Birmingham has a once in a generation opportunity to repair the damage done to its historic markets quarter in the 1970s, but risks further harm if it simply gentrifies the area, writes Joe Holyoak
In 1973, eight hectares of historic streets and buildings adjacent to Birmingham’s city-centre Bull Ring markets were wiped from the map. They were replaced by the new wholesale market – big, single-storey sheds inside a walled stockade: a lifeless, anti-urban obstacle to movement.
In 2012, working for the retail market traders who wanted the wholesale markets to remain next door to them, I designed a scheme showing how the area could be redeveloped permeably while retaining the wholesale markets. My proposal was to rebuild in a different form on a smaller footprint, together with other land uses. But the city council was committed to the wholesale markets’ removal, and the proposal went nowhere.
In 2018 the wholesale markets were relocated to new sheds four miles away, near to Villa Park. The empty site, which will accommodate meanwhile activities of basketball and beach volleyball in this summer’s Commonwealth Games, is now part of the 14-hectare mixed-use Smithfield development site.
Public space is expensive to make, and does not earn any money
目前的总体规划是由市议会在2016年内部准备的。这是一个很好的计划，在很大程度上恢复了失去的连接的街道网络，为斗牛场(Bull Ring)零售市场提供了新的建筑，包括2000套住宅和其他用途。跨国公司Lendlease是被选中的开发商，它已经任命了一些正在进行第一阶段设计的建筑师。
This includes the new retail markets, other buildings including 600 dwellings, and a large new square. The inclusion of public space in the first phase is unusual, and encouraging.
Public space is expensive to make, and does not earn any money. Major public space is often left to a later phase of development, after income-earning buildings are built and occupied.
Six firms of architects are involved: four London practices – Haworth Tompkins, dRMM, RCKa, and David Kohn Architects. And two small West Midlands practices – Minesh Patel Architects and Intervention Architecture. Prior + Partners are masterplanners and James Corner Field Operations are the landscape architects.
In phase one, the six architects are combined in design teams for each of the five buildings. It is a collaborative design exercise reminiscent of Argent’s mostly-successful Brindleyplace development, which started nearly 30 years ago. It has been surprising that the success of Argent’s groundbreaking scheme has not led to other similar team projects in the city until now. Smithfield will be measured against the achievement of Brindleyplace.
David Kohn Architects, working with Eastside Projects (a local public art organisation), is responsible for the design of the new retail markets.
The Bull Ring market stallholders have not had happy past experiences of city centre redevelopment. When the 1963 Bull Ring shopping centre was built, together with the Inner Ring Road, wrecking the historic street pattern, the open-air traders found themselves squashed between subways and overshadowed by a highway flyover.
When the failed 1960s shopping centre was replaced by the ineptly-named BullRing in 2003, the traders were pushed farther away from the city core, beyond St Martin’s parish church. Now, although the open-air market will stay in the same place, the Indoor Market and the Rag Market will be relocated farther away still from the city core. They will be on the edge of the new square; perhaps some compensation for their displacement.
Lendlease’s aspiration appears to be to make the place glamorous and move it upmarket
As sometimes happens, a fake history is being invented for the market redevelopment. The name Smithfield was imported from London by the Birmingham street commissioners in 1817, and later given to the 1880 wholesale meat market building; a fine building which, to avoid its possible listing, was demolished by the council on a bank holiday in the great 1973 clearance.
更让人困惑的是，Lendlease的宣传声称“最初的史密斯菲尔德市场在第二次世界大战中被摧毁了……”但德国空军轰炸的实际上是1835年斗牛场的市场大厅。毗邻的露天市场一直被称为斗牛场市场。
I suspect that Lendlease’s motivation for resurecting the Smithfield name, like that of the earlier street commissioners, is to acquire by association a pedigree with a metropolitan resonance.
一个关键的问题是，如何在重建期间保持露天市场交易商的经营连续性。目前，这个问题似乎还没有答案。在过去的40年里，他们的经济繁荣程度一直在下降，他们没有得到他们的地主——市议会的良好服务。交易的任何中断都可能进一步严重损害它们的经济生存能力。
Lendlease’s aspiration appears to be to make the place glamorous and move it upmarket – “an international creative and cultural destination” – not just a place to buy bananas and carrots. Is this realistic while also maintaining the historic outdoor markets? I doubt it.
Better surely to concentrate on making a user-friendly and convenient food market, especially for the poorer and more elderly residents of the city who depend on it.
Postscript
Joe Holyoak is an architect and urban designer practising in Birmingham.
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