MADE.

Proclaiming ‘audacity’ as one of the principles for planning your city is a brave move and a tough commitment to live up to. That was the opening remark from David West at the recent Talking Cities Lecture at Birmingham Town Hall

Audacity is one of the ten words which Birmingham City Council have used in their Big City Plan for the wider city centre area. David, a partner in the practice Studio Egret-West, dissected each of these words in turn, starting with Audacity. Is Birmingham really willing to live up to the word ‘audacity’ in a “tough environment of concrete, rings of grey and pointy ugly bits”. If we were really being audacious, asked David, would we not be talking about getting rid of all the cars in the city centre, planting a million trees, bringing in combine harvesters for some urban agriculture? And how about setting some animals free? Would it not be really audacious to have giraffes roaming the city centre?

In an energetic and provocative presentation David challenged the planners and citizens of Birmingham to think about what the ten words in the Big City Plan mean and used examples from his own portfolio and elsewhere to illustrate what they could mean. His presentation was a plea to go beyond the cosy phrases which every city uses to articulate their objectives. The principle themes were working with existing structures, an aspect of ‘complexcity’, and doing things now to achieve a ‘liveablecity’ (illustrated by the temporary grassing over of Cowcross street in London). When it came to ‘authenticity’, David urged Brummies not just to look at the obviously ‘authentic’ areas such as the Jewellery Quarter, but at those structures you would never see anywhere else but Birmingham, to celebrate the use of concrete, the “1960s extraordinariness”. When asked what he thought the essential character of Birmingham was David pointed to the ‘episodic’ walk from New Street to Brindley Place (and on to Fiveways) and suggested Birmingham could create ‘episodic squares’ where, for example, a city bench unfolds into a play structure. The Talking Cities lecture series is organised by a partnership of Birmingham City University and MADE and sponsored by Atkins. A new series starts in the new year.