Masterplanner chosen for £10bn Birmingham regeneration » Communities » 24dash.com

A consortium led by leading UK urban designers, Urban Initiatives, has been unveiled as the winning bidder chosen to create and shape Birmingham City Council’s groundbreaking City Centre Masterplan.

The largest ever plan of its kind in the UK, the Masterplan will co-ordinate the physical, economic and cultural development of the city centre over the next 20 years.

As part of this more than £10 billion worth of investment is already planned for the city centre, including Arena Central, New Street Gateway Project, Snow Hill redevelopment and the proposed Library of Birmingham.

Council Leader, Mike Whitby, said: “The Masterplan is the most ambitious and far reaching city-wide development project ever undertaken in the UK and will underpin the future development of the entire city and wider region for many generations to come.”

“By developing an integrated approach within which public and private sectors work in unison, the Masterplan will create an environment within which all parts of the city centre are linked together.

"It will ensure that future change and development is predicted and managed, and opportunities for inward investment are maximised.

“With their extensive expertise in managing headline projects, creativity and clear commitment to work with local people, we believe Urban Initiatives will provide the ideal partner to help us deliver on our vision to make Birmingham a global city with a local heart.”

Urban initiatives were awarded the £750,000 Masterplan contract after beating four rival bidders in a rigorous tender process.

As part of this each company’s ability to manage the financial, legal and organisational aspects of delivering the plan were considered just as highly as their design and development expertise.

Urban Initiatives is one of the UK’s leading urban planning and design consultancies, with an established reputation for being at the cutting edge of the rapidly changing agendas that are shaping urban areas.

Over the years it has won much recognition for its achievements, and was most recently named Planning Consultant of the Year 2003 and Regeneration Awards Consultant of the Year 2006.

With in-house expertise in town planning, architecture, landscape design, transport planning, traffic engineering, development planning and civil engineering, the company’s role in project managing the Masterplan will be far reaching.

Kelvin Campbell, Managing Director of Urban Initiatives, said: “A job like this only comes along once in a lifetime.

"To work on a whole city, particularly one of the scale and quality of Birmingham, is the holy grail of urban design and anyone who sees themselves at the forefront of the ‘making cities’ agenda will want to work on this project.

“We are therefore absolutely delighted to have been awarded the commission to undertake the city centre masterplan and my whole team are very much looking forward to working on this challenging study.”

The Masterplan will be based upon the principles set out by Professor Michael Parkinson of the European Institute for Urban Affairs, in his ‘visioning study’, which was delivered to the Council earlier this year.

As well as seeking to better connect the city and integrate future developments with improved transportation links, the Masterplan will also identify appropriate delivery mechanisms for sustainable future growth and find ways to use the city’s assets to generate more private-sector investment.

Currently the city council owns almost half of all the land within the 2000 acre city centre. Working alongside private companies, the Authority will use the Masterplan as a route map for unlocking the full potential of this key resource.

The appointment of Urban Initiatives comes at just the time when Birmingham’s original city centre strategy, endorsed by the Highbury Initiative, is reaching the end of its 20-year lifespan.

Since it was drawn up in 1988, the real city centre has since expanded from 80 to 800 hectares inside the middle ring road.

The new Masterplan will update proposals for different parts of the city to provide the outline for Birmingham’s growth and development for the next 20 years and beyond.

Leading Birmingham architect and Stirling Prize nominee, Glen Howells, said: "I believe the appointment of Urban initiatives as masterplanner's is a huge step forward for the city, the challenge now is for the consortium working under Urban Initiatives to create and deliver a vision that is worthy of Birmingham".

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