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Making Connections: Crossing Boundaries of Place and Identity in Liverpool and Merseyside Amateur Transport Films

2009; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17450100903435052

1745-011X

Les Roberts,

Urbanization and City Planning

Abstract In this paper I draw on a selection of local transport films, dating from the 1930s to 1970s, to explore issues of mobility, place and identity in Liverpool and Merseyside. The archive footage discussed in the paper includes amateur film of the Birkenhead and Wallasey tunnel openings, commuter ferry services to Liverpool, and also of the river crossings at Runcorn. Mapping the changing social and cultural geographies of mobility in Merseyside, it is argued that these films engage in a spatial dialogue expressive of a shift between, on the one hand, local, organic spaces of place and identity and, on the other, centrifugal spaces and non‐places of transit, which, since the 1960s and with the expansion of regional and national motorway networks, have shaped much of Liverpool's contemporary urban fabric. Key Words: Spacenon‐placesLiverpoolamateur filmstransportmotorways Acknowledgements I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments, and to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the research on which this article is based. Notes 1. See http://www.liv.ac.uk/lsa/cityinfilm. 2. Arranged on a series of screens and historical maps, Keiller's exhibit comprises actuality footage of urban landscapes filmed between 1896 and 1909, showing street scenes and 'phantom ride' views shot from moving vehicles such as trams and trains. The exhibition was held at the BFI Southbank in London between 23 November 2007 and 3 February 2008. 3. Peter Adey's (Citation2006) study of Liverpool airport similarly questions the extent to which such spaces of transit may prompt other forms and readings than those associated with Augé's conception of 'non‐places'. As with Merriman's work on the motorway, Adey explores ways in which airports were experienced as spaces that were invested with localised and geographically specific structures of meaning, history and identity. 4. See http://www.liv.ac.uk/lsa/cityinfilm. 5. It is worth noting that, upon emerging from either of the two branches, the first landmark that greets the Liverpool‐bound motorist is a view of one of the two main iconic buildings associated with the city: the Liver Building (at the New Quay exit) and St. George's Hall (at Haymarket). 6. The tradition of the public walkthrough has continued to this day. In June 2008, a walkthrough of the Birkenhead tunnel, the first since 1994, was conducted as part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations. It is instructive to note that there has been no pubic walkthrough of the Wallasey Tunnel other than that which marked its opening in 1971. 7. See North West Film Archive catalogue: www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk. 8. The complete film can be viewed online on the British Film Institute's Screenonline Liverpool website: www.screenonline.org.uk/liverpool/. 9. Angus Tilston uses footage from The Last Transporter in screenings of his Merseyside amateur film collection. These screenings are mostly for elderly audiences, including those in residential care homes as a means to stimulate remembrances of earlier times and places in their lives. Clive Garner is a Wirral‐based film and music collector and former broadcaster for BBC Radio Merseyside. He too puts on regular screenings and nostalgia events (in his own 12‐seater cinema attached to his house in Wallasey Village), using archive film, music and period newsreel footage to create an 'authentic' memoryscape of times past (Tilston, personal communication). 10. The bridge has appeared in Alan Bleasdale's 1991 drama GBH, as well as popular BBC programmes such as Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Merseybeat, and Drop Dead Gorgeous. 11. Film of the opening of the Liverpool‐East Lancashire Road was shot by the Preston Brothers and included in their Glengarry Topic News no.17 compilation (see www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk). 12. A new bridge crossing between Runcorn and Widnes is scheduled to open in 2014. The Mersey Gateway, as the bridge will be known, will provide a 'major strategic new transport route linking the Liverpool city‐region, north Cheshire and the north west to the rest of the country' enabling the existing bridge to be 'redesigned to deal with local traffic, cyclists, pedestrians and those using public transport' (Halton Borough Council – www2.halton.gov.uk/merseygateway/). 13. For a discussion of the disruption and urban upheaval caused by the construction of the Cross‐Bronx Expressway in New York, see Marshall Berman's chapter 'Robert Moses: The Expressway World' in his All That is Solid Melts into Air (1982, pp. 290–312). 14. To illustrate his point Augé invites the reader to imagine a Durkeimian analysis of a transit lounge at Roissy airport (Citation1995, p. 94). 15. For example, Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit's seminal motorway film, London Orbital (2002). See also the BBC's three‐part documentary The Secret Life of the Motorway (BBC4, 2007).