The Downtown Organisation, Liverpool

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Hello Downtowners -

Our launch of METROPOLIS last August has been excellent. We have had a fantastic and very supportive response and a good number of new people have signed up for our e-digest, so welcome! We will be establishing a dedicated METROPOLIS email newsletter in the next couple of months as well as building-up the content and resource of the Metropolis website at www.liverpoolbayarea.com so please bear with us in the meantime!

As part of Urban Design Week 2004 We have arranged a walking tour of Liverpool tomorrow, Wednesday at 12pm, meeting at the new steps of the Metropolitan Cathedral and meandering downtown to the Pierhead, taking in new and old development. The theme of the walk is ‘No such thing as neutral impact architecture’ we will be taking in such delights as Commutation Plaza described in the new Pevsner Guide to Liverpool as 'feeble' and 'deeply depressing' !! Just come along, all welcome, should take about 2 hours.

We will organise our usual downtowners evening get together later in the month, check out the DL website.

Downtown

New downtown Arts Neighbourhood
Downtown Culture Queen, Jayne Casey is to open a new ‘village’ for independent artists and creatives currently unable to find affordable downtown space. An initiative of The Afoundation we can only say well done - and more power to downtown! More info

Looking good for the creative city
Good news also in that we have the Centre for Arts Development [CAD] relaunching the organisation, including new programme, branding (and new website) under the expert guidance of Liz Lacey. Based downtown on Brownlow Hill, they will be more punchy, more entrepreneurial and more successful. For an invitation to the relaunch on the 7th October email us

Quiggins
It also looks as though one of Liverpool’s most important assets will remain at the centre of the city’s alternative culture and they will be on the move rather than pushed out of downtown. Have deals been concluded and set in stone? We certainly hope so. Quiggins is also downtown's only micro business incubator, their ‘alumni’ are amongst the most impressive ‘top end’ independents in the city, without Quiggins, Bold St might well still be a dump!

Business Intelligence
GME’s fast-improving business intelligence service should become a regular web stop for downtown entrepreneurs, for example see their Daily ‘Hot Tips’

Enterprise
- seems to be flavour of the month, lets hope it stays that way. HM Treasury

Chambré-Hardman
The downtown home of renowned photographer, Chambré-Hardman is finally to open to the public. The culmination of a hard-fought campaign, most notably by the Daily Post's own Peter Elson and Circa 1900’s Wayne Colquhoun. A really excellent place that should have both locals and tourists alike coming downtown in their droves! Be sure that you don’t miss the fascinating links on this BBC page

Speaking of Photography -
Take a look at some very impressive waterfront pics for Liverpool Pictorial. We MUST fight for more and better of this kind of stuff, we only wish our planners had half the ideas that these postgraduate students at LJMU showed last year?

Calling all City Builders
A quick trawl through Google Images highlights our ‘skyline’ is really just three buildings!
UNLESS
We support the kind of development such as Ian Simpson Architects' Brunswick Quay. Make sure that you visit the exhibition at City Exchange - if we let the heritage lobby kill this one then we may as well change the signs to Shrewsbury [link]! C’mon downtowners and metropolitanists, we must FIGHT for this scheme! Open until 24th September.

City

Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art 18th September-28th November 2004 [website]
The UK's largest independent festival of contemporary art - but also rather fun and a great way to see downtown. Highlights this year include a glimpse inside the derelict Futurist Cinema in Lime Street, the Smallpox room in Lewis's and Paolo Canevari's 'bomb' above Seel Street. Remember the War?

'It was twenty years ago today..'
Time for something finally to be done about the former Garden Festival Site?

Wapping News
The excellent Baltic Fleet pub is getting a new neighbour. An intriguing development, currently on-site, which we hear will rise to an elegant 6 stories facing the Strand. Are we at last getting something more appropriate in scale and quality along this stretch of prime L1 real estate?

Metropolis

Games Central
The Bay Area is a hothouse of high tec game bods as this report reminds us. With seaside metropoli like the Bay Area being a natural magnet for young techies, we have the chance to really consolidate this sector. Also see what our American cousins think.

Not Much On Telly?
'Capitals of Culture' surely have a sophisticated television industry. There are NO other cities denied the right to enter a market in the way our region has; every two-bit city in the world has a TV industry. If the ‘West’ and ‘Westcountry’can sustain two commercial [terrestial TV map] and two BBC [BBC map] stations as well as the plethora of associated ‘new media’ and digital/satellite stations then surely the Bay Area can?

Just think of the jobs, the prestige- the ‘imaging’ we could provide out of this! But how many BBC jobs from London will come to Liverpool rather than Manchester 'capital' of the 'Northwest'?

Public Art
is largely hit or miss and this shouldn’t be an excuse to retreat into the bland. Some really good proposals have been made in recent times for major pieces. This latest one by Antony Gormley for the beach at Crosby is real class!

Liverpool Bay Guide
Still time to buy your Liverpool Guide from LDP&Echo. Some genuinely impressive content from around the Bay Area!

National / International

Property Developer/Estate Agent?
Are you selling downtown living quite like this? Vancouver

Metro Areas/Bay Areas
Urban sustainability and the relation between city and hinterland has some really interesting fields to explore. See this excellent site, again from Vancouver.

Leicester, UK
In our last e-digest we took a (well deserved) dig at URC’s, citing Leicester's as an example. There are some excellent things going on down that way though. Take a look at this enterprise support centre and of course the National Space Centre, a snip at £52m!

Dallas, Texas knows that tall buildings are actually a selling point as well as a vital economic asset for downtown!

We were thinking aloud about Mann Island, Liverpool and struck a conversation with one of our downtowners who mentioned Chicago's Millennium Park [1, 2] designed by Frank Gehry.

Amsterdam is an urban utopia for so many and it does seem to do everything very competently. See how it generates and attracts wealth If only Liverpool was still trading far and wide...and bringing the profits home!


3 Years On
A life-size copy of Michelangelo's statue of David has been donated by the city of Florence to NYC, in memory of the victims of the 11th September attacks. The statue is an exact replica of the original, made of Carrara marble and weighing some 17 tons. It is hoped that it will be placed in "ground zero", downtown Manhattan but its installation will depend on the plans in progress for the former site of the World Trade Centre [1, 2]

Time begins to heal, things move on, GREAT cities carry on.

RIP

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