{"id":19864,"date":"2018-08-14T17:04:37","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T16:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=19864"},"modified":"2023-11-14T15:04:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T15:04:04","slug":"ihbcs-imho-feature-from-the-guardian-welcome-to-brumbria-should-the-west-midlands-become-a-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=19864","title":{"rendered":"IHBC\u2019s \u2018IMHO\u2019 feature &#8211; from the Guardian: \u2018Welcome to Brumbria: should the West Midlands become a national park?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>A <em>Guardian<\/em> opinion piece: Could a plan to turn the West Midlands into a national park transform the Black Country\u2019s unlovely reputation, asks Wolverhampton native Stuart Jeffries.<\/h3>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Guardian<\/em> writes:<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I think we have an extraordinary landscape here waiting to be discovered by millions,\u2019 says landscape architect Kathryn Moore, unrolling a jauntily coloured map of her visionary new park in a Birmingham City University office. The professor isn\u2019t talking about of Cumbria, Umbria, Snowdonia or Amazonia. She\u2019s talking about the touristic potential of the West Midlands plateau, the heart of England that threw itself into the fiery crucible of the Industrial Revolution and still bears sacrificial scars. It is here that Professor Moore wants to create the United Kingdom\u2019s 16th national park.<\/p>\n<p>In the 19th century, Queen Victoria would lower the blinds on the royal train so she didn\u2019t have to see the smokestack hell of the Black Country. Tolkien was inspired to create Mordor from nocturnal visions of its blast furnaces. If Moore has her way, though, in a decade or so Queen Kate will raise the blinds as the HS2 train passes the reconfigured Tame Valley between Birmingham and Coventry. \u2018Look!\u2019 she\u2019ll exclaim to King William. \u2018What a vista of allotments, fisheries, fields, orchards, forests, hi-tech agriculture, green industries, creative hubs and cycle paths!\u2019 She\u2019ll gaze in admiration at how the Tame has been rerouted using water from Birmingham city centre\u2019s aquifer, all crisscrossed by new footbridges linking together suburbs long isolated by the city\u2019s motorised arterial routes.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, as the train makes its approach to Philip Hardwick\u2019s recently reopened grade I-listed, Roman-inspired, 1838 Curzon Street rail terminus, King William too will look out of the window. \u2018Gosh!\u2019 he\u2019ll exclaim. \u2018Is that the famous Birmingham Central Park?\u2019 I know what you\u2019re thinking. Make the Black Country green? Royal trains that stop in Birmingham?\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/cities\/2018\/jun\/20\/welcome-to-brumbria-should-the-west-midlands-become-a-national-park\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more&#8230;.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Guardian opinion piece: Could a plan to turn the West Midlands into a national park transform the Black Country\u2019s unlovely reputation, asks Wolverhampton native Stuart Jeffries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ihbc-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19864"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38121,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19864\/revisions\/38121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}