LIVERPOOL and Glasgow are mirror images of each other, two port cities with large Irish immigrant communities and an obsession with the beautiful game; two once-pulsing heartbeats of the Empire that prospered on free trade but were transformed into strongholds of political fundamentalism by industrial decline; a pair of communities with the highest urban deprivation index in Britain, where great wealth lives cheek by jowl with squalid poverty.
Yet it is difficult to fully appreciate just how alike Glasgow and Liverpool are until you've spent some time in the People's Republic of Scouseland. Even the ambience leaves you in no doubt that these are two cities cut from the same cloth. The same
gallus swagger and garrulous chattiness that define Glaswegians are evident on every street and in every bar I visit. Everyone asks me to "say something good about this place for once".
Even the two cities' chosen routes to economic redemption have uncanny similarities. In Glasgow the hard-won status as European City of Culture in 1990 provided an invaluable driver for change. Now Liverpool is trying to carry off the same trick. This weekend, the 2008 European City of Culture is in overdrive. In any normal year there would be around 1.7 million visitors to the city. This week, thanks to 800,000 visitors for the Tall Ships and 200,000 for The Open at Birkdale, half that number will be added to the total within a couple of days.
Liverpool believes it has much to show off. Down at the city's historic docks, home to the greatest concentration of Grade One listed buildings in the country, the regeneration programme has forged ahead. The gleaming wharfs of the Albert Dock which once played host to Richard and Judy are packed with crowds here to watch boats compete in the Tall Ships race, and they're here to spend their cash at shops such as Liverpool Impressions, where you can buy Everton midfielder Tim Cahill's framed and signed right boot for £120 or a talking 'John Lennon – The New York Years' doll for £89.99. Then there is the recently opened Liverpool One development, a £1bn shopping development which is a monument to modern consumerist aspirations and Liverpool's vibrant WAG culture. From Hugo Boss to Armani and Harvey Nichols, all manner of consumer goods are there.
But it is in the arena of high culture that the most staggering steps have been taken. Liverpool has more art galleries and museums than any city outside of London, and they are thriving. Numbers at the Tate Liverpool, which last year hosted the Turner Prize and is currently staging the only Gustav Klimt exhibition ever put on in Britain, have climbed 30% on this time last year, when it had already seen phenomenal growth. Liverpool, says the Tate's Jemima Pyne, is "the best place in Britain to be right now".
It is an upbeat theme reinforced by Helen Johnson of the Liverpool Culture Company, the umbrella organisation responsible for coordinating the city's 350 European City of Culture events. "Liverpool has changed so much," she says. "People like me, people who are young and ambitious, used to have to leave Liverpool to be successful. That's just not true any more."
Not everyone is so convinced. Karl Jung once called Liverpool "the pool of life", and in the deep end there are plenty who are drowning, not waving. "The city centre is incredible and being the Capital of Culture has given a real boost to the city's growth," says businessman John Sage, who runs a local taxi business. "But there are lots of places that haven't been touched by the changes. Take Toxteth – it's just so poor, just so rundown. It hasn't changed at all in the last 30 years, in fact if anything it's got worse. There's no trickledown out here, or in lots of the outlying bits of the city."
Toxteth is less than a mile from the Albert Dock but its deserted streets are a world apart. They are far cleaner and more orderly than Glasgow's East End, yet there is a sense of deadness here. The folk in Liverpool 8 certainly feel neglected; they believe they inhabit a parallel universe to the shoppers who flock to the city centre. "Being the Capital of Culture hasn't affected me or anyone here," says Anastasia McDonald in Toxteth's Royal Oak pub as a pair of scallies get ejected at four o'clock in the afternoon. "That's a different world."
The reality, according to Professor David Robertson of the city's John Moores University, is that it is the same world, just with a facelift that won't pass the test of time. He says £12bn of central Government and European funding has been spent on what he calls "very frothy projects focusing on tourism, short-termism and increasing spending on shopping".
A recent Department of Communities and Local Government report said that Liverpool remains the most deprived district in England, adding that the developments associated with being Capital of Culture have added no new jobs or extra income.
In the grounds of the austere, imposing and cavernous Protestant Cathedral on Hope Street, students from the class of 2008 are milling around for photographs having just received their degrees. Two of them are standing at the bar of the nearby Philharmonic pub, still wearing their graduation robes. Over several noisy drinks with their parents they're already discussing whether they will stay in the city. One, who says her name is Anna, has just qualified to become a primary school teacher and has no doubt she will stay.
Her friend, Lucy, from the Wirral, wants a career in finance and isn't so sure. Her dilemma is a familiar one to many Scots. "It's better than it was here, but there's still the perception that to do really well you have to move away. They say that's not true any more but I'm not sure if I believe them."
As with Glasgow, Liverpool is finding out that becoming the European City of Culture is just a start, not an end in itself.
The full article contains 1026 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
