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Liverpool Tall Buildings Policy Consultation Process

This public consultation closes on the 4th March 2005.

If you feel strongly about the recent planning decisions regarding West Tower, Brunswick Quay and others, for example the decision not to go ahead with Will Alsops scheme for Mann Island, then it will be worth your while taking time out to consult Liverpool City Council's Tall Buildings policy online.

Section 3 no.5: 'To consider whether the vision for a city centre is for radical change through large numbers of tall buildings (sometimes referred to as the contrast between American and European cities, this is especially poignant for Liverpool with its trans- Atlantic influences).'

Section 4 no. 15: The [UNESCO] World Heritage Committee as part of the Inscription process, requested that the ‘State Party’, in applying its planning procedures rigorously, assures that:- (a) the height of any new construction in the World Heritage Site and its Buffer Zone does not exceed that of structures in the immediate surroundings'

But the buffer zone covers the WHOLE INNER CITY World Heritage Site Management Plan 2003 [pdf] What chance then for tall buildings?! Clearly we support the former point and would ask all supporters to use this opportunity to have your say!

Observations on the Tall Buildings Policy from Downtown:

The WHS (which is determining the raft of negative and restrictive policies being drafted and enacted) is unprecedented in its comprehensive nature - with every site steered to having to accommodate the minimum amount of development through a raft of codes devised to ensure this. It is essentially, and effectively, couched in terms from another century, totally disregarding the fundamentally different way in which commerce and urban society is organised today.

Neither does it consider how modern interventions like building regulations, fire and health and Safety standards impact on the spatial volume of buildings, (for example personal work space averages and the spatial requirements of technology) added to this heating and ventilation systems as well as developments like the elevator all combining to increase volume requirements of modern development. This goes up in magnitude when we consider residential property, especially with regards to overcrowding, storage requirements and amenity like extra bathrooms per unit etc that are normal demands of today ...especially in comparison with mid Victorian values.

WHS (and as a consequence the whole intellectual framework shaping supporting and supplementary development codes in the city) does not take into account the fact that large cities work on a completely different magnitude than smaller ones...not just exponential volume, but in generating and attracting niche features and specialisation that commands different ratios again as well, of course, extra downtown space. WHS is bad for a commercial city with contemporary aspirations. There is a danger that this aspiration will be drowned in a plethora of heritage preservation codices.

The proposed (anti) Tall Buildings Policy is a central piece of the developing armoury.

Tall buildings should be welcomed. They are only a response (as all major schemes are) to current or perceived market growth for Liverpool. This is currently sufficient to convince developers that tenants will be available in sufficient numbers to provide income. The strange determination to undermine or even thwart 'developer greed' has slipped into the mind set as policy backdrop in the city, but what is this? Surely a developer will only succeed in tapping extra income from more floor-space if there is the market to take it?

This falls into a negative 'anti business' attitude that seeps into political debate amongst some of our politicos! There is sometimes an instinctive approach which sees enterprise, entrepreneurs, and in this case the physical consequences of their activity as somehow unclean, immoral and so best to be thwarted as much as possible. Surely not healthy for a city that aspires to be 'Most Business friendly in the UK!

There is also an intensely unfair, and damaging bias toward public sector led schemes, an assumption that the market is limited and so best to preserve as much of this 'capacity' for public sector schemes, i.e. Kings Dock over Maro and Tithebarn St over the original proposals for Unity. This of course also enables the planners to maintain their outdated, even obsolete, notion that they should control and dictate development. Is this the statutory authority abusing its monopoly control?

We are especially concerned that only one option has been drafted, and that it is only the only one councils planning committee have been presented with must decide on- in planners minds, an arrogant fait accompli?. If Liverpool is indeed to have a tall buildings policy at all, then surely there has to be options to discuss?

Finally, we must again state that the new needs for business and social organisation are foregone by heritage towns ...letting other towns have the excess, or sending it to edge edge areas or the countryside (as in 'county' hospitals).

Is Liverpool really willing to give up on these natural centripetal forces that leads to growth in normal cities? Extra capacity generated through his type of site intensification leads to extra growth through critical mass, unachievable with any lesser configuration.

Having said all that this is not a call for tall buildings to be utilised just to enhance the city's skyline and townscape however, it is a plea for the aspiration for Liverpool to realise/maximise what ever potential it has to grow and attract business as well as growth in population it can, with no arbitrary limits on this. We are passionate about this, if we reach a certain level of regeneration we simply ask, then why stop it? What happens once we've filled our three 'tall buildings zones' and another successful Liverpool company needs to expand significantly?

Neither is it a plea to disregard proper values with regards to conservation and townscape enhancement, rather we see tall buildings as providing an elegant way of avoiding destruction of fine grain street patterning whilst still tapping the expansion of the employment market.

Tall buildings provide an excellent means of reaching sufficient density of residential and office provision, especially where the requirement also accounts for ground floor retail and other service providers. within a logical, indeed, traditional urban landscape.

Most importantly, when considering whether curtailing tall buildings is appropriate to Liverpool is to remind ourselves of the fact that we have actually been here before; and the evidence that proves that setting arbitrary height limits in a growing city for 'aesthetic reasons' are a folly is all around us. We are all aware of the horrendous stock that has been generated over the last twenty years on the waterfront, supposed to improve the visual aspect of the city by fully complying to height limits derived from that of the Albert and Wapping warehouses, but do nothing of the sort.

What is less well known however is that the idea of curtailing the height of major commercial buildings (that might otherwise have been tall and most likely beautiful) has been enforced before, in the 1960s' and early 70s'. This is the reason why the RSA, Littlewoods and Metropolitan buildings are the heights that they are. To that list we must also add Silkhouse Court and Concourse House. It is no coincidence that it is these very buildings are the same ones that most people complain about...they certainly add nothing to the 'majesty' of the waterfront and skyline. It is the reason that Metropolitan house is stunted and ungainly, the RSA morphs into a convoluted massing and why Littlewoods is such a hideous 'giant, low-rise, neighbourhood destroying, slab! Missed opportunities? We are possibly about to commit the same errors, for 'aesthetic reasons'.

Great cities grow and change, just as Liverpool always has. The only other break in this ongoing tradition of change was as a result of twenty years of the most appalling decline. Downtown's around the world are taking advantage of the new era in approaches to city growth and so must we. We are a trading city ...indeed a mercantile/maritime city and so we need to rediscover our old habits, the habits that all good trading cities have. We're on the up once again now, so why should we stop?

All text and images © 2005 The Downtown Liverpool Organisation
http://www.downtownliverpool.org

The independent, not-for-profit urbanist think tank for Liverpool, UK.