A 124 mile long park circling the city will help keep residents in their own 15 minute neighbourhood.
Birmingham’s Labour-run council say that their anti-car plans to strip residents of the right to drive around their own city have been “very well received”, but failed to ay exactly by who and how many.
The council plan to turn part of the city’s famous ring road into a “park that circles the city” in an effort to put “pedestrians and cyclists first”. Labour’s City Council Leader Ian Ward announced on Radio 4’s Today programme that the goal is to 'double the amount of green space' and become “carbon zero”.
According to the plans for how Birmingham would look under a Labour administration in 2040, it will double its green spaces and build around 124 miles of walking and cycling routes, making it similar to Denmark’s capital city Copenhagen.
‘”The plan we are going to be launching tomorrow is a route map to a greener Birmingham, creating more jobs, better transport options and having higher quality, more energy efficient new homes,” Mr Ward, told Radio 4 Today.
“We are already a city on the up and we’re looking to use the investments coming in to double the amount of green space in the city, making us as green as Vienna, and to double active travel routes to some 200km which will put us at the same level for cycle friendliness as Copenhagen. “This is probably the most ambitious plan in a century for the city and it’s going to map out how we’ll become carbon zero and how we will green our city in the future.”
Mr Ward claimed the council is attracting record levels of investment into the city. He said they are working with developers and investors “to ensure that as the city expands out into the deprived communities beyond the ring road that the wealth that this creates as a result is shared with those communities. We’re also working to create a new park in Birmingham, right in the heart of the city centre, creating a green space – in order to ensure the city is more liveable.”
The plan is unlikely to have taken in to consideration anything like population size, density, cityscape, business impact, logistics or, indeed, residence voices and will more likely take the form of other anti-car policies from Oxford, London, and Canterbury where Marxist councils have completely ignored resident wishes in pursuit of their ideological goals.
Birmingham's infrastructure is already under unprecedented strain, whilst the population is steeply rising year on year. A huge park that circled the city would do nothing to alleviate these problems, whilst trapping thousands of people into their 15 minute neighbourhoods.