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Governance and Urban Development in Birmingham: England's Second

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Governance and Urban Development in Birmingham: England's Second Governance and urban development in Birmingham England’s second city since the millennium Acknowledgements This report was written by Liam O’Farrell, Research Associate at the University of Birmingham with funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation as part of the “Democratic Foundations of the Just City” project, which was a comparative study of housing, urban planning and governance in three European second cities: Birmingham, Lyon and Zurich. The project was a collaboration between the University of Zurich’s Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA) and the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS). The report was made possible through the support of a number of colleagues, including Dr Peter Lee at the University of Birmingham’s CURS; Dr Eric Chu, previously at CURS and now at the University of California, Davis; Oliver Dlabac and Roman Zwicky at the University of Zurich’s ZDA; and Dr Charlotte Hoole at the University of Birmingham’s City-REDI. Unless otherwise cited, photographs in this report were provided by Roman Zwicky, part of the research team. Birmingham analysis maps were produced by Dr Charlotte Hoole using publicly available ONS datasets. We would like to thank those working in the housing sector across the city who generously shared their knowledge and experience of planning and development in Birmingham. The “Democratic Foundations of the Just City” project was supported by: • The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), by means of a research grant for the project “The Democratic Foundations of the Just City” (100012M_170240) within the International Co-Investigator Scheme in cooperation with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK. • The Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA), a research centre that conducts research and engages with topical questions on democracy in Switzerland, in Europe, and worldwide. • The Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) at the University of Birmingham, a leading international centre for research, teaching and consultancy in spatial and social planning studies. • The City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI) at the University of Birmingham, a research institute focused on developing a robust understanding of major city regions across the globe. To cite this report: O’Farrell, L. (2020) Governance and urban development in Birmingham: England’s second city since the millennium. In collaboration with Eric Chu, Oliver Dlabac, Peter Lee, Charlotte Hoole and Roman Zwicky. Birmingham: University of Birmingham. 1 Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 1 Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 7 Aims of this study ................................................................................................................... 7 Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 8 Development of Birmingham up to the year 2000 .................................................................. 10 Birmingham since the year 2000 ............................................................................................. 17 Continuing Birmingham’s urban development .................................................................... 17 Birmingham’s urban strategies in the 21st century .............................................................. 19 Urban governance models in Birmingham .......................................................................... 23 Periodisation of governance structures since 2000 ............................................................. 24 Current social and economic issues in Birmingham ............................................................ 29 Birmingham tomorrow ............................................................................................................ 35 Housing crisis ........................................................................................................................ 35 Attracting international investment .................................................................................... 40 Austerity as a permanent culture shift ................................................................................ 42 After Brexit ........................................................................................................................... 44 Co-design agenda: toward real community involvement in decisions? .............................. 46 Who governs? ...................................................................................................................... 47 Interview findings .................................................................................................................... 51 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................. 59 How have governance, housing and development changed since the year 2000? ............ 59 Is Birmingham a “just city”? ................................................................................................. 61 How far can the city shape its own future? ......................................................................... 62 Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 65 Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 70 Appendix 1: Interview guide ................................................................................................ 70 Appendix 2: Informed consent form for interviewees ........................................................ 74 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 77 2 3 Executive Summary Birmingham is a post-industrial landscape cut through with ring roads. Birmingham is a city that is intensely segregated along the lines of race and class. Birmingham is booming and is looking forward to a bright future. These are all impressions of the city that emerged in our interviews. Perhaps more than any other major city in the UK, the dominant narrative of Birmingham focuses on negative perceptions of its industrial past, modernist post-war period and car dependency. These images inhibit the city from being able to take on the role of the UK’s second city and attract the graduates and skilled professionals that will enable Birmingham’s economy to thrive in the long-term. Negative perceptions of the quality of life in the city harm its attractiveness to investors and potential migrants. Much of these negative perceptions come down to how space is developed and governed. The “Democratic Foundations of the Just City” project aimed to understand development and governance in Birmingham, Lyon, and Zurich, three European second cities with very different institutional models. We sought to determine the extent to which local government has the power to realise a vision of its own future and independently introduce policies that respond to local problems. Compared to the two other cities in the project, we found Birmingham notable for operating in a highly centralised political system in which the local authority has very little autonomy in policy-making terms. Long-term trends in the housing market driven by national government decisions have affected the development of the city, and today, in common with the rest of the UK, Birmingham is a city in which it is increasingly difficult to get onto the housing ladder. Homelessness and poverty rates have also been rising as a result of austerity measures implemented in order to reconfigure the relationship between the individual and the state in post-crisis Britain. While we found enthusiasm for experimenting with new models of working, such as co-design and multi- agency approaches, the reality is that austerity has reduced the capability of the public sector in Birmingham to act. Other options for devolving more power and responsibility down to community level, such as the establishment of town and parish councils, are nowhere near as developed in Birmingham as they are in cities such as Leeds and Manchester. In common with elsewhere, citizens in the city are beginning to use social media in order to organise and protest against policies they disagree with in new ways, but established trends of lower engagement in poorer and more diverse areas continue to hold. Our research identified a place that increasingly attracts international investment, expressed in numerous regeneration projects that are visually transforming the city. Businesses and finance capital are spatially changing the city according to their investment priorities. Birmingham’s population and economy has returned to growth, and the city is ever more super-diverse. Much of this investment has arrived since the announcement of High Speed Two and is predicated on the completion of the project. A common theme in the interviews we conducted in the city was that Birmingham’s current economic growth
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