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Culturally Capable Capital?

Liverpool’s Look of the City scheme asks if the city is in danger of losing its identity.

W / Daisy Bell

Liverpool is a controversial Capital of Culture in 2008. To the average southerner, the impression is of scallies, crime and industrial smoke. But there's a TATE now, of course, a brand new shopping centre, and an influx of new clubs and restaurants. So has the UK's cultural capital successfully concealed traditional stereotypes? Or should it seek to conceal them at all?

Edge Lane, one of the main routes into Liverpool, is host to the highest number of boarded up houses in the city. In the council's Look of the City scheme (an attempt to stop tourists being put off by local dereliction), the houses have been revamped in a simple, cheap yet innovative way. The boards covering the windows and doors have been brightly painted with images famously associated with Liverpool. John Lennons, Liver birds and odes to Everton or Liverpool FC have been painted in green, purple, blue and red, turning the city's most poverty stricken streets into the brightest in town. A bad situation has become a celebration of Merseyside pride.

Unfortunately, the Look of the City scheme on Edge Lane is temporary. With a new £350 million budget, the council is going ahead with the Edge Lane Project, an expansion of this three mile route into the city centre. The painted houses, each a witness to Liverpool's recent history, will be bulldozed down. So despite the short term improvement there, the long-term 'solution' is one of modernity, space and, most likely, boredom.

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Categories Culture Tags Liverpool Architecture

By on 2/12/08