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“It could be that the neighbourhood, not the individual, is the essential unit of social change. If you’re trying to improve lives, maybe you have to think about changing many elements of a single neighbourhood, in a systematic way, at a steady pace.”
—David Brooks
In a range of ways, Ladywood, Birmingham UK — the place CIVIC SQUARE calls home — exemplifies many inner city areas: close to a wealthy city centre, statistically masking the reality of under investment and poor outcomes. What we know about our neighbourhood and what the detailed data show about the disparity of social outcomes here is purposely masked by the inclusion of data from the extremely wealthy core of the city. City centre facilities often mean the lack of neighbourhood infrastructure is overlooked or not accounted for, and the pockets of extreme deprivation and under investment with very poor outcomes is statistically balanced out by nearby areas of wealth, resources and investment.
In a pattern that we see elsewhere, Ladywood is also separated from other neighbourhoods by key arterial roads, which can often act as boundaries between areas of differing social outcomes and experiences. It’s an area that has deep social networks and connections, as well as one that’s been a hub of 20th Century models of industry, creativity and community, despite systematic under investment.
<aside> 💡 For a more in-depth look at context please see the early and emergent framing of our neighbourhood(s), context and place from 2019 ‣, which focused on the critically important scale of the neighbourhood, whilst recognising the plural ways in which these terms are defined, bounded, and understood by those that live with them.
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“The fact that groups across the political spectrum create these sorts of maps illustrates that counter-mapping itself is not necessarily politically progressive, but that geographical imaginations are important sites of struggle.”
—Counter Cartographies Collective, Daltron & Mason-Desee (2012)
CIVIC SQUARE sits in the heart of the B16 postcode, in Ladywood, in the middle of two voting boundaries, surrounded by neighbours and places that define themselves in many ways, as many different communities, as geographies that are fluid and shifting, deep and historical, as streets, as estates, as places, as neighbourhoods, as Summerfield, Ladywood or Edgbaston or as roads such as Dudley Road, and much, much more. People get around via car, on arterial roads, on canals, bus routes, bikes and on foot. People relate to canals, large bodies of water, childhood experiences, a single road, a whole area. There is no single, people-defined neighbourhood to draw a hard boundary around.
CIVIC SQUARE is based at Port Loop (previously known as Icknield Port Loop), an emerging new development; developer-described as a 'new neighbourhood'. The bridges and boundaries between our neighbourhoods are varied and porous, and they can act as either genuine bridges or as dividers. Within all of these tensions and complexities we recognise that our homes, streets, and neighbourhoods are where, ultimately, our challenges, crises, and opportunities converge. They are also platforms for deep change, demonstration and possibility both small enough and connected enough to see transformation happen, and big enough to aggregate and invest individually or across a portfolio. They can give a taste of what the future could look like, drawing on data and stories, people and projects. But how do we not commodify them or their residents? How do we not artificially define or create barriers, whilst also recognising their power?