Birmingham’s 1990s urban regeneration marketed a white city despite its minority population.

Evidence

The Council “reimagineered” the marketing of the city by relocating it. A council promotion exercise, captured by the accidentally ironic strap line “More than meets the eye” drew on images of gondolas to boast that the city had more miles of canal than Venice; of Stratford on Avon and Coventry Cathedral to highlight the city’s cultural heritage; empty shopping malls and (white) nuclear families walking through villages of Warwickshire to highlight lifestyle opportunities. Given that a 1988 quality of life report had placed Birmingham 38th out of 38 cities in the UK and that in 1988 the French newspaper Le Point had ranked the city 49th out of the 50 largest cities in Europe it is perhaps not surprising that “image” and reputation were central to the project to regenerate the city. But whilst the politics of the city clearly reflected the fact that over 25 percent of the city’s population were drawn from black and ethnic minority backgrounds (Solomos and Back, 1995) the regeneration reconstructed a sense of the city that was profoundly white in its refusal to acknowledge the needs, presence, or aspirations of such communities as Patrick Loftman has described in great detail (Loftman, 1990). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2249 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Birmingham’s regeneration marketing erased its 25 percent minority population as profoundly white — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2249

Broader Connections

• Birmingham’s regeneration marketing erased its 25 percent minority population as profoundly white #corroborates (1.00) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2249