On The Brandwagon
BBC2 May 16 19.00
Liverpool had its garden festival - which gave us the word regeneration if not much else. Fifteen years later Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim opened in Bilbao, a three dimensional logo which made that rustbucket city famous throughout the world for something other than ETA and pinxos. Liverpool and Bilbao combined to create a fashion. Every city wanted a slice of regeneration and now every city knew how to get it. “Landmark” buildings and self-proclaiming “icons” sprung up everywhere: the same landmarks, the same icons. Titanium panels and mannerist bridges, synthetic-modern towers and minimalist bars. There’s no longer such thing as a builder. They’re all urban regenerators now. Meades travels to Liverpool, Bilbao and Manchester to scrutinise, in appropriately aspirant language, the new millenium’s most expensive craze and ponders the probable longterm effects of supposedly regenerated inner cities.
Director: Colin Murray
Producer:
MARTHA WAILES
Series Producer:
ALLAN CAMPBELL
Directors:
TIM NIEL
COLIN MURRAY
FRANCIS HANLY
ROBERT PAYTON
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