Ever Changing Birmingham in Colour

The author was born in the Handsworth district of Birmingham in 1954 and today lives one mile away from where he was born. Growing up in the 1960s he witnessed innumerable changes to the Birmingham skyline, such as the replacement of terraced, back-to-back houses with multi-storey tower blocks and the construction the Inner Ring Road which swept away many smaller roads and buildings. The Bull Ring Shopping Centre, (the first indoor shopping centre in the country) opened in 1964. However, over the years many of these 'improvements' came to be seen as not very 'improving' at all and many tower blocks are now being demolished in favour of ground level housing schemes and apartments. In the city centre, the Inner Ring Road with its numerous subways, known as the 'Concrete Collar', was restricting outward growth of the city centre, and is now slowly being removed; the largest part of this scheme is the rebuilding of the Bull Ring. This book gives a 1st hand account of the ever changing city of Birmingham.