Young Liverpool professionals produce ‘tidal wave’ of ideas to improve city

Kim Cooper

Businesses in Liverpool have launched a vision to tackle the city’s current challenges and make it a more exciting and inclusive place to live and work.

Ideas for Liverpool is a 60-strong group of young professionals from 40 businesses across the city.

It was originally set up by global engineering and consultancy firm, Arup, which has offices in the city, to encourage young, local talent to use their knowledge and expertise to improve their home city.

The group aims to provide creative solutions to solve real problems the city faces and consists of professionals from a range of backgrounds including town planners, architects, lecturers, solicitors, surveyors and communications professionals.

One of the key ideas in the vision proposes an unbroken path along the waterfront, dubbed the ‘Liverpool Tide Line’, effectively connecting the whole city from the airport, through the city centre, to as far north as Crosby Beach.

While the job-rich waterfront and city centre offers significant employment opportunities, it is geographically distant and inaccessible from many areas of the city, notably from those areas which face the most significant economic challenges.

The Tide Line aims to open up the city and provide greater opportunities for all.

Coupling this with another idea of five ‘Green Avenues’ acting as tributaries branching away from the Tide Line, new routes would be created through the city, opening up new areas of green corridors and community spaces, providing further health and wellbeing benefits for residents.

Currently 86% of people in Liverpool achieve less than the recommended daily amount of physical exercise, so, the group’s vision also includes a proposal for a scheme called ‘Bike More, Car Less’ to encourage the uptake of active travel, such as cycling and walking, through significant improvements to the existing cycle network.

The vision also identified a ‘general sense of loneliness’ in some sectors of society during workshops conducted by the group, leading to the idea for a centralised, online volunteering platform to reduce social isolation called Givapool.

Givapool would connect participants with volunteering opportunities across the city and enable them to “bank” volunteering time which could then be exchanged for benefits to assist the improvement of health and wellbeing.

Chair of Ideas for Liverpool and senior town planner in Arup’s Liverpool office, Kim Cooper, said: “I am born, raised, educated and working in Liverpool, so my ambition is to make my city the best it can be.

“The Ideas for Liverpool forum has provided an opportunity for young professionals across the city to meet and collaborate to help shape the Liverpool of the future.”

A background to the city’s challenges was given by Liverpool City Council chief executive, Tony Reeves, and the professionals were split into groups to research how they could make it the most exciting and inclusive place to live and work.

With support during the process from the Mayor of Liverpool, Liverpool BID, KQ Liverpool, University of Liverpool and Liverpool City Council, the resulting manifesto offers real and tangible ideas to positively impact on the people of Liverpool and address its current challenges.

Liverpool waterfront can link North and South of the city 

Tony Reeves said: “If we can mobilise the city’s residents, workers and businesses through collaboration and innovation the sky is the limit to what we can achieve.

“And so, this is why I was so attracted to the Ideas for Liverpool proposal. Empowering young professionals to put their collective talents towards identifying solutions to some of the biggest issues facing their city is such a brilliant initiative.”

Seeing the inspirational and positive solutions created by Ideas for Liverpool, Professional Liverpool, along with Kim Cooper, has agreed to continue the forum, supporting the groups as necessary to bring their ideas to fruition, while planning for the next cohort to take on the cities challenges in two years’ time.

Philip Rooney, chair of Professional Liverpool, said: “I am really excited that Ideas for Liverpool have agreed to join forces with Professional Liverpool.

“Kim and her team have achieved a great deal in a short time and we are looking forward to being able to support them in the delivery and development of Ideas for Liverpool in the next phase of their journey.”

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