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Birmingham's Image And Status

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Yes Mike, but what about the esthetic's for the area,? and visual impression on the visiting public and local population, my dad used to take me there as a kid and I often visited as a youth, and the gardens were always very much used by the population, they were pretty, neat & tidy and a piece of quietness in the centre of bustle. I just think it sad, that your elected corporation lack the foresight and finesse, for there subjects, as Nico says, (jobsworths), just there to pay the mortgage, rather than serve with idealism, as the great Victorian did.
 
Thank you Morturn, it's magicall! I never see the City at night. I love the way "Our Bull" is watching everything go by.
rosie.
 
Thank you so much for sharing this with us all. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Great piece of technical work. Thanks again.
 
That's lovely - what a change from the useless graffiti we usually get!
Very talented young men.
 
Congratulations Morturn, great video. Just watched it on F/B. I hope all the people that go out of their way to belittle our great city see this.
 
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Nice one Morturn, let's hope the "knockers" of our fine City take a good look at what we have.
jimbo
 
I must say that any survey that nominates Johannesburg as the number one destination in the world has to be suspect.
 
The nominations are not in any particular order, and towns like Johannesburg are now, thankfully recovering from a very disturbing period of conflict.
 
I took this photo in Birmingham today.

The tall tower on the left was designed by John Madin, who designed the old library. This tall tower is also due to be demolished (and replaced by an even taller tower).

To the right of the Cathedral is the Post Office tower, and to the right of that is the Grand Hotel which is being fully renovated, and here is having a new roof fitted to it.

 
guilbert53, lovely photo, the good,( the Cathederal) the bad,( the tower) and the getting better, (new roof for the Grand)
 
jimbo said:
guilbert53, lovely photo, the good,( the Cathederal) the bad,( the tower) and the getting better, (new roof for the Grand)
Click to expand...

While the old Nat West Tower is due to be knocked down, sadly they plan to replace it with an ever larger tower.

I find that rather sad as most of the buildings in and around Colmore Row are only a few floors so this building will stick out like a sore thumb.

Have a look at the View Gallery photos on this web page to see how awful it looks, particularly the view from Victoria Square with the Council House in the foreground.

https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/bu...y/new-vision-natwest-tower-demolition-8855786

Click on this link for a drawing of how it may look

https://i3.birminghampost.co.uk/bus....ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/103-CR-Vic-Sq-view.jpg
 
This is one of many watercolours I have painted of the Cathedral over the years, notice I selected a view that does not show the tower. EricJulie St Philips.JPG
 
cookie273uk said:
This is one of many watercolours I have painted of the Cathedral over the years, notice I selected a view that does not show the tower. Eric
Click to expand...

I think the poster above was complaining about the NatWest tower (which you HAVE included) and not the Post Office tower.

I think the NatWest tower is an ugly building (sadly another ugly John Madin building)
 
Hi All,

Birmingham has long been considered Englands second city with London the first of course. I now ask "Is this still the case?" We have a brand new library in a modern building but by all accounts it is failing to work as a library and it is being given the thumbs down by members of this forum who use it.

The Motor Show left the NEC and returned to London. The main part of the BBC has left B'ham and set up in Manchester in an area they call Media City Several cities e.g Manchester and Nottingham now have excellent tram services whilst B'ham is just starting to improve its service. It used to have its own B'ham City Transport but that is long gone.

I ask again. "Is Birmingham still the Second City?" I have my doubts.

Old Boy
 
I was born in London and spent the first 30 years there, and have now lived in Birmingham/Solihull for the last 30 or so, so I am in a reasonable position to comment on Birmingham.

A couple of years ago there was a documentary series which went round all the major cities in England and looked at their history, why they were built there, and why they grew.

Most major cities grew for a reason, be it Sheffield and its steel, Liverpool a major port, Manchester its cotton trade and so on. And of course people will GO to a city when it is growing and there is work and money to be made, and they will LEAVE a city when the work goes and therefore the jobs and money goes.

Birmingham of course mainly grew up on the building of the canals (before the arrival of the canals Birmingham was quite a small place).

Because goods could be brought to Birmingham by canal, and taken away from Birmingham by canal, then thousands of small factories were built in the city and it became the "city of a thousand trades". One of the major trades was of course the motor car.

But gradually one by one many of the these small factories closed and the car industry was decimated.

Nobody needed what Birmingham made any more, you could buy it cheaper or better from China or Japan or whatever.

I moved to Birmingham in the late 1970s (my work moved here) and the city was dying, and to be blunt it was an awful place. My London work colleagues thought I was mad to move here and they tried to talk me out of it.

The city had the "concrete city" image, horrible underpasses everywhere, huge parts of the city were full of empty factories, we had the British Leyland strikes and the Handsworth riots.

When a city gets like that the people with the "brains" go and move elsewhere to start up a business and gradually the city loses many of its leaders and people with skills.

The city did begin to turn itself round in the 1980s with the Convention Centre, the Symphony Hall, the National Indoor Arena, and all the work around the canals.

Since then we have had a new Bull Ring, an improved New St station, and much work to remove the underpasses and get rid of some of the ring road. Further work is going on in other parts of the city like the site of the old library.

But these things take time and the city still has a VERY poor reputation in other parts of the UK.

I help on the Trip Advisor forums for people who want a holiday in the UK and whenever someone says they are going to Birmingham various other people try to talk them out of it, they say it is not worth going to Birmingham.

One of the problems with Birmingham is that many people who drive THROUGH the city along the M6 get a terrible view of the city and they think it is all like that. I used to drive from London to the Lake District and that was MY only view of the city.

There is good news, HSBC UK are moving their head office to Birmingham (on the Arena Central site) and soon there will be new office blocks on the site of the old library, bringing new companies to the city.

But these things take time (decades) and I think Birmingham will keep its negative image for many years to come. Once you have got a bad image it takes a long time to shake it off (I am sure you all remember the comedians who used to make jokes about the Ford Cortina for years. Once anything gets a bad reputation it sticks).

It seems to me that the Manchester area is now seen as "the place to be" with two successful football clubs, the huge Media Centre development, and the Trafford shopping centre.

The term "Northern powerhouse" (based around Manchester) seems to have caught on, and it seems to me that the North West is now a more vibrant and exciting place than Birmingham, particularly with the major BBC offices there giving more promotion to Manchester.

Sadly Birmingham is playing "catch up".
 
I think the biggest problem is that the towns in the West Midlands Conurbation are very insular and do not like to be regarded as one composite area. Manchester on the other hand likes to blur the differences between the City of Manchester and the County of Greater Manchester in whatever way suits them at the time. People who live in Trafford for example are quite happy to say they come from Manchester yet Trafford is a separate borough. You would never get people from say Smethwick telling people that they come from Birmingham, although they might admit to coming from near Birmingham. Smethwick is nowadays classed as being in the Black Country yet strictly speaking only West Smethwick is Black Country, the main part of Smethwick is indistinguishable from Birmingham.

Much of the arguments about the setting up of the West Midlands Combined Authority from Coventry, Solihull and the Black Country was that they did not want the authority to be Birminghamcentric. When the metropolitan counties were set up in 1974 the towns around Manchester were happy to be called Greater Manchester whereas here there was much objection to Greater Birmingham which made more sense than West Midlands County which was only a part of the West Midlands geographical aarea.
 
DavidGrain said:
I think the biggest problem is that the towns in the West Midlands Conurbation are very insular and do not like to be regarded as one composite area.
Click to expand...

There is a lot of truth in that.

As London grew it swallowed up many many villages, but the people who now live in those villages think of themselves as Londoners.

I spent many years in North West London, living in Pinner and Ruislip (villages in their own right many years ago). They were many miles from the London city centre, but we still thought of ourselves as Londoners.

And I am sure people who live way over the East of London, say in West Ham (40 miles from Pinner or Ruislip !), also see themselves as Londoners.

Yet as you say, even though people from outside the West Midlands may see the area (and Birmingham) as one big "lump" the area is in fact made of very discrete areas (towns): Walsall, Dudley, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and so on.

I am sure the people of Wolverhampton don't say they live in Birmingham, and I live in Solihull and whenever anyone asks where I live I always say Solihull, near Birmingham.

When the West Midlands Combined Authority was set up recently (the "Midlands Engine") their was much opposition from the people of Solihull as they did not want to be part of Birmingham (reinforcing Birmingham's "negative" image).

Personally I think if we are going to complete on the world stage for business and investment we HAVE to see ourselves as one "area".

If you go to China or India and ask for investment for say Walsall or Solihull they will have little idea where they are, go to them as one huge organization representing the whole of the Midlands and you are more likely to succeed.
 
On a smaller scale, a similar situation existed here in Cheshire. Back in the 70s some genius decided that a new town called Crewe and Nantwich should be created. The people of Nantwich hated the idea then and now that Crewe has lost its two major employers and become a dump, the whole concept has been quietly dropped.
 
A few years ago I worked as a car park attendant on a holiday beach near Pembroke. Many visitors were from Birmingham ,as judged by their accent, and as a Brummie myself could almost detect the side of Birmingham they were from. I'd ask those, who looked happy enough to be asked, where did they come from. In the seven years I was at the car park not one person said they were from Birmingham. They always said the West Midlands as though this would make them better citizens. I stated I was a Brummie and then invariably they would say they were too. Why did they feel so ashamed to reveal their true identity ? Did they feel second class citizens ?
 
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