The renewal of Hope Street in Liverpool shows how well-designed streets can become part of a city's cultural offering. Designed by Camlins / Mouchel Parkman for Liverpool 20/20.
Many cities can point to streets that have come to symbolise the gradual reversal of decline and the renaissance of cultural and economic confidence. The extent to which renewed streets help to drive such changes in fortune, or whether they merely reflect urban transformation, remains a subject for academic debate.
Hope Street links Liverpool's two great cathedrals, Protestant and Catholic, in addition to serving many famous landmarks and cultural institutions of Liverpool. It links the arts, university and cultural quarters of the city, serving as an entry point into the city centre for the routes that converge down towards the Mersey. About a kilometre in length, it links Mount Pleasant, running due south to Upper Parliament Street, part of a robust grid of Georgian streets framed by varied and memorable architecture.
'Liverpool Vision', the city's Urban Regeneration Company (URC), identified Hope Street as one of seven priority areas for Liverpool city centre in its Strategic Regeneration Framework, a strategy formed after 18 months extensive public consultation in the late 1990's. HOPES, a community organisation, was actively involved from the beginning in the design and consultations for the improvements. Delivered by Liverpool City Council and supported by HOPES, the remodelling of Hope Street has resulted from the successful fusion of bold and innovative urban design with progressive in-house term consultants backed by the URC, and a local authority increasingly recognizing the role of streets in regeneration.
