The Core contains offices for international and national businesses, shops with attract people from across the region,  leisure facilities, a major museum, art gallery and library all of which contain important collections. The core also has key tourist attractions and top theatre and concert venues. It includes the Colmore Row Conservation Area, civic buildings and spaces, several listed buildings, and the main public transport interchanges.

Around the outside of the historic Core we find the distinctive quarters and neighbourhoods of Birmingham. These quarters are largely based on historic clusters of common businesses, some of which continue to this day. We want to protect these distinct qualities whilst planning to allow the quarters scope to change in the future.

Some of the quarters are more defined and historically established than others, and there are more opportunities for change in certain quarters than in others. Some will be transformed whilst others need their exiting qualities to be improved.  Where roads and canals form a boundary between the areas it is important to make that both sides of roads and canals are treated in similar ways.

We define the city centre as stopping at the Ring Road, however we also need to find ways to improve the ways the city centre connects to outlying neighbourhoods.  This particularly applies to sites such as Birmingham Wheels and Icknield Port Loop.

The part of the Big City Plan which deals with the layout of the newly enlarged city centre will be based on the following areas (see Figure 5.1):

Image 5.1 Existing quarters and proposed new quarters. Click on the map for a larger image.

• The City Core
• Southside
• Highgate
• Westside
• Ladywood
• Jewellery Quarter
• Gun Quarter
• Eastside
• Digbeth

Some of these policy areas are neighbourhoods people will largely recognise,  such as the Jewellery Quarter, the Gun Quarter, Highgate and Ladywood. Others are newly defined neighbourhoods. For example Southside includes the Chinese Quarter, Gay Village and the Entertainment District around the Hippodrome. Westside includes Brindleyplace, the Convention Quarter, Attwood Green and Park Central plus Broad Street as far as Fiveways. Digbeth includes the Irish Quarter.

The individual quarters that make up these new areas still exist and will continue to do so.

Before we look at these areas in more detail first let us look at how we should deal with the general expansion of  Birmingham city centre: