Drive into Liverpool from Manchester, and the signs of economic dereliction which once dominated the landscape are gone. Close to a gleaming new airport terminal are Ford's Jaguar factory and some shiny new pharmaceutical plants. Further in, rows of modern suburban houses give way to smart converted warehouse apartments crowding round a city centre sprouting construction cranes. For most of the last two decades of the previous century, growth on Merseyside was either stagnant or much slower than in the rest of Britain (see chart). Now the opposite is true. "Things had been so bad for so long that it is difficult to see how they could have got worse," says Andrew Bur-rell, an economist with Experian Business Strategies, a consultancy. "But as other places have become more expensive, Liverpool has become a more popular place to develop and invest."
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机译：从曼彻斯特驶入利物浦，曾经一度占据主导地位的经济下滑迹象消失了。福特捷豹工厂和一些崭新的制药厂就在一个闪闪发光的新机场航站楼附近。在更远的地方，成排的现代郊区房屋让位给了精巧的改建仓库公寓，这些公寓挤在市中心发芽的建筑用起重机周围。在上个世纪最后二十年的大部分时间里，默西塞德郡的增长要么停滞不前，要么慢于英国其他地区（见图）。现在情况正好相反。咨询公司Experian Business Strategies的经济学家安德鲁·伯雷尔（Andrew Bur-rell）说：“事情已经这么糟了，以至于很难看到它们会变得更糟。” “但是，随着其他地方变得更加昂贵，利物浦已经成为开发和投资更受欢迎的地方。”
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