Birmingham

Birmingham England (which Birmingham Alabama named itself after in 1871, in frank and acknowledged flattery) is the 18^th century’s version of Silicon Valley: it exists solely because of its own inventiveness, creativity, and vision.

Between 1750 and 1850 it went from irrelevant to irreplaceable.

The Industrial Revolution started here: the invention of the industrial steam engine in Birmingham made it possible to build factories anywhere. No longer would manufacturing plants be bound to rivers who’s rapid currents turned the giant machinery within.

The list of inventions and brands that came out of this city is both lengthy and astonishing for its variety: Cadbury’s chocolates, Jaguar cars, the electroplating process, multi-speed transmissions, modern bicycles, the bicycle bell, the stove, steel fountain pen nibs, various kinds of lanterns, gas lighting, smoke detectors, x-ray scanners, pneumatic tires, windshield wipers, automatic record changers, the pacemaker, weather maps, celluloid, the postage stamp and the modern postage system, all are Birmingham innovations.

Musical trailblazers like The Moody Blues, UB40, Ozzy Osbourne, ELO and Led Zeppelin are also “Brummies”.

There’s an energy and excitement to the city that you can feel oozing up through the sidewalks: Birmingham has been declared dead countless times over the past 300 years, yet has continued to re-invent itself.

Today, the old Victorian core has been pedestrianized and revived by the construction of the magnificent just-completed train station as its focal point. There’s a brand new futuristic tram line linking the city centre with outlying areas. The new library is a beautifully eccentric piece of modern architecture, flooded with light both from outdoors and from the atrium within, where a glass walled elevator and atrium escalators take you from the ground to the 9^th floor.

Bifrmingham is old and new, with architecture that is simultaneously Victorian and Contemporary, Georgian and Modern, standing side by side.

As the UKs second biggest city, with a Metro Area population of 3.8 million (Birmingham proper stands at about 1.1 million) it of course has gritty areas, but Birmingham itself, ribboned with a 160 km network of canals built originally for the easy transport of raw materials and manufactured goods, has an architectural vivacity and a risk-taking spirit that is magnetic.

I wasn’t that interested in seeing Birmingham.

Now I love it and can’t wait to return.