something I said

Let me say that again: What Does Your Future Brum Look Like?

Does it look like this, maybe just a little bit?

Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert asked architects, city planners, and transportation engineers, “what would you do if you didn’t have to worry about budgets, beauracracy, politics, or physics?” Ideas from these conversations were then merged, developed, and perhaps mildly exaggerated by Steve and Packard to create a series of 6 posters for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street Program.

This kind of outside-the-box approach to a city’s future is what I would hope to see - on an ongoing basis - from the people charged with outlining strategic visions for urban futures. That in addition to the almost incidental bits of consultation, such people should always be asking, provoking, and entertaining us with ‘what if’ ideas. It would help counteract the destructive attitudes associated with ‘visioning’ and promotional organisations.

I would expect Brummies to come up with something other than roller-coaster tramways and Painted Ladies, possibly something to do with motorways, trains, canals, allotments, a safari park along the Rea, dirigibles and airborne performance platforms. It would be a brilliant exercise with or without official backing.

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