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« Enthusiasm for Swindon's canal | Main | Water, water everywhere except in the Rochdale Canal »

Tuesday, 30 January 2007

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dp

Local or not, your perspective is relevant. You, as a boater, would have an opinion on the treatment of waterways.

I recall your comment about Warwick Bar being a place whose dereliction we may come to value. That view is not often stated with such clarity, and represents an appreciation of landscape character.

Warwick Bar - and the greater Eastside - are susceptible to the kind of redevelopment that would wipe out the interesting bits of dereliction and gentle decay, replacing them with more Millennium Points, Aston Science Parks, and overly-sanitised Woodsman pubs. Is that what the boating community wants to see? Your perspective is relevant and perhaps representative.

In that vein, you way want to have a look at what's in store for the former Curzon goodsyard as Birmingham's newest outdoor leisure space. The winning City Park design scheme is not clear about what it will do on the ground - it could be a mix of blessing and curse.

Andrew Denny

Thanks, DP, a great comment!

It does need a lot of people on it, that's true. But I feel that the more local people who write about it in open blogs (and link to other local bloggers), the better.

Granny is only a passer-by, not a local. I simply observe interesting things that I think deserve more attention, and try to raise their profile. But I'm happy to watch and revisit stories. And I'll now keep a watch on the phrase "eastside masterplan".

dp

You are right in wanting a good overall story. But to get that story you would need investigators who were both good at ferreting information and who had the time to track all of the pertinent sources. One could say that the plan is too big to be detailed in any one place or by any one person.

I have tried to do bits of it on and off for several years, and can say that while I have come across people who are very familiar with the Eastside story, they are generally too busy to write about it, and nobody - Goldberg included - has found the time to interview a number of those people and write a cohesive story.

If I were going to do it I would start with people in community, policy and academic sectors who have an interest in and concern about the way Eastside develops. This includes local architects, academic staff at UB and UCE, staff at regional policy institutes and in groups representing cultural and heritage interests. There would also be mileage in seeking the views of residents (Such as Fred Grove) and business people in the area. Contrary to what one might suppose, this latter group cannot be expected to line up uniformly behind the Masterplan, since some of them are under pressure to relocate. Even some of the big players might have an objection or two. (You may have heard about the chemical processing facility scandal last year that put the entire masterplan in jeopardy.)

The Eastside Team is headed by an approachable fellow, and one might make some inroads with regard to getting the official side of the story. But one would have extraordinary difficulty getting more than a superficial account of the scheme and its processes.

On this basis I think the general feeling is that the scheme needs as many eyes on it as possible; that a lot of community-minded people need to be following various bits of the story and coming together to keep in touch. There are already people like Joe Holyoake, Libby Porter, the Birmingham Civic Trust and Midlands Architecture and the Design Environment (MADE), each of whom is doing something important in terms of keeping an eye on things.

But it also needs you, me, the Goldbergs, D'logs, Brum Blogs and so forth. Not because we write about such things, but because the development is supposed to be in our interest, for our benefit. If we value Fred Grove's tenure, if we believe that the house is more important with him in it, and that it is his life there that gives the house significance, then we need to be making that clear to everyone who acts on our behalf.

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