Regeneration and retracing steps in Liverpool

Back from a late summer break which included a visit to Liverpool, home to my student days over a decade ago. The city may have lost the most eye-catching centrepiece of its upcoming European City of Culture status, that of the distinctively blobby Will Alsop-designed Fourth Grace building, but the development taking place in the centre is still huge. The Paradise Street regeneration project and the new stadium in the Docks area top the list of a multitude of schemes under construction, which are unsurprisingly dominated by new city centre flats. It's a template for regeneration that has already taken place in nearby Manchester and down the M6 in Birmingham.

What I have yet to see in many of these cities is a ripple-through affect. The areas surrounding these major city centres have yet to move forward - in fact some of the streets I passed through in Liverpool had gone backwards in the last 10 years. Not only are there still the boarded up houses throughout many streets that existed in the 1990s but even the local shops are now disappearing. Will the health of the centre naturally pass through the rest of the cities? I'm not convinced. Without strong local democracy, instead of diktat from central government, this contrast could become even more extreme in future years.