Redevelopment of Birmingham

The Big City Plan is a major development plan for the city centre of Birmingham, England.

Stage 2 of the Big City Plan, the City Centre Masterplan was launched on 29 September 2010. This masterplan sets out how the city centre of Birmingham will be improved over the next 20 years. The plan identifies five key areas of development potentially worth £10 billion.

The aim of this ambitious plan will be to increase the size of the city core by 25%, improving transport connectivity throughout the seven ‘quarters’ that make up the city centre. It identifies how the city centre population will grow providing more than 5000 new homes and 50,000 new jobs, as well as the £600 million redevelopment of New Street Station, opened in September 2015, a new Library of Birmingham which opened in September 2013 and Eastside City Park which was opened in 2012, the first new city centre park since Victorian times. It also sets out visionary proposals in which each of the seven 'quarters' will be able to evolve.

The city was subject to a widespread regeneration effort following the Birmingham Blitz during World War II. This public demand for modern buildings, combined with Victorian architectural styles falling out of favour, resulted in dozens of fine Victorian buildings like the intricate glass-roofed Birmingham New Street Station, and the old Central Library being destroyed in the 1950s and 1960s by the city planners. These planning decisions were to have a profound effect on the image of Birmingham in subsequent decades, with the mix of concrete ring roads, shopping centres and tower blocks giving Birmingham a 'concrete jungle' tag. Sir Herbert Manzoni was made city engineer of Birmingham and his work included the construction of the Inner Ring Road, Middle Ring Road and the Outer Ring Road, which necessitated the purchase and clearance of vast areas of land. As well as this, he designated large areas of land redevelopment areas and set about clearing large areas of slums. The elevated roadways and the ring roads gave Birmingham the tag; "Britain's motor city". One commentator described Manzoni's vision of Birmingham as a "Godless, concrete urban hell", another a "brutalist, concrete-dominated slave to the motor car"".

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