Big City Plan is a signpost for success
Feb 5 2009 Agenda
As the Big City Plan consultation draws to a close Neil Rami, chief executive of Marketing Birmingham, looks at the challenges and opportunities for the visitor economy.
At a time when our minds are focussed on the very real challenges of today, it’s perhaps difficult to think about what Birmingham could be like a generation from now.
The Big City Plan has, however, generated a healthy debate and some interesting ideas. At its simplest, it’s about creating a liveable city. A city that people feel comfortable in, that marks the tides of time in equal measure with the optimism of the new.
A city that excites, delights, surprises and transforms whilst maintaining its own identity and authenticity. These are the attributes of a city people want to visit as much as live in.
For me, there are three main challenges in terms of re-thinking our city centre from a visitor perspective.
The first relates to arrival and way-finding. You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression and our gateways must create a greater sense of arrival.
The redevelopment of New Street Station is vital but what one sees beyond its entrance is as important. When you arrive at the Gare du Nord in Paris or New York’s Grand Central Terminal, you immediately feel you are connected to the daily working lives of those cities’ inhabitants.
Aside from the various challenges of improving our existing public transport infrastructure, we must also think carefully about how one can navigate the city as a newcomer on foot.
Consistent and co-ordinated signage is vital, as are connections across the many highways that segment and divide the city centre, if we are to allow people the true experience of discovery that other successful cities provide.
Secondly, I believe we must make much more of our existing built heritage and improve some of our tired public realm if we are to allow visitors the opportunity to better understand and appreciate what our city has to offer.
Many of our shop frontages cruelly disguise some of our most interesting and majestic buildings.
Some simple design guidelines on Corporation Street, New Street and parts of the Colmore Row area, for example, would undoubtedly change the look and feel of these major thoroughfares.
This can be achieved sympathetically as part of a wider plan as has been shown in Newcastle’s Grainger Town, Glasgow’s Merchant City and Liverpool’s Ropewalks.
We must also find creative and sustainable ways of illuminating these buildings and the spaces around them. Great cities have the capacity to utilise their assets flexibly at all times of the day and night. We must not lose that opportunity here.
The third, more complex, challenge is how we animate the city, providing a more visible expression of what is a rich and varied cultural offering.
There has been much talk during the consultation process about Birmingham’s various quarters and zones. However, it could be argued that those cities which feel the most vibrant and relevant tend not to over-control the local economy in any one area.
Prescribing certain uses and types of business can often deter rather than encourage the entrepreneur, artist and indeed city-dweller. What is perhaps more important is how we go about attracting and retaining people with talent to bring these areas to life.
Areas such as Le Marais in Paris and Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin offer spaces where artists can create and sell their work, developing into genuine ‘creative’ quarters.
Our own areas such as the Jewellery Quarter and Digbeth are attracting growing numbers of talented people who are keen to create a new narrative for the city. We must find new fiscal instruments to allow and encourage these people to develop their own independent enterprises.
We should also examine more imaginative ways of supporting smaller arts organisations and some of our niche festivals which, whilst cultivating new audiences and attracting international media interest, often find it an uphill struggle to present their work locally.
We must be committed to creating permanent spaces for these organisations, or we will lose their talent and their ambition.
Perhaps the changing nature of financial markets will require a new model for urban regeneration which no longer demands large-scale developer led schemes, but smaller more organic mixed-use developments, which in themselves will encourage more of the ‘fine grain’ that Professor Michael Parkinson urged us to retain and grow in his insightful report which preceded this plan.
Food provides another obvious connection between city and visitor. It has the ability to bring a city to life. One cannot ignore the colour and intensity of Barcelona’s many markets or the comedic theatre of Seattle’s Fish Market.
We have much to build on here. At the centre of the country, with Michelin -starred chefs and such an eclectic mix of cultures and produce to draw upon, we must find more visible ways of connecting our visitors to food.
This may well require the addition of more public spaces or more creative thinking in terms of the opportunities for local producers to access high footfall areas at attractive commercial rates.
None of these thoughts predicate against the need for new, bold statements of the city’s growth and indeed its international relevance.
There are huge opportunities to tell a fresh story of Birmingham with, for example, the City Library development and the proposal to create a new Contemporary Art Museum. These should be welcomed but not at the expense of building on what we already have.
There is much to be commended in The Big City Plan Work in Progress document. It has some interesting and imaginative ideas. Inevitably, the challenge will be finding the resources and the right means to implement them.
It is perhaps worth remembering that when the city centre is a place that people from all over the world want to visit, we may well have created a city that people really want to live in.
