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Comment by iso1631 | Hacker News Reader

So UNESCO status means a stagnant city that never changes?

Liverpool is a working city, not a museum. By all means it should be respectful to its heritage, but also respectful to continue the the development that made that city worthy of UNESCO status in the first place, and continue it.

If anything, not developing a progressive industrial city, keeping up with the times, would be worthy of removal of UNESCO status.

The city made the right choice.

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I don't think having UNESCO status means that you can do nothing - it's that you have to be careful with what you do if you care about keeping this status. If you look at the main photo on The Guardian's article on this subject (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/21/unesco-strip...) you'll see that there's a bunch of generic glass-and-steel buildings that have sprung up around that area. The BBC article went with pictures that do not show this for some reason, and it's easy to come away from that article thinking that Liverpool has been punished for just tidying the place up a little bit, when they've done some pretty substantial development that really changes the character of the area.

As someone who is neither an architect nor personally involved in UNESCO I've no idea what they would have considered acceptable or compatible with World Heritage status, but I am sure that there is some way that land could have been developed in a way that wouldn't have drawn their ire (like not planning a 55000 seat stadium, for example). Whether Liverpool would have considered such a development worth it or not, I don't know.

Pretty sure BBC's tone was clear when they went with the "secret meeting in China" angle

Thanks for sharing that photo from The Guardian. Parent is right, Liverpool isn't a museum, but no point listing it as one in that case

The world heritage status was awarded for specific reasons. If you take them away, you lose the status. Pretty simple. Some world heritage sites are more significant than others and in the grand scheme of things fewer people will lament the loss of Liverpool’s docks than, say, Palmyra. Just don’t whine when deliberate actions result in the loss of status. Plenty of places manage just fine.

Also, the article is quite slanted and plays the usual trope of the plucky English standing up to the evil foreigners. That’s stupid and unnecessarily inflammatory, though unfortunately not unsurprising from the Beeb.

> not developing a progressive industrial city, keeping up with the times, would be worthy of removal of UNESCO status

I don't know if you literally don't know what UNESCO is, but the point is the opposite of promoting 'progressive industrial' development of historical sites.

The irony being Liverpool is not a historical site - it barely existed until the 18th century. It's known for its industrial heritage.

There’s been quite a lot of world history since the 18th century. Think of some of the events seen from these buildings, like the announcement of the sinking of the Titanic - that building was recently restored. And I think Liverpool has some architecture world firsts - first curtain wall I think.

Plus aren’t other major industrial sites heritage sites? Saltaire? So I don’t see the irony that you do.

You can change all you want, but then you will no longer fit the definition of World Heritage site.

Unesco status mean that you preserve the past.

Well, it at least means not bulldozing the historical part and building a football stadium on the rubble.

But why are they whining then?

UNESCO heritage doesn't mean never changing cities but preserving the heritage places to keep their historical value. You can't habe a historical dock and change it so it doesn't look like the original and still want to call this UNESCO heritage.

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