Ring Road: Birmingham and the Collapse of the Motor City Ideal in 1970s Britain

摘要

Reconstructing Britain’s cities to accommodate the ‘motor revolution’ was an integral\udpart of urban renewal in the post-war decades. This article shows how opposition to\udurban motorways had a pivotal role in the retreat from urban modernism in the 1970s.\udIt takes as its case study Birmingham, Britain’s premier motor city, headquarters of the\udmotor industry and with heavy investment in roads, including the Inner Ring, Britain’s\udfirst urban motorway completed in 1971. The article traces the collapse of the motor\udcity ideal in Birmingham sparked by controversy over car pollution at Spaghetti\udJunction, the growth of roads protest and the implication of the Inner Ring in municipal\udcorruption. In so doing it identifies the intersection of environmental, political and\udeconomic factors that lay behind the volte-face in urban policy and compares\udBirmingham with other cities which witnessed similar revolts. It argues that the 1970s\udin Britain saw the end of a specific engineering vision of the post-war city, centred on\udthe car and the ‘citizen-driver’.