Modelling urban futures

Architectural models are representational forms that can be used in such a way as to make visions of capitalist futures more meaningful. This paper explores the additional resonance afforded by the deployment of digital architectural models to the Liverpool Waters project, a planned £5.5 billion development of that city's waterfront. Analysing the models of Liverpool Waters as interpretive representations whose practical use generates context and rationale for the project, the argument is that models allow for: (i) visual connections to be forged between Liverpool and waterfront 'global cities' elsewhere; (ii) a foregrounding of the dramatic scale and character of the transformation proposed by the project (including via a problematisation of the site's present uses); and (iii) a basis for other sets of claims concerning Liverpool Waters to cohere, as illustrated by the public consultation exercises in which models became presentational devices allowing for the visualisation of social claims concerning the development. Accordingly, architectural models here become consequential in effect, with the display and presentation of models allowing for the coordination and integration of other, otherwise disparate, claims and data. Precisely due to the other types of mobilisations that such modelling makes possible, critical research must engage with the interpretative frames that architectural models seek to establish and exploit.