It’s time to stop bashing metal-bashing in this city.
There appear to be some in the city who are so stuck in the pre-crash world, and, indeed, still stuck in the last century, that they continue to believe somewhere like Birmingham (for goodness sake) needs to throw off its reputation as a city of industry.
They believe in some nonsense of a ‘modern’ city world where coffee shops, retail, finance, call centres and the public sector are all that are needed to keep a ‘new’ city thriving and thrusting and ‘modern’.
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This is a city of great industry. We should not only be proud of this as a heritage, we should continue to embrace it, develop it and place our new sustainable industries at the forefront of the city’s continuing regeneration in the 21st century.
Banks, retail, commercial offices, call centres and public sector bases are indeed welcome but they are not the only options for the future of a city.
The over focus on them is a sign of the mindset of those still desperately stuck in the 20st century, with little concept of the city of the here and now, never mind the future.
So let’s not celebrate in any way a view of this city as having broken free from the supposed shackles of ‘metal-bashing’ industry.
In particular the idea that Birmingham is some finance, commerce, service-sector and public sector regional capital whilst the Black Country ‘does’ manufacturing is a total nonsense. We ‘do’ too.
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That particular anti-manufacturing drainpipe of a dream does not serve the economic well-being of the city and, in particular, does not serve the economic well-being of present and future citizens of the city.
It is also far more likely to concentrate economic regeneration (yet again) into the city centre and leave the 40 wards of the city beholden to that city centre.
Again, this is an unimaginative and old-fashioned view of the kind of city Birmingham needs to become to be a thriving world city.
By being a city driven simply by finance and commerce, service and public sector bases Birmingham is much more likely to become a city of extreme haves and have-nots.
It is more likely to find that other cities at home and abroad overtake Birmingham because it will remain a 20th century city.
The city requires thinking not anchored in the past.
Birmingham has again to become a city that makes physical things in the real world.
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I am very worried, in particular, that Birmingham is going to be utterly passed by in one of the most important of recent manufacturing developments: additive manufacturing or 3D printing.
On a large scale level in say, automotive and aerospace 3D printing it is definitely the 21st century’s thirddecade direction. It is ideally Brummie.
But (equally) on a small-scale micro and small and medium-sized businesses can use 3D printing to respond and provide in an agile and bespoke way to real physical manufacturing and consumer needs. It’s what’s becoming known as ‘distributed manufacturing’.
The city of a thousand trades could miss out on being the city of a thousand 3D printing enterprises and on a scale which allows those enterprises to be based across the 40 wards of the city. Birmingham should have aimed to become the 海角视频’s first 3D printing city.
The utterly 20th century concept of the Enterprise Zone (could it BE more 1980s) where we try to ram into pre-determined geographical zones whatever business concern we can attract (usually displacing the activity from elsewhere anyway) by never-never incremental financing from the 1990s is a tired idea from tired thinkers.
Instead we can take an approach which actually promotes 40 ward business growth across the city and even provides industry and jobs closer to Brummie homes.
Perhaps if jobs and enterprises were planned in a network of business activity city-wide, not city-centre-narrow, transport issues might find some solutions.
Actual modern and recent economic thinking suggests that industry (including, indeed, metal-bashing) can and should sit side-by-side with the spheres of commerce and the creative and can complement them, with what are called ‘serendipitous spillovers’ between stimulating whole new areas of economic activity. We can and should develop 21st century manufacturing enterprise in this city side-by-side with our more recent commercial activities and services: all industries bright and beautiful, great and small.
Birmingham’s economy needs to become a recognisably productive economy.
And there’s nothing wrong with being known for bashing metal in all the different and newly distinctive ways metal and other materials can now be bashed – or printed.
Birmingham can bash metal and print metal and bash and print and shape materials into real physical things that create real wealth for the city. Carry on bashing.
* John Clancy is a Birmingham Labour councillor for Quinton