Birmingham in 1939

The City covered 80 square miles administratively, but not wholly with buildings. On the outskirts many farms still survived, and infilling elsewhere was far from complete: Northfield, Kings Norton, Sheldon and Castle Bromwich were least developed. There were said to be 1200 distinct trades in the City, many of them carried on in small workshops and factories often-converted from slum dwellings. More than a million people lived in Birmingham: prosperous emigrants to Solihull and Sutton Coldfield were replaced by Middle Ringers whose houses were taken over by immigrants from Wales and Ireland, while slum dwellers moved to new municipal estates. One third of the work-people from the Outer Ring travelled daily to central factories by bus, tram, or bicycle. Against the flow or across it were those who worked
at Longbridge, Cadburys, Stirchley. Witton, or Tyburn.

The City centre, the administrative and business district, was small even for a town a quarter the size. Its origin as a village to which many roads came was still all too clear: it had been necessary in '33 to institute a one-way system, and the need for a circular road which would divert the traffic from a score of radials away from the cramped centre was greater every year. The shopping area was quite inadequate, though the arcades provided several additional pedestrian precincts. Apart from the Dudley Road, Selly Oak, and newly-opened Q.E. Hospitals, all the main ones were in the centre. Outward therefrom were the slum terraces and factories of the Inner Ring, and along the radials former villages and hamlets created nodes of congestion, with their lines of shops and multiple intersections. There were 70 miles of tram routes, mostly radial: buses linked them and served the outlying estates. These were characterised by trees and grass verges and a paucity of amenities. The central areas had one pub for every 500 people, the outer ring for 5000: although more than half of the population now lived in the 1911-31 acquisitions, they had to travel to 'town' or the larger 'villages' for most of their needs and pleasures. Only 10 community centres had been provided, some of them being private. There were six theatres, but 80 cinemas were strategically placed all about the City. Sports fields, allotments - 1300 acres of them, much in demand in depression years - nurseries, tennis clubs, parks and recreation grounds, occupied large acreages in complete contrast to the grassless slums. In 1937 the first areas for comprehensive redevelopment were chosen, Highgate and Duddeston/Nechells. The most notable social change between the wars was the replacement of the old mixed districts by one-class areas: Camp Hill and Ladywood, e.g., became slums less through decay than through population shift. Hall Green, Yardley, Handsworth Wood, were developed for middle class mortgage-payers, and the council estates for artisans.

Tame and Rea works within the City made the streams, flowing now in artificial straightened and deepened channels, into little more than storm drains. The work extended from Bourn Brook to Minworth, and was completed by 1934. The Tame flood-meadows east of Nechells thus became available for building, and many factories were established along a new highway, Tyburn Road.

When war came and improvement work ended abruptly, only 30 miles of dual carriageway had been completed, a third of the Class A roads: many of these are still in the same stage of incompletion as in 1939.