Originally Posted by
fortinian
Ha ha, I can't believe you have used that hackneyed argument! Read it again,
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"the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s to clear away a lot of stuff we now rather wish we'd kept"
So you would rather the world as it was in 1950? .
On a purely aesthetic level, yes (well, about 1930 actually).
Which is how it is in a lot of other major European cities.
The courts, tenements etc needed (to simplify things a lot) decent plumbing, and a reduction in the number of occupants per acre, not wholesale clearance.
The combination in the townscape of warehouses, courts, tenements and the rest was what gave Liverpool as a whole its special character (and combinations of other locally-distinctive but not individually-special buildings and building types) again, just as in Edinburgh or Prague or anywhere else with a strong architectural identity (where a particularly local take on the universal need for shelter generates a distinctive architectural language), not a handful of masterpiece monuments in the city centre.
So the
local landmarks, and a rich and identifiably
local tradition of "ordinary" building and design, are important to a wider sense of civic identity, and just preserving a few buildings that you happen to think are of major importance is the pathetic argument that was used for decades to justify wrecking Liverpool, and that you've swallowed hook,line and sinker.
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