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OVERVIEW
The
Transforming Industrial Heartland - Liverpool and Randstad
This
video program features two case studies on Europe: Liverpool:
A Tale of Two Cities and Randstad: Preserving
the Green Heart. The city of Liverpool in England
and the metropolitan region of the Randstad in the Netherlands
are tied together by the common themes of modernization,
transportation, and trade as well as quality of life
issues.
Liverpool:
A Tale of Two Cities examines the rise, fall,
and revival of the port city of Liverpool, which was
originally settled in 1207 in northwestern England after
King John granted a charter for a new planned town on
the shore of the Mersey Estuary. The city developed
during the mid-seventeenth century as the main port
linking England with Ireland. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the port handled colonial trade,
and during the Industrial Revolution it served the nearby
manufacturing complex that was based in Manchester.
Now
an industrial city itself, Liverpool's city center is
three miles (five kilometers) from the Irish Sea, but
its docks extend for five miles (eight kilometers) northward
along the flat coast. By the 1970s, the port began to
lose business because it lacked modern equipment that
would speed the loading and unloading of goods. When
Liverpool's docks were modernized and containerized
cargo became predominant, many stevedores who had worked
the docks became unemployed.
The
update to this case study features a wealth of new footage
of the Liverpool area including a new interview with
our original geographer, Dr. Peter Lloyd, as well as
several interviews with local residents. We explore
Liverpool's revitalized downtown and dockside, it's
emergence as a locus of new technology and service industries,
and the continuing struggle of the residents in the
working class communities surrounding Liverpool.
Randstad:
Preserving the Green Heart discusses the Randstad
megalopolis, which is anchored by three cities -- Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, and The Hague -- that together form the cornerstone
of the Netherlands' core area. The Randstad conurbation
and its coalescence has created a ring-shaped complex
that surrounds a still-rural center. The literal translation
of rand is edge or margin; stad means
city. A more precise labeling of the conurbation, however,
would be Randstad-Holland, because Holland (meaning
"hollow land") refers specifically to the
Dutch heartland that faces the North Sea in these lowest-lying
western provinces of the Netherlands.
The
original case study shows how residents and farmers
are attempting to preserve the region's remaining "green"
character in the face of development. Currently, the
government backs a plan to develop high-speed rail access
to Schiphol Airport from Rotterdam, and the most efficient
route cuts right through the rural heart of the Randstad.
The people of the Randstad see the need for a link with
the rest of Europe via Rotterdam, but those interviewed
also believe this area needs to be preserved. The government
sees no way to both bypass the green heart and maintain
Schiphol's comparative advantage as a transportation
center that provides both air and land access to greater
Europe.
Updates
to this case study include detailed satellite imagery
showing options for rail link routes, discussion of
the construction of the new tunnel under the Randstad,
and further commentary by Dutch geographer, Dr. Herman
van der Wusten.
Video Key Words
Liverpool
- Industrial
Revolution
- Information
Revolution
- Containerized
Shipping
- Reduced
Labor Force
- Economic
Decline and Revitalization
- European
Union
Randstad
- Dense
Urban Center on the Edge of Europe's Heartland
- Randstad
- Infrastructure
Development
- Environmental
Issues
- Agriculture/Environmental
Protection
- Transportation
and Communications for European Integration
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