Inspired by Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, who believed streets fostered disease, a vision of Britain was cooked up that would see historic city centres flattened for flats and ring roads. But the public decided they’d had enough – and took to the streets
The interview did not go well. I was in Liverpool as a journalist being shown a model for the city’s future by its proud architect, Graeme Shankland. I told him I regarded his city as the most magnificent port in Europe. He corrected me and said Liverpool was “glaringly obsolete”. His plan, produced in 1965, was to demolish two-thirds of the city centre as well as much of Everton, Toxteth and Sefton. A new metropolis of towers and slabs would rise, pierced by swooping motorway overpasses and tunnels. A few historic buildings might be allowed to survive.
I was horrified and said so, making a tactless reference to the RAF’s “Bomber” Harris. I was much moved by a visit I had just made with a colleague to see a similar scorched-earth project in Manchester’s Hulme. We watched as Mancunians were herded on to buses with their belongings, to be dumped miles from their old homes on out-of-town estates. Many were in tears or dazed. We compared them with wartime refugees. They were to make way for Europe’s biggest council estate, Hulme Crescents, its blocks bizarrely named after Georgian architects such as William Kent and Robert Adam.
