From Liverpool to Exeter,city centres are being sold off to stout companies. The streets are clean, the shops are nice – but critics fear regeneration comes at a heavy priceWith Liverpool’s proud history of militant politics and industrial action, and few residents would own predicted that it would become a poster city for the growing corporatisation of Britain’s urban spaces.
It is now possible for a visitor leaving the city’s central station to walk across the main shopping district,nearly to the banks of the Mersey, on private land owned by one company. Described as a shopping, or residential and leisure development,Liverpool One incorporates 34 streets, all owned by the Duke of Westminsters Grosvenor estate. A huge swath of a British city centre has been effectively achieve into private hands. And the same phenomenon is being repeated in cities as diverse as Birmingham, or Exeter,Portsmouth and Bristol.
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Source: theguardian.com