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Unesco set to Strip Liverpool of it's World Heritage Status


Hooch
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  • 4 weeks later...

I think this is a complete failure by the council to maximise what Liverpool is all about. They had a golden opportunity to develop a cool city and instead they’ve let speculators in and now there’ll never be another opportunity as funds will not come from central government. 

 

Sure, it’s still a cool place, but that’s inspite of the authorities and down to the people who run the independent sector. 
 

Sure big spending Yank tourists will be aghast at the concreting over of history, while the stag and hen parties are spewing up in front of them. 
 

 

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On 21/06/2021 at 21:21, Bruce Spanner said:


I agree with your larger point, but it’s still nice to be noticed for, and advertised as a place that…

 

  1. Represents a masterpiece of human design.
  2. Exhibits an important interchange of human values, over a span of time, or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning, or landscape design.
  3. To bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.
  4. Is an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural, or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates a significant stage in human history.
  5. Is an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture, or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change.
  6. Is directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance.
  7. Contains superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional beauty and aesthetic importance.
  8. Is an outstanding example representing major stages of Earth’s history, including the record of life, significant ongoing geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features.
  9. Is an outstanding example representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, and communities of plants and animals.
  10. Contains the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.

We should preserve the good stuff and not pave paradise etc etc.

Do as they say......

 

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/where-is-the-headquarters-of-the-unesco-located.html

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6 minutes ago, torahboy said:

I wonder how many tourists hit Liverpool thinking about it's UNESCO awarded World Heritage Status.

Yeah I can't see it having much of an impact at all but till, those pesky blues fucking things up as usual. 

 

 

(I think I'd prefer their new stadium and a regenerated area to a unesco status that doesn't really mean all that much) 

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3 minutes ago, torahboy said:

I wonder how many tourists hit Liverpool thinking about it's UNESCO awarded World Heritage Status.

Doubt it's many. I was doing PR for the tourist board when we got the status, and while it was definitely a nice thing to get, it paled compared to the effort that went into delivering 2008. If I remember the World Heritage bid had one person working on it. For 2008 there was a whole company set up. 

 

It's still fucking stupid though - who wouldn't want UNESCO heritage status. The council has been a shambles since Storey/Bradley/Henshaw vacated. 

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At one point one third of the world’s shipping was registered in Liverpool. It’s rich merchant class built the parks, mansions and buildings we love today. At the same time, the “scousers”

lived in some of the worst slums in Europe which meant Liverpool had a long list of world first’s when it came to public health reforms.

Tourism is more than going to your hotel, quick shufty on Trip Advisor and go from there. Even the story of its decline is up there with Detroit, but if no one is selling it because they think shite quick build Lego apartments for Steve from Singapore to dodge tax in is the answer to regenerating a city then quite frankly they can get fucked, the massive sell out cunts. 
Even in the comments on FB there was a Yank lamenting this saying over there it’s “ here once stood”

as some neo yuppie has put up some monstrosity. 
The blame lies squarely with Liverpool Labour I’m afraid and I hate having to say that because the other pricks are just as complicit. 
Maybe things would’ve been different if they’d knocked up a Canary Wharf in the early 80s like they did for East London. 
Bastards the lot of them.

 

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It almost beggars belief to think that a Tory was responsible for the only worthwhile transformation in this city in the last 100 years.  And that was partially done to spite Thatcher.  The council has been let by cheap little conmen of different stripes for at least 50 years.  No vision, no credibility outside the narrow tribal band they seek election from, and have all let the city and it's inhabitants down to such an extent that it's now turned into a Blackpool with better legacy architecture.  It's fucking annoying that there seems to be no understanding of this amongst the tribes, and people's expectations are so low that apathy has been the order of the day for those 50 years.  

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From SevenStreets site.

 

UNESCO's Binned Us Off. What Next For Liverpool?

Our World Heritage status has gone, floating out of sight like a chippy wrapper from the Lobster Pot. But it's not about them anymore. It's about us.

SevenStreets

47 min ago1

by David Lloyd

History will not look kindly on former mayor Joe Anderson. The man who had it all to lose. And lost it. The man who presided over a “toxic culture” that wanted development at all costs, and gave us shit cladding and retrospective planning approval that led to tumorous growths on elegant buildings. 

Of course, there are some who’ll say “who needs UNESCO”? Well, maybe some places don’t. Venice doesn’t need UNESCO - I’d say its tourist future is pretty well secured, but it recognises the value of paying things forward. Of development that enhances and preserves, rather than removing and replacing. So when it was threatened with its delisting from UNESCO’s World Heritage list, it set to work, and banned all cruise ships from squeezing through its Grand Canal. It didn’t need to. The tourists would have come either way. 

Us? We green-lighted another “bold and ambitious” residential tower block that’s currently being delisted too, as the property developer fights insolvency claims, and investors struggle to recoup the millions sunk into yet another ailing scheme. We put our trust in shiny new castles in the air, we remove public realm open spaces at the waterfront to make way for new car parking bays for Merseytravel staff, all while pretending to support a greener city (what’s that all about anyway?).

How many tourists will come to see these? How many guide books will rave about the Hilton Liverpool ONE? What happens when we wake up and realise we had something special, and we sold it down the river for a handful of schemes that make us look like Leeds, or Swansea or anywhere?

The stripping of our UNESCO status - blamed on years of development causing an “irreversible loss” of our historic Victorian docks and mercantile heart - was anything but inevitable. New buildings don’t have to be anathema to heritage. This is not about us “preserving in aspic”, as Steve Rotherham suggests. The Copper House for example, newly completed along The Strand, shows how a confident, elegant new arrival can enhance the city’s curb appeal, with its garden courtyard entrance and cool white window reliefs. 

It’s a painful truth - but a history worth remembering - that it was a Tory, Michael Hestletine, who’s done more for our waterfront since Jesse Hartley. The Merseyside Development Committee could have bulldozered the docks and built something akin to the Crowne Plaza hotel, but they didn’t.

Will Everton’s stadium, taking over Bramley Moore Dock, suck the life out of the North Docks area, or give it the vital shot in the arm it needs? 

Well, let’s go and visit Anfield. Stroll along any of the well-worn streets around Oakfield Road and let’s talk about regeneration, or of how a super-stadium seeds life in its community. Rafa was wrong to call the Blues a “small club”, yet there’s no doubt Anfield will continue to be the real tourist Mecca. But how many of the thousands of fans shuttled in and out spend any money in Booze and News? 

Not a fair comparison? Anfield not very touristy? Not very well connected to the city? It’s the same distance from the Pier Head as Bramley Moore Dock is, the new home of Everton. So why not? It could be. Instead, we tin-up the terraced streets and let the bins go uncollected.

Look at the London Stadium, aka West Ham’s home ground, in East London. Hermetically sealed, like an implanted cell, sucking life out of its host, giving nothing back. A monument to social cleansing. All compulsory purchase orders and displaced housing. 

Close your eyes and imagine the vendors bidding for business around the new Everton stadium. A Costa, perhaps? A cheeky Nandos and a KFC drive-through, perchance?

Go take a look at what’s happening there now, or at least within its orbit. The Ten Streets area is bubbling up with incredible energy. Enjoy a zingy espresso at Cafe Riccado’s, browse in the market, hear about what creators and inventors are doing at MAKE’s workshops, enjoy jazz and grub at the Social, and feel the sense that something special is happening here. 

The irony is that the Council got behind Ten Streets. But they got behind the Baltic Triangle - another regenerated warehouse area - too. And hands up who thinks that narrative is progressing the way we wanted it to? With venue Constellations dying, giving way to another identikit residential block, and 24 Kitchen Street - probably the city’s most progressive dance music club right now - in a seemingly endless stand-off with looming developments.

The approved Everton stadium

The use of stadiums as regenerative catalysts has been investigated by numerous academic studies. They’ve all found that five, ten or even 20 years on they’ve contributed little or no economic uplift for their local areas. Clubs will argue the opposite, of course. Everton-supporting ex-Mayors too. But it’s the clubs that reallybenefit. In the ten years since they moved to the Emirates Stadium in 2006, Arsenal’s annual match-day revenue almost tripled, from £33.8m in 2004 to £100.2m in 2014.

One thing that’s undeniable though is a super-stadium’s effect on local property and land values. So if driving up land and property prices is called ‘regeneration’, then we’re home and dry. But what will the start ups of Ten Streets think about that?

For us, the idea that inserting a massive stadium into any area in need of regeneration is automatically going to be a salve for all its problems is naïve beyond words. It takes collaboration, creativity, integration and deeply-connected planning to make a place work and bring it to life again. 

So this isn’t really about UNESCO after all. It’s about us. Our future. What is it we’re fighting for, anyway? What are we good at (hint: take a look at Ten Streets)? And how do we - all of us - protect our past while encouraging the new?

Liverpool is an old city. So why have we forgotten the art of playing the long game?

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If you ran a poll of L postcode residents and asked them would they prefer a Unesco Heritage tag (which I suspect many didn't even know about anyway) or a regenerated Vauxhall docks area they would pick the latter, and rightly so. 

 

Still I'm going to wind Blues up about this for a while just because their veins would be popping out of their heads if it was us. 

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1 hour ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

Somebody should be looking into how these things got planing then funded and why the owners don’t seem to know or care that they are empty. I suspect a combination of corruption, money laundering and maybe some gullible overseas investors being conned by promises of 5% rental yields.
 

Flats are of course a great way to launder money, you invest your cash as equity borrow some debt then claim the money you are making from crime and banking each week is actually rent from your property massive portfolio. As long as you own the flats, it’s hard for the courts to prove they were empty for years unless they put them under 24 hour surveillance which the police aren’t going to bother with. 
 

 Vauxhall in london is the same, 1000s of flats all empty.

 

A concrete shrine to crime and corruption.  

And the fucking rest.

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