Introduction

Urban planning in Britain has changed and developed from being an adjunct of architecture and municipal engineering to emerge as a powerful professional discipline in its own right. By the early 1970s the 'inner city' and 'urban deprivation' had emerged as planning problems and after the post-1973 recession, local economic development became a major issue. The need to tackle these and other problems such as urban dereliction, outworn infrastructure and under investment in inner city housing led to the notion of urban regeneration as an important aim of urban planning. Liverpool has undergone more economic restructuring and urban change than virtually any other city in Britain or Europe. Liverpool has been a laboratory for almost every experiment and innovation in modern urban policy and planning. It gradually became clear that the definition and prioritisation of goals for urban development were matters of significant political concern. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.