The ‘Liverpool model(s)’: cultural planning, Liverpool andudCapital of Culture 2008

摘要

Within the UK, the ‘Liverpool model’ is being celebrated as the new templateudfor Capital of Culture festivals, and culture led urban regeneration in general.udThis paper will question this celebration and argue that there are, in fact, twoud‘Liverpool models’: the first, outlined in its bid and developed within its initialudplanning strategy, represented the apogee of a New Labour informed ‘culturaludplanning’ framework for urban development; the second, developed post-2008udwithin the impact analysis Impacts08, is a more sober and realistic reflection ofudthe role of culture in urban regeneration. This paper will demonstrate how thisudfirst model, while politically expedient and rhetorically seductive, was both theoreticallyudunstable and practically unrealizable. Its subsequent abandonment representsudan indictment of cultural planning as a nostrum for the complexudstructural, social and economic problems of the post-industrial city.udKeywords: cultural planning; Capital of Culture; Liverpool08; social instrumentalism;udeconomic instrumentalism; New Labour cultural policy