The Big City Plan

[feltip]

Does anyone agree / disagree / actually care about any of the points I said in my mini rant.

I hope i'm not alone in hoping this reaches all sections of Birmingham and doesn't get all it's responses from the typical commentators and people such as us on this forum.

[edgexedge]

To be honest, i think a lot of the population of brum are fed up with constant consulation, plan after plan, & not much happening.

Look at all that time & money spent talking about the Metro extension, & whats happened?

Its also no good going out & asking everyone what they think, & then ignoring it all, on the basis that weve spent a lot of money on 'expert' consultants.

Or stopping everything every time theres a council election!
Look at what happened to the new library. If that had been stuck with, they could have been building it by now. How much has BCC since spent on new plans etc?
At the same time, they want to now build an olympic pool, with no money, & run it, with no money.

Have any council-led projects actually happened fully in the past 20 years?
The ICC, NIA etc were done through the NEC group
BHX is partly-private


& dont start on Mike 'Whitless' Whitby, who dosnt even live in Birmingham!!!

[edgexedge]

Oh how typical!
They havnt even put on the site their usual line about needing a pdf reader to read the document.


page 9: black text on a yellow background
page 10: white text on black background



On a side note, whats all this stuff theyve got up about 'Birmingham 2026' ?

[feltip]

Originally Posted by edgexedge

To be honest, i think a lot of the population of brum are fed up with constant consulation, plan after plan, & not much happening.

Look at all that time & money spent talking about the Metro extension, & whats happened?

Its also no good going out & asking everyone what they think, & then ignoring it all, on the basis that weve spent a lot of money on 'expert' consultants.

Or stopping everything every time theres a council election!
Look at what happened to the new library. If that had been stuck with, they could have been building it by now. How much has BCC since spent on new plans etc?
At the same time, they want to now build an olympic pool, with no money, & run it, with no money.

Have any council-led projects actually happened fully in the past 20 years?
The ICC, NIA etc were done through the NEC group
BHX is partly-private


& dont start on Mike 'Whitless' Whitby, who dosnt even live in Birmingham!!!

I agree it's not good unless we act on the feedback but this is such a significant plan and when we reach 2026 the makeup of the city will have changed that it's important that people feel they have said their bit.

The consultants should gather all this variety of views together and use their expertise / experience etc to come up with achieveable measurable aims / plans. Just like in a democracy you justify what you picked / ignored and by virtue of not doing every single thing that people suggest we should reach a compromise outcome. Like with all things you can't please all of the people all of the time but i'd hope even if people disagree there is a consensus on what aims / plans move forward to.

That's what really seems to be absent when you see the tooing and froing with the library project. Regardless of the facts, for joe blogg council tax payer it seemed that one party used spite to stop a project for the other party to redo it in their own image. The fear then as you say that every election brings another reversal of policy or complete delete and start again.

On the subject of council led projects happening you could say the council led Highbury Initiative, the immediate predecessor of the Big City Plan set in motion things we can see today such as the breaking of the concrete collar.
As we don't live in a state controlled arena we have to work with partners, companies, individuals to achieve the ambitions of the plan and lead where it is in the power of the council to do so.

I'll leave Whitless to those who want to share their thoughts. All i'll say is seeing him doing a presentation on a clip on Midlands Today didn't impress me

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Originally Posted by feltip

Does anyone agree / disagree / actually care about any of the points I said in my mini rant.

I care.

I will reply, just not well today.

[feltip]

aww,
get well soon,

and stay dry if you can. Hopefully Birmingham has managed to avoid flash flooding but the river Rea was a bit swollen earlier.

[i_like_concrete]

Originally Posted by feltip

aww,
get well soon,

and stay dry if you can. Hopefully Birmingham has managed to avoid flash flooding but the river Rea was a bit swollen earlier.

Birmingham international was flooded yeterday, most Virgin trains into Brum from Euston were cancelled or delayed. But it MEANT I GOT TO TRAVEL IN FIRST CLASS FOR FREE when the train did finally get going.

[feltip]

Birmingham plans centre "ten times bigger"
Samantha Thorp, Regen.net, 22 December 2008

Birmingham city centre could be expanded to ten times its current size under proposals being put forward by its council.

A consultation document published this week claims that the traditional core of Birmingham's city centre is too small and inhibits Birmingham from realising its economic ambitions. It suggests expanding the...

http://www.regen.net/news/ByDiscipli.../login/870558/

[Erebus555]

That's slightly deceptive. We knew months ago that the council were considering the city centre to be the area within the middle ring road and not the inner ring road. This has increased the area of the city centre by 10 times! Imagine if they increased the size of the city centre 10 times of what it is now! We'd be taking over Walsall and Sandwell at that rate!

[JayPeeDee]

Sooooooo, is Opal classed as being in the city centre then? Or out of it? Bit rural for my liking...

[Erebus555]

In fact, during World War II, the Luftwaffe dropped a plaque on the site which reads (when translated): "This two acre patch of land surrounding this plaque is declared as being under the jurisdiction of Deutschland."

Thus meaning that it is not in the city centre, or even in Birmingham, technically. In fact, it is in Germany.

[SimonTheSoundMan]

If it helps, a group of us are busy developing a web site where people can comment and discuss the TBCP. First task is we are translating the document into plain English.

I'll post a link to the site when it becomes live.

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Originally Posted by i_like_concrete

Birmingham international was flooded yeterday, most Virgin trains into Brum from Euston were cancelled or delayed. But it MEANT I GOT TO TRAVEL IN FIRST CLASS FOR FREE when the train did finally get going.

You can travel in first class with a standard class ticket during peak hours. First class from Wolver to Brum every day before 9:30AM for me.

[i_like_concrete]

Originally Posted by JayPeeDee

Sooooooo, is Opal classed as being in the city centre then? Or out of it? Bit rural for my liking...

God I went past Opal on the bus today, it's so bad I feel sorry for the students stupid enough to pay money to live there.

[feltip]

Originally Posted by SimonTheSoundMan

If it helps, a group of us are busy developing a web site where people can comment and discuss the TBCP. First task is we are translating the document into plain English.

I'll post a link to the site when it becomes live.

Excellent

Most documents, including laws, are written in language that most can't understand so those that do understand wield power over those who don't.

Look forward to seeing it.

[pootle5]

Originally Posted by Erebus555

That's slightly deceptive. We knew months ago that the council were considering the city centre to be the area within the middle ring road and not the inner ring road. This has increased the area of the city centre by 10 times! Imagine if they increased the size of the city centre 10 times of what it is now! We'd be taking over Walsall and Sandwell at that rate!

Actually, the idea of expanding the City Centre to the Ring Road (the Middle Ring Road as was) came out of the Highbury Initiative 20 years ago - this concept has underpinned the planning strategy within the Ring Road area since then.

Urban Initiatives seem to be claiming they've thought of this! On reading the "Work in Progress" it's clear that many of the ideas have been around for years in the various Quarter Planning Frameworks - some of the wording has been around that long to (cut and paste's great isn't it?!).

On ploughing through this document, I'm left underwhelmed, confused about what tangible land-use "options" there really are, and wondering where hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money actually went in producing this "award winning plan"?

I'm physically repulsed by the over-sized mugshot of Whitby too.

[SimonTheSoundMan]

pootle5, you hit it on the head. Everybody is saying the same, and commenting on how poor the process is, not actually commentating on the questions asked in the document itself.


I have just translated the plan for rail. "We do not really care about rail, we have a new new street in planning, this should fix every problem to do with rail for the foreseeable future that we care about. Please stop whining over the rail network, it is good enough for everybody, it's not like it will be used by commuters, is it!".

[Biosonic]

But isn't the point of the consultation to find out what people want? I didn't think it was "this is the plan, what do you think?" I thought it was "what do you want your city do to in future?"

[i_like_concrete]

Originally Posted by Biosonic

But isn't the point of the consultation to find out what people want? I didn't think it was "this is the plan, what do you think?" I thought it was "what do you want your city do to in future?"

Have you watched the videos on the Bg City Plan website? They already have a pretty good idea of what they want to do, they'll just be consulting people and picking the views that fit in with what they want.

And to be honest I doubt the people of Birmingham, like in most cities (AHEM MANCHESTER) understand how vital public transport infrastructure is to the future of Birmingham and so will simply say they want shiny new buildings instead.

[Telfordboy]

Yes, which is why I don't think the sheer amount of consultation we do in this country is excessive. Like some guy on tv said the other day"You don't consult the frogs when draining a swamp".