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It’s all been a bit quiet online about the Big City Plan for a while now. Other than Birmingham Central’s summaries, I haven’t seen much (maybe I’m looking in the wrong place?).
I was beginning to think I was never going to get any text content to get my teeth into to start some online dialogue of what this thing is all about.
A lot of people I speak to either don’t know about it, think it’s already happened or think it’s not for them - wrong on all counts!
Yesterday I went to an update briefing by Philip Singleton who’s one of the main people in charge of the plan - here’s a summary of what was said online about it. I was tweeting some of it from the front row, but it was unclear what I was allowed to publish and what I wasn’t. Here’s the thrust of it in micro-blogs and text notes from my iPhone. Philip tells me that the presentation he gave is going to be online with him doing a voiceover recording too (not sure when).
Top things to know about the Big City Plan
The Big City Plan is going out to ‘public consultation’ for eight weeks starting December 12th.
This means that anyone can have a say in the plan for the next 25 years of Birmingham. Yes - I mean anyone. And that means that everyone should be interested.
This is a unique opportunity to say what you want our city to be like in the future.
Quite seriously, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for anyone who’s passionate about Birmingham to have a say in what we need to make the place better.
This isn’t just a plan for where we put the roads and buildings.
Since early on it was clear to me that this plan isn’t just about the built environment, it’s about the experience of living in the city, the concept of the place, the culture, the people that live here and designing systems and structures that enable us to live better lives here. What really really worried me was when I actually got laughed at around the table (some pretty clued up people I would have thought) for using the word Psychogeography. And no offence to Phil for not knowing what it is but if the planners don’t even know what this means then how can there possibly any real thinking on mixing artistic ideas into the plan. It seems to me we need some artists and creative people to take a look at this plan and come up with some unexpected ideas. I still go back to Sandra Hall’s idea of the Mistressplan in response to what was then being called the Masterplan.
They love bloggers.
They are very interested in now getting lots of people discussing the plan. I made the point that at the time of the last consultation like this (1988) the medium had to be printed sheets of paper. In 2008 the medium _has_ to be at last in part digital - and lets face it, bloggers are getting more traffic than the big boys with the deep pockets in this city nowadays.
The case has been made for Creativity - what do we want now?
We’ve all been working hard to make sure that creativity is included in all of the city’s thinking and decision-making. There’s still a lot of talk about ‘the creative quarters’, but Philip said that to support the creative industries in Birmingham it’s not about building buildings and planning, it’s about economic policy. So we’re on the radar as being important - now the challenge is on us to decide what interventions (or lack of) would be good to help us to continue to grow.
They like the idea of a Creative Director.
We’ve been talking about this one for a while now, and we have Michael Wolff coming to give a masterclass this evening (5.30pm at Fazeley Studios - free). Big news for this idea! Does it have legs then?
I’m concerned about how they’re going to use the web.
With apologies to the team, the Big City Plan website so far seems to have been hampered by a lack of content being generated through the planning process, and we’re left with a very dry, not updated, RSS-free site that whilst well structured and accessible is not really pushing out new content regularly. With the consultation happening in only three weeks and a new site being launched, I guess we hope that it’ll be whizz-bangy in the smart use of free tools. But you know how it goes - councils move slowly. [Update: just spoke to Debra Davis who's in charge of communications for the council. They are going to be using Limehouse to support a formal consultation process through web and mobile, that gets fed into a structured process for collating formal responses to the consultation. I'm guessing the tool isn't conversational in approach, so is this where we fit in as bloggers? To provide the online conversation/debate, and then have some formal responses end up being submitted either individually or as a group? ]
How about we do something ourselves?
They’ve asked for consultation - I say we give them consultation! There are some very smart and opinionated people in this city, and I think that getting us together to pool our thinking would be amazing. And with something as easy to understand as “What do you want Birmingham in 25 years to be like?” and huge issues like sustainability, transport, fuel crisis, energy, food, population, technology, communications, education, where we live, what we want from our public spaces, culture, creativity and lots more to consider this feels like one for the bloggers to really get our teeth into.
What would be the right online tool to pool opposing opinions on the plan?
I’m expecting the responses to the plan to be in the form of some kind of questionnaire, maybe some video clips to spark conversation, and maybe a blog or two. Early on a few of us suggested a wiki as a way of getting discussion going. John Bounds pointed out on Twitter that a wiki wouldn’t be the best way, but perhaps we should think about some other format and using my new rapid web startup tools throw it together and see what happens. I think of it as the internet community responding to the plan and saying what we think should happen. I mean - for Pete’s sake (literally) why haven’t we got free city-wide WIFI yet?
So who’s in?
I’m putting this out there just to see what the response is, but the idea of a concerted, unexpected and exciting online response I think is a valid one. I put a few messages on Twitter and got a great response from the people I’m friends with on there. But that’s quite a small group of people! If you’re interested in what I’m talking about, leave a comment below and we’ll see what we can make happen. I’ll also be talking about this at the Social Media Cafe on Friday if anyone wants to chat about it.
Here’s what I said on Twitter:
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We have one big opp to say what we want our city to be like in 25 years. Fountains? Squares? Art gallery? Music venues? Everything
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To explain. Big options and issues. Whole neighboutroods and areas to be redeveloped. Creative used about ten times in the presentation
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Once I know more about what’s happening with big city plan we will throw up an open source site with everything there for us to respond to
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there is an eight week period starting ok 12 dec where we can all influence the plan for the next 25 years of the city. Who’s up for it?
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Philip Singleton who’s running the big city plan thinks that a creative director or otganistion to do that is an excellent idea
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@deplorableword yes. Philip singleton says that there is a 12 pager, short videos and a new site coming. I think we should build a wiki!
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At big city plan briefing. New website soon and public consultation on 12 December. Any questions before it goes out? They like bloggers
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And here are the responses:
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ironmanrecords @aeioux you mentioned fountains, squares, music venues so you should mention big city plan web idea you talked about at music network
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cybrum @aeioux hi, do you know anyone who went to this; http://tinyurl.com/6aw2re
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emilyquinton @aeioux As this is the city I have spent most of my life (so far!) I feel I should be involved with this. Tell me more later!
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ironmanrecords @aeioux can you come to music network meeting on Thursday and put your case?
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nicklockey @aeioux #sxswm Just added my (rather lengthy) two-penneth’s worth to the SXSWM planning discussion http://tinyurl.com/68soaf
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deplorableword @aeioux a cash machine in digbeth, OMG my mind will explode!
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editorialgirl @aeioux Sounds handy. Yeah, count me in too.
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getgood @aeioux Me, I’m up for. @peteashton See you & everyone at Social Media surgery in a bit, though not sure I’ve much knowledge to impart!
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RichBatsford @aeioux put that way its hard to ignore, tho Im always a bit suspicious of what looks like “big lever pulling”. Xx
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johnmostyn @aeioux yep go on then. @peteashton see you there.
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claireprocter
 @aeioux Sounds interesting. Big City Plan? How are they opening up the process for those outside the council to have influence? |
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deplorableword @aeioux is this stuff up for debate, or is it simply telling us whats going to happen?
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BhamPostJoanna @aeioux Yay for Philip Singleton! I agree!
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bounder @aeioux is the site going to have a blog? and better still something like http://interactive.dius.gov…
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deplorableword @aeioux can a normal person find out what’s going our without diving into a 300 page pdf report?
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Anyone else interested? Leave me a comment and let’s see what we can make happen.
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10 Comments
Sorry I missed your live tweeting yesterday, but good to chat to you last night.
You can definitely count me in for this. I won’t be at Social Media Cafe on Friday, but please keep me in the loop.
Excellent. Yep, count me in. I’ll be at the SMC on Friday.
I think it’s an awesome idea, how exactly do the plan to filter in
I think it’s an awesome idea, but how exactly do the plan to filter in all the responses? If I strongly want something, how is that going to affect the plan overall?
I have views on things. I also have views out of my window. Both are relevant. Count me in.
I’ve used the Limehouse tool for the recent BCC Core Strategy consultation (aka should we build on the green belt - where were the bloggers for that one?) - it’s essentially an online form. There is an option for your responses to be visible to others but it’s not really social media. The advantage (for the council) is that it structures your replies so they don’t have to plough through the responses picking out the ideas.
Thank you for restoring my faith in the project! Up to now I’ve been feeling rather used and abused.
I’m in.
This sounds great - but is it of interest mainly to those who are all gadgeted up and connected? Can you think of a format that can be ported to paper, to community bulletin boards, to people on buses and in pubs? It would be really swell to have new media serve as a means for harvesting a much broader spectrum of input.
Great! Thanks everyone. I had another chat with Debra Davis from the city council last night (separate blog about that) but she wants to offer a few things:
* Some thoughts on how to distill our thoughts into the process so that this isn’t just a waste of time for people - as Tom was saying above.
* An invitation to a group of bloggers/social media people who are interested in attending the mid-way conference in January where lots of interesting people will be talking about these issues.
* A link from their site to whatever we set up
* To give us a challenge - not everyone is online, so what’s special about the online community - what’s the big challenge we could address?
* She said if we wanted to produce anything - video, recorded conversations, text, photos, maps, whatever that we should send them to her.
My response: we’re all just going to tag stuff ‘bigcityplan’. Hope that’s cool with everyone? (only 131 results on Google as of today)
Re: Limehouse - I’ve had a look and it looks more like a project/content management tool. I think our unique offer as a community is to host the conversation, and it’s all of our responsibilities to make the next couple of months a bit of a ‘not more of this surely!’ online theme and get lots of people talking.
Re: digital divide/buses/etc - I leave that entirely to the Big City Plan team. They’ve got marketing companies, PR agencies, web designers, printers, and most importantly budget. I see this as us asking ‘what can you do with free social media tools?’…
Hi Stef,
Been following this thread for a while now. I love the concept, and feel we need something similar for Cardiff. It’s growing at a phenomenal rate and it would be nice to think that this isn’t happening just taking infrastructure and tourism into account.
I’m also amazed that the concept of psychogeography was met with amusement. Surely a no-brainer?
Would love to chat to you about how you got this off the ground if you’re ever in town visiting Tom B.
Neil
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