City and Borough of Birmingham: England's Second City, Nobody's Second Thought
Birmingham has spent decades pushing against a reputation it never deserved. The city that manufactured half of everything Britain exported during the Industrial Revolution — buttons, guns, jewellery, pens, screws, steam engines — was labelled ugly and boring by people who had never walked through the Jewellery Quarter or eaten in the Balti Triangle. The 2022 Commonwealth Games went some way to resetting the perception. The reality is a city of over a million people with a cultural, culinary, and economic weight that justifies the "second city" title it has held for two centuries.
The Bullring shopping centre, rebuilt in 2003 with the Selfridges building wrapped in aluminium discs, is the commercial heart. The canals — Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice, a fact the city has been repeating since roughly 1985 — now host bars, restaurants, and narrowboat dwellers rather than cargo. Cadbury's Bournville factory, the model village George Cadbury built alongside it, and the Bournville green remain intact in the south of the city, though production has scaled down. The Balti Triangle in Sparkbrook serves a style of curry invented in Birmingham in the 1970s, cooked and served in the pressed steel balti dish.
Economically, Birmingham is a powerhouse. The city is the UK's largest centre for financial and professional services outside London. Five universities bring a student population exceeding 80,000. HS2, despite its controversies and cost overruns, will eventually connect Curzon Street station to London in under an hour. The population of the local authority area is around 1.15 million — the largest in England outside London.
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Birmingham has spent decades pushing against a reputation it never deserved. The city that manufactured half of everything Britain exported during the Industrial Revolution — buttons, guns, jewellery, pens, screws, steam engines — was labelled ugly and boring by people who had never walked through the Jewellery Quarter or eaten in the Balti Triangle. The 2022 Commonwealth Games went some way to resetting the perception. The reality is a city of over a million people with a cultural, culinary, and economic weight that justifies the "second city" title it has held for two centuries.
The Bullring shopping centre, rebuilt in 2003 with the Selfridges building wrapped in aluminium discs, is the commercial heart. The canals — Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice, a fact the city has been repeating since roughly 1985 — now host bars, restaurants, and narrowboat dwellers rather than cargo. Cadbury's Bournville factory, the model village George Cadbury built alongside it, and the Bournville green remain intact in the south of the city, though production has scaled down. The Balti Triangle in Sparkbrook serves a style of curry invented in Birmingham in the 1970s, cooked and served in the pressed steel balti dish.
Economically, Birmingham is a powerhouse. The city is the UK's largest centre for financial and professional services outside London. Five universities bring a student population exceeding 80,000. HS2, despite its controversies and cost overruns, will eventually connect Curzon Street station to London in under an hour. The population of the local authority area is around 1.15 million — the largest in England outside London.
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