Description:Reginald Edgecombe was a designer commissioned by the Council to produce artist’s impressions of what Birmingham might look like post-war once reconstruction was complete. A collection of his watercolour impressions is held at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which also included sketches by Sir Herbert Manzoni, City Engineer and Surveyor and member of the West Midlands Planning Group, whose radical vision influenced the direction of planning policy in the city after 1945. The situation inherited by Birmingham Council in 1945 was grave and demanded all-encompassing solutions. Land, material and labour was scarce. Bombed-out buildings had to be rebuilt or replaced quickly. The largely working-class servicemen who had helped defeat fascism also had to be rewarded, which meant demolishing the remaining slums and building new homes.<small><sup>1</sup></small>
Although not an accurate rendition of what Birmingham became, the paintings are striking in their utopianism. A glance through articles on post-war planning in the press reveals that similar illustrations were used to accompany articles, in keeping with the wishes of the West Midland Group that governments used propaganda to foster a sympathetic attitude to large-scale planning projects amongst the public (<a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1479">Thomas Bodkin file</a>). One key aspect of Manzoni’s work from the 1950s was planning ever taller blocks of flats in the central Redevelopment Zones, which rose on suburban fringes like Northfield to the south-west. Council officials had visited central and eastern European cities to look at radical solutions adopted elsewhere. The monolithic blocks designed by modernist architects like Le Corbusier also served as a template.<small><sup>2</sup></small> Edgecombe accentuates the huge structures that jut out of the ground to the extent that earlier architectural styles are not visible, perhaps emphasising the permanence of the structures that would rise out of the wartime devastation.
Flat building was essential as Manzoni envisioned Birmingham as a ‘city of the car’, with huge new arterial roads putting additional pressure on available land for housing. Birmingham was one of the hubs of the British motor industry, with working-class vehicle ownership projected to rise once prosperity returned, therefore road networks were planned that would allow safe and easy flow of traffic.<small><sup>3</sup></small> The lush avenues of trees and grass that line the thoroughfare in this painting show some continuity with the ideals of the Chamberlains and Cadburys in terms of providing green space, possibly symbolising the benefits the new roads would bring to civic health.
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Anthony Sutcliffe and Roger Smith, History of Birmingham volume III: Birmingham 1939-1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp.220-2.
<sup>2</sup> Lynsey Hanley, Estates: an intimate history (London: Granta Publications, 2007), pp. 92-3
<sup>3</sup> Malcolm Dick, Birmingham: A history of the city and its people (Birmingham: Birmingham Library Services, 2005), pp.38-9</font></small>