July 23, 2021 - 7:05am
It’s finally happened. Liverpool’s iconic waterfront and city centre — officially, the ‘Maritime Mercantile City’ — has been stripped of its UNESCO World Heritage status. This is only third time this has happened anywhere in the world.
According the the World Heritage Committee, the decision was made because of the “irreversible loss of attributes conveying the outstanding universal value of the property”.
But what does this actually mean? It’s not like they’ve demolished the Albert Dock. The Three Graces are still standing. St George’s Hall remains in one piece.
Rather, the problem is one of addition, not subtraction. The Committee is unhappy with new buildings going up in, and around, the World Heritage Site. In particular, there’s the Liverpool Waters project — a glassy, modernist redevelopment of the city’s northern docks.
I wouldn’t describe it as the worst kind of spreadsheet architecture — there’s plenty worse. Nevertheless, the overall effect of this and other recent developments is to overwhelm the unmistakable with the unremarkable.
Steve Rotherham, the Liverpool City Region metro mayor, is furious with UNESCO. In a statement, he said that “places like Liverpool should not be faced with the binary choice between maintaining heritage status or regenerating left behind communities – and the wealth of jobs and opportunities that come with it.”
No, they shouldn’t. But the actual “binary choice” here is the one forced upon us by architects and planners: beautiful old buildings versus ugly new ones.
There is no good reason why we can’t have new development in a style that harmonises with a city’s definitive architecture. The decision to maximise aesthetic discord is an ideological one — a modernist bigotry that slanders respect for the past as pastiche.
Of course, if one were to apply the doctrine of contrasts to the modernists’ favourite buildings then they’d be the first to complain. Personally, I think a Mock Tudor extension to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater would be hilarious, but I doubt they’d they see the joke.
Another argument against the UNESCO decision is that a city should not be a museum. But that’s wrong — a museum is exactly what a city is. What we build lasts far beyond our lifespans (or ought to). A city, therefore, is an accumulation of bequests from long-dead generations.
Before we build we need to think not just about our immediate needs, but about what our monuments will say about us in centuries to come. And the more important the city and the more prestigious the location, the harder we need to think.
As well as respecting the heritage we’ve already got, we should striving to create the heritage of the future.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeThank you! Some sanity and perspective finally.
Hear, hear. All this hysteria and cant over football! As if it means anything beyond a transient, drunken five minutes of mob sentimentality. And people imagine that this creates “togetherness” or “community” or the triumph of the “rainbow”! Was ever there a more blatant instance of wishful thinking? Authentic identities can never be shaken permanently into this momentary vinaigrette of TV “solidarity” – why do they think it so difficult to erase “racism” from supporting a team? Rangers and Celtic, anyone? Like all bullying sentimentalists, our increasingly totalitarian bosses have fallen for their own piffling lies; but even as they shed their slimy tears of joy, like Stalin weeping into his vodka, they double and double down and down on the forcing press of “multi-culture”.
FootballRugby is by far the best sport on earth, and onlydeviantsfools think otherwise.Personally, I much prefer Rugby to Football – though there’s little to be gained by trying to convert a fan of one sport to the other.
BUT, there is a lesson from Rugby that could/should be learned across all comments pages like these.
One of the great joys of Rugby – something surely that can be celebrated even by people who don’t follow the game – is that opposing side’s fans all sit together. There is never crowd trouble – they’ll be some good natured joshing, for sure, but never any trouble.
Whether it is lower league Rugby, through to a top-of-the-table clash between premier sides, or even a bitterly fought international match, the fans sit together, drink and sing together and – as often as not – a fan of the losing side will congratulate a winning supporter on their success at the end of it.
My younger son’s first experience of a live game (several years ago now) was taking him to Wasps v Harlequins at the Stoop on his 5th birthday. I was a lone Wasps fan sat in a crowd of Quins, and Wasps were on the wrong side of a hiding. All the guys around us were telling my son that he shouldn’t follow his Dad’s team as they were clearly second best and should instead become a Quins fan. We were all chatting and laughing and they found out it was my son’s birthday.
As we took our seats again after half-time, a group of total strangers had been to the Club shop and bought him a Quins shirt, a Quins hat and a Quins flag. By the end of the match he was standing on his seat singing “The Mighty Quin” whilst I was being teased about my son now being a cuckoo in the nest.
He is, I’m afraid to say, an ardent Harlequins fan to this day.
That is one of the (many) reasons I love Rugby.
It should be perfectly possible for people who passionately support one side of an argument to be able to respect people who passionately believe in the other side. We can believe the other is misguided and wrong, but there is no need to insist that they must therefore be evil! There is much too much of that in evidence in political debate over the last several years and, at a guess, such attitudes have never yet convinced anyone to change their mind.
It’s also one of the reasons there’s very little atmosphere at rugby grounds. Whilst I can watch rugby, internationals anyway, being at the game is a soulless experience. Give me footballs tribalism any day of the week, even if it does go too far now and again
Very well said Mr. West. The Football Association chose the team which it thought had the best chance of winning something. If they thought they were choosing a team to represent the country, or the people, of England they failed as they were bound to do.
dltd.