ABSTRACT
The Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 presents another case of a post-industrial city turning to a cultural mega-event to regenerate its city centre and promote a new image of the city, but which chose to largely ignore its built heritage in these proceses. Despite the city receiving World Heritage status by UNESCO in 2004, it used the ECoC to instead craft a new image of the city based on cultural production and festivalisation. While the city’s event has been largely lauded for hosting one of the most successful ECoCs ever and was embedded within a number of plans and funding schemes, there were no heritage restoration projects specifically completed within the event program. However, by hosting the event, a number of external actors were independently motivated to restore various heritage structures to either contribute to or benefit from the ECoC event. The case provides important insight into the potential for cultural mega-events to indirectly benefit heritage as well as the risks this approach can pose for heritage over the long term. The negative effects can be most clearly observed in the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City being added to, and remaining, on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2012.
