The ‘Big City Plan’ is a city-wide development project to plan for the next 20 years of change in Birmingham. We aim to be one of the top 20 cities in the world where people most want to live.

We started this process in 2006 when we asked Professor Michael Parkinson from Liverpool John Moores University to do a study [link to PDF document]. We took the next step in 2007, when we named the project the “Big City Plan” and asked some Birmingham experts their opinions. We wrote a report containing their thoughts and ideas, which came out at the start of 2008. I am very excited about the work that has happened so far. We won an award for the best city plan in the world, beating Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

The ‘Big City Plan’ deals with the area within the ring road (the pink line on this map) and covers the physical environment (such as buildings, roads, transport, and so on), the economy, culture and creativity (such as art, design, music, dance, and so on). We need everyone’s help to acheive this, by discussing the ‘Work in Progress Report’.

We have split up the ‘Work in Progress Report’ to match areas within the ring road. We have come up with ideas about housing, creative workplaces, more shops and offices, and more public areas (such as parks). We also have ideas about transport, how different types of places fit together and how to make sure we can keep them going. We want you to help decide the future of Birmingham. How do you see Birmingham becoming an exciting and attractive place to live and work? What sort of culture do you think Birmingham should have? How do you and your family want to use the city and travel around it? We need to think about these questions and many more and I hope that the information in the Work in Progress Report will help you have your say.

We don’t just want your opinions on the things in the Work in Progress Report, we want to hear about anything that you think is important to include in our plans. We think that these plans will also help the whole of the city of Birmingham (not just the parts within the ring road) – see our ‘Core Strategy‘ plan for more information. We will ask for more feedback from the public and permission from the Planning Committee in the future, and that will be affected by what you tell us now. We hope to officially start work on the ‘Big City Plan’ during 2009.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts about what we can achieve in the city centre and the whole of Birmingham. I am excited about the ideas in the ‘Big City Plan’ for Birmingham and the choices we are thinking about to make it happen. The finished plan will be something very special and will let everyone involved with Birmingham (including the Government and the Council) know exactly what we plan to do for Birmingham in the future to make sure it continues to do well.