Downtown creatives take a spin
Two downtown initiatives are inviting folk to join in their activities. Chinapool launch their 'Chinese painted boats' project this Sunday 10.30. Meet at the pierhead in front of the cunard building. The Unicorn will lead the way to the ferry. The ferry leaves at 11.00am prompt. Returns at 12.00 noon.

A marquee will be on site so bring a picnic!
Paintings by chinese artists will be on view. Workshops by Cathy Woo and Xia Lu will be in the marquee after the launch - All welcome

The mighty, majestic Mersey brought our Chinese community to Liverpool

Meanwhile, ace home from home for creatives, 3345 have an incredibly rich series of music and creative events every Thursday night, go to web for details of the latest acts.

A particularly popular series was the 'Acoustica' sets and the 3345 team want to get them going again. If you are interested in performing at Tom's place then email-Tom

The trials and tribulations of technology!
Regular downtowners will no doubt have noticed that we have not quite been up to our usual high standard, with regards to getting you fresh downtown info as soon as we hear, this week. We have been suffering from a technological version of the wobbly's we're afraid!

And what a week it's been! We've had stuff about trees, companies going bust and others slagging our 'lousy retail offer', to say nothing about yet more bizarre skyscraperaphobia and the usual, inevitable, depressing, low grade, counter productive, petty political grandstanding ...we wonder what the dailies will make of it?

Excellent downtown coverage in the Daily Post and Echo as usual - so go to our icliverpool link below and check out the stories.

We think we have cracked the main problem now so thanks (again) for bearing with us - we will put together a summary of the best of last weeks downtown news in a special page on Monday.

Too many obsessives and not enough Chieftans?
Be sure to get along to the public exhibition of the super cool development proposed for the car park on Skelhorn St and show your support?

Planners do not want this - the question should be, why do we still want their advice?

Plans can be seen at the Empire Theatre's atrium next Wednesday and Thursday (27th & 28th) between 11a.m & 7p.m

Look after the pennies
Downtown based company, Medicash, are planning a major expansion ..yet another example of little acorns being much more valuable to our urban economy than those big, bloated 'treats' that inward investment imposes.

Sad news however that Wade Smith is to close down ...helped on the way by LCC's obsession with multiples at the expense of metropolitan commerce? We have warned about relying on inward investment rather than metro wealth creation ..some forecasts look bad ..let's keep our fingers crossed!

That's the way to do it
Great stuff about that scouse youngster setting up an airline ...enterprise, not a subsidised hand out is the way in which the city will be restored.

Not everybody has to set up an airline though (though someone should take advantage of the massive profit to be made linking the Pool with NYC) ...small stuff like this new website, 'an independent guide to 2008' is as important...or what about these?

Sadie, with Nan, June, helping to entertain downtown shoppers

We came across some Scouse super talents of the future from The Harlequin Stage School providing culture and entertainment in downtown Church St as well as helping to build up their business. For more info call Dean on 287 0947

Just what we want to hear, the city's folk taking the reins up for themselves!

Not In Our Name
Even the most casual observer will have noticed the steady tide of letters in the local press recently, all from ordinary people bemoaning the critical grumblings of our planning officers towards new buildings (read 'investment') and the general depressing -and mistaken -attitude that somehow this city needs to be 'protected' from the Modern.

Unity Buildings, Liverpool
reproduced by permission
with thanks to webbaviation

The above development being one of the few, high-quality, large scale designs to slip through the Planners net.

But why don't they pop down to Liverpool Vision and see what even the children have to say about the attitude to tall buildings, in the current (and wonderful) exhibition of schoolwork?

Culture News
The Culture Company have at last published their new website - a BIG improvement and which might now at least give us something to cheer about from Millennium House!

The 'X' factor?
Government funding has been agreed for two major downtown projects - a new museum of Liverpool on Mann island and a canal link between the North and South docks.

credit: 3xn

Watch as costs escalate as, unlike the case with the Cloud, any extra burden will be carried by downtowners.

CABE has also just published its Design Review of the proposed Museum of Liverpool which makes interesting reading:

'We are also pleased to note that the scale of the building has been reduced in response to our comments and a review of the brief by the client'

Why must the scale of the building be reduced?! How will they fit it all in?

Date for your Diaries
Urban Forum's Annual Conference will be held at The Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool on 6/7 December 2005.

Downtown Lingchi?
When leading economists suggest a wake-up call for the city's attitude to parking - can we echo this by reminding our city (mothers and) fathers that the death of cities is usually not suicide but rather due to a thousand cuts..

A HUB of downtown youth culture
Don't forget to get downtown this weekend to see what young downtowners get up to. Downtown is for youth, exploration, and all sorts of undercurrents, detached from the mainstream .. and certainly Millennium House! Full details of times and venues.

Bunny Hopping in Derby Sq

There are kids doing 'HUB' type stuff year-round ...but beyond the festival they usually get stick!

Take a look at this interesting little piece about how urban cultures are international, multi cultural but also blended with the locale. Also this article on Hip Hop and Rap in Europe.

The Alley Alley O
The fabulous Crystal Symphony cruise liner docked in the Mersey today [Thursday 14th] at 5am, and departs this evening at 10pm.

Crystal Symphony berthed in Mersey

You can get a feel of what it's like coming up the river by taking a look at the 'bridgecam'. Don't forget to just take 10 mins out of your day to go to the Pier Head and see the real thing though! And if you're looking at this site from on board - WELCOME, drop us an email and we'll post it online.

Ivory Towers
Two stories that we have covered before were highlighted this week. Welcome news that downtown's to get its first top class hotel in decades was
announced formally this week with the conversion of the former Conservative Club [Municipal Annexe building] in Dale Street, whilst another 'hotel story' just up the road took a nasty turn.

Royal Insurance Building

News that English Heritage has added the grade II* listed Royal Insurance Building in North John St to the Buildings at Risk register.

Will we end up with a 'Cassartelli' scenario when obsessives wring their hands after the original structure falls down after years and years of inteference in every proposal that could have saved the original? And will the former ABC Cinema on Lime Street also fall foul? Oh and the Wellington Rooms on Mount Pleasant? [etc. etc...]

Give a dog a bad name
Never having given too much store to the ramblings of corporate bores and provincial no-marks we were, naturally, not invited along to the CBI's 'North West' bash at downtown St George's Hall Wednesday night.

This instinct has been largely preserved once we had reports of the wise words of Digby Jones. Amongst the better ones was one about 'regional passion not allowing money to be lost to host the Olympics' - we can only assume he came across a New Labour leaflet floating around the square mile somewhere!!

Olympic Pique?
After all the shenanigans over yesterday's selection of 2012's venue for the Olympic games - we thought that super sexy Singapore came out best ... elegant, vibrant, non-grasping.

Perhaps Liverpool should bid to be the host of the next decision-making session?

Congratulations to London, now let's see if the guff about 'everyone in the UK benefiting' lives beyond the win?!! We suppose it knocks any any hope of the nationals now helping the
little celebrations taking place in 07/08?

Notable by Our Absence (no. 692)
Yet again a sore reminder of the catching up Liverpool needs to do in order to creep into the mainstream of urban design talk in the UK at the moment. John Sorrell, chief of design watchdog CABE speaking at the RIBA conference in Bristol this week - and unable to mention Liverpool! [link]

Mind the Gap
BBC-watchers are invited to submit a picture or two of the city to the Picture of Britain gallery, because few people seem to have bothered from either
the public or the BBC. [Incidentally, Tate was the Liverpool sugar company that provided the profits and donations for the art gallery that BBC has of course partnered with for this programme].

Liverpool was also 'cut out' of the BBC version of the Natural History of Britain too.. as well as the Battle of the Atlantic series last year and the latest BBC weathermap etc. etc. etc. ...

No Liverpool in BBCland.

Closer to Home Please
We mentioned earlier this week the fear that the Canning House Police HQ may be on the move out of downtown. News now that the wonderful Alder Hey Children's Hospital may not be moving to an adjacent site but options for alternative sites -including Huyton -are being considered. Please avoid.

Clatterbridge over on the Wirral is a good example of an excellent hospital, with great staff and patient care, in leafy countryside but a nightmare to get to for staff, and visitors, and patients.

Glad to say that the NHS has recently shown its committment to downtown..

No.1 Arthouse Square

..by placing its Primary Care Trust in this funky new building next to FACT! Good news.

Beating a Path(finder)
Many firms are now coming to Liverpool to help develop new social housing. Good to see then that firms like PTE Architects and URBED are in the city. Maybe they will snatch work from some (we regret) local firms that built the type of appalling, low density, anti-city [read 'high crime'?] cul-de sacs in the 80's and 90s. You know who you are!

Magnetic Attraction
News that the UK govt is considering a £16bn Maglev supertrain linking North and South should be welcomed. But not wishing to put the dampeners on it - the evidence of what has happened to rail services out of Lime Street station in the past 18mths should kill any optimism of the likelihood of a Maglev 'spur' into Liverpool.

We will of course have to commute to the regional 'capital' of Manchester by pack horse to pick it up. Place your bets now on politicos saying '..the economic case for extending the Maglev to Liverpool is regretably not justified..' in 15 years time...

It's all about perceptions
Substance over style, stuff over bluff,
Vision rather than vague aspirations.
News of a 'major redevelopment' of the
Woodside area of the Mersey, could take lessons from this piece from Brooklyn, whilst a host of strategies
in downtown Liverpool, from the Paradise project to the Capital of Culture agenda could be enlightened
by this one from downtown Hamburg.

NYNY courtesy: NYC & Company

Think big, aim high and you may just get somewhere - where did we hear that phrase 'make no little plans' in relation to Liverpool's ambitions?

When in Rome?
News from the Eternal City that even they have decided that ripping UP cobbled streets is the only way to protect the adjacent crumbling buildings and keep the metropolis on the move.

Load of Cobble[r]s

In Liverpool meanwhile, we're busily putting them back in!

Now THERE'S a heritage site
We hope you watched Sunday's BBC programme 'Coast' Liverpool's downtown World Heritage Site, as should have been gets a profile in a later episode - great stuff.

Thankfully, 'heritage' is about more than just buildings

As heritage block salvaging old buildings
English Heritage have been involved in determining what is most suitable for the former ABC Cinema on Lime St. LFC star Jamie Carragher is the latest to come up with plans to save and restore the building ...let's see what happens there. Previous plans have stalled because of obstinacy in adapting the building - meanwhile, this grand old cinema is slowly disintegrating.

The road to oblivion is couched in gobbledygook
Really interesting revelations as to just how far off-beam our city's planning has become.

Planning chiefs state, with regards to the Chieftain proposals for a new 32 storey tower near Lime Street outlined below,

"The proposed tower has no clear logical connection to the immediate buildings and appears to dominate the local townscape"

Followed by the usual nugget

"It would also have a negative impact on the adjoining area and World Heritage Site"

What the hell do these mean?!! .. more importantly should this type of nonsense dictate what function downtown takes on? That's just for starters. Give us strength...

Clashes with the adjacent architecture? Why was this selected as a tall building zone? Where's the principle?

For more details see icliverpool

Talking of taste
We hope all who could went along to support the Chieftan tower proposal? We would ask people to keep at the front of their thoughts, when reading the 'objections' and statements on 'taste' and 'suitability' of buildings by those officers recommendation is to refuse this tower a few pointers.

What they have in mind as a 'suitable' building for that site would be much more like Commutation Plaza than would be healthy (they where given free reign to design the ultimate building with that)

There are masses of contradictions and a huge U-turn is planned to change tack and recommend the Public sector backed replacement for Concourse House.

Their choices are being taken from a single aspect, which even in the best of circumstances is never a healthy approach.

The 'perfect type of building for downtown', as envisioned by those against tall buildings and modern architecture

They do not want a dynamic, forward looking (in both respects) commercially successful city - they want a rendition of a previous city that was wrecked in WWII and finished off in the 60s'

They are really quite, quite irrelevant - but they hold all the cards right now - which raises fundamental issues. What do most right minded people think?

A taste of where we are headed
can be gleaned from this article in the Scotsman about Edinburgh's heritage community's efforts to stifle what's goes on there ..and we can hardly call current development in that city 'rad'!

And there's more!
EH have finally come out of the closet today with regards to the Ballymore/Merepark proposal for Central Station. One objection is that it will 'soar' above the adjacent buildings. Isn't that what ALL tall buildings do? The Liver Bdg and Anglican cathedral do just that - it's part of what makes them so impressive ...they create an impression.

This weeks events have now proven beyond doubt that our planning committee have been lied to all along by certain groups about the real intentions of the raft of restrictive codes in place or being crafted as we have said all along.

They are against any tall building ..in principle, they would just be shown as the excessive and irrelevant zealots that they are if they came out and said it. Please members of the committee, bear this in mind?