further evidence that Liverpool – at least in modern times – has not been a lucky city. (Although the city’s botched relationship with its architects - Alsop’s “Fourth Grace” was dropped, to be replaced by a new Museum of Liverpool whose architects 3XN were also sacked - is a reminder that successful places do the right thing and make their own luck). Much of the action has been on the waterfront and while it would be premature to judge it a success or a failure at this stage, there are worrying signs that, while Liverpool will get lots of “iconic” object buildings (few of them very distinguished) the serious business of place making has been largely neglected.


Liverpool One

There was much talk about Grosvenor’s vast £1bn Liverpool One development, parts of which opened early this year. The masterplan by BDP aims to integrate this retail-led scheme into the existing grain of the city and to establish a better connection to the waterfront. Working within this framework, a roster of big name architects has designed the 30 buildings contained in the development, which opens out onto the new Chavasse Park. Liverpool needed this development: its city centre retail offer was a disgrace, with expenditure leaking to out-of-town retail parks, Manchester and Chester. Liverpool One will stem the flow, and help to attract shoppers from the wider region; it will form part of the package for the lucrative short-break tourism market.

The masterplan is a brave attempt to reconcile the demands of high street retailers for large floorplate stores, with some proper city-making. Some elements of the scheme appear problematic: the buildings are huge; the upper level of the park was deserted on a sunny day, even though the shops were busy; and it will be interesting to see how shops trade on the upper tier of the South John Street “canyon”. Liverpool One is much better than most of its kind and it is important for Liverpool that it should be a success. However, listening to the celebratory tone of the Liverpool PR machine, we should remember that, important though it is, Liverpool One is a site of consumption: it’s only a shopping centre. The real challenge for Liverpool continues to be wealth creation, which the city has not been good at in recent decades, but which is essential to encourage high achievers to stay and talented people to move to the city.


Back to the symposium

I’ve just accepted (gratefully) an invitation to join the Academy, and it would be humiliating to be asked to leave within the first month for rubbishing the symposium. So I am happy to report that Day 2 was genuinely interesting and encouraging. I particularly enjoyed David Rudlin’s contribution, which was a model of clarity, and Anne Power’s reflections on the experience of seven post-industrial cities in Europe which offered grounds for optimism – and an agenda for practical action - but were also a useful corrective to the civic boosterism which is inevitably part of the package on these occasions. The stories from Copenhagen and Berlin were familiar but still worth hearing, and a reminder of the value of long-term (20-year+) strategic thinking. Running through all of this were important threads about governance, economic renewal, community engagement and the role of experts.

I spent much of the day thinking about the North Laines in Brighton, one of the nominees for the Academy’s Great Place award. It is a great place, and John Thompson spoke about his visit there with evident passion. But it also presents a challenge for designers and regeneration practitioners, because the North Laines has evolved slowly over a long period of time, and because it was created by the urban pioneers, entrepreneurs and mavericks who saw the possibilities of a run-down quarter of Brighton. In truth, it is probably already past its best: money has moved in; the shops have become smarter; and some of the bohemian quality of the place has been lost, but it is still charming, surprising and really good fun. You can’t make places like this: for policy makers the trick is to leave them alone, and not to worry about the rough edges. Places like the North Laines thrive on spontaneity, serendipity and diversity: in other words, they are the antithesis of Liverpool One.

http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/
http://www.oftimeandthecity.com/
http://www.liverpoolarchitecture.com/index.php
http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/Exhibitions/lecorbusier/lecorbusier.aspx

Trump not so rich after all?

An encouraging story, courtesy of Kevin Brass of the International Herald Tribune Online:

A few days after Donald Trump said he has “a lot of cash” and wouldn’t have a problem financing a development in Scotland, the Trumpster filed a lawsuit against the lenders of his Chicago project (Bloomberg News/Landov).
Trump wants more time to repay the $640 million construction loan on the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, according to the Wall Street Journal. Due to the “unprecedented financial crisis,” Trump wants to trigger a clause in the deal normally reserved for “acts of war and natural disasters,” the article says.
Sales in the partially-completed tower, which will be the second-tallest in the U.S., “have come in below original estimates and the project’s current projected revenue remains short by nearly $100 million,” the WSJ reports.

http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/properties/roof/