Our guest speaker is Waheed Nazir, Director of Regeneration with Birmingham City Council who will be delivering a presentation and update on the Big City Plan.

The Plan is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure and enhance Birmingham's ambitious and far-reaching development and regeneration. It brings together local people and organisations to share in and support the Big City ambition.

Birmingham's city centre has a strong and characterful urban environment rooted in the city's historic legacy. The core of the city has a fine array of civic buildings, and the neighbourhoods beyond each have their own distinctive character, demonstrated by the building stock and predominant uses within each of these areas.

The city centre also has a strong network of public squares and the canal network, although largely hidden from view, that have been substantially improved over recent years.

There are, however, improvements that Birmingham needs to make.

The built environment suffered during the 1960s, with unsympathetic highway construction. More recently economic trends have resulted in much redundant industrial buildings particularly in Digbeth, the Gun Quarter and the Jewellery Quarter.

The canal network is also a greatly under used resource with the potential to attract more people and activities and act as a safe alternative movement network.

The Big City Plan therefore looks at the possibility of providing new areas of open space or extending existing areas of space.