Liverpool may well be the most regenerated city in Europe. Some hold that it was already in decline before the end of the nineteenth century; yet in the past 60 years grand plans have been proposed with great confidence, flamboyance, and dreams of past wealth. Recent urban regeneration, by contrast, has opted for the surveyor's piecemeal physical engineering. With some cases of plans that did not happen, I will consider them as evidence for the notion of civic pride, embodied in the ubiquitous symbol of the mythical Liver Birds, whose first representation appears to be in the courtyard of Bluecoat Chambers, 1716, predating the sculptures on the Royal Liver Friendly Society (aka Liver Building) of 1911. They stood and still stand for a serious fantasy, mythic in proportion, and a mysterious force which even now resists the onslaught of urban regeneration.
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