Future of cities: How Birmingham got its groove back
Cities are difficult to manage and live in, particularly if they are car-dominated, rundown and sprawling. Only two minutes' walk from Birmingham's ugly central New Street station, a shopper is plunged into areas of semi-abandoned buildings, derelict land and noisy, unkempt, over-wide roads with fast traffic menacing pedestrians. For low-income families, these inner areas are deeply inhospitable. Richer people simply don't stay.
Cities like Birmingham long ago lost their charm through rapid industrial growth, but gained huge wealth, population and prestige. Their chaotic conditions were tamed over a relatively brief half century of civic intervention. Nevertheless, cities in the 20th century retained their image as too big, too bad and too ugly, driving out indigenous populations while attracting migrants, who after the second world war came to Birmingham in increasing numbers from the Caribbean, India, Kashmir, Pakistan and elsewhere.
Birmingham gained prestige by building Rolls Royce cars and developing spaghetti junctions to accommodate them. Massive demolitions of the old industrial "slums" during the 20th century led to giant council-estate buildings, leading Birmingham to boast that it had more tower blocks, more densely packed, than anywhere else in the country. This "New Jerusalem" broke down as Birmingham lost jobs and wealth but retained its increasingly lowincome, ethnically divided population.
The draining problems of deindustrialisation and suburbanisation, followed by brutal privatisation drives in the 1980s, left cities like Birmingham thinned out, dispersed and polarised as inequality intensified, and alarming signs of incipient ghettoes emerged. Disorder, vandalism, antisocial behaviour and crime rose as Birmingham in the 80s and 90s became a turbulent and tense place.
Yet today, a decade of intense regeneration is pulling the city into the new world of knowledge-based services and hi-tech engineering. Birmingham has become the international headquarters for major companies alongside financial, legal, retail and cultural enterprises. It has also become a major host for international business conventions, music and the arts.
This summer, Birmingham took another bold turn, holding a week-long climate change festival to promote a lowcarbon future. Its engineering, scientific and manufacturing roots have put it ahead in hydrogen technology, decentralised renewable energy and retrofitting buildings. It is the first city to boast a hydrogenpowered canal boat for one of the most extensive and dense networks of urban canals in Europe. The canals themselves boast not just yuppie flats but also water transport, school and youth parties learning the skills of boating and environmental care.
Birmingham is fighting the loss of family vitality in its core areas and a skills gap among its large, redundant industrial workforce that hampers its renewed enterprise culture. It is also struggling to close the gap between its highly separated ethnic groups. But England is more crowded than before; cities offer an attractive alternative in an energy-constrained world. So Birmingham's poor inner-neighbourhoods, its under-used old buildings, and its decayed streets are becoming assets again in our crowded country.
Anne Power is professor of social policy at the London School of Economics and member of the government's Urban Task Force