The 1952 Birmingham Big City Plan

By David Harte on May 16, 08 11:13 AM in Planning

The library here at Birmingham City University is a model of efficiency nowadays. It emails you on the day that your books are supposed to go back and then lets you renew them online when you realise that you haven't looked at said books since the day you got them out. So it is with The 1952 City of Birmingham Development Plan.

This is as dry a document as you could hope to find. I got it out last November as I was pondering what earlier incarnations of the Birmingham Big City Plan had looked like. Given that the inner ring road is now widely recognised as a mistake, where's the document that outlines why it was needed in the first place. How clearly was the case made for it, how emotive was the language used? But since late last year there seems to have been little public discussion of the new plan as Stef Lewandowski has noted on this site. No wonder I'd let it drift.

But I've done the reading on this now and despite the rather plain, austere layout (this was 1952 after all - at the end of the Age of Austerity) the 1952 plan is by far the more exciting document. In fact it has what the new charter document lacks, it has tangible facts to get stuck into and major post-war problems to deal with. If you like, the new one's all theory where the 1952 plan is all practice.

In the new plan we have 20 'Big Ideas' with slightly awkward tag lines like 'FamilyCity', 'UniverCity', 'Move Local', 'Street Local'. You won't find any such fancy terms being bandied about in 1952. Instead you get a list of 18 'problems':

"Problem no. 14: Relief of Traffic congestion in the City Centre. It is intended to carry out the major portion of an Inner Ring Road scheme

And with those words Birmingham handed over the reins to the Public Works committee (full schedule in appendix 2 of the document) and the ring road was built over the next 5 to 15 years. No fancy words, no attractive typographical flourishes, it was a problem that simply needed a solution. Okay, yes I know what followed strangled our poor city for years to come but one has to admire the flourish with which these post-war problems were dealt with.

The 1952 plan was for the subsequent 20 year period just as the new one is. In contrast to the authoritative tone of the first one (the words 'compulsory purchase order' are mentioned an awful lot) the latter seems all about careful persuasion and gentle nudging, that somehow the idea of refocusing our lives around the local is such a hard concept to grasp for most of us that it needs repeating in ten of the Big Ideas. Yes we get it - local shops good, out of town retail parks bad.

In 1952 the sheer volume of inner-city post-war housing sites needing redevelopment (either through bomb damage or the need to renew very poor quality housing) ended up pushing the population to the edges of the city or into overspill towns. The concept of 'Live Local', 'Work Local', wasn't an option for planners. The need to bring people from those cities and suburbs into the centre resulted in major road building. I can't find one mention of the role of public transport in the old plan - where there's a traffic problem the solution is a road-building one.

Yet for all the planning mistakes we can see being worked through there's a refreshing pragmatism about the 1952 plan. We worry now about failing to act to ensure Birmingham is seen as a world-class city (or to be in the top 25 of the Mercer Index) but back then if we failed to act quickly enough we would have had citizens without homes to live in or schools to learn in or open spaces to play in (surprisingly both the latter two points are talked about in detail). We were ahead of the game in thinking through the consequences of increased car ownership and acted decisively in ensuring our streets weren't clogged with them and business could get from A to B swiftly and profitably. Practical, tough decisions made back then helped us grow to where we are now.

Clearly the new plan is at the stage of kicking around some concepts rather than detailed infrastructure planning and we'll wait and see what emerges from the rather quiet consultation period we're in. But as we await the Business Plan, the Delivery Plan, the Area Action Plans, what we wouldn't give for our municipal forefathers' expediency.

On my trip to the library I also dug out some plans from the 70s and early 80s (pre-dating the fabled Highbury Initiative). I make mention of them on my own blog

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2 Comments

Paul Groves said:

Thanks. I really enjoyed this (and the stuff on your own blog).

I can't help thinking that, so far at least, the 2008 Big City Plan has been a triumph of style over substance.

It would be great to get some genuinely open and productive conversations going on it, but then do the architects of the plan really want to listen?

As you say, the 1952 version has a no-nonsense feel about it and they simply identified the key problems and set about tackling them.

Mistakes might well have been made, but at least they tried. We now seem to be just stuck in limbo where everyone talks a good fight but is wary of getting stuck in because they might fail.

Too often these days the likes of BCC appear frightened of creativity and innovation and too scared of losing political points by trying something.

The pursuit of style over substance and the blame culture have been allowed to stifle progress in Birmingham.

May 16, 2008 4:49 PM

sid langley said:

Fascinating, and presented in such a way that even arty types like wot I am can grasp it. I think the whole thing shows the contrasting styles of local politics then and now - today, as Grovesy says, it's all about style,spin and petty short-term political advantage.

May 16, 2008 11:36 PM