Labour ‘happy’ to see city decline
DEAR Editor, As a lifelong Brummie, born, raised, educated and working in Birmingham, I love our amazing city.
As a young child, the city used to promote the historic parts of Birmingham through the Birmingham-wide game, where children could travel on buses in the summer across the city seeing all our heritage.
As a student at the University of Birmingham, I did the module they ran called the Built Form Of Birmingham that showcased all the beautiful and historic architecture across our City.
It is therefore hugely disappointing to see the city council deciding to cease protecting so many of our conservation zones and indeed to refuse to create additional conservation zones.
All across the world, major cities or tourist venues make protecting the character, culture and heritage of a location a priority to ensure they remain an attractive place to live, work and visit.
Birmingham sadly is at a crossroads. Earlier this summer we saw data published which highlighted two-thirds of graduates leave our city after finishing university. That number doesn’t even include those students from our schools who go to university outside of Birmingham, never to come back again.
For years now we have seen increasing numbers of people leave our city for London down south or places like Manchester up north.
With so much character and history, Birmingham should be the premier location in the world to locate. We should never suffer from so many people wanting to leave as soon as they can from our great city. We need to be protecting our city’s character if we are to encourage the best and brightest to live, work and settle here; not elsewhere.
Sadly, the decision by the Labour-run council to abandon some of the Conservation Zones, shows that in reality this council is perfectly happy to let the decline of Birmingham happen.
After all, anyone can build a bland modern city. The secret is to build a modern city that showcases the character and heritage of our home, not eradicates it. Using our heritage can actually be a selling point that brings more