REDEVELOPMENT 1

The 'Holmes' Estate on Garrison Lane was an early flats development (1929). Nine years later the St. Martin's Estate was let in Highgate. After forty years of decline it was demolished. By '37 the concept of total clearance and rebuilding had replaced the sporadic and piecemeal replacement policy : a large part of Duddeston and Nicholas had been designated as the first Redevelopment Area. It was a crowded and decaying district of dwellings (80 to the acre) with embedded industry. Planning went on during World War II : the 'Blitz & Blight' Act of '44 permitted compulsory purchase and redevelopment of slum and bombed areas. From '47 the whole city was subject to Council planning powers.

Four other 'New Towns' were designated : their names, chosen by competition and historically fitting, were Highgate, Lee Bank, Ladywood, these three stretching for 2.5 miles from Moseley Road to Dudley Road, and Newtown, largest of all. The proposed Middleway would join the five areas. To them other districts were added from '55, eventually totalling 13 General Improvement Areas.

In the five zones clearance was almost total, only churches and listed buildings surviving - even the street plan was truncated if not completely changed. Neighbourhood units, containing all necessary amenities and services, are separated from industry and each other by green ribbons with trees, rubble mounds turfed over, and play areas. Collector roads ring the units, to which there is limited access except on foot. Designed to house half the former population, the dwellings of necessity include many tall towers. These are scenically dramatic but unpopular with their residents. No more were built after 1970, but by then more than 400 punctuated the city's skyline.

The New Towns were built in two decades from the later '50's. Smaller replacements and new estates were going up from a decade earlier : at Salford the Holte Estate; at Tile Cross, Shard End, Kingshurst (outside the city boundary); and on bombsites elsewhere. On the new eastern highway, the Meadway, a shopping precinct for new suburbs thereabout, was the forerunner of others at Kingstanding, Erdington, Northfield, etc. Lyndhurst, 38 acres, seven towers and other blocks, was a 1960 estate with its own facilities replacing early Victorian villas and gardens.

Highgate and New Town incorporates a park and descends the east bank of the Rea. Lee Bank has the sunny west bank and the most spectacular vistas: low early blocks look very dated in contrast to the clean lines of the last towers. Ladywood has attractive mid-Victorian villas to contrast with modern rectangles : their stark outlines are softened by mature trees, both retained and planted. Newtown's great amenity complex has been denied success by the recession which started at its completion. In all the areas hundreds of small firms in cheap premises went out of business at the clearance. Post-'70's estates contrast with earlier ones in lacking towers : long brown-brick blocks of four storeys and short off-street terraces substitute for them.

Denied New Towns beyond its green belt, Birmingham planned them on its borders. Castle Vale and Chelmesley Wood had been started when Telford and Redditch were approved.

In the General Improvement Areas selective demolitions are made and what remains is refurbished. The aim is to avoid that destruction of communities which was the worst feature of redevelopment. Some fine houses and terraces from the early C19th have been and are being restored. The endless terraces of Middle Ring 'Byelaw Houses' are given new roofs and garden walls and bathrooms are built on. Rows and streets are cleared to create open spaces. Bright paint is economic, thanks to the Clean Air Act. Community centres, adventure playgrounds, trees, and restricted access aim to bring the advantages of redevelopment without its drawbacks.

Twelve Conservation Areas have been designated about the city : their present character is to be preserved, and change will be strictly controlled. They are :- St. Paul's Square, Colmore Row (including Bennetts Hill and Waterloo Street), Lee Crescent and St. James's (both in east Birmingham), Aston Hall Park, Yardley Village, Harborne and Northfield Villages, Bournville, King's Norton Village Green, and Harborne Tenants' Estate. Much of the twelfth area has been cleared, the Brewmaster's House in St. Peter's Place has been restored, but the Brasshouse on Broad Street is sadly neglected. These are two of 389 individual listed buildings which deserve preservation. The Calthorpe Estate is being redeveloped privately, with commercial buildings near Five Ways and town-house cul-de-sacs in former mansion grounds.

Twenty main roads funnel into the tiny city centre : much of the traffic upon them has no business there. Since '33 there have been several one-way systems designed to keep wheels moving, and economic trams had to be replaced by costly 'buses because they held up the flow. A plan of '43 to divert cross-city traffic around an Inner Ring road was carried out - with drastic alterations - from the Fifties. 85 acres were acquired, of which half would be available for commercial building.

The Ringway was intended from the start to be a compromise between a shopping and amenity street and an urban motorway, with six surface junctions : improved streets would cross the centre. Smallbrook Ringway was first built, as a double shopping row with parking : but ever-increasing traffic brought changes. Grade separation had to be provided at the intersections (except for St. Martin's Circus where railway tunnels made it impossible), and access was limited. To speed A38 traffic (Worcester - Lichfield), a half-mile tunnel was made from Paradise Circus to lower Great Charles Street.

At Lancaster Circus three levels were made, the third to give flyover access to Aston Expressway. Three pedestrian bridges only are supplemented by 52 subways : the circuses should be attractive oases with their gardens and murals, but many subways are disused for fear of muggers. The Ringway was completed in '71, and inadvertently re-named by Her Majesty : she thought she was naming the whole road and not merely the tunnel. So 'Queensway' it is, and pink with pride - except where W. M. C. C. has insisted on repairing it with black tarmac !

The radial approaches to Queensway have been slowly improved. In '55 the first major post-war project was the dualling of Deritend/Digbeth. St. Chad's, Old Square, and Masshouse Circuses link both sides of Queensway to Corporation Street as intended : but the widening of Colmore Row to provide another chord road has been abandoned - along with the demolition once proposed which would have made a green swath between Cathedral and Town Hall.