Birmingham

Written by Darryn Mitussis. Posted on 26 October, 2008. Filed under Friends, Personal, Photography. Tagged , . Bookmark the Permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

A former student (and now friend) of mine is spending a semester in the UK as part of his PhD studies in Australia.

We met in Birmingham and wandered around a little to see the sights while talking about teaching and research.

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The cities in the English Midlands are useful places to visit for those if us who are students of business — they are home, of course, to the first industrial revolution. No thinking about national, social, organisational or technological change can be complete without some attention to what happened in these cities.

Some of the former riches and grandure is clearly visible (as of course is the new wealth, though I haven’t shown that).

One of the highlights was the interior of the Old Joint Stock pub where we had a tasty upmarket pub lunch (not photograhed because every one was eating).

Alas, with the UK’s creaky regional rail system, it takes a bit longer to get there than it should.

Now, back to work for me.

2 Comments

  1. Clara
    Posted 26 October, 2008 at 2:45 pm | Permalink

    It’s not hard to spot the once grand facades of Birimingham (particularly if you avoid the Bull Ring) but next time you go there, you and your friend should try “hunt the green spaces”. And if you can find the one green space that I found in Birmingham (centre region) then I defy you to find it a) open and b) free to enter!

    Enjoy the challenge!

  2. Darryn Mitussis
    Posted 26 October, 2008 at 3:07 pm | Permalink

    I think I did find it — opposite the pub where we ate lunch. Its not very big. The rest of the open spaces in the centre of Birmingham were very commercial. One of the things that concerns me about modern urban design is that there is no non-commercial social space left. I wrote a blog post that mentioned this a long time ago (see “All set to go”).