Almost four years after the publication of a ground-breaking report mapping out the expansion of Birmingham’s central core by Professor Michael Parkinson, the city council has bowed inevitably to changing economic circumstances.

The Big City Plan is still a hefty document, but nowhere near as all-encompassing as was first envisaged.

In its initial draft form, the plan contained 20 themes and ideas setting out a framework for development.

That has been whittled down to six objectives, and the plan is all the more credible for that.

The objectives are: a Liveable City, providing high quality living space within an accessible, safe and attractive environment; A Connected City, enabling pedestrians and cyclists to move around and with an efficient public transport system; An Authentic City, offering a unique and diverse experience through architecture, arts and culture; A Knowledge City, utilising and supporting its universities, colleges and businesses; A Creative City, valuing and supporting creativity and industry in all its forms; A Smart City, responding to the challenge of climate change through sustainable growth.

There are a lot of words and a great many aspirations in this plan, most of which the council accepts are bound to be challenging to achieve.

Setting out the overall vision, the plan speaks of strengthening Birmingham as a 24-hour city, a thriving shopping, office and leisure centre, with a greater mix of choice and acitivities within distinctive streets and spaces.

It is intended over the 20-year lifetime of the document to grow the city centre by a quarter and to create 50,000 jobs.

During each year, on average, about £2.1 billion of inward investment will be achieved – some £42 billion in total.

It should come as no great surprise to discover, though, that the hardest section of the 85-page plan to write was that dealing with delivery mechanisms. Indeed, the finishing touches were being applied just days before the Big City Plan’s formal launch at the Fort Dunlop headquarters of BPM Media.

The official line from the council is that although the economy is in a bad state at the moment, recovery will occur and it is important that Birmingham puts itself in the right position to benefit from investment decisions in the future.

Much store is being put on the possibility of convincing the Government to allow Birmingham to establish Accelerated Development Zones, releasing business rate income to generate economic development. This, along with approval for the Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership, is essential if the Big City Plan is to be anything other than a fine aspirational document.

As things stand, a simple analysis of the plan’s five proposed “transformation areas” shows that many existing economic development schemes are already struggling or mothballed.

In the five zones, only the redevelopment of New Street Station will definitely proceed, thanks to about £400 million of public money, and construction of the new city library in Centenary Square again as a result of public funding.

The transformation areas include Westside, where the redevelopment of Paradise Circus has been talked about for 10 years, and Arena Central in Broad Street which includes a skyscraper block of luxury flats, restaurants and bars. The council says it is confident Paradise Circus will get off the ground by 2015, through joint partner Argent, and also expects to see some work on Arena Central begin soon.

Another transformation area, Snow Hill, hit problems when developers Ballymore halted work on construction of a five-star hotel and apartment tower block. There is also a question over the firm’s ability to complete new offices for Wragge & Co.

As the Post reported recently (here), a planning application to hide the uncompleted concrete stumps of the proposed hotel with a giant advertising hoarding for up to five years has been submitted to the council. This gives little confidence that anything very positive is going to happen here in the immediate future.

The fourth transformation area, Eastside, does at least offer some hope of progress. The long-awaited City Park, a green oasis designed to lure commercial and residential developers, will be completed by 2013, to be followed at some stage in the future if the Government is to be believed by a high speed rail terminus.

As for the final transformation area, the Southern Gateway, questions remain over whether the vast wholesale markets site can be released for development. As things stand, the council is finding it difficult to conclude a deal with the owners of a site at Witton, where the markets are to be relocated.

Many of Prof Parkinson’s principles are retained, with proposals to create a network of new public spaces. These include new squares or piazzas at New Street Station, the Jewellery Quarter, the Eastside high speed rail terminus, and the wholesale markets site. Intriguingly, there is also a proposal to extend Centenary Square across Broad Street although this will not involve completely banning traffic from the city’s entertainment zone.

The council’s fascination with tall buildings commands a chapter of its own in the document. Locations identified as suitable for clusters of tower blocks include Five Ways, Broad Street, Paradise Circus, New Street Station, Snow Hill and Lancaster Circus.

And once more, for the umpteenth time in recent years, there is a pledge to remove buses from the retail core, including Corporation Street, in order to transform the retail heart of Birmingham as a pedestrianised area.

Is the Big City Plan an inspring document. Yes. Will its main objectiveas be achieved in the timescale? Only time will tell.