Boom Cities: Architect-Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain

摘要

As I write this review in January 2020, Birmingham City Council has just announced that it is planning to make private car use within the city centre almost impossible. Birmingham was for decades a key centre in the British motor industry, and this 'motor city' was significantly remodelled in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1990s, however, it has had a troubled relationship with its post-war inheritance. Some recent moves - including the downgrading of the Inner Ring Road - have been well conceived. Other interventions, however, will surely be counted as mistakes by future generations: the demolition of John Madin's Central Library, for example, a sophisticated design opened in 1974.