Re-inventing place: Birmingham as an information city?

Abstract

In this article, Frank Webster sets out to "swim against the current" of some recent thinking on cities. In particular, he takes to task what he calls the "new urbanism" in which cities are seen as the new drivers and switching centres of an emerging economy which is largely deindustrialized, global and places a high premium on knowledge and information professionals. Webster goes on to test these ideas against Birmingham, the UK's second largest city, which has been keen to reap the assumed benefits of this new urban paradigm. Attempts to reinvent Birmingham are discussed such as the revamped historical canal system, the corporate leisure hub of Brindley place and through the city's internal cultural and ethnic diversity. However, Webster is less sanguine about attempts to transform Birmingham into a knowledge city because large swathes of the city's population play little or no role in the emerging new economy. He ends by questioning why there is such an air of inevitability about the new urbanism and why the "dull compulsion" of economics continues to exercise its dominant influence. In particular, he highlights the ways in which the vision from metropolitan elites of a brave new exonomy sidelines the experiences of many urban dwellers, especially the elderly for whom the new urbanism means little apart from a loss of community.