Birmingham city centre: It needs work, but they've started. Photo / Getty Images
Birmingham city centre: It needs work, but they've started. Photo / Getty Images
Heard this one before? In the 1960s, the city was redesigned to make it as car-friendly as possible. New motorways, tram tracks ripped out and car parking everywhere. They proudly called it Motorway City, a nod to the real Motor City, Detroit.
Is it Auckland? Well, yes. But also Birmingham,the second-largest city in Britain, now with a population of 1.2 million. Birmingham is Auckland only a bit smaller, with worse weather and no harbour, volcanoes or even any hills. Actually, it's a pretty unattractive city.
Recently, though, the Brummies have had a rethink. They realised that every week, on average, 18 people were dying from air pollution. Drivers spent two hours stuck in traffic. More than £23 million [$44 million] was lost to the economy. Auckland has uncannily similar statistics.
They knew if they built more roads it would make all those problems worse. So they looked around and thought, "Aha, Ghent." The Belgian city is much smaller, but in 2017 it had invented a new transport system. And it was working. The Birmingham City Council decided to copy it.
In October last year they agreed to divide the city centre into seven zones: when it's set up, you'll be able to drive in and out of any one of them, but not go across town. If you're driving, you'll have to go around.
The new Birmingham Transport Plan proposes carbon neutrality by 2031. There'll be much more public transport, more road space for buses and bikes and a new network of pedestrian streets. Less parking - and what remains will be more expensive. Businesses with staff car parks will pay an annual £500 levy per park. Apartment blocks will be built on former car park land.
All local roads will have a 32km/h speed limit and traffic near schools will be heavily restricted.
Traffic in Birmingham: Scenes like this will soon be a thing of the past. Photro / supplied
A quarter of all car trips in Birmingham are less than 1.6 km long. Now, they hope, walking and cycling "will become the mode of choice for short trips". In a pilot scheme, the council has just given away 500 bicycles to people unable to buy their own. Names were put forward by GPs and social workers.
There were complaints, although not so many. "Most businesses supported the Workplace Parking Levy," The Guardian reported, "and residents strongly welcomed the promise of more protected cycleways."
In Ghent, they've had time to measure the results. Pre-Covid, says deputy mayor Filip Watteeuw, the Green Party politician who led the project, they'd had "a 17 per cent increase in restaurant and bar startups, and the number of empty shops has been arrested".
Auckland Council has an Access for Everyone (A4E) plan that's very similar to Birmingham's. Like them, we copied Ghent.
But there is a difference. Birmingham is doing it. Auckland adopted A4E but somehow is still talking about doing it. That talk has been going on so long, it almost qualifies as pretending.
Watteeuw's advice? "Don't stagger the changes." It delays the benefits, confuses everyone and encourages complaints. In Ghent, they put it all in place one Sunday night. "It was technically and politically the easiest way."
Before the changes, Watteeuw received death threats. A year later, he was re-elected with an increased majority.
Design for Living is a series about bright ideas that make cities better, appearing weekly in Canvas magazine.
