downwardspiral

So, Liverpool is the city I'm from and have lived in my entire life, so the pros and cons..

What I like:

How aesthetically beautiful it is, there are some truly amazing streets and lots of beautiful and imposing architecture around the city.

The layout of the city centre and how accessible it is, you can get from one side to the other in about 20 minutes flat (although where the city centre begins and ends varies depending on who you talk to, I don't think it's as definitive as some places).

How much ethnic diversity there is, but obviously that isn't exclusive to Liverpool and you'll often find that in most/all big cities in the UK now, however I found Newcastle to be very white when I visited last summer..

The amazing culture and how much there is to do, we are spoiled in Liverpool and do very well for ourselves considering we're next door to the 'capital of the north west' (Manchester). We have four amazing museums, numerous amazing art galleries (including a Tate), a beautiful central library, tonnes of great restaurants and some brilliant venues (one of which being the Kazimier which is, imo, the best small venue in the country) and a really great independent scene. And tying in with what I said before about the layout of the city centre, everything is within spitting distance of one another too, you don't have to take a bus or a train or a tube to get from one thing to the next, it's all within close proximity.

How Liverpool has reinvented itself over the past 7 years. If you're from the UK you'll no doubt know that Liverpool was a bit of a derelict hole up until about 2008/2009 when its regeneration really started taking place, the city was crowned Capital of Culture which obviously helped a great deal. Now, the city is thriving and it's the best it's ever been and it seems to just keep growing. The economy is the fastest growing outside of London and there are new and exciting things happening here all the time, it's so lovely to see.

What I dislike:

The fact that you can barely go anywhere without seeing/hearing about something to do with The Beatles. I get that they were huge and influenced a lot of modern music, but come on!

Obnoxious tourists. It's not particularly hard to avoid tourists, you just need to stay away from The Albert Dock and Mathew Street, but sometimes it's just exhausting. Though, without tourism, Liverpool would struggle a lot more than it does, so obviously I understand its importance.

The current rise in crime rates, Liverpool has never been a utopian paradise and anyone that claims it has and ever will be is delusional. It's always had its problems and that will never go away, but lately there has been a huge increase in violent crime and it's getting out of hand. We have our fair share of gang rivalries too and stuff like that happening in the city you live in is just really unpleasant. I've personally never experienced any issues and I feel safe here and have walked around different parts of suburbs in the dead of night and have felt fine, but I know there are some dangerous and awful people out there but I don't know of any major UK city that can say they don't have that, really.

Peoples misconceptions about the city and its people. As I mentioned earlier, before its recent generation a lot of Liverpool was run down and derelict and for years the papers targeted Liverpool for that reason and published a lot of propaganda about the city and how all Scousers are thieves, yada yada. It bothers me that to this day there are still people out there with these views, people who either have never ever visited Liverpool or haven't visited in 10+ years and have no idea what it's like now. People are legitimately shocked when they walk around and see how nice a place it is and how much it has to offer and sadly a lot of people also seem really annoyed that Liverpool has managed to come back from what was deemed the point of no return and become the place it is today. I'm not really sure I can use this point in my dislikes *about* the city, it's more about clueless outsiders, but still.

All in all, Liverpool is great, and I would wholly recommend it to anybody who hasn't visited before or who hasn't been back recently.

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