Image from Plus - blog on this coming soon
I’ve just come back from an exciting meeting and I’m wired, so rather than sit down and eat my dinner (sorry Emily) and have 1001 things rolling around in my head I’m going to write as much down here as I can.
The meeting was one of the first of what looks set to be a year-long series of meetings, discussions, public debates and events all based around what is being called the “Birmingham City Centre Masterplan”.
I was invited to be part of what the consultants, Urban Initiatives, who are running the project are terming the ‘City Team’ - basically about twenty people who they see as being good ‘ideas people’ (well connected, opinion formers, etc etc. - sorry didn’t get everyone’s names) to come up with good thinking about how Birmingham should change, grow and improve over the coming ten to twenty years.
Here’s the invitation I received:
You may be aware that Birmingham City Council has recently appointed a team of consultants to help the city develop its Masterplan for the next 20 years and beyond.
The consultants are led by Urban Initiatives with specialists in the fields of: Design; Town Planning; Regeneration; Transportation; Property; Economics; Culture; Innovation and Delivery.
They will be working closely with the council for at least a year with the objectives of producing a framework for sustainable growth for the city centre that will inevitably inform regional development and prosperity.
Their outputs will be not only a Spatial Plan for the city centre within the ring road, but also a Business Plan and the means of delivering both in the shape of proposals for a Delivery Vehicle.
The goal is to improve Birmingham as a place to live and work. To achieve this, Urban Initiatives and Birmingham City Council acknowledge the need to engage with local business and community leaders, specifically committed individuals who share their enthusiasm and aspirations for Birmingham.
To this end, I am delighted to invite you to become a member of a ‘City Team’ of such individuals.
This team will be invited to a number of consultation events over the next year and will be instrumental in assisting the Council, its consultants and partners in shaping Birmingham’s future.
The inaugural event, run by Urban Initiatives, will be the ‘Big Ideas’ event on the 1st and 2nd November at the Bond Warehouse in Birmingham. Urban Initiatives will present their objectives and aspirational proposals for discussion and as the genus of a charter that will inform the Masterplan to follow.
It was happening in Alpha Tower, one of Birmingham City Council’s main office blocks with a panoramic view of the city (we were on the 16th floor), and it kicked off relatively informally for me, with a chat about architecture with some of the other people who were there.
Then it was on to a short intro from the City Council outlining what the meeting was about and then a ten minute presentation from the lead consultant on the project from Urban Initiatives.
The thrust of it is that the Masterplan as it is being called is a piece of work which will be happening over the coming year looking at creating a coherent document (a business plan more or less) for how Birmingham can be designed to grow, change and improve.
How are they going to do that?
It turns out that what the consultants are going to do from day one is to get some switched on people (and they certainly had a few of those) in a room for two days (1st / 2nd November) to come up with some audacious (their word), ambitious and generally big ideas for what Birmingham needs to do right now to bring it higher up the international rankings and make it the city it’s always hinted at being.
Apparently the same thing happened about 20 years ago (before my time) and one of the big results was the loosening of the concrete noose that was the inner city road system, which had huge impact for the city.
So this is big scale - this is “redevelop new street station”, “put a big public art space there”, “get an international high speed train link there”, “close that road”, “build more affordable city centre housing”, “encourage families to live in the city centre”, “don’t ruin Digbeth by killing the established culture”, “make the city more sustainable”, “design a new transport system”, “give artists this entire block of the Gun quarter for no rent for five years and see what happens”, “create more public space”, and that’s just off the top of my head.
As Michael Wolff said on Friday (yes - I will write this up!) - design is not just the visual representation of something, it is the business structure, the essence of a thing. A bus shelter isn’t an example of good design - an efficient bus system is though.
So I’m looking at this as a vast design project - an opportunity to redesign a city, obviously with constraints, but huge potential for success and impact.
I guess this only dawned on me about ten minutes after we started asking slightly wary questions after the presentation:
Me: “Are you the consultants actually independent in this situation? Are you asking us to get involved in this just so you can rubber stamp decisions that have already been made? Last time I stuck my neck above the parapet I got shot down for my opinions - won’t this just happen here too? Isn’t there a danger that you’re just going to have a talking shop where we’ll just be agreeing on things that are presented rather than saying ‘no that’s just a silly idea’?”
It turns out (taking this at face value obviously) that this is for real - the council have employed an independent firm of consultants to crowdsource opinions from a wide variety of groups (didn’t have a copy of the presentation to clarify), but the kernels of the ideas that they are looking for are being sourced from an invited group of people (of which I am one) - people who have an opinion and aren’t afraid to air it.
So it’s simple - we come up with some radical (or maybe not so radical?) ideas, we come up with some a list of things that we believe in, the consultants take them, flesh them out, present them to other people, get feedback, have dialogues, start debates, etc. and then all of this gets distilled down into a Charter (a statement of intent), a Masterplan (the nitty gritty), and a Business Plan (the long term strategy for the city).
At the end of the discussion I got pretty vocal about my opinions of what I term the ‘grey hand’ - the powers that be having a negative effect on the culture of the city. You know the kind of things - shutting great music venues because they get a bit loud, not supporting or helping art galleries effectively to thrive, shutting down climbing walls with compulsory purchase orders because they look a bit ugly and then leaving the buildings to rot, etc. etc.
Me, talking about the plans for Digbeth: “What always gets missed out of these kinds of discussions is to talk about the real cultural identity of a place. The ‘underground’ matters and the property developers, city council and other powers that be are so removed that they don’t know how to support cultural activity at that level. Take Birmingham’s music scene - the city’s cultural heritage is all about black metal, death metal, industrial techno and more recently bhangra and desi beats. But nobody at the top level even hears those kinds of words. I think that needs to change or we’ll end up losing the cultural heritage that we have, and once it’s gone it’s gone - it won’t come back”.
Sarah Gee made a good comment at this point - “We don’t want Birmingham to suffer from the gastro pub effect. All the original fixtures and fittings are ripped out and false stuff put back in its place.” I couldn’t agree more.
So - on the 1st and 2nd I’m going to be talking about Authenticity - how can a city be redesigned yet still keep its cultural identity - quite topical given the debate raging around the Keep Digbeth Vibrant campaign. The fantastic Blast event redefined how I think about Birmingham - it made it all to clear that we need to embrace the industrial heritage and sense of place rather than airbrushing over it and trying to make the city something it is not.
So this is where I hand the crowdsourcing over to you.
I’m one of the invited few. I want to push good ideas in this forum. I had said ‘no more committees’ was one of my new rules (blog on this coming soon), but if this piece of work truly turns out to be what I think it could or should be then its an opportunity not to be missed.
If you have a fantastic idea and you want it to be heard by the very top people at the City Council and a bunch of ‘very important people’ you need to let me know about it. Or if you know someone who should be in this group, you should let me know too - the consultants want a few more names from us as suggestions.
You can’t get much of a better open brief than this from the City Council - “help us redesign the city, no strings attached”.
If you post a comment and I think it’s worth raising I’ll be discussing it on the day, so use that comment box…
Let’s see where this thing goes.
35 Comments
While I think something like this is looong overdue, I would love to think that while you are all saying things like ‘redevelop New Street Station’ you are actually saying ‘redevelop New Street Station while ensuring that proper transportation infrastructure and rail down-time is covered for the commuters’.
I think the city needs shaking up, but at the same time the consideration should focus on its users first. (Feeling commuter angst this morning, can you tell?!)
Stef, I should introduce you to my friends at Fusion Architecture they have some interesting ideas.
I’ve never been to Birmingham so can’t really comment. You have a huge task ahead of you…
Hi Karl - well behind you on that one. I was just pulling out some of the big ideas that they were hinting at in the presentation.
Images of other European cities where when you come out of the main station it feels like there is room to breathe - Waterloo with its green areas, for instance.
@Emma - sure - you should do! Pass on my email…
hi Stef
sounds exciting - good luck with it.
I dont know if this fits in the remit, but what i would like to see is more support for the festivals in the city.
Martin Mullaney has suggested a pot of say £500,000 to be set aside by the council each year to fund festivals such as the now defunct thru lack of funding Esprit Manouche, also the Moseley Folk Festival, Supersonic, Gigbeth and so on, but he seems to be a bit of a lone voice on that one so far.
At the risk of sounding our own horn I think embodied networks of creative people such as Project X are very important as well.
Also as a promoter I get frsutrated at seeing massive poster sites everywhere selling commercial products at people, but no where for me to put up posters advertising locally orientated artist and musical events.
We are left bluetacking the odd posters to bus stops or going for the expensive and illegal distribution of posters onto boarded up shops etc.
How about community poster boards or something similar?
thanks for throwing this open to the floor.
Rich
Xx
I hope is really is more than a rubber stamp job. Go wild, propose the biggest and best things ever, then even if they get distilled down…
Few ‘large-scale’ problems thoughts about Birmingham :
Too much of an insistence on “quarters”/quartiers - Broad St Golden mile, Balti Triangle, Irish, Chinese, Education, etc etc - which separates out people and makes it a trek from one end of the city to the other if you fancy a quick change of scene - doesn’t help the integrated nature of the town.
Awful cross-city centre public transport. We need trams, basically, and they need to be clean, safe, regular and cheap.
Too many ‘mixed use’ developments. The mixed use thing makes for bad offices (ours in the mailbox are cramped and fairly often stink off the food cooking in the restaurants/bars) bad bars (that are right up against offices and homes so they are homogenised and have to be quiet) and bad shops that are forced by economic necessity to appeal to the inhabitants of the flats/offices (which is why for every failing clothes shop there’s a mini supermarket). The argument for mixed-use is supposedly that it helps an area be alive at different times, but it’s a funny kind of alive.
Planners really need to forget about how things look once in a while and think about how they work - New St Station could be the ugliest concretest shitehole in the world, but if the trains were on time and you could get in and out quickly would it really matter? In this case it’s the actual rail infrastructure rather than the glass roof that needs looking at. (Although I agree that a empty space out side, like Amsterdam, like so many other cities, gives a much better first impression than a branch of Tie Rack).
I’m sure more will come to me…
Thanks Stef for such a good summary of the event and everyone else - keep the ideas and comments coming, we are listening!
This all sounds very exciting. I echo the comments above about New Street Station, but I will not condemn the place as I remember it when it was much worse! In fact a recent journey through New Street Station to the airport was a lot easier than an equivalent transfer in London.
Integrating the transport system is really what is needed most. I agree with the tram system concept being able to connect the quarters - city centre walking can be miserable in cold and wet weather. There is something about a tram that separates it from the bus, and yes, it’s the rails! But in reality, strangers to public transport and/or the city are more likely to get on a tram because they feel like they know it can only go along the rails and therefore they won’t get them lost!
City centre tram and bus fares should be free, subsidized by the city council. Additional revenue from city centre businesses who would benefit would pay for the subsidy. Calgary, Canada does this along their 7th Avenue.
But above all, everything should be aimed at making Birmingham City Centre a pleasant place to visit - clean, well lit at night, visible evidence of the police, etc.
Tall fancy buildings can take a second priority in my opinion.
Throw away the current Birmingham ‘brand’ and start again from the top down. Follow Manchester’s example and hire an internationally renowned designer (who has a particular connection or interest in the city) to create a new Birmingham brand. Birmingham by its nature is a melting pot of different cultures/architecture/people but his doesn’t mean its brand needs to be. Lets face it Birmingham City Council (the largest local authority in the UK) are not equipped to manage the city’s image/brand with a few poorly paid inhouse designers.
Ad-supported public WiFi, we can get free information from birmingham.gov but so what? BT’s build the infrastructure let’s give it ad-supported or free to people who live in Birmingham. You could regulate it with a library style card.
Let’s get the buses out of corperation/new street, running over pedrestrians right next to the tourist information booth was never a good idea. It’s such a narrow street, often taxis and other busses block it up anyway. Let’s pedestrianise all of that area and put the buses out of the city center.
Get cars out of broad street, make it for taxis and buses only during peek times. There’s no point in having a decent bus infrastructure if there all going to be stuck in traffic jams at fiveways around 5.30.
Redesign the Birmingham city council logo, it’s an absolute disgrace, give it to a decent agency and let them get on with it.
New street is a bit of a joke, all of the bigger cities have a much better railway stations. If they can’t expand then why not spend some money making the insides look nice. Embrace your limitations, let’s get some proper sineage, better waiting areas, etc etc
more rants to follow probably
In a nutshell, Openness.
I’d like to see the Council (and other large city institutions, AWM, etc) not just giving lip service to consulting the public but putting everything out there in a manner which people can understand and use.
Rather than launching new initiatives and campaigns on people and expecting everyone to love them, announce them in advance, explain what’s going to happen and why and adjust them as feedback comes on board.
And don’t be afraid to give away “secrets”. If we’re worried about other cities stealing our ideas then we obviously don’t have any faith in our ability to put them into practice.
Stop talking in gobbledegook, don’t let politics get in the way of vision, treat the tax payers as partners not customers, get involved with the conversations that are going on about the city and, most, importantly, let your employees speak their minds.
Birmingham is being strangled by paranoid, secretive nonsense. Get rid of this and let it bloom.
I think the arguments around mixed-use space are as much about self-policing. If, like Broad Street, one activity or one group of people dominates an area it can be intimidating to others or like the financial district can be deserted. A good mixed area, or so the argument goes, makes for a mix of generations and activities and so the streets have more people out and about etc. I suggest you read some Jane Jacobs, if you haven’t already - she was, other than extremely interesting and influential in her own right (and as I understand it) Richard Florida’s mentor.
And another thing…
In terms of families living in the city centre. The city serves family life well in a lot respects with a lot of free events etc but mostly in its design (the pedestrianisation is great when you have kids running about). However there are no places for children to play. I have spent a fair amount of time in Paris with my daughter. Paris has a large proportion of folks living in apartments in central areas but on nearly every street corner is a small park, with well-maintained play equipment and pockets of green space. Families’ being catered for adds to the idea of mixed use.
Anyway like others I also would love to have some involvement in this and appreciate you sharing this in this way as too often consultation processes are rather closed.
Sorry, I have to disagree with the whole notion of rebranding the city. While we are currently stifled with the whole idea of having a ‘brand’ anyway, with the current effort, why should we throw excessive amounts of cash at another one? What does it do for a city?
Manchester was mentioned as an example. But didn’t Peter Saville simply announce that he was not actually going to create a brand, but a consistent approach to how the city is integrated with it’s various services, much like Berlin and the work of Meta Design?
I’m aware of the people who would quickly jump behind a brand in the city leader circles and how much public money would get put behind it, but perhaps think the wrong people may end up driving it and therefore wasting an opportunity to spend the funds in a much wiser way.
Very true Karl, but surely a clear and consistent design system across all city communications is part of a ‘brand’. But yep you’re right, I over-emphasised the notion of rebranding Birmingham - I was more concerned with creatign a consistency of design in Birmingham.
First of all Stef, thanks for opening up the conversation.
Birmingham city centre is full of empty shops, but there are very few independents and those that there are are often on back streets. Conclusion: rents are too high (and possibly there aren’t enough small premises). I have a feeling the Council owns large chunks of Corporation Street - can’t they encourage independents here (as it’s dying on its feet at the moment)? I’ve been to Chester, Bristol, Leicester, Edinburgh and Glasgow this month and all have (to varying extents) more independents that you just come across in the centre, rather than having to seek out places like the Custard Factory.
As an ex-Londoner, the other thing I miss is decent pubs centrally that aren’t part of chains. I don’t know what it is about Birmingham - perhaps a hangover (sic) from the 19th century temperance movement - but it really lacks good boozers that (again) you can just come across rather than trekking to the back streets of Digbeth.
I’m not sure trams are the answer for transport. Installing the infrastructure is cheaper than heavy rail but still expensive, and the way that TWM bus drivers drive, they’ll only block the trams anyway by stopping at a bus stop sticking out into the road. Ken Livingstone (whatever else one might think of him) has very effectively improved transport in London by pumping money into the buses, making them more frequent. Some judicious extensions and rerouting of existing bus routes would improve the coverage in the city centre more effectively than the current Stationlink which is a fine example of how a subsidised bus service can be routed to serve so many places that one could probably walk between the furthest two in the time it takes the bus to do a single circuit. Unfortunately most of this is outside the council’s and even Network West Midlands/Centro’s control (thanks to Thatcher’s deregulation).
What Birmingham has done well is the bits in between the buildings - treatment of streets and public spaces - and this should be continued and extended to some of the grottier streets remaining in the city centre. Encouraging more good architecture (perhaps through competitions for any city council sponsored projects) would also help - iconic buildings such as Selfridges may be controversial but help to define the city as forward-looking. There’s too many bland commercial buildings going up that won’t stand the test of time.
I hope they listen to you…
No more ‘Motor City’!
Get rid of cars (as much as possible) and Birmingham would be a much better place to live/work/visit. Why are there so few cyclists in Birmingham?
Just reading some of these comments I realise the focus is very much on the city centre and the brand of the city. I think there are some deeper issues here. Just by way of an example: On my way to work from the leafy streets of Moseley/KH up to Perry Barr I see a whole bunch of issues which relate to social inclusion and loving thy neighbourhood. The most obvious one is that going right through the middle of Newtown, Aston and Perry Barr is at some points an 8-10 lane road! This road goes through some of the most deprived wards of the city. I would be keen to do some work on how the physcial environment here impacts on individuals sense of self, well being etc. I have been involved in a lot of projects related to social inclusion which could be revisited to re-look at some of these issues.
Wow. This sounds like an incredible opportunity to throw in some grand ideas. It will be interesting to see how open the team of consultants is to the more radical schemes which inevitably get suggested.
I think that making Birmingham more cycle friendly is an excellent idea. It is after all, a fairly flat city and therefore lends itself well in that respect. In many European towns and cities I have visited, cycling is the preferred choice of transport for a large proportion of the residents and they are well catered for with their own cycle routes (and we’re not just talking a couple of feet painted off at the side of a main road which is all but ignored by motorists), ample places to lock bikes and often “rental” schemes whereby you pick up a bike from one area and use it to ride to your destination to be left for the next user. I appreciate that there are issues here with theft and so on, but if we focus too hard on the problems we forget about what *could* be.
How about making all bus journeys within the inner ring road free? Lord knows how it would be financed/managed, but what a way to encourage greater bus usage and cut down on cars, congestion, pollution and so on.
Anyway, thanks for the information Stef. Let’s hope we get some great ideas and that the council actually act on some of these. It’s not often that an opportunity like this comes our way.
Yep I totally agree with Jack’s view about Birmingham’s lack of independent shops/bars/restaurants. It must be due to high rents. The Custard Factory does offer these but very few seem to survive longer than a few months which must be in part due to lack of passing trade. The Council definately needs to address the chain effect going on in the city centre. I am sick of soulless bars and shops that are part of huge chains. Offer discounted rents to new startups offering something new and fresh to the city centre. I rarely leave Moseley for entertainment and if I do it is to go to Digbeth or perhaps the Jewellery Quarter. The city centre is a no go area in my mind when it comes to evening entertainment (apart from theatre/cinema etc)…
p.s. the problem may also be that Birmingham doesn’t have enough people willing to sustain an interesting and more unusual nightlife. the chains are here becuase people use them. Manchester and London have a more open-minded population IMHO. A difficult fact to admit to but probably true.
Digbeth/Custard Factory is definately far too much hassle to get to, especially if you’re a young gal.
Cleanliness only attracts godliness, and saintly virtue rarely makes for exciting talent. Family friendliness will only serve to attract families nervous about any kind of daring liveliness, so I wouldn’t go overboard on that kinda thing if you want to liven things up, else you’ll end up alienating those people who will make the desired changes - which is the problem now. Also, just cos’ one has white skin doesn’t mean one is dull and uncreative - by making these kinds of statements and distinctions you could easily miss out on the right people for the job, there are too many preconceived notions of just what a truly ‘creative’ person looks like!! Often they look entirely normal and dull on the surface - it’s their minds which are illuminating and not their appearance.
If good artists and other creative types are going to be attracted to B’ham as much as London they will need top quality art schools with top quality tutors to learn from. UCE just aint good enough! This is a fundamental problem which must be addressed. After all these people are the folk with fire in their bellies most likely to form rock bands and set up the indedendent shops everyone wants. Improve the art school - this is a desperate plea!!! And no more wishy-washy shit - there must be standards.
They also need wealthy patrons and genuine art lovers to buy their work & support their output - but of course the work has to be of a high enough standard in the first place - this is where the importance of the art school comes in.
No more hype without substance behind it as people just become cynical about all this ‘rebranding’. Don’t force culture, culture cannot be forced. You need to attract the best talent by finding out what actually attracts the best talent & then providing it - fuel for fire. Then things will evolve all by themselves - but be warned ‘creativity’ does its own thing so don’t even bother being prescriptive else you’ll kill it stone dead.
Just going for a coffee & if I think of anything else I’ll add some more…….
Me again - B’ham Museum & Art Gallery also desperately needs improvement. What happened to all the stuffed animals in glass cases & the enormous dinosaur - these were the best things in it! BMAG also needs to have far, far better exhibitions of historical art - think of the big ‘dramatic’ hitters which places like the Royal Academy show; Velasquez, Caravaggio, El Greco, Goya etc there is nothing like seeing first rate art from any age to spark things off. Old things can be just as exciting as new stuff. B’ham council would have to support this fully else it would end up being watered down & half-hearted like at present.
We need a SCIENCE MUSEUM - filled with animal skeletons & pickled specimens from a couple of hundred years ago. We need a brilliant and soulful gospel choir with a lead singer like the late MAHALIA JACKSON to stir up Bhams emotions. The first ever URBAN ZOO/SAFARI PARK - fill it with derelict buildings and infest them with urban pests so they’re in their natural environment but we can have a look at them too & become familiar with what we share our towns & cities. Pigeon races. We need an allocated RACE TRACK for all those car mad geezas who race their modified high performance turbo charged cars & film it like formula 1.
Tess - we have a Science Museum, its called Think Tank and was developed at Millenium Point funnily enough for the Millenium. A joke of a building - vast internal space with a small Science Museum bolted onto the edge. Who signs these buildings off!?
Several contributors have focused on public transport. Trams are part of the answer - not the only solution. But I’d really like to see a route from the city down to Digbeth and points south. And that proposed heavy rail route through Kings Heath and Moseley into town is a must, along with a service in from Walsall via Sutton and Walmley. This of course requires Moor Street to FINALLY be allowed to use those nice new platforms we all paid for, and connecting City Centre trams. For anyone not convinced about how transport changes the way the city works, check out Berlin, or Paris, or Strasbourg, or Frankfurt, or even Manchester… I could go on… where huge and small, but above all, imaginative schemes are opening everything up and making things so much easier. Right now, driving around or worse, across, town is a pain, and walking is only pleasant if you can avoid the traffic. Movement should be easy and uplifting, not oppressive. Other points - totally agree with Pete Ashton about Council secrecy and aloofness. And whatever happens from these discussions, please let can we avoid yet more agencies funded by the council that have a lovely grant-aided time for two years in posh offices… patronise everyone along the way… and achieve precisely nothing. I’m tired of enablers who don’t enable.
Chris - In my exuberance I wasn’t clear enough regarding the Science Museum, I meant to put the emphasis on ‘old school’ science exhibits, as this is what fascinated me as a youngster. Actually perhaps it should be more of a NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM - I think History is as important as the contemporary and the modern, as attitudes from the past were so different in so many ways, history can be far more outrageous than anything that goes on today. Yes & vast empty spaces in hollow buildings are terribly depressing - we should bring back some dark corners, winding chambers & generally less transparency.
Also, I heard Cardiff put on an amazing URBAN DOWNHILL MOUNTAIN BIKE RACE very recently- perhaps B’ham could do something in a similar vein?
The redesigned Birmingham should never forget its roots.
“Forward!” I say, “Encourage the anti-Establishment, Embrace Hard Work and Industry, Despise those who Cower behind can’t-do rule books, and above all, Have Fun doing it.”
Keep the ghost of Matthew Boulton happy!
Perhaps we need some members of a Psychogeographical Society to take a walk around Bham & write a response? You could consult the Psy-Geo-Conflux society which holds annual 4 day events in New York. Midnight walks & all sorts.
Carl Chinn could also make a dramatic serial/documentary about Bham’s roots in the same manner of the charismatic Peter Ackroyd on London.
I’m probably going to get slated for this….but I think the last few years have shown a great improvement in the city and its design. We have different developers now working together, and with the council, to try and integrate the design and purpose of whole chunks of the city.
It’s not perfect (I agree with Jon that the constantly increasing range of Quarters is slightly bizzare), but it is getting there.
Perhaps it is in my business interest to see the city do well, but I chose to work in Birmingham because of the fantastic opportunities it provides. I’m just not so sure we should all knock it quite so often - or assume that everything that has taken place previously was a waste of time.
We have to be passionate about the city.
This is all very encouraging. It means the people at the very top have finally, FINALLY, stopped deluding themselves and realised that other cities are visibly and undeniably outperforming Birmingham (one city in particular… can we guess which one? Hmmm).
That Birmingham has the talent to achieve its long-promised full potential isn’t in doubt. The question is how to harness it. As we all know, the ‘product’ is much better than it’s given credit for, and yet it still seems to punch beneath its weight.
I would suggest the following:
1) Learn from the best, but don’t copy. Some cities have a knack for seeming to do everything right, and these are the cities that have managed to fuse an intrinsic sense of self-confidence with a belief in the universal power of good design. Barcelona is the most obvious example. Also in this vein, issue 5 of volume 1 (July/August 2007) of Monocle magazine should be standard reading for all city-makers; it’s a journal that effortlessly conveys a persuasive understanding of what makes the greatest cities… well, the greatest.
2) Rebrand. Michael Wolff is dead right. The current Birmingham logo and branding is embarrassing. But the branding must mean more than just a new logo and slogan. It must mean a whole new way of marketing and promoting Birmingham that utterly eschews the tired and ineffectual marketing devices the city has used as crutches in the past, principally the title of ‘Second City’ and the yawn-inducing fact that Brum has more miles of canal than Venice. The latter typifies a traditional and very damaging Brummie preference for quantity over quality. And even if you passionately believe that there is such a thing as the ‘Second City’, and that Birmingham is it, let it go. You’re on a hiding to nothing. Don’t even mention those words – a self-imposed ban would be a fine idea. Who needs the hassle of arguing over this irrelevance with Mancunians or anyone else? No-one outside Brum and Manchester cares anyway, and Birmingham should be secure enough not to lower itself to giving a shit about such a trivial, infantile debate. Aside from the above, the general calibre of official marketing campaigns used to promote Birmingham (both within the city and outside it) isn’t high enough.
3) Architectural quality control. Birmingham has some decent landmarks and a lot of excellent urban regeneration, but some of the new buildings in between undo all the good work. Someone clearly fell asleep at wheel when the Orion building slipped through. And it happens too often for comfort. The planning department needs to stop asking itself “is it bad enough to refuse?” and start asking “is it good enough to approve?”.
4) Transport. It’s quite simple: a city Birmingham’s size should have an Underground, and would do, if it were in any comparable country. It won’t be too long before Birmingham’s traffic problem will be too serious for mere trams to make much of a difference. Birmingham needs an Underground. It deserves an Underground. Most importantly, both Birmingham and Whitehall need to get used to the idea that Birmingham deserves an Underground. “Birmingham needs an Underground” needs to become a simple, clear and consistent cross-party policy that is reiterated so often that it no longer seems like the impossible dream it currently seems. It must become a long-term aim. Realistically the politicians of today need to recognise that it will take a few generations at the very least for a case to be accepted. But Birmingham must start making that case now, even if we never live to see it. Meanwhile trams are a good enough interim solution, and the long-term pursuit of an Underground shouldn’t be viewed as compromising the construction of one or two further tram lines, because one is a short-term solution and the other is a long-term solution. If Birmingham demonstrates it is serious about an Underground, is truly committed to it, and is in it for the long-haul, I believe it could secure at least one Underground line within the next fifty years. Sounds like a long time, but that’s how long these things take. And it would be a laudable aim – the power of Undergrounds and Metros to transform cities (both in terms of physicality and perception) shouldn’t be underestimated.
4) Birmingham needs a mayor. Period. Cities with mayors work better than cities without. They promote themselves better and are taken more seriously. Business and central government likes being able to deal with just one guy, rather than several different bodies that don’t necessarily sing from the same hymnsheet. London, New York, Paris, Berlin and Athens all have or have had mayors that have had a dramatic effect on their cities.
5) Independents make a city more attractive. I agree with what people have said above. Birmingham needs more independent shops and cafes. The Bullring was supposed to free up units elsewhere in the city centre; rents would fall, it was predicted, and the independents would move in. Well, it’s certainly freed up the units – but that’s all. Why are landlords not lowering the rents of stubbornly vacant retail units? What’s their problem? They prefer no income to a reduced income with a tenant? What’s the deal with the Great Western Arcade – always half empty? Birmingham City Council needs to seriously consider how it can help independents thrive and prosper. There are flaws in ideas such as a rent subsidy scheme, but it would be better than nothing. It’s certainly an issue that needs to be addressed and not ignored. Good independent coffee shops in particular can really lift a neighbourhood – something for the suburbs to consider too. The effect on the city’s character of having more independents on its streets would be immeasurable – certainly enough to elevate perceptions of the city from the “better than it used to be” rut in which it currently resides to “really good” in absolute terms.
The key to solving the problems is for local residents to get involved in the city’s governance. Of those complaining about the city’s ills: who has ever attended city meetings or has email addresses for people working within the local government? The reason crap plans get pasted is because no one is there voicing an alternative. The council represents citizens.
@chris “Throw away the current Birmingham ‘brand’ and start again from the top down.”
No; this is the cause of the problems
Start from the bottom up. What do individual people do each day, what are their aspirations…
Talent has left bham, that has been happening for years and years. Why stay in bham when you can live in London and be back in less than 2 hours (if you ever need to). I left bham in 2003 for London. I spent three months this summer back in bham. Needless to say i’m back in London.
@all - Thank you all so much for your comments.
I’ve written a blog post in response to pick up on most of these points.
Interestingly enough, a couple of comments from this blog post have actually found their way into the final Charter document.
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