birmingham case study

Question 1

the first instance that we hear Birmingham

Answer 1

in the Domesday Book
in 1086
mentioned as a poor rural manor

Question 2

first player in making it a place of trade

Answer 2

the de Birmingham family put in a petition to set up a market at their manor house.
they were given a royal charter by King Henry II in 1166
it became a market town that was very, very prosperous in the local area during this medieval period up until the 15th century

Question 3

16th century

Answer 3

they had had some small scale industry started to grow
this was largely due to the fact that west of Birmingham there is a really large coal seam which was close to the surface in the area that we now known as Dudley.

Question 4

use of coal seam

Answer 4

gave them raw materials for what would become Birmingham’s metalwork industry
they started to make knives and buttons and nails and swords. And again, at the moment this isn’t hugely industrial, it’s just on small scale levels. –> black country

Question 5

change between 15th and 17th century

Answer 5

it went from having a population of about a thousand people (a very small settlement)
by the 17th century, we’re starting to get these small scale metal works, that had a population of about 15,000. So quite a significant change in the 200 years.

Question 6

player involved in the start of industrial revolution

Answer 6

Matthew Boulton
He set up a factory called the Soho Manufactory in 1761
he was an important player because he actually a lot of workers- 700 workers under one roof and helped to kind of establish what we consider now in modern factories.
the idea of an assembly line where different people would do different parts and it would go until it was completely manufactured, this is the idea that it’s not a small scale

Question 7

canals

Answer 7

canals were built this was largely to help move all these finished industrial goods that are starting to get built, but also the raw materials from the areas like in Dudley
Birmingham became the heart of this national canal network where resources and goods are being shipped in and out. It’s gone from this small market town to now, to a real hub of the kind of manufacturing of the Industrial Revolution period.

Question 8

specialising

Answer 8

started to specialise in metalwork industries again.
We can see the connection here with the kind of raw materials, the iron ore and the coal being taken from that Black Country area, very, very nearby.
And so Birmingham became famous for having highly skilled workers in the areas of brass and button manufacturing, jewellery and later gun manufacturing.
This is what was dominating in the 19th century, obviously going hand in hand with this as the city starts to grow.

Question 9

other needs for a growing city

Answer 9

needed money and so bank firms started to appear. Legal firms to kind of help protect and grow the assets and also insurance companies. And so we have Lloyds Bank and Midland bank due to multiplier effect

Question 10

cadbury family

Answer 10

they decided they wanted to build their factory in an area called Bournville, which was on the rural urban fringe of the city at the time then
what they actually tried to do here was help positively change the lives of the workers there.
So what they did is they built a model village for the employees. These were really good housing at the time.
They also had parks that were available for their employees to go and live and play in and kind of have recreational facilities. they had very good wages. So it was the idea that as the city grows, some players try to really, really have a positive impact on some of the workers that were in the city.

Question 11

population growth between 1800 and 1900

Answer 11

by 1801, the population was 73,000. But by 1901, that had hugely grown to half a million. So we can see that this former market town has completely changed because of the industrial revolution to a marketing hub

Question 12

city of a Thousand Trades

Answer 12

those kind of small to medium enterprises that had made the city famous, it basically meant that there was lots and lots of different types of products, industrial products being made in the city. It was a city of production, manufacturing

Question 13

growth after 1900

Answer 13

We start to see growth in other areas, and this was particularly in the car manufacturing.
So we had the Austin car plant opened in Longbridge in 1906. This is where the many Mini Cooper was eventually made, and it had lots and lots of people employed over 22,000 at its height.
At the same time, Dunlop tyre factory kind of was established and again, 10,000 people working here.

These are industries that rely on each other, support each other. And so car manufacturing in that 20th century became a really, really important industry in Birmingham.

Question 14

changes to built environment in 1900s-1950s

Answer 14

We had rural to urban migration from other parts of the British Isles. So people coming from Ireland, but also from other parts of actually within England, they were coming for these job opportunities in the manufacturing, hub. And because of that, they had to build lots of terraced housing near these factories to actually house the workers. Obviously, the city starts to grow as we get more people coming in and more housing. And also there’s changes in transport. So we see trams and buses, become more popular in the 1950s. This gives more people,more mobility.–> they dont have to live directly next to the factory–> urban area expands

Question 15

other impacts of industrialisation
housing

Answer 15

slum like houses in inner city areas

Question 16

other impacts of industrialisation
pollution

Answer 16

industrial waste in rivers and canals
air pollution high due to no constraints
smog–> lung problems

Question 17

diversity in 1950s

Answer 17

predominantly white due to migration mainly form other British isles

Question 18

unemployment in the 50s/60s

Answer 18

Birmingham’s unemployment was below 1% in the 50s and 60s, and the UK average was about 2% at this point, so it was pretty good on a national level.

Question 19

unemployment in the 80s

Answer 19

The UK average was about 12-13% by 1982, but Birmingham was significantly above that at 19.4%. So we’ve seen a huge shift from being a very high employment area to an area of mass unemployment

Question 20

cause of unemployment

Answer 20

largely due to some significant economic changes in key industries that started to happen from the 70s onwards

Question 21

industrial decline eg
metal manufacturing

Answer 21

had been dominating Birmingham’s landscape for many, many years, went from 22% in 1950 to 12% by 1980, (1:42) and less than 5% by 2013.

Question 22

industrial decline eg
car manufacturing

Answer 22

another dominant one that had started to appear in 1901, was 11% by 1951, and then 3% by 2013.

Question 23

causes of industrial decline
1973 oil crisis

Answer 23

there was an Arab-Israeli war in 1973, and different nations backed different sides, either the Arab side or the Israeli side. Unfortunately for the Arabs, many of the western states actually supported Israel, America being the most dominant one, but lots of other western nations followed suit.
OPEC, which is a group of oil and petroleum exporting countries made up of largely Arab states, Saudi Arabia being the most dominant one, decided that they didn’t like that the western nations had supported Israel, and so they started to embargo oil. –> to ban the supply of it to your western countries and see how your economies fare.
OPEC, were a very (3:26) powerful player in what would happen to Birmingham later on

Question 24

oil prices due to oil crisis

Answer 24

barrels went from three dollars a barrel to twelve dollars a barrel, with a huge hike in the price. This had knock-on effects for lots of countries, especially western nations where the supply was limited. It meant that petrol prices went up because there wasn’t enough oil, and that means petrol prices and energy prices went up.

Question 25

effect of Birmingham

Answer 25

led to Birmingham's demise in some areas because manufacturing in Birmingham was very reliant on cheap energy prices, and so all the manufacturing costs go up, and so Birmingham has to start making cutbacks because they can't actually run their industry at the same level as they were before.

Question 26

players causing industrial decline

Answer 26

the car manufacturing industry was hit by competition from foreign TNCs An example of this is the Japanese car manufacturers Nissan and Toyota. They started to export cars to the UK in the 70s, and this was because they were often better value, more reliable, and often more fuel efficient. You want them to be more fuel efficient when the price of fuel has gone up, and so these cars became popular. Volkswagen from Germany and Renault from France started to import more cars as well, and so those traditional British cars, which most people have bought, start to have competition and therefore sales started to go down.

Question 27

effect of car manufacturing declining

Answer 27

the trade unions that ran these companies started to strike. British Leyland is a really good example of a company in Birmingham that started to strike a lot, and so trade unions became key players. They were key in shutting down factories, and they were therefore altering the future of Birmingham

Question 28

effect of strikes in outside investment

Answer 28

it actually led to lots of investors being put off from going there. They didn't want to go to an area where people were striking, and so they decided not to invest in that area. This led to further decline.

Question 29

TNCs investment

Answer 29

some foreign TNCs decided to actually set up factories in the UK. Nissan in Sunderland and Honda in Swindon, they wanted to take advantage of those EU markets by being able to ship their cars into the EU without having to pay tariffs, and the central government actually helped do this. They gave tax breaks to companies like Honda and Grant and said to them, we'll give you some incentives to come and actually put your company here, especially if you put it in an area with high unemployment. So that's why they went to places like Swindon, which had a lot of the railway employment that had disappeared after the 1940s. The unfortunate thing is that this key player could have put it in Birmingham, but unfortunately they didn't, and therefore there were no foreign car manufacturing TNCs actually put in Birmingham, and so Birmingham's manufacturing base continued to decline even

Question 30

city council actions

Answer 30

the city council decided to clear all the slums that started to appear as part of something called a comprehensive redevelopment program, but as they were clearing their slums, they had to get rid of lots of the small and medium enterprises that Birmingham had become famous for. So this city of a thousand trades, all these small businesses were demolished in the process, and when they said here's some new premises you can use, unfortunately most of those small businesses couldn't afford them. So we saw lots of small businesses start to decline as Birmingham went through this huge redevelopment program because they couldn't afford the rents

Question 31

housing in Birmingham post WW2

Answer 31

the housing stock in Birmingham was pretty poor quality, partly because lots of houses had been destroyed, 5,000 during bombing in World War II, but also we just had really large-scale slums that had started to exist. 110,000 houses were a very, very poor sub-standard.

Question 32

councils response to housing problems

Answer 32

So the council started to clear slums, and they replaced them with was these 400 tower blocks, which they built in the 50s and 60s. Over 81,000 homes built between 1945 and 1970. This happened all over the country, but in Birmingham there was obviously a lot of them, and they weren't all high-rise flats, but they were often better conditions than the slums. Some of these were social housing, but they were the better affordable homes for people who had been living in pretty sub-standard conditions.

Question 33

result of new flats

Answer 33

this started to redistribute the population. So lots of those slums had been in the centre of Birmingham, but when they built these huge tower blocks, they actually built them on housing estates on the rural urban fringe, Castle Vale being an example in the north-east, and so people actually moved out of the centre. We also saw people move out of the centre as they moved to new towns, which were being set up, and so we saw this migration of people away from the slums to the edges of the city.

Question 34

urban sprawl

Answer 34

as people moved out, therefore the industry started to change and so services became more important as we got into the 80s and 90s, and so we see this flow of people commuting back from their jobs, from their areas where they live in the suburbs, into the centre where most of these services would have been based. The government decided that they didn't want the city to get too big and didn't want too much urban sprawl, and so the local and national government set up a green belt to stop the urban sprawl, and this had a knock-on effect in that areas that were close to that green belt, where they had good transport links but were really, really close to that nice green space, really increased in land value. Solihull is a good example, and Knoll just outside it. They're very, very expensive areas because they're in this prime position next to the green belt, right on the edge of the city.

Question 35

demographic changes

Answer 35

it was predominantly white before the 1950s, was the international migration after World War II, from the Caribbean, from South Asia and the Far East. These were often economic migrants moving to places like Birmingham and London for jobs that people had lost those jobs after World War II. The labour force had died off, and so they were people to go and replace those jobs. It was a place of lots of economic opportunity. We see that these migrants often tended to cluster in certain bits of the inner city where there was cheap housing. So there's a big Asian community just outside the CBD, and same for the black community. these are long-standing communities where people migrated into those cheaper housing. As the service industry grew in the city, lots of opportunities came available for migrants, which encouraged them to go there, and often these were in low-skilled jobs. Examples are taxi drivers, hospital porters, or in retail.

Question 36

opportunities created by migration

Answer 36

they started to bring their cultures and beliefs, and therefore they altered the built environment. eg the Birmingham Central Mosque, which was built due to migration of Muslims into the city since the 1960s. We also see key services and new services popping up to support those migrants. eg money transfer centres like the Western Union and that's because lots of migrants want to be able to send remittances back to their home nation. So these services have popped up to meet the demand. and migrants set up businesses. eg Balty Triangle is an area of Birmingham where there's lots of Indian and other ethnic restaurants that have been set up by migrants coming into the city. Not only have they actually brought businesses and services, so kind of fabric shops, but also they've changed the culture. eg the balti was invented in Birmingham,so migrants have not only changed demography, but they've also actually changed the culture of Birmingham.

Question 37

age demography of Birmingham

Answer 37

it's very youthful compared to lots of parts of the UK and England. we can see that there's more people that are 24 or younger, 38% compared to the national average of 31, and there is more people that, less people that are above 65.

Question 38

unemployment in the 80s vs 2020

Answer 38

they had nearly 20% unemployment in the 80s but it's now 8% in 2020. It's not as good as the UK average, it shows there's still improvement to be done

Question 39

role of the government in regeneration

Answer 39

They've tried to build the city as a place for business tourism as financial services, regional centre for trade, but also a retail and tourism hub and so lots of the projects and funds that they've gone for have tried to do this, get away and build services and new investment into the city.

Question 40

eg of government projects

Answer 40

one of them is the NEC which is the National Exhibition Centre. The government petitioned for investment to be given to Birmingham so they could build it on the west side of the city and at the same time they petitioned for Birmingham airport to be expanded. So the local government were doing this because they knew that when they got those both working in conjunction they could get these major international exhibitions and conferences to the region which means that they would get a lot of money.

Question 41

how did the governments create these projects

Answer 41

So they partly did this by accessing funding schemes that were from national governments. So the single regeneration budget which was a budget used to build projects in deprived areas and the city challenge. So this is where local government and national government working together to try and develop areas

Question 42

eg of development corporations

Answer 42

One of these ways was in the 80s that development corporations were set up. These were organisations that were trying to plan and regenerate deprived areas and there was the Birmingham Heartlands Development Corporation and they were trying to do the industrial areas of Birmingham. They got 100 million from the government but they also got 200 million from other investors and the EU

Question 43

example of what the Birmingham Heartlands Development Corporation did

Answer 43

Naeshells power station which the the corporation regenerated and turned into Star City which was a entertainment leisure complex that brought in new opportunities and services and brought new investment into the area and completely cleaned up this old industrial site. Similarly the corporation built Bordersley Village near Birmingham City Stadium. It's that kind of green area and the housing around it. They got rid of all the terrace housing that was run down and they replaced it with these nice semi-detached housing for low-income earners lowering the entire density of the area. these were kind of projects that the local government worked on in conjunction with national government and they also tapped into things like the New Deals for Communities scheme which was a government scheme to try and reduce deprivation at neighbourhood level and part of that scheme Birmingham actually got some areas that broadband upgraded and also work experience programme set up and one of those areas was Aston so it helped the communities in that area.

Question 44

EU investment

Answer 44

this is where local government works with the EU. So the council actually gained funds from the EU for projects. The social investment fund gave them £235 million over a number of years and also the regional development fund gave them money to kind of help look after their landmarks, improve the social housing eg Bordersley Village and build space for small enterprises

Question 45

planning and flagship development

Answer 45

this is the idea that the city wants to make important physical changes to the city. They do this through having a really clear plan but also building these flagship projects. These are the hope that if physical change is made it will actually lead to social and economic benefits for the city.

Question 46

eg of planning projects

Answer 46

Centenary Square was originally built in the 20s but they just refurbished it. They upgraded this public space, a space that people were going to spend a lot of time in, reconstructed it. Similarly in Victoria Square which is where the old town hall is they refurbished that as places that people actually wanted to spend time outside at.

Question 47

flagship projects

Answer 47

The flagship projects are essentially large infrastructure projects they're normally one-offs and they're very expensive. The ones they built in Birmingham were the ICC, the International Conference Centre and the Symphony Hall. They were opened in the 90s and they were both very expensive. This was where local government was again working with the EU so it got 50 million to help with the construction of those projects even though they kind of cost 200 million so there was other investment as well.

Question 48

the ICC

Answer 48

So the great thing about the ICC is that it kind of brings in a lot of income by hosting national and international conferences so bringing people into the city to use the conference centre and then the kind of services around it. Bill Clinton was famously there and in the G8 summit and this was good because it got international recognition for Birmingham as a major kind of centre for important events.

Question 49

the Symphony Hall

Answer 49

Similarly of Symphony Hall has the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and this changes the cultural landscape of Birmingham. Its, a national orchestra basically saying that it's away from the idea of being a run-down city and it's actually a place where nationally, internationally acclaimed orchestra exist.

Question 50

the NIA

Answer 50

The NIA is another flagship project that was built and that has drawn in more tourists for large sporting events including the 22 Commonwealth Games.

Question 51

multiplier effect of flagship projects

Answer 51

All of these flagship projects help create a multiply effect. They bring people into the city and these people need to use hotels and restaurants and other facilities and therefore those are established and then that brings more money into the economy.So it's a success breeds more success by more services needed off the back of these initial projects. Other things that have improved, there's key services in the city improved.

Question 52

eg of multiplier effect projects

Answer 52

The retail centre, the Bull Ring which was initially built in the 60s and by the 90s was pretty run down was demolished and rebuilt and they put in some pretty radical designs to do that and Birmingham has now become a really key regional national hub for retail. It's got really impressive buildings like the Selfridges store which is its kind of flagship building. They've also built library services with a new library in Centenary Square which shows you again that lots of flagship projects are built close to each other to draw in this mass of tourists.

Question 53

environmental planning

Answer 53

the environment has actually been improved. So not only have public spaces been built and they've built street furniture and monuments and public arts but also the canals have been cleaned up. Eg Brindley Place is a place now that is for tourists but it was once an industrial area and players like the local government working with organisations like the Canal and River Trust to help regenerate and clean up these areas.

Question 54

universities

Answer 54

So Birmingham's got three main universities. This brings in 50,000 students which is important but this changes the demographics of the city. It makes it a younger place and takes away from that old industrial image but these are important players because they spend a lot of money. There's people employed actually to work in these universities but also the students spend money on housing and services and so again it's adding more and more money into the economy and improving the social economic conditions in the city.

Question 55

transport

Answer 55

Birmingham's always had a legacy of being well connected. We talked about the canal network before but the national network of motorways, we've got the M6 that links the M1, the M42 ring road and the M5 showing that this is a well-connected area and these motorways that built since the 60s have meant that there is more opportunities for people to actually come to the city because it's so well connected to the rest of the country. What they're trying to do is build on some of the infrastructure. So Birmingham New Street has just had a huge revamp, 700 million gone into that and as part of that they've actually developed the shopping centre called the Grand Central above it. They've refurbished that which has brought in a thousand jobs and there's new services, shops and restaurants that have been created as part of that refurbishment. The big project though is related to HS2.

Question 56

HS2

Answer 56

HS2 is a high-speed railway network that is starting in London, is going to link Birmingham and northern cities. The government have done this as a flagship development for the country to try and stop the gap between the north and the south in terms of wealth and income and they want to use this railway as a catalyst for growth. So by connecting it to the capital they're going to hopefully make these northern cities that they're connected to into economic powerhouses. One of the ways it's going to connect is the fact that the journey time between Birmingham and London is going to be 45 minutes, it's currently an hour and a half, and that means that there is better connection so people can move between the cities better. That means trade can be easier and more investment can be done into the city. The last thing to kind of really mention is to say that obviously this is going to end up in Birmingham, the first phase, and so they are building a whole new station there to meet, to actually have a hub for it and this is going to be good for the city because they're actually going to redevelop the areas around it. So Eastside and Digbeth are the areas right next to the station and they're actually, the city is going to spend a lot of time redeveloping those areas to bring opportunities to those areas. The council has hoped that this regeneration off the back of HST will bring at least 36,000 jobs and 1.4 billion in economic uplift. So we can see how lots of players are involved in HST and hopefully it could boost Birmingham from an area that was kind of industrial decline, its service industry is on the way up, but hopefully they can reduce the unemployment rate down.

Question 57

players involved in HS2

Answer 57

Lots of players involved in this, local council, big engineering TNCs like (Lane O'Rourke who are building Curzon Station and Skanzer, but also community groups who are involved and also NGOs like the National Trust who are interested in the kind of environmental impacts of such a big project.