Study Tour C – Birmingham
Starts: Tuesday
15th June at 11.00am at Birmingham New Street
station (exact meeting point details will be sent to those
who register).
Finishes: Tuesday
15th June at 4.30pm at Birmingham New Street
Station.
Tour outline:
The tour starts at Birmingham New Street station in the very heart
of Birmingham City Centre. The tour will comprise a guided walking
tour of the city centre led by those engaged locally in developing
and managing the renaissance of the centre. It will include a
series of short presentations on developments undertaken and
planned and on the strategic approach to city centre management
undertaken by Birmingham. There are five local partnerships
operating in the city centre, three of which are formal BIDs, one
is a BID in development and the other is a voluntary partnership as
well as an overall strategic partnership and strong engagement by
the City Council. The tour will take in a number of key schemes
Birmingham's award-winning renaissance of its city centre and
demonstrate the interconnection between the public and private
sectors in transforming the city.
Birmingham: The UK's Second City
with a population of around 1 million, Birmingham is at the heart
of the West Midlands metropolitan area of over 3.5 million. Once
known as 'the workshop of the world', and with reputedly more miles
of canal than Venice, the city's fortunes were built on
manufacturing and engineering. The city grew rapidly throughout the
19th Century and the car industry saw continued
investment through to the 1970s. The importance of the car in the
area, and its central location in England, led to extensive
investment in motorways and highways in and around the city and by
the 1980s Birmingham City Centre was in many ways isolated from its
surrounding areas by a major inner ring road that was in part
elevated and in part cut below ground. Regeneration of areas of the
city had already begun but a new strategy in the early 1990s aimed
to promote access for pedestrians and over the subsequent decade
large parts of the inner ring road were 'humanised' as elevated
sections were demolished and new grade crossings introduced. This
connected the city centre to its hinterland and at the same time
the City undertook extensive improvements to the central streets,
squares and spaces.
Birmingham today is a very different city centre to that which
existed a generation ago. It is now England's most significant
retail centre outside of London, a very vibrant leisure and
entertainment district, a hugely important office base and has seen
extensive regeneration of city centre fringe areas for residential
use. Brindley Place created a new office and entertainment hub
around high quality public squares and linked directly to the
city's main entertainment core at Broad Street. This is also home
to the International Convention Centre and Symphony Hall, which
themselves were important drivers of regeneration. From there you
can walk through to the civic core of the city and the
award-winning Centenary Square before choosing whether to head for
the 1.35 million square foot (125,000 square metre) Bullring
shopping and leisure centre (which opened in 2003 with two
department stores, some 160 other shops, over 3000 car parking
spaces and which attracts almost 40 million visitors a year), plus
the chance to explore other parts of the refurbished and
redeveloped retail core, or head to the Mailbox, an impressive
upmarket retail, leisure and residential reuse scheme. Birmingham
has ambitious plans for further investment in the city centre,
including the (much needed) refurbishment of New Street
Station.
Birmingham is rightly famous for its Symphony Orchestra and is
also home to the National Indoor Arena. It has two Premier League
football clubs, Birmingham City and Aston Villa, the latter a
former European champion. Around 65,000 students study at its three
universities, and like all England's major cities, Birmingham is a
thriving multicultural city with a wide range of festivals and
events that recognise this. Birmingham was one of the first six
locations to be awarded Purple Flag accreditation for the quality
of its evening and night time economy.
The tour is offered in partnership with Birmingham City Centre
Partnership, Birmingham City Council and the local partnerships in
the city.
Cost per person (including a buffet-style lunch
but excluding
travel to and from Birmingham*)
£75.00 plus VAT
This tour is limited to a capacity of 25 people.
*Please note that because of the wide fluctuations in the
cost of long distance rail travel in the UK, depending on when you
book and the train you travel on, rail travel to and from London is
not included in the cost of the Study Tour and you
must make your own booking. We very strongly recommend that you
book in advance as there are considerable savings to be made
(tickets may be available for as little as 10% of the fare payable
if you book on the day). You can book on line for single (one way)
or return (round trip) journeys at www.virgintrains.co.uk
and arrange to collect your tickets from machines at the relevant
station on the day. Please note you must keep a record of your
booking reference and take it with you to the station and also have
with you the credit card used to make the booking. If you book in
advance you must travel on the train you are
booked to travel on otherwise your ticket will be worthless and you
will be required to buy another full fare ticket.
Birmingham has an international airport served by around 40
airlines (code BHX). It has a monorail link to Birmingham
International station which is around 12 minutes journey time from
Birmingham New Street station.
To download a Study Tours booking form, please click
here. Please complete the form and return it to Jordan
Ley - jordan.ley@atcm.org
