When we build again -- Birmingham -- fifty years on
Summary
Like many UK cities Birmingham was heavily bombed during the Second World War and as with so many bombed British cities, and many un-bombed ones that jumped on to the re-planning bandwagon, there was a clear imperative to reconstruct. But Birmingham was atypical in how it went about this. The city had begun planning in the mid-1930s, principally to replace vast quantities of slum housing - and there had been suggestions about ring roads even from the time of the First World War. So plans were available virtually ready to go, and were approved by a private Act of Parliament in 1946.>
