The role of Environmental and Heritage Impact Assessment in Liverpool World Heritage site

The city of Liverpool is one of the major cities in the United Kingdom. Starting from the second half of the 17th century, it has become a port city of world-wide significance. Liverpool’s expansion and economic development had suffered an intense degeneration starting from the 1930s and especially after the Second World War, which had provoked the loss of many job opportunities and a huge demographic decline. To face this socio-economic change, the beginning of the 21st century has been characterized by cultural-led regeneration strategies with the aim to transform the city image from a neglected into a new international, creative and dynamic reality and to stimulate its economic development. This paper focuses in particular on the inscription of Liverpool’s historic centre in the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) as “Liverpool-Maritime Mercantile City” in 2004. However, the World Heritage site (WHS) is currently threatened by the potential negative impacts of Liverpool Waters, a major urban redevelopment scheme extended both in the UNESCO site and in its buffer zone. While being able to attract bigger investments and to stimulate economic development, the scheme may irreversibly damage the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the site. For this reason, the site was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in danger in 2012.

The conflict between the needs of heritage preservation and those of urban development happening in Liverpool is not an isolated example, as it is underlined in many state of conservation reports related to other World Heritage sites. However, the case of Liverpool is particularly relevant if considering the Environmental and Heritage Impact Assessments tools that were carried out on behalf of different actors with diverging interests (the developers – Peel Group – and English Heritage – Statutory Advisor of the government of the United Kingdom) to underline the potential impacts that the scheme Liverpool Waters may have on the OUV of the WHS. The objective of this paper is to critically analyse the assessment tools used in this context – Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Heritage Impact Assessments (HIAs) – identifying their limits and strengths in evaluating the impacts on cultural heritage and, in particular, on the OUV of Liverpool WHS.