Birmingham City Centre Renewal

The Birmingham City Centre Renewal scheme has created an exciting and distinctive city centre, with a series of public gardens and squares. Designed by Birmingham City Council.

As well as making the area unsafe for pedestrians, the road discouraged city development and created a plethora of empty sites, ugly car parks and buildings that turned their backs on the noise and pollution of the street. Its negative impacts, combined with the economic downturn of the 1980s, led Birmingham City Council to set in motion an ambitious programme to reverse the trends of the previous fifty years, and to recreate a central area where the vitality of city life would be restored.

After 15 years of policy measures within this programme the city has indeed been transformed. A series of connected schemes has been implemented to provide safe, attractive and interesting pedestrian routes covering a large proportion of the central area. The successful change from motorway traffic-dominated centre to a network of quiet leafy public squares and tree-lined streets is extraordinary.