We have heard a lot about objections to the proposed High Speed 2 railway line between London and Birmingham, from residents of the Chilterns and rural Warwickshire, whose lives are going to be affected by the new route.

In Birmingham it is different.

There are complaints about the enormous cost of the line, certainly, and concerns about whether it represents good value for money, but it is widely assumed that the effect upon the city itself will be positive – creating a potentially magnificent new terminus building, and stimulating new development around it, generating increased employment.

The city council has published a draft Eastside Masterplan, showing how the area on the city centre side of the new station, stretching from Moor Street Station to Lawley Middleway, and including the new city centre park and the old Curzon Street Station building, can be redeveloped to become a very attractive extension to the city centre.

The public consultation period for this draft masterplan finished last week.

But the consequences of HS2 for Digbeth, lying to the south of the new station, are very different. The new station, located on the north side of the existing West Coast main line into New Street Station, and parallel to it, will form an impermeable barrier between the city centre and Digbeth.

Over a distance of 500 metres, from Moor Street Station to the old Curzon Street Station building, there will be no way of moving between the two areas. Digbeth will be effectively cut off.

In terms of recent planning history, this is extremely ironic. When the Eastside project was declared by the last Labour administration in 1999, the first action of the new Eastside team in the City Council was to demolish Masshouse Circus and the elevated section of Moor Street Queensway.

The team perceived, correctly, that the ring road was an obstacle to movement between the city centre and Digbeth, and a deterrent to new development to the south of it, which could expand the city centre.

Instead of this barrier, we now have the new tree-lined surface-level boulevard of Moor Street – an urban street in place of something that was similar to a hostile motorway.

But the barrier effect of the proposed new HS2 station will be far worse than that of the old elevated Queensway. One could walk and drive under the old Moor Street Queensway, although it was not a pleasant experience.

The station, by contrast, will be impenetrable, creating what in the urban design profession we call severance – cutting the area into two.

This is likely to be disastrous for the economy of Digbeth.

A healthy city works rather like a healthy body. Blood flows freely through a system of joined-up arteries and veins; if there is a blockage to free circulation, health suffers.

Birmingham realised the mistakes it had made with the restricting “concrete collar” of the Queensway soon after it was completed, and has spent the last 22 years energetically putting them right – reducing its barrier effect, and removing parts of it altogether.

But the proposal for the HS2 station suggests that the council is experiencing short term memory loss.

The station proposal will act in opposition to other policies for Digbeth which the council is pursuing. It has included most of Digbeth within the new Enterprise Zone, which is intended to stimulate business growth and create new jobs. In Digbeth, as part of this programme, there will be a Local Development Order designated, which will make it easier for businesses to change the uses of buildings. If planning controls are bad for business, as the present Government claims, this relaxation will encourage new economic growth in Digbeth. But businesses will not move into Digbeth if it is cut off from the city centre, and workers and customers cannot easily get to it.

The plans published in the draft masterplan document make the severance effect clear, but the accompanying text employs the tactic that the fictional country of Airstrip One in George Orwell’s 1984 used – labelling things as the opposite of what they are.

The map that shows that Fazeley Street and Park Street are to be closed and buried under the new station is labelled Connectivity. On Fazeley Street there are two large redevelopment sites, Warwick Bar and TyPhoo Wharf, which have been struggling for years to attract investment.

Under the heading Regenerating Digbeth, the document claims that “Improved connections to the northern part of Digbeth would transform the development potential of TyPhoo Wharf, Warwick Wharf and other sites”.

Describing the closure of Park Street and Fazeley Street, which are the streets by which one gains access to these sites, as “improved connections”, seems to me to be rather like calling the government body that imposes food rationing the Ministry of Plenty.

* Joe Holyoak is a Birmingham-based architect and urban designer