Cities and History II

The Beatles in the early 1960s, a fifteen-foot-high image in HMV, Liverpool One

Walking through Liverpool One I saw this astonishing image of the Beatles in (I guess) about 1964 walking through somewhere that looks like Liverpool. The overlap of time and place I found fascinating; to their left are three-storey Georgian houses whilst behind George on the right is a modern concrete-pebble wall and a low railing; I find this juxtaposition of old and new in one photograph - connected by the Beatles with all those connotations of modernity - beautiful. And now Liverpool One is reflected in the windows of the image , a further layering of time and place, a vision of the city two of them did not live to see and none of them understand; the city trades on them mercilessly but has moved forward without them.

Cities and History

The past as a different world; Liverpool's Old Dock wall, October 2008

Liverpool One is built on what used to be the City of Liverpool Building, Canning Place, South John Street and the land between these and Paradise Street. Before 1974 the old Sailor's Home stood on the corner of Hanover/Paradise streets and before 1945 the gigantic Customs House - huge and neoclassical, echoing Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, one of John Foster's contributions to the cityscape - stood on the City of Liverpool Building site. These are two of the great losses to the city's architecture. And before this the Old Dock was here, the world's first commercial dock, built in 1715 by Thomas Steers on land reclaimed from the Pool. When the twentieth century buildings were cleared from the site the archaeologists found the dock in a reasonable state of repair despite being buried and infilled and used as the foundations of large buildings for nearly two hundred years. I deplore the decision not to open the channel with Canning Dock again and restore the Old Dock - where Liverpool's prosperity began - to the streets of the city. My ideal would be a warren of narrow pedestrian streets filled with quirky shops and small restaurants, small parks and a mix of apartments and houses above. Maybe one day. The decision to build Liverpool One instead is like Nice clearing the old town for a car park and a shopping mall.

BUT some of the Old Dock survives; a small viewing disc has been left in the pavement outside te new shops, and a space age rail protects shoppers from history. The dock wall can just be seen to the left of the inner disc, illuminated from below.

Cityscape II

Chavasse Park and the Albert Dock in the distance

Some more views of Liverpool One. I don't think that the buildings are particularly exciting but they have a bright modern energy which the city has found attractive; my concern is that the whole project will date very quickly and that beneath it all nothing of substance has been achieved for the city.

The distant dome of the old - currently empty - Royal Insurance Building and a ventilation tower for the old tunnel

Cityscape

Chavasse Park and One Park West, Liverpool One, 3rd October 2008

Last Friday we were in Liverpool and took the chance to explore the huge Livepool One development, the new shopping heart of the city. Old streets have been cleared and even newish buildings demolished to make way for the colossal regeneration of this underused area of the city. It is bright and clean and will soon blend seamlessly into the surviving pattern of streets between Paradise Street and Lord Street. But I am uneasy. I think that there should be more to city life than shopping, more to streets than a way of getting from one shop to the next. The space between the shops has been largely ignored; the space rises through three floors - so the old South Castle Street is now a three-tier shopping arcade open to the sky - and is crowned with an open space that I think has been called Chavasse Park. But it does not feel like a real city park; it feels like landscaping designed to show off the new buildings.

My gut instinct is to rebuild city life - the lives of cities - from the street up. I feel that cities are tinkered with endlessly, so that they become a mish-mash of half-baked plans. Liverpool One ends abruptly and the streets beyond are as scruffy and potholed as ever and there is no understanding of street life - buskers, benches, conversations, statues, smokers - on these sterile new streets. And then I wonder if I am being curmudgeonly, whether my vision of cities is old-fashioned. But cities are more than shops and more than money; there is more to urban life than consumption.