Liverpool Rope Walks

The Rope Walks project has introduced coherent, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes and attractive urban squares to this quarter of Liverpool city centre. Designed by BDP.

Identified by English Partnerships in the mid 1990’s as a target area for regeneration, Liverpool Rope Walks is a compact and densely developed area (c 35ha) adjacent to the commercial heart of the city centre.

The area traditionally served the Old Dock of Liverpool (the first commercial dock in the world) and is of great historical character and architectural merit. 96 of the existing buildings are listed and the area lies within a Conservation Area, with part of the site now designated a World Heritage Site The completed public realm improvements seen today formed the first part of an overall Integrated Action Plan (IAP) for regeneration, the three overarching themes of which were, a public realm programme, a development projects programme and a business support and training programme. The design and implementation of the public realm works programme ran from Spring 1999 to Autumn 2004. A multi-disciplinary design team at BDP acted as lead consultants, a commission which extended the firms involvement in the project from their earlier work on the IAP. BDP's long term involvement and commitment to the project even saw them set up a regional office in the Rope Walks area with a dedicated team focused on delivering the scheme. This enabled them to build relationships with the local community and understand the site specific issues more intimately through a continuing programme of consultation.

The completed scheme has created a coherent high quality network of streets and public spaces with a strong local identity. They have also helped to stimulate inward investment with numerous private conversion and new build residential and commercial developments bringing activity to a previously neglected part of the City. The local population has increased from some 100 - 200 people to several thousand and the area is now a thriving creative quarter in the city.