Graham Young visits urban parkland that offers a rare sight in our built-up city environment.

You don’t have to get out of your car or off a bus to realise that Birmingham’s post-war planning decisions often defy common sense.

Simply travel outbound along the city’s Bristol Street gateway towards Edgbaston’s beautifully timeless inner city period properties.

En route, there’s the boxy Etap Hotel to your right, opposite the fancifully-named, horribly-dated Monaco House, with the open-sore ugliness of the new Opal student accommodation shortly to appear in front of you.

Turn right here for Lee Bank Middleway, the A4540 middle ring road stretching all the way from the Bristol Road to Five Ways.

Sporting the obese girth of a motorway, it’s all too easy to drive uphill without a second thought.

Turn quickly left on to Ryland Road and Lee Crescent and stop for a walk, though, and you’ll be able to better appreciate one Birmingham’s most important conservation areas complete with a collection of beautifully mature trees and a panorama rare in our built environment.

Nearby, Lee Crescent is a row of gorgeous Georgian houses.

It’s hard to imagine that your view to the other side of the six-lane Lee Bank Middleway would have once been towards 19th century back-to-back houses collectively known as Holloway Head.

Second World War bomb damage was seen as a good reason to replace them with tower blocks, low-rise flats and properties as horrible as they sound – maisonettes.

By the 1990s, the renamed Lee Bank (later Middleway) area was considered a slum, with health and social problems to match.

The Optima Community Housing Association then helped to produce a new plan for Attwood Green, named after Birmingham’s first MP, Thomas Attwood.

Under reconstruction for most of this century, the old Lee Bank is no more.

The area’s new collection of designer apartments is referred to as Park Central, an ongoing, award-winning community-led project started from scratch.

At its heart are Moonlit and Sunset Parks, offering a recreational area the combined size of five football pitches.

While you might not be in New York’s Central Park, the exciting playgrounds and celestial views on a clear night suggest that you could be in central Los Angeles.