Upper Duke Street

Contemporary v’s the Conservative

Who lives (or wants to!) in a house like this? Evidently not many as it turns out, as these apartments took ages to sell. Contemporary schemes however, that have been accepted downtown, have largely sold-out 'off plan'. More than a fair amount of the twee just isn't popular!

This is the case all over downtown, ‘olde worlde’ drags, bright and contemporary flies! For example the Cinnamon Building could have sold three times the apartments that were built... this surely begs the question; then why wasn't it three times taller? Could anybody actually give a reasonable, constructive answer to that?

Market demand, i.e. what people want, has to be one of the main influences on what we should actually get. This should by rights then determine how the landscape evolves. Choice and preference in building, landscape and environment for the contemporary by the consumer are just not considered at present. Permission or refusal of downtown housing and commercial development are almost entirely driven by image and stilted issues of 'appropriateness' of planners and ‘heritage experts’. Can this be right?

The home you live in and the building your company owns or lets (to say nothing of the image of the city you live in) plays a major part in the image you wish to project as well as the impression that is made and given. Just how big is the market for people who want to live in Georgian or Faux Georgian brown brick blocks?

Why live in a fake warehouse when there are hundreds of genuine ones to have? Other cities are leaving Liverpool behind in the city building stakes and sadly our city will not even have good architecture to compensate for the lack of an urban environment.

Choice must be a prime consideration and so why limit that choice? We are moving into an era when the stilted tastes of a very small number of people are going to impose that taste on the whole market, especially with regards to more substantial proposals...this of course is untenable as well as unsustainable...but by the time we discover this it will have caused immense damage!

The current bias toward the meagre, inoffensive and deferential, leads directly to another problem facing the city, one that could spell catastrophe in the long term. The profligate under-utilisation of precious development sites is not only wasteful but can also restrict the long term potential of the city to develop a truly appropriate urban dimension. Efficient use of downtown development sites must surely be one of the key considerations in any planning strategy...do we have a land bank and mean density analysis?

How does all this affect other plans and strategies for downtown? One example that we have mentioned elsewhere but feel it important to reiterate here that Historic towns, or cities who dedicate themselves to heritage and architectural tourism FORGOE normal commercial patterns of growth and investment, especially in their centres. For Liverpool to dedicate its path to heritage based regeneration means forgoing it too. Even Liverpool (oh, city we love!) cannot have its cake and eat it!

© 2004 Downtown Liverpool updated Nov 04