New vision for the city shouldn’t be a tall order
AS the crisis within Birmingham City Council deepens, disturbing information has come to light concerning many years of dysfunction in the organisation and the breakdown of relationships between officers and elected members.
Inevitably this has created an atmosphere of half-truths and confusion.
Recently, two members of the planning committee have been suspended by their parties.
One for alleged assault and the other, who has now resigned, for racist comments.
At the same time, another member of the planning committee, who never attends, denies that she sits on the committee – more confusion.
Our experience of campaigning to save the Ringway Centre from demolition – and 14 years of disruption in the heart of the city – suggests this may explain why the Smallbrook planning application got beyond the pre-application stage.
The planning system gets ever more bizarre.
Have you seen the plans for 80 Broad Street?
They can’t, easily, knock down the Grade II-listed Georgian Orthopaedic Hospital, so instead they are going to build a 42-storey building over the top.
How on earth did this get through the pre-application process?
The eyes of the world are on Birmingham because it is broke and we are quickly becoming the butt of jokes.
Who makes the decisions about the future of our city, and where does this fetish with tall buildings come from?
Surprisingly, the planning department and the planning committee do not appear to be intricately bound with the governance of the city. It transpires that the chair of the planning committee does not have a place at the cabinet table.
The CEO, Deborah Cadman, who resigned recently and is facing an official complaint, may have been the only person who had an overview of planning matters.
So who is driving this enthusiasm for tall towers when we know they don’t meet the needs of Birmingham people and families?
Towers are not places that encourage community; rather they tend to be filled with transitory occupiers, if filled at all. They are also incredibly bad for the environment, as they use proportionately larger quantities of concrete and steel in the need for deep foundations.
Anything over 20 storeys uses 250% more energy on an ongoing basis.
Birmingham is not the only city experiencing the rise of tall towers but it is exceeding its neighbours in this regard.
Do residents want this?
The outrage about the possible demolition of the Crown Pub and the Electric Cinema on Station Street in favour of yet another tall tower may give you the answer.
Even planning committee members don’t appear to welcome tall towers.
At the meeting to review the Smallbrook plans, comments were made that all the applications that come before them are for tall residential towers. It was asked if there was nothing else that could be built.
This brings us back to those initial discussions between planners and developers. Why are the planners not saying “no”?
The Smallbrook plans provide no infrastructure. The proposal for 1700 homes does not include schools, medical facilities or all the other services people and families need.
We understand that the City Plan guides planning decisions, but who gets a say in the City Plan? The latest – Our Future City Plan – was not launched in the city but at a prestigious developer conference. That says it all.
The crisis in Birmingham has galvanised John Cotton and his cabinet to rethink the council’s relationship with their voters.
It is reported that a new ‘Shaping Birmingham’s Futures Together Commission’ will be created this summer to help determine the “role and purpose” of the council and “develop a power-sharing agenda”.
A power-sharing agenda is certainly what this city needs.
In the meantime, the concrete cruncher looms over Smallbrook and 1 Lancaster Circus. A fine, solid 1960s building is under threat of replacement with – you guessed it – yet more tall towers.
Pre-application discussions between the planning department and the developer are quietly taking place behind closed doors.
Herbert Manzoni, Birmingham’s city engineer in the 1960s, was held responsible for the destruction of Victorian Birmingham in his disregard for ‘architecture’.
Is his ghost wandering the halls of the dysfunctional Council House, still determined to destroy our heritage?
We know that people and families want to live in buildings that have a more human scale. The favourable compromise between tall towers and individual houses are five- and sixstorey buildings that increase density without sacrificing quality of life.
This is what Birmingham residents deserve, and to be fair it is referenced in Our City Plan.
It won’t come as a surprise to know we already have plenty of fiveand six-storey buildings that can be reused and repurposed – Smallbrook and 1 Lancaster House being among many.
Reuse of existing buildings must be the city policy if we are going to get anywhere near achieving our climate targets and protecting the city and the world for our children.
The fight to save Smallbrook will continue. ‘This is Birmingham’ – a documentary film made about the campaign by Doberman Documentaries – will premiere at the Flatpack Film Festival on the May 11.
The international Docomomo conference, this year in Chile, has accepted a paper on the potential reuse of the Ringway Centre.
Like the now demolished Central Library, Smallbrook has an international profile. How well the city could exploit the tourist value of heritage regeneration.
Steven Knight is doing his best to put Birmingham on the map, and the new TV series, This Town – gritty as it is – celebrates Birmingham in the 1980s.
They just about managed to find some buildings still standing to provide context for the drama.
Mary Keating represents Brutiful Birmingham, which campaigns to preserve the best of the city’s postwar Modernist architecture.