The Beatles and HMS Titanic - Liverpool

Why is it that the most "depressed" cities have the most beautiful period architecture? I have never seen such an intact collection of beaux-artes and neoclassical structures, outside of maybe Washington, DC and New York. Clearly the 1920s were quite a heyday for Liverpool, and the city never quite recovered from whatever it was that followed.

The detail of the buildings - mansard roofs, columns, porticoes, statuary - are ornate and clearly very expensively - built. As befitting one of the most important port cities of that time. The HMS Titanic did embark from Liverpool, after all.

The waterfront seems to be in a frenzied state of regeneration. Some significant redevelopment has already occurred, thanks to years of location-based efforts by the Central Government. The poster child of British deprivation has been a poster-child of large regeneration projects. The piers and docks present a dense collection of museums - one to the slave trade, one to maritime history, one to the Beatles, and even a Tate branch. The Liverpool Museum is about halfway completed, yet already striking, in the form of a great ship. Several ultra-modern residential towers have been completed, and judging by the number of cranes, many more look to be on the way. This, to me, is a dubious aspect given present economic conditions. Who will fill these buildings? Are young people flocking to Liverpool? Who will fund this private-sector construction?

Liverpool One, the brand-new centerpiece project by BDP, seems to be a desperate attempt to breathe life into an aging and under-utilized retail precinct.

Though, at first, the project seems to be a well-used, utilitarian public space, a closer inspection reveals a rather typical shopping mall. Crowds, lines, and hidden passageways. A variety of any-place UK high-street chains. A venerable temple to consumption and service sector, which, clearly, a higher-power deemed to be Liverpool's salvation.

No doubt, on some levels this project will be judged a success. Children laughed and splashed in the fountains and rolled playfully down the soft grassy slopes. Throngs of city-goers relaxingly went about their Sunday afternoon passaggiata around the sprawling complex.

Overall I feel that the project failed to seamlessly blend into the truly notable existing urban stock, instead turning inward into a convoluted mass of stone, glass, and steel.

I also worry that One's national and international chains will steal money and customers from whatever local and independent landmarks, restaurants, and shops that remain.

But again, on paper, or to those financially accountable, the project represents a tangible, and likely profitable investment. It is clear that jobs were and will be created, and at least it gives metropolitan residents and out of town visitors another reason to come to the center city.

I feel that these projects all end up looking rather alike - no matter how much thought was put into the unique design or planning elements and regardless of the city's vernacular. Baltimore's Inner-Harbor, Manchester's Arndale, and Melbourne's Southbank are all different, and certainly in very different settings and climates, yet are fundamentally the same on so many levels. There are echoes of Disney in each of them. A retail fantasy.

I am confident that Liverpool One will not age as well as the grand civic buildings and temples to maritime prosperity. Surely, a mall is a 20th-century fix-all solution to urban problems. Can the thousands of people who work at Liverpool One afford to shop or dine there? Or are they relegated to the ASDA of their blighted suburban district?

Ports have not lost their global importance. Ships are still the best way to transport bulky goods around an increasingly inter-connected marketplace. Therefore, Liverpool's fate is not sealed. It has great potential - perhaps the greatest I've ever seen - to weave itself into the new economy. And in a way other than shoping malls, convention centers, and "starchitect" monuments.

In the words of the most famous native son, just "Let it be" - Liverpool style.