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13. Exploring the Interaction Between Urban Landscape and Regeneration Decision-Making Factors in the Context of Urban Regeneration, Exemplified by Liverpool Docklands
This chapter examines the dynamic interplay between urban landscape evolution and the decision-making factors that drive urban regeneration, with a focus on Liverpool Docklands. It begins by exploring the theoretical foundations of urban landscape and urban morphology, tracing the evolution of these concepts from their origins in cultural geography to their contemporary applications. The chapter then delves into the historical context of Liverpool Docklands, highlighting the socio-economic factors that have shaped its development over time. Key topics include the role of urban regeneration in transforming post-industrial cities, the influence of institutional systems and administrative relationships on decision-making processes, and the impact of heritage conservation on urban landscape evolution. The analysis is structured around three major regeneration projects in Liverpool Docklands: the Albert Dock, Mann Island, and the Liverpool Waters scheme. Each case study provides a detailed examination of the agents involved, the decision-making processes, and the resulting changes to the urban landscape. The chapter concludes by discussing the broader implications of these findings for urban regeneration practices and the evolution of urban landscapes. Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of how urban regeneration practices shape the urban landscape and the complex interplay of factors that influence these processes.
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Abstract
Urban regeneration is emerging as an important means of transforming cities for development, with built environment as the main object of operation. Modern urban regeneration process has become a mechanism in the evolution of urban landscape, where decision-making factors such as legal, institutional and administrative systems have a direct impact on the implementation of regeneration activities. In turn, the built environment will also influence the urban decision-making process. Accordingly, this article interprets the important role of decision-making factors in urban regeneration from the perspective of urban landscape, taking Liverpool docklands as a case as it bears the history of shipping and trade and is also the main area of Liverpool’s urban regeneration. Based on the literature and official documents, this article reviews the urban regeneration process staging in Liverpool Docklands, identifies the decision-making factors, and constructs an explanatory framework, then the role of decision-making factors in shaping urban landscape is interpreted in stage. It is found that the role of decision-making factors is rooted in the notion of legitimacy of development power and influenced by institutional systems and administrative relationships, generally involving different agents from public, private and intermediate organisations. And the role in shaping urban landscape takes three forms: restrictive, chance and evolutionary.
13.1 Introduction
The concept of urban regeneration has evolved in urban development and in the process of regional development relationships reshaped and is emerging as an important strategy to seek for new paths of development. In contemporary times, the practice of urban regeneration is still primarily concerned with the physical environment, reforming the built environment at the material level to achieve social, economic and political goals, so that it is seen as a rational means of creating new opportunities for development when cities are facing economic and social difficulties. Thus, urban regeneration has become a mechanism that cannot be ignored in the evolution of urban landscape, which implies the rationality of the practice and the initiative of human agents. In the field of geography, the concept of urban landscape is derived from cultural landscape, all of which include perspectives on regional contexts, human activities, and historical processes. Exploring the process of urban landscape evolution and achieving an interpretation of structure and logic of itself is the theoretical objective of Conzenian approach of Urban Morphology. Within this objective, the focus on the mechanisms of action between the various elements of the surface human phenomena broadens the definition of the field of urban morphology to include a focus on the human role in the surface human phenomena, which gives rise to discussions on agent and agency in the field of urban morphology.
Urban regeneration is a form of urban governance as its connotations have expanded to include physical, social and economic dimensions, involving different actors with different values and goals. Accordingly, the practice of urban regeneration becomes a process in which different actors coordinate and participate in decision-making and implementation, which also implies the influence of legal, institutional and administrative systems. The exploration of the mechanisms of urban landscape evolution and its agency in the field of urban morphology is thus concretised here in the following questions: in the context of urban regeneration, who shapes urban landscape, how it is shaped, and how we understand the process of urban landscape evolution. This article attempts to answer these questions in order to explore how the decision-making factors involved by urban regeneration have influenced the changes in urban landscape. The analysis is divided into four parts: the first part gives an account of the theoretical perspectives on which this article is based, including the relationship between the concept of urban landscape and urban morphology, the general findings of agent theory in urban morphology, and the influence of urban regeneration practice; the second part introduces the research methodology of this article; the third part is the case analysis; and the fourth part is the conclusions.
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13.2 Background
13.2.1 Urban Landscape and Urban Morphology
The understanding of the spatial composition and the content of the built environment has undergone a cognitive process from descriptive to systematic, involving a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The Conzenian School of urban morphology was established along the lines of geography to provide a systematic geographic interpretation of the urban landscape. In this regard, urban landscape is an object of concern and interpretation in geography when studying urban at the morphological level (Conzen 1960).
The study of urban landscape dates to the end of the nineteenth century in Germany, from a concern with the evolution of landscapes in the discipline of geography and similar fields. Influenced by Ferdinand von Richthofen’s ideas on human geography—the study of the evolution of human phenomena on the surface in terms of the relationship between people and the environment (Richthofen 1883)—his student Otto Schlüter proposed that the central aim of cultural geography (Kulturgeographie) was to study the form, function and historical development of cultural landscape (Kulturlandschaft) (Dickinson 2014). The German-speaking academia was then drawn to the problems of urban morphology, topography and development by historians, geographers and architects, and until the Second World War, morphologists in the field of German geography had not yet broken through the limitations of a simplistic morphological approach (Larkham and Conzen 2014). Thereafter, influenced by Herbert Louis, a teacher at the School of Geography at the University of Berlin, his student M.R.G. Conzen, who developed an interest in settlement geography and urban morphology, was taught to place urban morphology in the whole context of geology, geomorphology and urban history (Whitehand 1981), and finally moved to England to work in the fields of urban planning and historical geography. After the Second World War, progress in urban morphology was slower. With the publication of Alnwick, Northumberland: A study in Town Plan Analysis, M.R.G. Conzen constructed a basic framework for the conceptualisation and study of the evolution of townscape form, structure and the interrelationship of essential elements, and has since carried out further validation and comparative studies in other case sites. Since then, the position of the Conzenian School of urban morphology has been gradually consolidated on the basis of the succession and development of numerous scholars such as J. W. R. Whitehand.
13.2.2 Urban Landscape Analysis and Agent Theory
In parallel with M.R.G. Conzen’s contribution to the basic framework of urban morphology, urban morphologists gradually developed an interest in agents and agency aiming to answer the question of how particular urban forms and spatial composition are produced. This is in line with the connotations of cultural landscape and urban landscape, which drive researchers to discover the mechanisms between the various elements of surface human phenomena. In this context, the field of urban morphology was broadened—morphology is simultaneously the understanding of the changes in thought that are manifested by human activity on the earth surface (Larkham and Conzen 2014), i.e. understanding the motivations behind agents’ behaviour and the scope and role of agency. Furthermore, from the 1970s onwards, the mainstream work in urban morphology saw no longer the built environment as a context for human habitation, and it was found that humans might actively modify and be influenced by changes in the built environment. Gordon’s conceptual framework pointed to the primary role of decision-makers in the evolution of urban form (Gordon 1984). Since then, agency has been discussed beyond the human and can be non-human things (Essex and Brayshay 2007). For example, culture and values (Edwards and Carr 2004; Preston and Lo 2000) and the process of economy and globalisation can shape the actions of individuals and organisations and the landscapes they produce (Gad and Holdsworth 1987).
Other studies of agency in the field of urban morphology point to the following conclusions: (1) In terms of study objectives, urban morphology’s exploration of the mechanisms of urban morphological change encompasses the academic topic of agency. (2) The discussion of agency pays attention to geographic variability and hierarchy due to the differences in the historical and geographical context of the specific case sites and their political and economic location in the region, and this has also led to the study of administrative systems, institutional systems and power relations in urban planning and urban landscape management. (3) Analyses of the scope of agency often start with processes, institutional factors and power relations directly related to the shaping of urban form and summarise the dominant agents, which are manifested in different ways for cities at stages, while institutional factors and power relations often correspond to each other, and both often define the key agents. (4) The range of agents can be categorised according to the decision-making structures, based on the possibilities for patterns of human behaviour determined by the logic of urban functioning in different development contexts. (5) When considering the role of human behaviour, agent behaviour is influenced by people’s values, and in this context, it is possible to discuss the relationship between multicultural contexts and the conflicting morphology of the built environment. (6) Furthermore, when the ‘rationality’ of urban morphology is explained in terms of the cultural context of agency, the ‘social production of the built environment’ (King 1984) provides the answer that ‘the environment is regarded as a reflection of the dominant pattern of economic, social and political relationships within society and as a means through which these relationships are reproduced and sustained’ (Knox 1984).
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Karl Kropf proposed a general model of urban morphology on agent and agency based on an analysis of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, UK, concerned with the basic human habitual behaviour of ‘learning’. The formation of communities of interest, negotiation in the collective decision-making of urban morphological change and coherence of agential behaviour were emphasised (Kropf 2014). Karl Kropf focused on the role of human behaviour and classified agents into five categories: those who propose and promote change (motive agents), those who generate the specific content of proposals (generative agents), and those who control or limit proposals (regulatory agents), those who oppose change (resistive agents), and those who use these changes (sensory agents), and any one agent may play several or all of these roles. Among that, the role of terminal users in the planning process was pointed, whose evaluations as feedback may modify forms of agency behaviour or stimulate new forms of behaviour. In addition, outcome from agents’ behaviour was emphasised as arising from a situation of mutual compromise between multiple agents, suggesting the variability of the generative ideas of different agents and the possible multiplicity of outcomes, in addition to the variability over time.
13.2.3 Urban Landscape Evolution and Urban Regeneration Practice
The concept of urban regeneration originates from a summary of the salient features of such practices, which in the contemporary context include the reconstruction and transformation of the built environment, the modification or adjustment of the uses and functions of the built environment, as well as actions at the social, economic and political levels. These practices often originate from local development initiative or strategies and usually involve the built environment on a large scale. Essentially, they are carried out by humans to adapt the settlements to the needs of development, occurring at different stages of urban development–decay–renewal–redevelopment. In the context of eras and local environments, and due to the problems and institutional systems in places, there are spatial and temporal differences in the motivation, objectives, contents and modes of regeneration, policy contexts, power relations and specific measures of regeneration activities. In terms of contemporary regeneration activities, Western urban regeneration can be traced back to the slum clearance programmes of the late nineteenth century, with housing, health and welfare claims as the main motivation. The early twentieth century saw a clear trend towards suburbanisation in the UK and the USA, with inner-city problems still unresolved. Second World War influenced European cities to implement large-scale knock-down redevelopment to improve inner-city housing conditions. In the 1960s and 1970s, urban regeneration practices were characterised by public housing construction and neighbourhood revitalisation, with countries such as the UK and the USA adopting integrated community development models and placing greater emphasis on the interests of residents. In the 1980s and 1990s, with global post-industrialisation and economic recession, cities in the West with heavy industry and manufacturing as the dominant industries experienced economic declined, which, as well as suburbanisation, gave rise to numerous social problems in inner cities. Since the 1990s, urban regeneration policies have shifted to a market-led approach to property development, forming a network of public and private sector partners. In addition to the goal of improving the physical and economic conditions of cities, the rise of values and policies to limit urban growth and protect the environment has become the stimulus for urban regeneration practices since the late twentieth century (Roberts et al. 2016).
Globally, urban regeneration has evolved in urban development and in the process of regional development relationships reshaped, from improving the built environment to focusing on multidimensional urban goals, and is emerging as an important strategy to seek for new paths of development in contemporary times. In fact, when urban regeneration has become an urban development strategy or even a policy, the practice of regeneration itself becomes a mechanism for the evolution of the urban landscape, with a degree of common characteristics that is politically, market-oriented and large-scale, and therefore its role in shaping landscape change cannot be ignored.
13.3 Methodology
‘Agent’ and ‘Agency’, which are of interest in urban morphology as one of the perspectives for exploring the mechanisms of urban landscape evolution, involve the topics of landscape shapers, shaping motives, and shaping processes. This is the theoretical starting point of this article. As urban regeneration can be seen as one of the mechanisms, this article considers urban regeneration practices as an agency and give the discussion. There are two objects, one of which is the decision-making factor in the urban regeneration practice and the other is the urban landscape. The decision-making factor refers to the factors that determine the direction of the regeneration practice at key aspects in the process, i.e., the structure and role of the human-agent.
In the mechanistic analysis of urban morphology, the relationship between case studies and general conclusions is inextricably linked. In this article, Liverpool docklands is chosen as the case site. Liverpool docklands have been closely associated with the rise and fall of the city since the seventeenth century and its transformation to seek a competitive position in the process of globalisation. In addition, Liverpool docklands is a key area in Liverpool’s urban regeneration strategy, witnessing a specific history of significant political, social and economic change of the city in the post-industrial period. Liverpool’s urban regeneration strategy has, on the one hand, served as a microcosm of the urban regeneration process in the UK and globally in the post-industrial transition period, and on the other hand, it has led to initiatives by various groups that have influenced local political, social and economic changes and are reflected in the changes to the urban landscape. Liverpool docklands was considered as a case study given the special characteristics it possesses.
Liverpool docklands are largely located in the waterfront area of the current Liverpool city centre, which is the study area (Fig. 13.1), but this article focuses on the larger scale and more influential regeneration practices in Liverpool docklands from the 1980s onwards. Literature and official documents are used as research material to retrace the main phases of the regeneration practices, interpreting decision-making factors and spatial outcomes in stages. In the decision-making factors analysis, decision makers and making processes of urban regeneration are summarised, then the landscape shapers and shaping processes are identified by reference to the general model of agent and agency in built environment change from Karl Kropf. In the spatial change analysis, the concepts of urban landscape such as plot, street, building fabric and land utilisation in the Conzenian morphological approach are used to account for the landscape pattern changes in the study area. It is important to note that the landscape pattern in the article is not a terminology in the Conzenian approach, nor is it the same as the concept of plan units which refers to the identification of morphological units with hierarchical characteristics based on a combination of morphological elements such as town plan, building fabric and land utilisation. Due to the limited spatial resources available, the article uses the term ‘landscape pattern’ to analyse the key morphological elements and their relationship within the urban landscape of the study area.
Fig. 13.1
Illustration of research study areas (Note Adapted from satellite image from Google Earth by the author)
Liverpool, located in the north-west of England, on the northern shore of the deep water of River Mersey estuary, was originally a small fishing and farming community that became a borough in the early thirteenth century and thereafter became the core city of the Merseyside region. After the Chester on the River Dee moved its trade to Liverpool in the early eighteenth century due to silting up, the Liverpool dock system was revamped, and the advent of wet docks brought a lot of trade. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board was established as an independent body to build 13 miles of wet docks along the River Mersey, including the Albert Dock and the Pier head (Fig. 13.2). Dependent on the early industrial growth of the North West of England, and on the strong commercial networks established under the leadership of Liverpool’s commercial elite, River Mersey developed as the gateway to England’s trade routes to the Atlantic, and thus built up capital for the city’s own development (Taylor and Davenport 2009). Liverpool has since experienced waves of immigration from other parts of the British Isles, its colonies and mainland Europe, with rapid population growth and pressure on the physical environment. To improve the overcrowding and squalor of the inner city, Liverpool embarked on a massive urban planning exercise. In the second half of the nineteenth century, with the growth of commercial activity, many shipping companies, commodity exchanges, banks, insurance companies were built around Pier Head and Castle Street which became an important element for Liverpool—Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage. At the same time, Liverpool’s increasing involvement in the slave trade made it an important hub for the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and America, which earned it the ‘stigma’ of being ‘Britain’s leading slave port’. Within the city, social inequalities came to the fore and the high rate of poverty and the economic culture of casual dock workers led to the problem of alcoholism, which became the largest category of crime in Liverpool in the second half of the nineteenth century (Sykes et al. 2013).
Fig. 13.2
Map of Liverpool in 1851 (Picture on the left),1 Dockland of Liverpool in history (Picture on the right)2
By the early twentieth century, Liverpool’s population and prosperity was at its peak and as late as 1970 it was still the largest export port in the Commonwealth. Prior to the First World War, Liverpool still hosted many foreign government embassies and consulates, thus dominating world trade, finance and shipping to some extent, and its city status encouraged the implementation of local schemes in health, housing and transport. Since then, due to changes in the economic environment both within and outside the city, and the physical damage caused by the war, Liverpool’s position as a trading hub has diminished and it has faced competition from other regional centres for the supply of trade and services. To mitigate the internal and external crisis, Liverpool restructured its industries and invested in public infrastructure from the Second World War until the 1970s (Sykes et al. 2013). The 1970s onwards saw the collapse of the UK’s manufacturing base, a shift in national economic focus to financial services, and the strategic priority of the South East of England, a recession in Liverpool and indeed Merseyside, and a rapid outflow of migrants. A shortage of labour resources coincided with rising unemployment. Social inequality remained a prominent issue (Sykes et al. 2013). After the 1980s, in order to alleviate social problems and improve economic conditions, Michael Heseltine, the Secretary of State for the Environment, took office and the Merseyside Task Force (MTF) and the Merseyside Development Corporation (MDC) were established to deal with the redevelopment of Liverpool’s urban areas. It was not until the 1990s that Liverpool local government repaired its relationship with the national government and secured development funding from the national government, the European Union (EU). Through the efforts of different levels of the public sector aiming at promoting public–private partnerships and regional development, the transformation of Liverpool’s industries and city centre was promoted and culture and heritage became important resource for Liverpool’s urban transformation. Since the end of the twentieth century, Liverpool has continued to drive the city along the path of post-industrial transformation. While the physical environment of the city centre has been improved and the population has grown, regeneration projects further afield have faced loss and controversy (Sykes et al. 2013).
Urban Regeneration Practice in Liverpool and Its Docklands
Urban regeneration practice on a large scale in Liverpool began with post-war reconstruction efforts after the Second World War, with the primary aim of improving the plight of housing and improving the physical environment, which was a key issue on the local political agenda at the time. By the 1960s, the redevelopment of urban centres was combined with large-scale residential development, with inner-city slums relocated to the urban fringe and replaced by high-rise buildings (Sykes et al. 2013). However, the high cost of building urban infrastructure and housing demolition, combined with the recession and labour shortage Liverpool was facing, made the city increasingly dependent on central government funding for its finances.
From the late 1970s onwards, relations between the local Liverpool Labour government and the national Conservative government became very tense. It was also during this period that different models of regeneration practices were developed in the Docklands and other parts of the city. The labour-directed urban regeneration strategy, which focused on building new municipal housing and clearing ‘slum’ tenements, ultimately failed due to high costs. Outside of local government control, the MTF, in partnership with the MDC, undertook regeneration projects in the docklands, using significant national government funding as well as private investment, as represented by the Albert Dock. The MTF and MDC became major agents in the management of Liverpool’s redevelopment at the time, both initiating or participating in much of the city’s regeneration practice in the 1980s. The period saw the beginning of a rapprochement between local and national government, with local government receiving significant funding for redevelopment from national government, and the City Challenge programme, overseen by Michael Heseltine, promoted public–private urban regeneration practices. Liverpool has since continued to receive funding for regeneration practices, and organisations such as the Mersey Partnership (TMP), Liverpool City Region (LCR) and the North West Development Agency (NWDA) have been established to support regeneration practices.
In 1999, Liverpool Vision, the UK’s first Urban Regeneration Company (URC), was established as an independent company responsible for the regeneration practice of Liverpool city centre. The first decade of the twenty-first century saw the development in the city centre and docklands, including projects of varying scales, driven by organisations such as Liverpool Vision and Liverpool City Council (LCC) (Biddulph 2008). In 2000, LCC published the Strategic Regeneration Framework (SRF) which proposed to further strengthen the role of built heritage as previous phase (Fageir et al. 2021), a goal and path that was validated by two key events in the first decade of the twenty-first century, namely the inscription of World Heritage list in 2004 and the award of the ‘European Capital of Culture’ (2008). This phase was represented by the regeneration of Mann Island and began to generate debate on heritage conservation.
In 2012, LCC published the Strategic Investment Framework (SIF) (Liverpool City Centre Strategic Investment Framework 2012), which sets out to promote urban growth over the next 15 years through non-physical investment in business, culture, creativity and the visitor economy, as well as investment in the physical environment. This phase is typified by ‘Liverpool Waters’ scheme in the north of Liverpool docklands, whose specificity in location, scale, form and function has once again led to a debate about the tension between urban redevelopment and heritage conservation. Liverpool Vision has now been integrated into the LCC offices and its functions will continue to be carried out in close collaboration with the City Council.
13.4.2 Discussion of Study Areas
In this section, three regeneration practices in the docklands in three phases, namely the regeneration of the Albert Dock, the Mann Island and the Liverpool North Dock, are specifically analysed in chronological order. The agents involved for the different phases are shown in Table 13.1.
Table 13.1
The range of agents and the general roles involved in the Albert Dock, Mann Island regeneration and Liverpool Waters scheme since the 1980s
Operator (Merseyside Maritime Museum, TATE Liverpool, Beatles Story museum etc.)
S
Operator
S
Voluntary organisation (EH)
Rg
Voluntary organisation (SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Royal Academy of Arts)
Re
Voluntary organisation (EH, The Liverpool Urban Design and Conservation Panel)
Rg
WHC
Rg
Resident associations (Merseyside Civic Society)
Re
WHC
Rg
Professional bodies
G
Professional bodies (3XN, Broadway Malyan, consultancies)
G
Investor (LADT)
M
Key individual
Michael Heseltine
M
Note M means motive agents, G means generative agents, Rg means regulatory agents, Re means resistive agents and S means sensory agents by reference to general model from Karl Kropf
Decision-Making Factors for Regeneration of Liverpool Docklands
1980–2000s:Regeneration of the Albert Dock
In the 1980s, Liverpool docklands began to be restored and redeveloped on a large scale, represented by the regeneration of Albert Dock. Amongst public organisations, the national government directly contributed to the establishment of the MTF to address social unrest in the area and appointed Michael Heseltine as leader. During the same period, MDC was established on Merseyside to redevelop the area’s disused docks and had full planning powers and funding for the area to improve the local economy (Sykes et al. 2013). If the national government provided legitimacy and financial support for the redevelopment, Michael Heseltine provided strategic support, who encouraged the private organisations to invest in regeneration practices in the city centre and promised to exempt it from taxation on industrial and commercial development. MDC, as implementer of the redevelopment strategy, is responsible for providing technical support. The MDC launched the ‘Initial Development Strategy’ in 1981, which developed a reclamation plan and land use strategy to transform the physical environment of Liverpool’s south docks with a focus on industrial and commercial, residential and leisure functions. The Albert Dock Company was subsequently established to undertake the redevelopment of the docks (Fageir et al. 2021).
After the end of the 1980s, the new LCC began to repair its external relations and actively promoted public–private partnerships and the regeneration of the docklands and the city centre. Under the auspices of the executive, the spatial scope of Liverpool’s regeneration strategy was expanded, and significant funding for regeneration was secured from the national government, EU, and subsequently the Objective One structural fund (Sykes et al. 2013), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), European Social Fund (ESF), etc. This had made Liverpool more attractive to private investment and enabled regeneration practices to take place in Albert Dock and large areas of the eastern part of the city centre. At the same time, multi-funding management, multi-stakeholder collaboration and the implementation of regeneration practices had placed new demands on the city’s governance, which has been crucial in rebuilding governance capacity and relationships with the outside world. In this context, the creation of organisations such as the Mersey Partnership (TMP) and Liverpool City Region (LCR) to reconcile the emerging order with existing governance models had contributed to the renewal of the city’s governance framework.
A further key factor made the regeneration model chosen for Albert Dock. The dock was closed in 1972 and listed as a Grade I listed building in England in 1952 due to its outstanding architectural and historic features. In the 1960s and early 1970s, criticism from groups such as the Merseyside Civic Society, Save Britain’s Heritage and the Royal Academy of Arts, and the public sentiment it generated, led to the Albert Dock to avoid options for its demolition and land redevelopment. After its closure, the lack of capacity of LCC prevented other attempts to renovate it.
In addition, the success of the Albert Dock regeneration practice was linked to a marked increase in demand for leisure activities, an outcome based on the restoration of the physical environment of the dock and driven by the reorientation of uses, the occupation of iconic public facilities and the adoption of city promotion strategies to increase awareness through international festivals. Merseyside Maritime Museum, TATE Liverpool and the Beatles Story Museum were built and opened in Albert Dock; and by the 1990s hotels, restaurants and companies were setting up branches in the area. The high demand for leisure uses in the Liverpool docklands during this period resulted in strategic objectives changing to leisure and tourism in later years.
2000–2010s:Mann Island and the Pier Head
The regeneration practice at Albert Dock offered important lessons in terms of awareness of built heritage resources, the value of cultural industries, the priorities and constraints of heritage conservation, the effectiveness of leisure and tourism strategies and public–private partnership models, also lay the foundations for subsequent regeneration practices in terms of administrative context, urban image, physical environment and infrastructure. Administrative aspects included the availability of external funding, the emergence of new institutions and the adaptation of governance frameworks.
In 1999, LCC set up Liverpool Vision with funding from the NWRD and English Partnership (EP). As a recommendation of the Urban Task Force (UTF) report, this type of company was dedicated to promoting development in and around the city centre. The Urban Regeneration Company itself has no significant funding or planning powers, but as a coordinating organisation tasked with identifying development opportunities, preparing strategic plans, and drawing on the expertise of existing agencies to facilitate development. Liverpool Vision provided an effective interface between local authorities and developers and investors, and communicated the local development strategy to the latter and coordinates cooperation so that the strategy can be implemented in practice (Biddulph 2008). At the same time, Liverpool Vision developed a series of master plans and frameworks for some of the larger project within the city, identified areas of development potential for investors and linked them to the wider regional strategy, provided spatial strategies for land use, tourism and building design, and set out development principles and standards, generally as Supplementary Planning Documents (SPD) and reference documents for the consideration of planning applications. Liverpool Vision also supported urban regeneration at a technical level, commissioning external consultants to produce strategic frameworks and engaging external professionals in statutory planning matters with the City Council in the early decade of the twenty-first century.
In 2002, Liverpool set up the ‘Fourth Grace’ international competition for the redevelopment of the Pier Head and the winning building was abandoned due to the high cost of construction, which generated debate about design suitability and site authenticity. Indeed, the regeneration practice of Albert Dock had been criticised for not being linked to the rest of the city and becoming an independent landmark. The competition itself also faced this problem, being located just south of the three iconic buildings on the Pier Head—the Royal Liverpool Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building—and in the direction of the connection between the commercial area and the water. The failure of the competition also led to a shift from landmark image design to place-making and urban design in Liverpool. Since then, Liverpool Vision, LCC and the NWDR have developed a new masterplan, and the Museum of Liverpool and Mann Island Development, located to the south of the Pier Head, have been supported by Commission for Architecture and Built Environment (CABE) and English Heritage (EH) for their focus on continuity of public space and historical authenticity alongside architectural quality. However, World Heritage Site status makes tighter controls on the redevelopment of the Docklands heritage, and at the urging of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC) the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site Supplementary Planning Document was developed, which has become the central guiding document for the subsequent development of the waterfront.
2010s–Now: Liverpool Waters Scheme
The launch of the Strategic Investment Framework (SIF) in 2012 meant that the city would move from relying on government and EU funding for regeneration practices to job creation and attracting investment to drive the redevelopment of the docklands and the city as a whole to enhance Liverpool’s competitive advantage. Liverpool Waters represents this vision (Liverpool City Centre Strategic Investment Framework 2012), which envisages a complete transformation of Liverpool’s north docks. The scheme was proposed by property-led developer Peel Group, which acquired the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company in 2004 with a large amount of unbuilt land on both sides of Liverpool water, from a project called ‘Ocean Gateway’, which also includes Wirral Waters across the River Mersey. For Liverpool Waters, the scheme was highly controversial for the WHC because it was located entirely within the heritage site and the buffer zone. The original scheme, which featured numbers of iconic skyscrapers, was submitted in 2010 after 3 years of discussions with various bodies including EH and CABE, and planning permission was granted in 2012. However, the EH and CABE still had concerns about the revised scheme, stating that the information in the planning application does not accurately assess the impact of the development on the historic buildings. In addition, the WHC sent a reactive monitoring mission and concluded that the scheme would result in irreversible damage to the Outstanding Universal Value and the integrity and authenticity of the World Heritage Site. In 2013, the UK government confirmed that they would not call-in this scheme, leaving the decision on revenue planning permission to the local planning authorities. The city council’s attitude was to support it as the regeneration of the northern part of Liverpool docks was instead a move to reconcile heritage conservation with urban development and had high economic and social benefits.
This phase is represented by the Liverpool Water as a response to the city’s development strategy, but it is not only this programme that reflects the structure and role of urban regeneration decision-making factors in Liverpool. In fact, the lessons learned from previous regeneration practices were developed during this phase, such as the establishment of the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) and the Combined Authority (CA), which provided financial, technical and administrative support for urban regeneration. Mechanisms have been established and the emergence of new procedures and rules marks the continued development of an urban governance framework.
Summary
Referring to the general model from Kropf (2014), it can be found that public organisation mainly acts as facilitators or controllers of regeneration practices, intermediary Organisation often act as advice providers, and private organisations are in the position of facilitating or hindering practice advice due to their different objectives. In addition, the motive agents in Kropf’s model have different manifestations in actual situations, including providing legitimacy, acting procedures and competence, etc.
Analysis of the Urban Landscape
1980–2000s:Regeneration of the Albert Dock
Albert Dock was one of the first enclosed docks in the world, and prior to the implementation of regeneration practices, its landscape pattern was largely defined by the dock itself and the group of buildings that remain intact. The docks are bounded to the north by Canning Dock, between it and the then town boundary by Salthouse Dock, and to the south by Duke’s Dock and Wapping Basin. The complex was the Albert Dock Warehouse, the first public general warehouse on the Liverpool Dock Estate, which opened between 1846 and 1847. At the beginning, the Albert Dock complex was separated from the town by the dock wall. After the 1960s, the removal of the quayside warehousing and transit sheds of Salthouse Dock and Duke’s Dock left the Albert Warehouses complex as a whole exposed to open views and the high wall was eventually replaced by a road. The structural and functional integrity of the complex and its contrast with the surrounding modern buildings and dense street pattern enhance its uniqueness and visibility (Marketing Services, Liverpool City Council 2003).
The Albert Dock was closed in 1972, and the restoration and redevelopment works led by MTF and MDC in the 1980s began with infrastructure improvements to the dock and surrounding area, including the installation of new roads, sewers, etc., and the design of new bridges to provide connections to the city network, as well as improving water quality at the dock. Its work focused on reflecting the historic character, including the use of traditional materials and the preservation of historic buildings. The regeneration practice of the dock made full use of the dock warehouses, reusing the complex as well as the dock in the form of public services such as museums and galleries (Fig. 13.3) (Marketing Services, Liverpool City Council 2003).
Fig. 13.3
Comparison of satellite images of Albert Dock in 2000, 2007, 2022 (Note Adapted from satellite image from Google Earth by the author)
This phase of regeneration is represented by the Mann Island regeneration practice closed to the Pier Head which was built in 1771 and under-used by merchant ships in the late nineteenth century due to its shallow and small water level. The site was initially owned in large part by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Commission and in small part by the Liverpool Corporation,3 after which agreement was reached between the two companies to purchase the site and reserve part of it for the Commission to build new offices. One of the three notable buildings later built on the site was the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, the other two were built by the Royal Liver Friendly Society and the Cunard shipping line, which later acquired the freehold of the site, respectively. The three buildings, together with the surrounding docks, form the landscape pattern of the area during this period, with dock warehouses to the north and south of the three buildings and a dense commercial area to the east of them, characterised by their large scale, prominent architectural features and orientation towards the riverbank. The three buildings and the office buildings that have been rebuilt in the commercial area were physical testament to Liverpool’s commercial prosperity in the early twentieth century.
Since ‘Fourth Grace’ design faced both high costs and neglect of the historic environment, the Museum of Liverpool and Mann Island masterplan was produced which tried to harmonise the relationship with the three historic buildings, including adaptation of the shape of the site, consideration of the skyline and views, and the appearance of materials and the internal structure of the building (Fig. 13.4).
Fig. 13.4
Comparison of satellite images of Mann Island and the Pier Head in 2000, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2022 (Note Adapted from satellite image from Google Earth by the author)
During the same period, Liverpool One, a comprehensive programme of city centre regeneration driven by Liverpool Vision and implemented by Grosvenor Estates, was implemented to the south of the Commercial District of WHS, retaining much of the original street pattern of the site, with buildings pushed back to redevelop and public space pattern redesigned in a mix way. With the aim of retail development, the site forms an important link between the Commercial District and the Ropewalks area and Albert Dock (Biddulph 2008). In addition, the period 2001–2008 saw the transformation of major sites in the city centre and a considerable number of smaller projects, particularly in the old historic commercial centre particularly around Ropewalks and Castle Street, most of which are mixed use (Fig. 13.4).
2010s–Now: Liverpool Waters Scheme
The Liverpool Waters scheme is located on the Peel Group estate and comprises a site extending from Bramley Moore Dock, currently the most northern part of Liverpool city centre, southwards along the waterfront to Princes Dock, and is also located entirely within the Stanley Dock Conservation Area of WHS and the buffer zone. During its time as a dockland area, the landscape pattern of the site comprised a complex of dock walls, docks (Stanley, Collingwood and Salisbury Docks), canals and locks, warehouses and clock towers of varying sizes, which were no longer in use after the closure of the docks, leaving the land, buildings and other structures in a largely derelict state. In the 1980s, Princes Dock was restored and redeveloped by the MDC, along with Albert Dock further south, to provide new infrastructure and develop the land around the docks with new offices and hotels as an extension of the Commercial District.
As a result, Princes Dock has become an important tourist destination and a source of employment for the city in the two decades since the 1980s. Indeed, due to its redevelopment and greater proximity to Liverpool’s southern docklands, Princes Dock and its outer eastern site have continued to be infilled with buildings since the twenty-first century (Fig. 13.5), while the rest of the site to the north has remained largely derelict. It was only after 2018 this area were repaired or infilled in preparation for the subsequent development (Fig. 13.5).
Fig. 13.5
Comparison of satellite images of Liverpool Waters scheme in 2000, 2007, 2022 (Note Adapted from satellite image from Google Earth by the author)
The analysis starts from the structure of the human-agent and looks at the role of the different agents in the key aspects of the decision process as a result of their interaction, and is linked in a timeline (Figs. 13.6, 13.7 and 13.8). According to the British planning system (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government 2021), the complete key aspects of the decision-making process are distinguished as ‘Strategy, Plan-making, Application, Application-approval, Implementation, Operation’.4
Fig. 13.6
The decision-making process of the Albert Dock regeneration (Note Drawn by the author)
The process from the closure of the docks to the MDC-led implementation of regeneration practices can be divided into three stages of decision-making. Following the closure of the docks, the demolition of the quayside warehousing and transit sheds at Salthouse Dock and Duke’s Dock and the dock wall, as well as existing international examples of waterfront redevelopment, paved the way for the redevelopment of the docks. As the docks were already a protected building, groups such as the Merseyside Civic Society, SAVE Britain’s Heritage and the Royal Academy of Arts raised objections to their demolition, which allowed elements of the docks’ own landscape pattern to be preserved. The second stage failed to promote change due to the capacity constraints of local planning authorities. The third stage was the key regeneration practice stage of the docks, which was driven by national government’s proposed development and governance strategy. Legitimacy was provided for the subsequent regeneration practices, which was fundamentally motivated by local socio-economic conditions and major social events in Liverpool. The national government formed the MTF and the MDC and appointed Michael Heseltine, who constituted a joint agent, giving the developer, investor, operator and other agents the power and ability to act. Those physical infrastructure improvements drove further physical environmental change. In this regard, intermediary agencies play a role to coordinate the interests of public and private institutions and manage public funds in the process of plan-making, application to permitting. They often have the same objectives as the plan makers and as transmitters of upper-level strategies, thus enhancing the influence of policies with legitimacy, in addition to improving the capacity of mainstream policy implementation. Furthermore, the emergence of the agency retains the shaping power from private interests.
The procedures, rules and mechanisms from this process were also gradually fixed and carried over into subsequent renewal practices. And the feedback from the operational phase influences the policy direction of the subsequent phases.
2000–2010s: Mann Island and the Pier Head
The regeneration practice for Mann Island was based on a more mature model through a two-stage decision-making process. The key element of this process was the URC. The formation of Liverpool Vision was jointly driven by regional and local public organisations, which represented the development and governance strategy for this period. Liverpool Vision and public organisations and LCC became a joint agent forming the producer of the urban policy framework whose formation was also influenced by the outcomes of exchanges between Liverpool Vision and private organisations. As the SPDs eventually became the standard for application approval consideration, the private organisations also influenced to some extent the specific direction of urban regeneration, while its technical expertise would be used as a learning resource and standard reference for subsequent planning and regeneration practice. The reasons for the failure of the first phase of the design competition included the lack of local implementation capacity and the opposition of groups representing the idea of heritage conservation. The process was closely linked to the cultural character of the wider regional landscape in which the site was located and directly bound the subsequent programming process. The following masterplan developed by the public bodies, Liverpool Vision and professional bodies was evaluated by the relevant voluntary organisations and reviewed by the World Heritage organisation, resulting in a supplementary planning document for the heritage site. It turns out to be crucial that the docks and landscape elements, including the Pier Head and the Commercial District to the east, and the Albert Dock to the south, are limited in their heritage status by the way and extent to which the landscape can be shaped. In the case of the Liverpool docklands, the limitation generally takes three forms: spontaneous opposition from the conservation community, a re-examination of its World Heritage status by the World Heritage organisations, and spatial legitimacy constraints by local and even regional authorities. Of these, the third sector will directly determine the decision-making process of landscape shaping, while the first two will influence the third sector’s decision, manifesting as acceptance in the decision-making process of the Mann Island regeneration and as rejection in the Liverpool Waters project.
2010s–Now: Liverpool Waters Scheme
According to LCC’s 2012 SIF, the Liverpool Waters scheme is representative of Liverpool’s development and governance strategy for this period. In the first phase, the project was not granted planning permission due to objections from CABE, EH and WHC. In the second phase, Peel Groups submitted a scaled down development which, although still not supported by the heritage groups and WHC, was eventually granted planning permission from the local planning authority. Development of the area is now underway, and the landscape pattern is being changed.
13.5 Conclusions
This article focuses on the academic topic of the mechanisms of urban landscape evolution in the field of urban morphology. From the perspective of agent and agency, the conception of landscape shapers, shaping motives and shaping processes in the context of urban regeneration is concentrated on. This is not an independent field with clear boundaries, but rather a certain type of phenomenon with common characteristics in the process of urban development. In terms of the logic of urban functioning, the re-instatement of the physical environment to its structure and function has become an important step in the transformation of post-industrial cities, as an objective requirement for cities to adjust their development paths, improve their facilities and meet service needs, and this phenomenon has increasingly spread around the world and taken on larger forms. Thus, urban regeneration has become a mechanism of urban landscape evolution. As the power to develop urban space is derived from and subject to the concept of legitimacy, the act of developing urban space (including the practice of urban regeneration) is subject to institutional systems and administrative relations, and the effect of this act on shaping the urban landscape is influenced by the decision-making processes determined by these systems and relations. As such, urban regeneration practices often involve multiple groups with different objectives, and the human-agent network (objectives, roles, decision-making positions, interactions) they form, based on institutional and administrative relations influences the direction of the shaping behaviour. Moreover, although human-agent is subjective in nature, the built environment does not only serve as a context for the practice process, but its physical and cultural characteristics will have a directional impact on the practice process. This article examines the role of decision-making factors in shaping urban landscape in an urban regeneration context, looking at the decision-making process and the human-agent structure.
Liverpool Docklands is in discussion. On an urban scale, the practice of urban regeneration in Liverpool has become an important agenda for urban management and governance since the end of the Second World War and has played a significant role in the transformation and redevelopment of the city. This development model become an important strategy chosen by authorities, which brings about changes in the urban landscape and the framework of urban governance.
The conclusions from the discussion are: (1) The shaping of urban landscape by urban regeneration practices is a complex process involving different agents from public, private and intermediate organisations with differences in their objectives, roles and positions in the decision-making process. Among them, intermediate organisations may form a joint agent with public ones and provide policy, financial and technical support for the whole decision-making process, and include private ones in the consultation mechanism, with the final proposal as the result of coordination. In the UK planning system, the outcome of coordination may ultimately form the criteria for subsequent regional planning approvals. (2) The role of decision-making factors is rooted in the notion of legitimacy of development power and therefore influenced by institutional systems and administrative relationships from the local to the regional level, so that the role of decision-making factors in shaping the landscape takes three forms: restrictive, chance and evolutionary. ‘Restrictive’ can be expressed in terms of where, how and to what extent the landscape is shaped by existing local institutions and policies and even by the international regimes that are followed, and in terms of obstacles to the shaping of the landscape by social groups based on the public interest or the group’s own values. ‘Chance’ is the emergence of new supportive systems and policies and new supportive institutions to improve the efficiency of decision-making processes, and the use of decision-making power by key agents. ‘Evolutionary’ is a consideration of temporal variables, and in the case of Liverpool docklands regeneration practice, decision-making factors have changed at different stages, including institutional systems and administrative relationships, institutional and strategic frameworks. Urban governance and strategic frameworks evolve as a result of key decisions, objective needs, learning and feedback from experience. In the decision-making process of urban regeneration, the three types of roles are not independent, but rather intertwined, influencing the landscape patterns that are ultimately expressed in the physical environment. Furthermore, the changing landscape pattern of the Liverpool Docklands also shows that in the plots identified as heritage, high degree of form persistence is maintained from plot to building, but land utilisation shows the opposite, while in the surrounding plots outside, change occurs in all morphological elements and the town plan continues to show high resistance. The above relationship is often reflected in the evolution of the landscape pattern of urban heritage areas facing urban regeneration policies, which is also closely related to the location of the urban heritage.
Indeed, the urban regeneration practices of Liverpool city and the docklands are connecting to places beyond them. Urban landscape presented here is the result of the interplay between economic globalisation and international competition, local heritage and culture, and local interests, and is the response of Liverpool city and the docklands to the socio-economic development issues, extreme urban competition, and changing patterns of urban governance they face. In addition, the landscape itself expresses the local desire to develop a renewed local image and competitiveness.
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Exploring the Interaction Between Urban Landscape and Regeneration Decision-Making Factors in the Context of Urban Regeneration, Exemplified by Liverpool Docklands
Note “Tallis & Co.’s map of Liverpool 1851, courtesy LRO” reprinted from Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site Supplementary Planning Document (p. 29), by Liverpool City Council, 2010, https://liverpool.gov.uk/media/kd0mxbum/world-heritage-site-spd.pdf. Copyright 2010 by Liverpool City Council.
In the analysis diagrams, the processes are indicated by acronyms.
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