Birmingham is set to go green with new infrastructure plan
Birmingham’s city centre Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) says it’s aiming to create a more attractive, greener and safer city with a master plan for green infrastructure.
The Going Green Masterplan gives a ‘toolkit’ of interventions to enable local decision-makers to make choices about implementing green infrastructure across the city.
Birmingham’s Colmore and Retail BIDs, which operate in the city core, commissioned UK-based international architects and urban designers Broadway Malyan to create the master plan.
Broadway Malyan found the districts to be heavily urbanised with low-quality biodiversity, impacts on health and wellbeing and potential issues around flooding, air quality and urban ‘heat island’ effects.
The Going Green Masterplan received £50,000 funding from Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) as part of the Towns and Local Centres programme and it will use the toolkit to inform green development opportunities in the area.
Louise Brooke-Smith, GBSLEP Board Director for Place said: “Creating greener and cleaner places for all of us is not a choice but a priority if we are to help our city-centres reach net-zero targets and mitigate the impacts of climate breakdown.
“This work builds upon our partnership with Colmore and Retail BIDs to ensure we help catalyse investment into the city centre. Our ambition is to create places that are greener and a city that is sustainable.”
Danny Crump, Director of Urbanism at Broadway Malyan, said: “Often we see reports with fantastic recommendations, but which don’t consider the real-life challenges, such as securing funding or planning permission. We wanted the proposals in our master plan to be as deliverable as possible.
“As urban designers, of huge importance to us is how city centres affect not just people’s health and wellbeing, but their safety and quality of life. If we truly want to have an impact on these shared issues, we can no longer afford to provide blue-sky thinking. We must come up with a clear roadmap for change.”
