Birmingham - Today and Tomorrow

In 1974 Birmingham joined Sutton Coldfield in a Metropolitan District still called 'the City of Birmingham' which retains most of the former Councils' powers except for major planning, highways and traffic, police, fire, health. Gas, electricity, and transport have already been taken away. The new District will be one of seven, the largest, in the West Midlands Metropolitan County, an area of nearly 200 square miles containing 2½ million people and including the whole conurbation - Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall, Warley/West Bromwich (Sandwell), SolihuIl and Coventry. This Authority will have regional powers and considerable autonomy. Water is to be controlled by wider regional boards, so that Birmingham will lose its Elan/Claerwen and Clywedog undertakings.

56.1. Map 34a

INDUSTRY. Birmingham's growth and prosperity have depended upon the adaptability of its people and its factories, and the diversity of its products. These protected the City from the worst effects of pre-war depressions. However, the policy of successive governments has been to permit expansion and new industry only in the national Development Areas: Birmingham has thus been deprived of participation in the growth of, e.g., plastics, man-made fibres, electronics, while losing many trades because of high costs and inability to expand here. Hundreds of small employers gave up because they could not afford to rent new premises after the old slum ones had been demolished. The result has been an increasing dependence upon vehicle and component production, so that a slump in the car trade or a strike is felt everywhere, and unemployment is relatively high. Factory sites and buildings are lying idle. Earlier, throughout the 50's there was considerable growth, notably at Mackadown, Kitts Green, Garretts Green, Acocks Green, Kings Norton, Shaftmoor, Longbridge, Woodgate. The trend has been towards the larger firm with mergers and redundancy. Family firms, notably Cadburys, have been taken over by national and international groups

CITY CENTRE. The original plan for the Broad Street complex will never be completed. A post-war one for the former canal basin has been abandoned, and the huge A.T.V. Centre is being built on the site. The new Library/School of Music complex will be finished, late, in 1975. The G.P.O. and adjacent area will be redeveloped in the next few years. Waterloo Street is to be preserved, so a plan for open space from Cathedral to Town Hall is shelved: the temporary lawn in Victoria Square may yet become permanent, however. The Grand Hotel is saved, and other Victorian blocks have been refurbished, so that the expected complete renewal of the centre will be delayed. Snow Hill Station site will be developed, but how is still uncertain. Hospital moves to Edgbaston will free valuable sites, but these may not necessarily become office towers: the Council has brought back people to the centre in the blocks beside James Brindley Walk and the Sentinel and Stephenson Towers, and other sites may be used for high-rise dwellings.

The central canals are to be landscaped to provide the waterside features the City lacks. There will be more traffic-free streets, paved, shrubbed, and tree'd: ultimately all traffic except service and supply vehicles will be able to penetrate the centre no further than the Ringway. There may be closures of whole rows of shops out of the mainstream of pedestrian flow.

MIDDLE RING. Some Victorian terraces of character will be restored to provide town houses for those wishing to avoid rush-hour commuting. More small flats and dwellings will be crammed onto sites near the centre. Multi-storey Comprehensive Schools will be inevitable due to the paucity of sites. Redevelopment will continue, but perhaps more slowly when all present designated areas are rebuilt or restored. Whatever the decision about throughways, radials and circular routes will be much more restricted, many access streets being blocked off: tidal flows will be in force, and right turns permitted at few junctions. Street parking will be largely forbidden. Small shops will continue to decline, despite the reviving of moribund shopping streets by Asian immigrants. Wherever redevelopment takes place the new structures will house more people than those they replace, whereas the aim hitherto has been to house half as many as were displaced. Multi-storey car-parks will be built near the radials.

OUTER RING. There will be little redevelopment but much infilling. Private sports grounds will be sold and overbuilt. Pressure to build on parks will be strong, when the last little pieces of land have been used for private or public building. There will be some road improvement, notably the Outer Ring Road, which may bypass old centres where junctions are specially awkward. Public transport may be rail-based much more than now: overhead or tube railways may yet be provided, especially for the south-west-north-east diagonal route. A fast route to Elmdon Airport may be tube, monorail, or helicopter: a heliport has been suggested for a canopied St. Andrew's stadium in Bordesley. Parkways, connecting valleys and providing green ribbons about the City, with lakes both for amenity and flood control will be well advanced, but the central rivers will not be pleasantly rural for many years. Long-term proposals for development are based on the principle of relatively high-density areas in the outer suburbs, well separated from each other, clustered about high-speed public transport routes to the centre.

These are predictions based on present trends and published plans. But if conditions of life in Birmingham change as much during the next decades as during the past two, they may require drastic revision to remain reasonable.

56.2. Map 35a

56.3. Map 36a