NEW FOOD QUARTER FOR BRUM

28-02-2008

Birmingham needs a dedicated food quarter to create a distinctive identity and attract more visitors according to a new masterplan unveiled yesterday. Inner city Highgate has also been identified as the site of a trendy new “Islington style” estate for families.

Consultants Urban Initiatives have drawn up the blueprint which aims to create a framework for development over the next 20 years.

Other bold ideas include the development of a new and unique form of public transport – dubbed “the Birmingham Bus” – and the creation of a local energy company.

Kelvin Campbell, director of Urban Initiatives drew up the plan in a series of meetings with civic leaders and local movers and shakers, but it will now go through an 18 month consultation process with “stakeholders” before being approved.

His aim – backed by Council leader Mike Whitby – is to take Birmingham from it’s current 55th place in the Mercer Index (which measures quality of life in various international cities) - to 25th.

Here’s Campbell's take on the key ways of achieving that:

A FOOD QUARTER: “Tyler Brulee wrote a great article in Monocle about how you know great places by their food. Birmingham has the balti belt, but that doesn’t have a physical presence in the city centre. In fact there’s no real presence of multiculturalism in the city centre. Can we change that?

“We need to think if we can do something with the retail markets and maybe see if we can make them better, especially with the changes that are coming in the Wholesale Markets area. We could align ourselves with the Slow Food movement and become know for food like Bologna.

“We’ve got Ludlow down the road and we need to raise ourselves to compete with that.”

TRANSPORT: “We’ve got to get rid of the indignity around public transport and stop it being seen as something that only poor people use. We can transform public transport into the equivalent of the Heathrow Express, which is seen as more attractive.

“We can also develop it as something distinctive from Birmingham – a ‘Birmingham Bus.’ I’m always calling on the universities to come up with something that is unique to this area and could be built around the natural industries of this place.”

A FAMILY NEIGHBOURHOOD: “The biggest challenge in the city centre is that with all the new apartments that have gone up, we’ve created a monocultural, transient population. When people outgrow that they have to move out to the suburbs.

“We need a new neighbourhood close to the city centre. It could have townhouses, so it would still have density, but it would be a place for families to live.

“Highgate already has a park, and it will be better connected to the city centre when the Wholesale Markets have gone. But it’s not about turfing out the people who are already there, but working with them.”

Other aspirations laid out by Campbell include creating a local energy supply company, and making Birmingham a centre for the creative industries and new enterprise.

To see the report in full click on http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/

To download THE PLAN click here (pdf file)

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