A city of the future

Mar 7 2007 Perspective

Olympic rowing on the Pershore Lake, award-winning architecture and a five-star hotel. Paul Dale imagines the Birmingham 20 years into the future, if Professor Parkinson's city centre masterplan visioning study was acted upon.

March 2027: It is difficult to imagine now, standing in Digbeth High Street and gazing towards the city centre skyline across what used to be the bland sheds of wholesale markets, quite what Birmingham looked like 20 years ago.

The markets are long gone, relocated to a more accessible out-of-town site. In their place, glistening in the morning sun, is the splendour of Pershore Lake – to many, the lasting legacy of the 2007 Parkinson Report, which mapped out Birmingham's rise to international status and ended once and for all any argument over which British city should rank as the most important after London.

The huge man-made lake – bounded by Pershore Street, Bradford Street, Moat Lane and Upper Dean Street – was made possible by the extension of the city's canal system and is the largest inland marina in England. On any day you will see scores of colourful narrow boats and yachts, many owned by those savvy enough to have bought the 2,000 luxury apartments dotted around the lake.

In the summer months, hundreds of tonnes of imported sand give Birmingham its own version of Paris' famous artificial beach along the Seine, complete with deck chairs and sun loungers. The tourism potential led to the rapid growth of high quality eating places and bars around the edge, enabling the city to acquire its first three-star Michelin restaurant specialising rather aptly in fish.

Birmingham has the fastest growing residential property values, and intends to use the lake as the venue for rowing events if its bid to stage the 2036 Olympics is successful. The track events will be at the magnificent City of Birmingham Stadium and Sports Village on the former Wheels site at Saltley. Birmingham City play here, although the 75,000-seat capacity is superfluous.

A rival Olympic bid by London/Milton Keynes is thought to stand little chance as a result of the appalling traffic congestion in the South-east, where emergency Government measures have banned all but essential car-borne travel between 7am and 9am and 4pm and 6pm.

Birmingham will promote its bid off the back of the 50-minute rail express service between Euston and a vastly improved New Street Station, finally completed two years late in 2015.

Dominating the skyline from Digbeth High Street are three striking inter-connecting 60-storey towers between New Street Station and Smallbrook Queensway, winners of the Sterling Award for architecture. Planning permission was finally given in 2020 after the Civil Aviation Authority withdrew long-standing objections to tall structures close to the flightpath to Birmingham Airport.

The towers are home to high quality offices, apartments and Birmingham's first five-star hotel.

Also in Digbeth is the Birmingham Institute for Sustainable Technologies, which recently won £150 million of Government funding and has been recognised as the leading venue of its kind in Europe.

In a neat contrast, the remains of the original 12th century Birmingham manor house have been rescued from underneath the wholesale markets and moved near Millennium Point, where they were painstakingly restored and are now attracting more than 300,000 visitors a year.

All these initiatives were made possible by the structural reforms recommended in the Parkinson Report. Central was the establishment in 2008 of a City Development Company, a public-private body including representatives from the city council and regional development agency.

With specific powers and responsibility for overseeing regeneration, the CDC was able to persuade the Government to allow it to tap into the council's huge property portfolio. By borrowing against its assets, the CDC was able to build up a £10 billion war chest to deliver economic development on a grand scale.

The second important reform was the emergence of the Birmingham Universities Partnership, bringing together for the first time Birmingham, Aston the UCE universities, the colleges of further education, the RDA and the council in a Knowledge Capital Initiative designed to exploit the potential of knowledge industries to the local economy and city centre.

The partnership has three aims: to increase innovation for research science and knowledge; benefit the people of Birmingham by offering employment, education and training; creating an environment for knowledge-intensive business success, quality of life and cultural openness.

The fruits can be seen clearly by the rapid expansion of the Eastside Learning Quarter, where it was recently announced all R&D units have been let and a two-year waiting list exists. Eastside has also, since 2012, been home to the City of Birmingham Library and Art Gallery bringing to an end 12 years of argument about where the replacement for the Central Library should be.

The additional space offered means the city can display much of the artistic treasures previously in storage, effectively operating two major art galleries at Eastside and Chamberlain Square.

The vigour with which city centre development has been approached in the past two decades spread, innevitably, to Birmingham's suburbs. In particular, the A38 Technology corridor, exemplified by the science parks standing on what was the MG Rover plant at Longbridge, has bought new wealth and jobs to a previously down-at-heel part of the city.

It goes without saying the Parkinson Report wasn't just about grand projects. Significantly, it underlined the urgent need for Birmingham to improve its "urban grain" by exploiting the gritty industrial qualities of Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter. The Custard Factory is now at the centre of a fast-growing creative industries quarter led by the World Arts Centre – a celebration of Birmingham's ethnic diversity.

By relaxing its stranglehold on markets, another Parkinson recommendation, the council allowed a planned expansion of street trading ranging from the Friday and Saturday flower market in the pedestrianised Colmore Row to the daily jewellery market on the site of the former AE Harris factory in Northwood Street.

The Jewellery Quarter has also benefited from the council's rent subsidy scheme for independent traders, introduced in 2009 to lure small shopkeepers back. As a result, a growing number of former industrial premises in the Jewellery Quarter are at the centre of a thriving second-hand book store, music shop and antiques trade. On the other side of the city, responding to demand from well-heeled residents in the Pershore Lake apartments, a number of delicatessens, patisseries and independent butchers have opened.

The Balti Quarter has been transformed, thanks to investment from the CDC. The School of Sino-Asian Cuisine, which attracted 1,500 students in its first year, is surrounded by up-market Asian fashion shops.

The Gay Quarter, condemned in the Parkinson Report as unattractive and dirty, has been the beneficiary of substantial public and private investment. It ranks alongside Manchester in terms of spending power generated by the pink pound.

And who would have believed, in response to Professor Parkinson's call for street festivals, Birmingham would stage the annual European buskers championships in the Bullring? It is just one of many popular events in World Arts Week, which includes a celebration of Birmingham's celebrated film-making industry.

All in all, an amazing transformation for a city that once spent 12 years arguing about where to build a library.

>> Previous articles on the Birmingham Masterplan by Professor Michael Parkinson