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Task 19. Summarise the texts.
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The city of Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary.
Inhabitants of Liverpool are referred to as Liverpoolians but are also known as "Scousers", in reference to the local meal known as 'scouse', a form of stew. In 2007 the city celebrated its 800th anniversary, and in 2008 it holds the European Capital of Culture title together with Stavanger, Norway.
Built across a ridge of sandstone hills rising up to a height of around 230 feet (70 metres) above sea-level at Everton Hill, these represent the southern boundary of the West Lancashire Coastal Plain.
Like the rest of the United Kingdom the city has seen a large growth in the service sector, both public and private. Government offices include parts of the National Health Service, Revenue and Customs and Home Office agencies such as the Criminal Records Bureau and the Identity and Passport Service, formerly the UK Passport Agency. Private sector service industries have invested in Liverpool too with major call centres opening in recent years. The activities of the port have left the site with a communications infrastructure that had for a long time exceeded requirements.
Growth in the areas of New Media has been helped by the existence of a relatively large computer game development community. Sony based one of only a handful of European PlayStation research and development centres in Wavertree. The first professional quality PlayStation software developer's kits were largely programmed by Sony's Liverpool 'studio' – the console has since become one of the World's most successful consumer products ever.
Tourism is a major factor in the economy and will be of increasing importance in the run up to the Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. This has led to a great increase in the provision of high quality services such as hotels, restaurants and clubs. The buildings of Liverpool not only attract tourists but also film makers, who regularly use Liverpool to double for cities around the world and making it the second most filmed city in the UK.[ citation needed ]
Car-manufacturing also takes place in the city at the Halewood plant where the Jaguar X-Type and Land Rover Freelander models are assembled.
Liverpool's main shopping area is Church Street, lying between Bold Street to the East and Lord Street to the West.
The docks are central to Liverpool's history, with the best-known being Albert Dock: the first enclosed, non-combustible dock warehouse system in the world and is built in cast iron, brick and stone.
The area around William Brown Street has been labelled the city's 'Cultural Quarter', owing to the presence of the William Brown Library, Walker Art Gallery and World Museum Liverpool, just three of Liverpool's neo-classical buildings. Nearby is St George's Hall, perhaps the most impressive of these neo-classical buildings. Also in this area are Wellington's Column and the Steble Fountain.
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Liverpool is internationally known as a cultural centre, with a particularly rich history in popular music (most notably The Beatles), performing and visual arts. In 2003, Liverpool was named a European Capital of Culture for 2008, the other site being Stavanger, Norway.
Liverpool has a strong history of performing arts which is reflected in its annual theatrical highlight The Liverpool Shakespeare Festival which takes place inside Liverpool Cathedral and in the adjacent historic St James' Gardens every summer, and in the number of theatres in the city.
Liverpool has three universities: the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Hope University. Edge Hill University, originally founded as a teacher-training college in the Edge Hill district of Liverpool, is now located in Ormskirk in south-west Lancashire.
Liverpool is associated with a variety of sports, most notably football, but also a number of others, such as basketball, county cricket, speedway, boxing, swimming, rugby, lacrosse, parkour or freerunning.
Cardiff
Cardiff ['cɑːdɪf] is the capital and largest city of Wales, and the country's commercial, sporting, tourism, transport, media and political centre. According to Census 2001 data, Cardiff was the 14th largest settlement in the United Kingdom, and the 21st largest urban area. However recent local government estimates put the population of the unitary authority as 317,500, making Cardiff one of the fastest growing cities in the United Kingdom.
The city of Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan (and later South Glamorgan). Cardiff is part of the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. Cardiff Urban Area covers a slightly larger area, including Dinas Powys, Penarth and Radyr. The area surrounding the Cardiff Urban area, South East Wales has a population of around 1,900,000 in 2006, two thirds of the whole Welsh population.
Cardiff is home to the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff Bay and much of the media in Wales. The television programmes "Doctor Who", "Torchwood", parts of "Gavin and Stacey", "The Worst Witch", "Tracey Beaker" and other popular television series are filmed mostly within the City and County of Cardiff. It has the biggest media sector in the UK outside London, being home to a number of television studios and radio stations, such as the BBC, ITV, HTV, S4C and Capital TV.
It was a small town until the early 19th century and came to prominence as a major port for the transport of coal following the arrival of industry in the region. Cardiff was made a city in 1905, and proclaimed capital of Wales in 1955. Since the 1990s Cardiff has seen significant development with a new waterfront area at Cardiff Bay which contains the new Welsh Assembly Building, and the city centre is currently undergoing a major redevelopment.
History of Birmingham
Birmingham started life in the 6th century as an Anglo-Saxon farming hamlet on the banks of the River Rea. The name 'Birmingham' comes from "Beorma ingas ham", meaning "home of the people of Beorma."
Birmingham was first recorded in written documents by the Domesday Book of 1086 as a small village, worth only 20 shillings. There were many variations on this name. Bermingeham is another version.
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In the 12th century, Birmingham was granted a royal charter to hold a market, which in time became known as the Bull Ring, transforming Birmingham from a village to a market town. As early as the 16th century, Birmingham's access to supplies of iron ore and coal meant that metalworking industries became established.
By the time of the English Civil War in the 17th century Birmingham had become an important manufacturing town with a reputation for producing small arms. Arms manufacture in Birmingham became a staple trade and was concentrated in the area known as the Gun Quarter. During the Industrial Revolution (from the mid-18th century onwards), Birmingham grew rapidly into a major industrial centre and the town prospered. During the 18th century, Birmingham was home to the Lunar Society, an important gathering of local thinkers and industrialists.
By the 1820s an extensive canal system had been constructed, giving greater access to natural resources to fuel to industries. Railways arrived in Birmingham in 1837 with the arrival of the Grand Junction Railway, and a year later, the London and Birmingham Railway. During the Victorian era, the population of Birmingham grew rapidly to well over half a million and Birmingham became the second largest population centre in England. Birmingham was granted city status in 1889 by Queen Victoria. The city established its own university in 1900.
Birmingham was originally part of Warwickshire, but expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, absorbing parts of Worcestershire to the south and Staffordshire to the north and west. The city absorbed Sutton Coldfield in 1974. The people of Sutton Coldfield still consider themselves separate from Birmingham. At the same time Birmingham became a metropolitan borough in the new West Midlands county. Up until 1986, the West Midlands County Council was based in Birmingham City Centre.
Birmingham suffered heavy bomb damage during World War II's "Birmingham Blitz", and the city was extensively redeveloped during the 1950s and 1960s. This included the construction of large tower block estates, such as Castle Vale in Erdington. The Bull Ring reconstructed and New Street station was redeveloped. In recent years, Birmingham has been transformed, with the construction of new squares like Centenary Square and Millennium Place. Old streets, buildings and canals have been restored, the pedestrian subways have been removed, and the Bull Ring shopping centre has been redeveloped further.
In the decades following The Second World War, the population of Birmingham changed dramatically, with immigration from the Commonwealth of Nations and beyond. The population peaked in 1951 at 1,113,000 residents.
The city of Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) north-northeast of London and is surrounded by a number of smaller towns and villages. It is also at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen.
Cambridge is best known for the University of Cambridge, which includes the renowned Cavendish Laboratory, King's College Chapel, and the Cambridge University Library. The Cambridge skyline is dominated by the last two, along with the chimney of Addenbrooke's Hospital in the far south of the city and St John's College Chapel tower in the north. The city's name is pronounced [keɪmbrɪdZ], as opposed to another Cambridge in Gloucestershire, England, which is pronounced [kæmbrɪdZ].
According to the 2001 United Kingdom census, the City's population was 108,863 (including 22,153 students), and the population of the urban area (which includes parts of South Cambridgeshire district) is estimated to be 130,000.
In 1209, students escaping from hostile townspeople in Oxford fled to Cambridge and formed a university there. The oldest college that still exists, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284. One of the most impressive buildings in Cambridge, King's College Chapel, was begun in 1446 by King Henry VI. The project was completed in 1515 during the reign of King Henry VIII.
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Cambridge University Press originated with a printing license issued in 1534. Hobson's Conduit, the first project to bring clean drinking water to the town centre, was built in 1610 (by the Hobson of Hobson's choice). Parts of it survive today. Addenbrooke's Hospital was founded in 1766. The railway and station were built in 1845. According to legend, the University dictated their location: well away from the centre of town, so that the possibility of quick access to London would not distract students from their work. However, there is no basis for this in written record.
Despite having a university, Cambridge was not granted its city charter until 1951. Cambridge does not have a cathedral, which was traditionally a pre-requisite for city status.
Cambridge is now one of East Anglia's major settlements, along with Norwich, Ipswich and Peterborough. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the size of the city was greatly increased by several large council estates planned to hold London's overspill. The biggest impact has been on the area north of the river, which is now home to the estates of Arbury, East Chesterton and King's Hedges, whilst there are many smaller estates to the south of the city.
Drawing on its links with the University, the Cambridge area today is sometimes referred to as Silicon Fen, due to the growth of high tech businesses and technology incubators that have sprung up in the series of science parks and other developments in and around the city. Such companies include CSR, world leader in Bluetooth chips, Acorn Computers (now ARM) and Sinclair. Cambridge was also the home of Pye Limited famous in the last century for early wireless and TV sets. In later years Pye evolved into several other companies including Pye Telecommunications (now Sepura, famous for TETRA radio equipment). Another major business is Marshall Aerospace located on the eastern edge of the city. Such businesses and their early stage precursors are well networked within the Cambridge Network.
The University was joined by the larger part of Anglia Ruskin University, and the educational reputation has led to other bodies (such as the Open University in East Anglia) basing themselves in the city.
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