Can the UK’s second city drop its label and become a city of firsts? For those active in its built environment, it is already doing so. A new vision for the city, updating and improving its 2010 Big City Plan, will see Birmingham build back better post-Covid with a focus on sustainability, people and pride.
The experts
- Tony Brooks, managing director, Moda Living
- Michael Davies, director – planning, Savills
- Simon Delahunty-Forrest, acting assistant director for development, Birmingham City Council
- Philippa Gill, director, EVORA Global
- Ian MacLeod, director for inclusive growth, Birmingham City Council
- Sara Wajid, co-chief executive, Birmingham Museums Trust
- Ian Ward, leader, Birmingham City Council
Green, equitable, liveable and distinctive. Four key principles set out by Birmingham as it unveils its vision for the future. The city, often known as the UK’s second city, is setting its sights on being a first. The first to deliver on a green economy and the first to be a place that delivers everything we’ve remembered we just can’t do without during the coronavirus pandemic.
The city wants to blur the lines set out in its Big City Plan of more than a decade ago and start to connect the edges with the centre, to deliver pathways – to net zero, to increased investment, to culture and to success.
Ian MacLeod, director for inclusive growth at Birmingham City Council, says now is the time to “re-envisage” Birmingham. Now is the time to adapt the city to the climate change agenda, to focus on inclusive growth and make Birmingham – and its outskirts – a place for all.
“There will be opportunities to remodel parts of the city centre to reintroduce green spaces, more trees and the softer landscaping people can enjoy within the city core but, importantly, that are connected to green spaces up into the inner-city areas as well,” says MacLeod.
“We want to encourage people in the inner-city areas to leave the car behind and feel like they can cycle and walk into the city core far more easily – that’s one of the big principles for us,” he adds. “We need to break that concrete column of the inner ring roads, which blocks a lot of connections into the inner-city areas.”
The challenge for us as a city is to change our view of how the city is used
Michael Davies, Savills
Walkable neighbourhoods
For Savills’ planning director, Michael Davies, that accessibility and those connections are key for the future of Birmingham.
“The challenge for us as a city is to change our view of how the city is used,” says Davies. “I do like the idea of 15-minute walkable neighbourhoods, and if we could have many of them around the city, we could have more people, more requirements for the hospitality and catering industry, possibly even some re-injection [of life] into retail. And if there are more people living on the edge of the city then hopefully the city can flourish.”
This enabling of people to come into and out of Birmingham city centre, making sure that it doesn’t become hollowed out, like much of London has, is one of the city’s greatest attractions, says Sara Wajid, co-chief executive of Birmingham Museums Trust. She says it is what tempted her from London to the Midlands.
“Although there are incredibly exciting things about living in a globalised world city,” Wajid says, “cities of the future will be more like Birmingham. I think the distinctive city, the sense of place you have in a place like Birmingham, is absolutely top value.”
As representative of the creative communities, Wajid of course believes that culture and the creative industries have a role to play in the future success of cities and says Birmingham, as a melting pot of people, is well placed to prosper.
“If there isn’t space for creative communities to live and thrive and work, we will lose a huge amount,” she says. “We’re already seeing a bit of a mass exodus at the moment for those who can get out of London. And for many years, artists particularly have found it very difficult to establish themselves. So places like Digbeth in Birmingham, where you see really vibrant and important creative communities, need protecting for the wider health of the city to flourish.”
I think the distinctive city, the sense of place you have in a place like Birmingham, is absolutely top value
Sara Wajid, Birmingham Museums Trust
What makes our cities thrive?
Capturing the necessities of life, all those little things that so many of us have missed so much throughout the Covid pandemic – the chance of live entertainment, a Friday night date at the cinema, going to church, having a drink in the pub – and utilising the pandemic to learn what it is that makes our cities thrive is what Birmingham (and every other city around the world) must do to deliver for the future, says EVORA Global director Philippa Gill.
Wajid agrees. “The social fabric needs to be woven somehow,” she says, “and at the moment I suppose we feel it more than ever because we are so constricted and we’re not able to have that great joy of city living where spontaneous and unexpected connections are made.”
She adds: “That’s exactly what we dream of in museums. We want people to make friendships, to develop relationships not just with artworks but with each other, and with the places where they live through the potency of the artworks or the sculptures or the social history objects that they’re engaging with in the museum.
“In a sense, we want to amplify that in the wider city. I often think of museum spaces and the experiences that people have in museums as the concentrated version – the espresso experience – of being in a city.”
Those connections, whether supercharged by cultural caffeine or through physical infrastructure, will ultimately bring more investment into our cities, says EVORA’s Gill.
“Investors want long-term investment, reliability and returns, and that is the output of having a truly successful international city – a place people love to be and people love to go,” says Gill. “I wouldn’t say that is all you need, but if people love to be in a city then investors will come because that is what makes it an investible city.”
Birmingham has got all of the ingredients. I see it is a city where everything is coming together
Tony Brooks, Moda Living
Poised for greatness
MacLeod says Birmingham’s job now is to make sure that it is clear about its vision for growth, that it can identify the opportunities it has to bring forward, that it can showcase the benefits that HS2 will bring to the city.
Savills’ Davies says the city has provided “an open door” to investors over the past decade and that it has to continue to build on that.
“We’ve got a number of major opportunities in the coming years to advertise Birmingham more than we have already,” says Davies. “In a couple of years’ time we are staging the Commonwealth Games, so what a window of opportunity that will be to host the next biggest party that can take place.
“The plan that the council is launching will provide a blueprint that effectively says ‘come here and invest in a whole range of opportunities’. So, while we might not feel it at the moment, the future of the city is bright. We’ve got some real opportunities and real investments ahead.”
And for Tony Brooks, managing director of Moda Living, which is on-site to deliver almost 500 BTR homes in the city, Birmingham’s future is not just bright, it is dazzling. “Birmingham is definitely poised for greatness,” he says. “It has got all of the ingredients. I see it is a city where everything is coming together.”
A city, some might say, that is connected.
Future City Plan: Towards a connected green city
Birmingham City Council’s Future City Plan offers a new vision for the city, building on its Big City Plan of 2010, and is aimed at turning it into the poster child for quality, sustainable development and placemaking.
Birmingham City Council leader Ian Ward says that Birmingham is “poised and ready to bounce back”, adding: “No other city is attempting to be this radical and ambitious on such a scale. This plan sets out our vision for a fair, inclusive and green city.”
Simon Delahunty-Forrest, the council’s acting assistant director for development, says the city’s ambition for growth will be delivered through six key themes. Chief among them is a focus on equality and connectivity.
“Growth in our local economy must be green, sustainable and for the benefit of all,” says Delahunty-Forrest. “Physically growing the reach of the city centre beyond the ring road and out to the communities beyond is going to result in major new developments, and the communities in these areas need to feel the benefit of this investment.”
As part of its plan, Birmingham is keen to gather insight from private sector partners and local communities on projects that it hopes will turn Birmingham into a city of the future. These include looking at how it might be able to remodel the A38 as a ring of green spaces throughout the city, how it could rethink its retail core to encourage new businesses into the centre, and expanding Digbeth’s creative sector through the development of a major visitor destination.
Click here to find more about Birmingham’s Future City Plan and to have your say. Consultation on the plan is open until 26 March 2021.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
