By Frank McKenna 25 November 2011 at 10:00
The World Heritage Status bade that was bestowed upon Liverpool by Unesco in 2004 is apparently under threat once again.
Should Peel’s proposals for the Liverpool Waters regeneration project go ahead then the heritage lobby will demand that the city is stripped of the title.
Whatever your views on ‘heritage’, and I have made mine known on many occasions over the years, any pragmatic observer of the current situation will know that Liverpool needs jobs and investment more than it needs a rather meaningless vanity badge.
Yes, it is a nice marketing tick in the box that arguably helps in some small way with our tourism and visitor destination agenda. The value of this, however, nowhere near matches the benefits of the potential regeneration projects planned will bring.
People also need to be reminded that it is not just the waterfront that is affected by World Heritage Status. Developments as far away as Duke Street have been scaled back, as a large chunk of the city is included in the so-called ‘buffer zone’.
Nobody likes to lose titles, and Liverpool should do what it can within reason to keep Unesco on board. Perhaps what is required is a conversation about the nature of the existing agreement and reducing the influence of World Heritage Status to simply cover the site of the three graces. If a compromise can be met, that would be great, but my experience of the heritage lobby is that they are extreme and immovable. Their politics, much like their views, are from a time gone by, when only people who took polar opposites on issues were considered ‘pure’ enough to articulate an opinion.
Ultimately, if Unesco insist on applying the current criteria in order for Liverpool to retain its vanity badge, then the city would be better served handing the title back graciously, rather than wait for it to be taken away from us.