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Liverpool and Manchester have come to typify twentieth-century urban decay and their demise is strongly associated with the perceived decline of local government after 1918. By the 1930s, contemporaries had stereotyped northern cities as places of poverty and deprivation, in comparison to the prosperous south. The divide was reinforced by economic historians who focused on regional variations in unemployment and economic depression. This article challenges stereotypical images of interwar Liverpool and Manchester by illustrating the ambitious programmes of urban redevelopment implemented by their Corporations in response to political and economic instability. Grandiose projects such as the Wythenshawe Estate, Mersey Tunnel and Manchester Central Library aimed to stimulate employment and to boost local economies and morale. Redevelopment was promoted heavily to present new images of Liverpool and Manchester. Crucially, urban transformation was marketed as a way to communicate with the newly enfranchised, classless citizen and suggests similarities with broader strategies employed by the Conservative party to engage with the mass electorate. The level of ambition and innovation demonstrates that local municipal culture thrived and Liverpool (with close American links) is shown to have been at the forefront of innovations in civic design and urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the recycling and composting of household waste in Liverpool. Impact of Best Value legislation with recycling and composting in the city; Promotion of sustainable development; Benefits of community-based recycling initiatives with collaborations from social enterprises, regeneration initiatives and local companies.

ABSTRACT This paper provides an opportunity to review the New Labour policy framework for dealing with low and changing demand for housing, review emerging policy agendas for regeneration and suggest alternative strategies for neighbourhood renewal. The paper argues that targeted housing and regeneration policy has limited effectiveness in dealing with the scale of the problems of low demand in Britain's northern cities and that a more strategic and planned policy agenda is required. The residential structure of cities in the north of England and the Midlands remain, disproportionately a product of the Victorian infrastructure which was built to fulfil the socio-economic circumstances of the time and the monolithic social housing neighbourhoods conceived during the 1940s and the 1950s. Since the mid-1970s housing and urban policy has concentrated on preserving and managing this infrastructure and initiated limited restructuring of small neighbourhoods. The scale of market change now being experienced in some urban areas is rapidly making this public policy framework redundant and as a consequence many existing New Labour regeneration initiatives will be undermined. Using administrative data at sub-regional, local and neighbourhood level (see Appendix), this paper illustrates processes and outcomes affecting housing abandonment in Liverpool. The paper also discusses policy responses within Liverpool and how these relate to the emerging pattern of abandonment and neighbourhood decline. The paper concludes by assessing the limitations of the current approach to regeneration in cities experiencing changing demand for low-income neighbourhoods, assessing the appropriate spatial scale of interventions and discusses the implications for housing strategies and regenerative partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the contribution of local policy interventions to the development of the two key transport 'gateways' in North West England – Manchester Airport and the Port of Liverpool – and maximization of their wider impact. Their recent success has mainly stemmed from market opportunities, managerial competence, bargaining strength and sympathetic national rather than local interventions. However, local institutional conflict delayed modernization of the port of Liverpool. Local governance has had greater bearing upon such assets' wider economic, social and environmental impact. Synergies between transport investment, economic development and tourism have been better exploited in the case of Manchester Airport and the drawbacks of expansion more effectively mitigated. Both case studies highlight the need for central government transport policy to mesh better with local, regional and national urban regeneration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the economic development of Liverpool, England from 1665-1750. During the last three decades of the seventeenth century, however, Liverpool emerged as one of England's leading ports. The port's commercial expansion began with its exploitation of American and West Indian trade, and its merchant fleets subsequently carried salt, naval stores, wines, iron and eventually slaves. Liverpool's development must first be viewed within the framework of the Anglo-American market. Both West Indian sugar and Chesapeake tobacco originally had been sold in England as luxury goods; large production profits facilitated the flow of capital and labour to the colonies, bringing additional land under cultivation and increasing output; in turn, the growth of supply lowered luxury prices on colonial produce and spread consumption to lower strata of the population. As prices continued to fall, the growth process would decelerate unless production and distribution costs could also be lowered. During the eighteenth century, Liverpool's pre-eminence among the outports grew, and the entrepôt became London's rival in the colonies. By the middle of the Restoration period, when Liverpool establish edits hold on the commerce of the colonies, problems were evident in both the English tobacco and sugar trades.

An important feature of 1980s England has been the so-called urban regeneration — taking place in many of its old industrial cities. Often this regeneration has been accompanied by image campaigns, most notably "Glasgow's Miles Better." When it comes to looking at such place marketing in further detail, Liverpool is a good example. Promotion seldom happens in a perceptual vacuum. Usually an accommodation, modification or exploitation of existing images takes place. This links place marketing with persuasion theory and the processes of response shaping, response reinforcing and response changing, and the last obviously being the most difficult task. An important tool in such a promotion process is what marketing people call an anchor. The product development of Liverpool is a very important part of its promotion of its new image. If the city is to be able to live up to the projected image, a lot of work still needs to be done: on access routes, on the general environment outside the city center and on up-grading of areas between its different tourist attractions, where many of the streets are very run down. However, the question is whether there is enough money available to do it properly.

The purpose of this article is to redress the balance in some degree through a study of Liverpool's timber trade during the first half of the nineteenth century. Timber became a commodity of national importance during this period, not merely because of the increased demands of the expanding home economy, but because the trade mirrored many of the country's commercial problems. In Liverpool the importing of timber and the owning of ships were closely connected. Though between 1820 and 1850, the general tendency in commerce, was for importing and shipowning to become increasingly separate functions, a growing number of the merchants who figured amongst Liverpool's leading timber importers were also shipowners. Timber was imported into Liverpool both for local and for inland consumption. Locally, importers sold to wholesalers who, in turn, sold to consumers, but also acted as retailers themselves, selling directly to the more important Liverpool builders and cabinetmakers. The first half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence and consolidation of the timber trade as one of the leading sectors of Liverpool's commerce. The timber merchant not only retained his function of selling but also expanded the scope of his activities, building up large vertically integrated businesses through moving backward into shipping and lumbering.