ABSTRACT

The city of Birmingham offers a particularly rich case study on urban regeneration as it strives to build a new city image. Positioned between decline and regeneration, the landscape of the city and its environs collages old and new, producing dramatic contrasts - of industrial and post-industrial urbanisms of crumbling brutalism and spectacular flagship developments, of Victorian housing and diverse cultural lifestyles - that compound the aesthetic and socio-economic means of regeneration. This visually exciting book also reflects upon and extends current debates about public space, cultural zoning and the futures of cities.

part |10 pages

Introduction The Creative Destruction of Birmingham

part I|44 pages

Concrete Dreams

chapter Chapter 1|13 pages

Street, Subway and Mall

Spatial Politics in the Bull Ring

chapter Chapter 2|10 pages

Shopping for the Future

The Re-enchantment of Birmingham's Urban Space

chapter Chapter 3|7 pages

Developing an Aesthetic for Birmingham

chapter Chapter 4|4 pages

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

chapter Chapter 5|6 pages

Acts of Madness

An interview with Will Alsop

part II|46 pages

Interventions

chapter Chapter 6|9 pages

Making Mansions

chapter Chapter 7|9 pages

Public Art, Civic Identity and the New Birmingham

chapter Chapter 8|8 pages

Off-site

chapter Chapter 9|9 pages

Merge

part III|55 pages

Imagineering Birmingham

chapter Chapter 11|13 pages

Birmingham, Photography and Change

chapter Chapter 12|5 pages

Take Me Higher

Birmingham and Cinema

chapter Chapter 13|10 pages

The Altered Eye

The European Capital of Culture Bid and Visual Images of Birmingham

chapter Chapter 14|9 pages

Without Borders

chapter Chapter 15|13 pages

Into the New, New, Old City