Just A Peasant In The Big City (Plan)...

...see what i did there*.

Still haven't had time to digest Birmingham's Big City Plan consultation document yet so instead i've decided to amalgamate the brief Tweets i did yesterday drop in a couple of quick comments and then probably clarify them later if i can be arsed...

• Big City Plan? neck out, overall good thing but BIG, Reinventing Birmingham is gonna be a long and costly job,not sure council has cahuna's
  Speaks for itself really, the problem is this plan is BIG, i'm not sure if this (or any Council) can actually pull this ambitious project off.


• The whole thing needs some HUGE P.R to get Joe Public involved (y' know, those people not on 'net and Twitter)
  In Councils defence a pullout appeared in Thursdays Evening Mail which is a good start, i'd hate to see something like this just thrashed out by I.T literate keyboard jockeys.
  


• 'CREATE LOCAL' good idea (but you can have too many paintings)
  
  


• 'LIVE LOCAL' as family city, would these be developments for 'Locals'
  a personal bugbear, rejuvination certainly, redevelopment which includes bulldozing over present communities certainly not. As regards to bringing families into the Centre i'll just Cut n' Paste the response i left on Birmingham It's Not Shits forum
  

  There’s enough issues to be discussed re: The Big City Plan to keep people talking to at least Feb 6th (end of consultation period). I’d just like to touch on the ‘FAMILY CITY’ subsection. Birmingham has a recent history of redevelopments who bring in an influx of people who then object to the ‘vibrant’ centre hubub that was sold to them in the first place. At least one Pub has been closed via this scenario and now some of Digbeth’s entertainment centre’s are facing a similar threat. I’m not sure how attracting families to a City Centre squares with also providing entertainment to the cross section of Brums nightlife?, can a ‘living’ modern City Centre really be family friendly?.

  
  


• 'AUDACITY' a good idea, i.e had some success in past of attracting big events


• 'BUY LOCAL' is a middle class pipe dream, waste of money, especially if it still supoports Supermarket planning appl' in city centre.
  this tweet was a bit glib and simplistic on my part, buy local is a good idea, trouble is B.C council has continually stiffed small independent retailers. maybe some reparation could be done here.
  


• 'FAMILY CITY' How would these families impact on the vibrancy of City Centre entertainment (fiddle & bone, spotted dog as ex')
  as above
  


• 'FAMILY CITY' would these families include the Birmingham families it's displaced during previous 'redevelopments'
  as above
  


• Consultation period now till Feb 6th, Is that long enough to get 'real' people involved and sort out finer details?,
  
  As someone has already stated this is an all too brief period especially as it covers the Christmas and New Year holidays, is it long enough to physically get people involved?
  

Finally comes the obvious crass question, Where is the money coming from giving that we're supposed to be entering a recession?. I think a lot of people in Brum would say they'd rather see the little problems fixed short term before cash is diverted into huge projects long term.

Looking back over this post i can see it looks cynical but i really would like to see this thing work BUT Councils have a rich history of screwing things up and alienating Joe Public, if they can just get the first bit right maybe people will really get behind it and we'll see some actual factual results!.

*(post title is a play on an old Stranglers track from 'No More Heroes' album if you hain't got it go get it!)