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Infrastructure and the rebuilt post-war city: Birmingham School of the Built Environment, Birmingham City University, UK, 25 March 2013

The prospect of sitting through a conference dedicated to the subject of infrastructure might not normally set the heart racing. The word infrastructure conjures up images of conduits, cabling, plumbing and sewerage. However, as one of the organizers Peter Larkham (Birmingham City University) pointed out in his introduction to this one-day conference, infrastructure is integral to urban form. Also, as was demonstrated in the subsequent presentations, infrastructure can shape patterns of everyday life, and even unrealized infrastructure projects can have an impact on the design of individual buildings. Infrastructure and the Rebuilt Post-war City was convened by the Birmingham School of the Built Environment and held at Millennium Point, Birmingham City University, on 25 March 2013. The aim of the conference was to address an aspect of post-war physical reconstruction which has received little attention to date: the new infrastructure, made necessary by bomb damage, or considered necessary to reposition towns in the post-war economy. The event also marked the publication of The Blitz and its Legacy (Asghate, 2013, edited by Mark Clapson and Peter Larkham), developed from a conference held at the University of Westminster in September 2010. Following a call for abstracts, 10 people were scheduled to speak. Peter Larkham started the conference with a presentation that introduced the conference’s theme. He described how rising vehicle numbers led planners to propose features commonly associated with British post-war reconstruction, such as roundabouts, ring roads, and buildings with chamfered corners intended to accommodate the large radii-bends required for motor traffic. Richard Brook (Manchester Metropolitan University) explored the history of attempts to build a ring road around Manchester’s city centre, from Charles Reilly’s first suggestion of the idea in 1928, to the planning schemes put forward by the City Surveyor’s Department from 1932 onwards, to the completion of the inner ring road in 2004. Manchester’s road proposals were revised repeatedly, but the traces of un-built road schemes can still be detected in the city’s fabric, such as in the positioning of the Granada Television building, designed by Ralph Tubbs and built 1954–1966; seemingly intended to face onto a stretch of the inner ring road, the Planning Perspectives, 2013 Vol. 28, No. 4, 640–642, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2013.828444