As I’ve said in a previous post, I’ve been invited to be part of Birmingham’s ‘City Team’ which is a group of people brought together to come up with big ideas for how Birmingham might change for the better over the coming ten to twenty-five years as part of a ‘masterplanning’ process being branded as “The Big City Plan”.
To kick things off, the consultants charged with making this plan happen decided to get us all in a room for two days in a TED/Davos style event with presentations from exciting speakers on a broad range of themes that Birmingham should be addressing.
I was one of the speakers and also attended the full two days and I’m going to put my notes here as blog posts, and I’ll be tagging them all “Big City Plan“.
Suffice to say, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inform how a city of the scale of Birmingham redesigns itself for the pressures, challenges and opportunities of the coming decade and I think it’s important that I write about it.
I've just read the article Space Invader (p. 107-8, Wallpaper*, January 2008) about Italian developer Alessanfro Cajrati Crivelli and Phillips de Pury. The article discusses their approach to redevelopment in Milan and Howick Place, London, and whilst the article's only a starting point, I thought they might be really interesting people to bring on board as consultants for 'The Big City Plan?'... Just a thought...
I just remembered a great idea that someone told me ages ago - I can't take credit for it (I believe the original idea was from the director of a local art gallery). Anyway the current central library (a fine example of brutalist architecture etc), that is likely to be knocked down etc, but instead the idea would be to paint it white and turn it Birmingham's museum of modern art. To me this is the most simple and fantastic idea and saves a building which is of architectural interest (albeit ugly to our current ways of seeing).
And one other thing. A friend of mine was up from London the other week and was really stunned by the quantity of chains in Brindly place (chain pubs/resturants/bars) her comments were something like 'it feels like a theme park' - I know others have commented on this, lack of independent places etc.. but it has that 'leisure place by numbers'.
Birmingham – the Big City Plan “City Team”
As I’ve said in a previous post, I’ve been invited to be part of Birmingham’s ‘City Team’ which is a group of people brought together to come up with big ideas for how Birmingham might change for the better over the coming ten to twenty-five years as part of a ‘masterplanning’ process being branded as “The Big City Plan”.
To kick things off, the consultants charged with making this plan happen decided to get us all in a room for two days in a TED/Davos style event with presentations from exciting speakers on a broad range of themes that Birmingham should be addressing.
I was one of the speakers and also attended the full two days and I’m going to put my notes here as blog posts, and I’ll be tagging them all “Big City Plan“.
Suffice to say, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inform how a city of the scale of Birmingham redesigns itself for the pressures, challenges and opportunities of the coming decade and I think it’s important that I write about it.