The Role of Environmental and Heritage Impact Assessments in Liverpool World Heritage site
Résumé
The city of Liverpool is one of the major cities in the United Kingdom. Starting from the second half of the 17th century, it has become a port city of world-wide significance. Liverpool’s expansion and economic development had suffered an intense degeneration starting from the 1930s and especially after the Second World War, which had provoked the loss of many job opportunities and a huge demographic decline. To face this socio-economic change, the beginning of the 21st century has been characterized by cultural-led regeneration strategies with the aim to transform the city image from a neglected into a new international, creative and dynamic reality and to stimulate its economic development. This paper focuses in particular on the inscription of Liverpool’s historic centre in the UNESCO World Heritage List as “Liverpool-Maritime Mercantile City” in 2004. However, the World Heritage site is currently threatened by the potential negative impacts of Liverpool Waters, a major urban redevelopment scheme extended both in the UNESCO site and in its buffer zone. While being able to attract bigger investments and to stimulate economic development, the scheme may irreversibly damage the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the site. For this reason, it was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in danger in 2012.
The conflict between the needs of heritage preservation and of urban development happening in Liverpool is not an isolated example, as it is underlined in many state of conservation reports related to other World Heritage sites. However, the case of Liverpool is particularly relevant if considering the Environmental and Heritage Impact Assessments tools that were carried out on behalf of different actors with diverging interests (the developers – Peel Group – and English Heritage – Statutory Advisor of the government of the United Kingdom) to underline the potential impacts that the scheme Liverpool Waters may have on the OUV of the World Heritage Site (WHS). The objective of this paper is to analyse critically the assessment tools used in this context – Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Heritage Impact Assessments (HIAs) – identifying their limits and strengths in evaluating the impacts on cultural heritage and on the OUV of Liverpool WHS in particular. Moreover, it presents, in a comparative way, the HIAs conducted on behalf of the representative of heritage conservation (English Heritage) and of the developer (Peel Holdings), which brought to opposite results. To conclude, it presents the choice made about the implementation of Liverpool Waters by the local administration after the examination of HIA’s diverging results.
Liverpool è una delle città più importanti del Regno Unito e, fin dalla seconda metà del XVII secolo, una città portuale di rilevanza mondiale. Dagli anni Trenta del XX secolo ed in particolare dalla Seconda Guerra Mondiale in avanti, l’espansione urbana e lo sviluppo economico della città hanno però sofferto di un intenso processo di declino che ha provocato la perdita di molti posti di lavoro ed una forte decrescita demografica. Per rispondere a tali cambiamenti socio-economici, l’inizio del XXI secolo ha visto la promozione di strategie di rigenerazione urbana basate sul patrimonio culturale della città, con l’obiettivo di trasformare l’immagine degradata della città in una realtà nuova, internazionale, creativa e dinamica, nonché di stimolare la sua crescita economica. In questo contesto, l’articolo pone l’attenzione sull’iscrizione del centro storico di Liverpool nella Lista del Patrimonio Mondiale dell’UNESCO avvenuta nel 2004 con la denominazione “Liverpool-Città Marittima Mercantile”.