REDEVELOPMENT AND RENEWAL

Demolitions for New Street and Snow Hill Stations in the early 1850's were the first slum clearances : the making of Corporation Street and the rebuilding of its side-streets swept away thousands of decayed dwellings, 1873 - 1903. Most of the centre had been rebuilt when World War I began. The first houses built by the City Council were in Ryder and Lawrence Streets, and a small flats estate in Milk Street, 1890 - 5. At that time 200,000 people were living in courts and yards, many in back-to-back houses : the less poor inhabited tunnel-back terraces in dreary straight streets. In 1906 the Birmingham Playgrounds Open Spaces and Playing Fields Association bought and cleared a noisome slum beside Garrison Lane and opened it as a recreation ground.

The Housing & Town Planning Act of 1909 gave the city powers to plan future development : the district of Quinton, taken in that year, provided the first exercise for the Town Planning Committee chaired by Neville Chamberlain. Housing, highways, transport, amenities and services could all be carefully devised.

Between 1913 and '31 Town Plans were produced for most of the newly-annexed districts. The city was zoned for industry, business, and residence. The aim was to keep factories out of intended housing areas, to allocate open space, to provide fast cheap public transport from suburbs to central workplaces.

In 1918 a scheme for wide arterial roads with tramtrack reservations ensured that new building would be set back to permit future widening. The suburbs were to be linked by trams on dual roads. Slum clearance was to begin when new housing estates were ready. The Committee could enforce its plans only where it owned the land, and huge purchases were made between the wars for roads, housing, schools, and parks : elsewhere it could persuade and advise.

The outbreak of war in '39 brought an abrupt end to many unfinished dual roads, and some have remained as they were, narrow lanes with green borders and old buildings which prevented widening. Intended cross-suburb highways and shopping-centre bypasses have been abandoned or postponed indefinitely. The circular tram-routes would have involved such demolition and cost that they were replaced by 'buses. Sutton New Road was opened in '38.

An Act of 1919 permitted the subsidising of Council house building. In two periods separated by the Depression 50,000 dwellings had been provided by the City, at low density (approx. 12 to the acre) in blocks of 2,4, and 6. They were all non-parlour 'cottage' houses, of varied styles but similar specifications. These estates of the Thirties were intended for displaced slum-dwellers. Huge areas such as Kingstanding became dormitory towns with few amenities until the Fifties.