Description:This map demonstrates the way land was parcelled up, or ‘zoned’, to the south-west of Birmingham’s city centre after the Second World War. Zoning organised units of land for residential, commercial or industrial development, and had its roots in the advanced town planning schemes introduced in recently industrialised German cities during the late nineteenth century. It was embraced by city planners and business leaders in large American cities, although critics argued that zoning had a more cynical purpose, keeping certain districts exclusive and property prices high, reducing the risk of competition from newly-arrived immigrant workers and businesses.<small><sup>1</sup></small> In the early twentieth century Birmingham housing density and industrial development was controlled by town planning schemes in accordance with working-class housing legislation.
Zoning in post-war Birmingham proved even more complex, reflecting challenges discussed by the West Midlands Planning Group (<a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1478">Manzoni file</a>). The array of colour-keyed blocks and lines stencilled over the maps specify where various works were to take place in the area around Lee Bank Road. Numbered blocks were assigned a colour, in accordance ten stages of development. Industrial development, bordered with purple lines, was kept to the north near the old city centre. A development of ‘flatted factories’ (marked with red and blue diagonal stripes) was to be situated off Holloway Street, designed to concentrate multiple small workshops and factories under single roofed units. Further south, residential areas are bordered with red lines, the bright yellow patch depicting the spaciously arranged tower blocks currently being built.
By comparing this image with <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1489"> a more recent map</a> we see wide arterial roads and rebuilding works cutting swathes through the old slum districts, <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1494"> new tower blocks</a> spaced out over a wider area. What we do not see is the arduously slow pace of the redevelopment schemes themselves. Large blocks of rubble-strewn land were sometimes left derelict for years at a time, and as the housing debate became increasingly politicised, articles appeared in the press criticising the way in which ‘wastelands’ had been created in inner-city areas. The vicar of Ladywood used the analogy of T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’ as a chapter of his book ‘The forgotten people’, a powerful critique of the effects of ‘scientific’ planning on community life in his parish. He described how the all-too-evident dereliction affected the behaviour of children, from noisy war games amidst the rubble to the growth of vandalism and delinquency.<small><sup>2</sup></small> The complexity of the situation became obvious as redevelopment works gathered pace, planners always having to consider the sometimes contradictory pressures of legislative obligation, economic necessity and public opinion.
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow (Oxford: Blackwells Publishers, 1988; 1996 edition), pp.57-61
<sup>2</sup> Norman S. Power, The forgotten people. A challenge to a caring community (Evesham: Arthur James Limited, 1965), p.38</small></font>