Liverpool, England
Liverpool, England is a port city of 470,537 and the center of the 2,241,000 Liverpool City Region on east side of the Mersey Estuary, due west of the manufacturing center of Manchester and opposite the Irish Sea from Dublin. It was made a borough of Lancashire in 1207 and incorporated as a city in 1880.
As a maritime center, the city flourished with the growth of trade across the Atlantic Ocean. As a result of its place in the slave trade, the city is home to a long-established African community. It later gained reknown as the port of call for the Cunard and White Star ocean liners, and, in the 1960s, as the home town of The Beatles. In 2008 Liverpool and Stavanger, Norway shared the title of "European Capital of Culture".
Mayor William Bell led a delegation from Birmingham to Liverpool for the International Forum for Business in 2014. While there he began the process of forging a "sister city" relationship with the city. The agreement was signed in Spring 2015 and became official in October of that year.
Soon representatives from UAB, Samford University, Innovation Depot and Southern Progress made the trip to England to meet with counterparts there, including Liverpool Hope University. The cities have applied for participation in an EB-5 visa program offered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services which would grant special status to business owners investing in low-income areas of Birmingham.
In late 2016 Vulcan Park's Junior Leadership Board commissioned a "Vulcans on Parade" fiberglass replica of Vulcan to be painted by artist Crystal Conner and delivered to Liverpool for public display.
References
- Gamlin, Rachael (July 1, 2016) "Birmingham Sister Cities wins prestigious national award." Birmingham Business Journal