Constructive criticism: the week in architecture

"Life goes on day after day/Hearts torn in every way." You can just hear Gerry Marsden singing Ferry Cross the Mersey back when Liverpool was one of the world's best loved cities. Imagine if Ferry Cross the Mersey was remade in 2015 and, instead of the Liver Building, Pier Head and working docks, the backdrop was an almighty prickle of skyscrapers and other schlock shipped in from anywhere except Merseyside itself.

More than hearts may be torn if the city gives the go-ahead to the titanic and controversial £5.5bn Liverpool Waters project proposed by property developers Peel Holdings. Unesco is so angry with what its inspectors have seen of the designs that it has threatened – and not for the first time – to strip Liverpool's city centre of its World Heritage Site status. While in other parts of the world this would matter, Liverpool – to judge from comments made in the local media – doesn't appear to care what Unesco thinks.

What matters more than heritage, it seems, is shopping and new jobs in new shops. Liverpool is no museum: it wants a global skyscrapers and luxury brands. This is a little unfair, yet the city – architecturally a curate's egg (even around Giles Gilbert Scott's magisterial cathedral should aim a lot higher than the glossy banality of Liverpool Waters. A concern for local heritage proves just how innovative and memorable the city's architecture has been, whether in the design of the Three Graces, the Albert Docks or Freddie Gibberd's space capsule-style Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King. Why give up the ghost?

Meanwhile, and aside from a new generation of ultra-modern factories, shipyards, skilled jobs, schools and whatever local people suggest, what Liverpool needs is close attention to its housing stock and to its dilapidated inner suburbs.

Imagine if the kind of intelligence Le Corbusier applied to the Unité d'Habitation in the late 1940s housing scheme in Marseilles, another great and often run-down maritime city, could be resurrected in contemporary form in Liverpool. From inside, looking out, this magnificent housing block has the feel of a great concrete liner anchored between the mountains, the city and the sea. Today, Unité d'Habitation is lived in by professional people, artists, architects, academics and writers. They have come to appreciate the artistry and quality of a building originally intended to house a mix of local people. Marseilles has long needed more buildings like this, instead of the myriad low quality, global-style high-rise blocks that mar its skyline.

Often photographed to look monumental and morose, a lovely image of the roof and paddling pool of Unité d'Habitation by Neil Dusheiko, director of Neil Dusheiko Architectst has won the Architecture and People category award in the Architect's Eye photography competition. The awards were given this week at a ceremony hosted by competition organisers International Art Consultants.

The winner of the Architecture and Place category was Simon Kennedy, a freelance architect and lecturer at the Bartlett school of architecture, who photographed the condemned early 1970s Heygate Estate in south London.

Jack Pringle, chairman of the judges, noted that "The two winning photographs, both of modernist designs, demonstrate carefully and beautifully, the striking contrast between the vibrant success of the Le Corbusier building and the lifeless failure of the Heygate Estate."

Unite d'Habitation was a huge influence on the design of Britain's finest post-war housing estate, the Barbican. This challenging and imposing landscaped development has echoes of English baroque masters such as John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, too, as well as Edwin Lutyens and other architects who helped inform Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. The achievement of these architects – shadowy figures today – has been brought to fresh life by the Elain Harwood's thoughtful book Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. It would be hard to imagine any British city paying for this kind of development today, particularly as the building of an Arts Centre was considered more important than shiny shops.

To consider how we might rethink the development of our cities, the Architectural Review has announced a Battleground for Ideas at the Royal College of Art. Ranging over questions of Style, Technology, Theory and Humanity, the season begins on 6 December (appropriately in the lead-up to Christmas) with Consumption. This British obsession, and one that could tear hearts and cities in every way, will be discussed by Ricky Burdett and Joseph Rykwert. Tickets are free; email boris.cesnik@rca.ac.uk for a place.