You called me a City of Nature five years ago. But I was a City of Nature long before that. I was one when my rivers first carved their routes through the landscape. I was one when people settled beside them, when roads crossed them, when factories drew upon them and when some of them disappeared beneath your streets. I was one when you planted my great parks and when gardens appeared behind rows of houses.
I was one when canals connected industries, railways divided habitats, trees grew old, buildings rose, neighbourhoods changed and children discovered wild places nobody had planned for them.
I am still one now. Because nature isn’t something that happens in particular parts of me. Nature is what I am and you are part of it.
Five years ago, you made me a promise.
You said I should be Fair, Green, Healthy, Involved and Valued. Those were not five separate promises. They were one. A promise to think about me as a whole.
Because my trees affect my air.
My air affects people’s lungs.
My streets affect whether people can walk.
My parks affect whether children can play.
My soil affects where rain
My rivers connect neighbourhoods.
My wildlife depends upon connections that do not appear on administrative maps.
And whether people feel welcome in my green spaces depends on much more than whether a green space exists.
Everything connects. You have begun to understand that.
Over these five years you have planted trees, restored habitats, cared for parks and created new places for nature. But you have also started asking different questions. Not simply: How green am I? But also:
Who benefits from that green?
Where is the shade?
Where is the clean air?
Where can children play?
Who can reach a good park?
Who feels welcome when they arrive?
Where are communities already caring for places?
Where are the gaps?
And who has been carrying the greatest environmental burden for the longest time?
Those questions matter. Because I may be one city, but I am not experienced equally.
You have measured me.
Mapped me.
Counted my trees.
Recorded my wildlife.
Measured health, deprivation, heat, flooding and access to green space.
That evidence helps you see me. But remember that I am also known in other ways.
By the person who walks the same park every morning.
By the Ranger who notices that something has changed.
By the child who knows where the frogs appear.
By the volunteer who has watched a young tree grow.
By the resident who knows which path floods first.
By the community that knows why people use one green space and avoid another.
Their observations are part of my story too. You understand me best when you listen to all of them.
And something else has happened. More people have begun to recognise that caring for me is not somebody else’s job.
Rangers, gardeners and ecologists.
Friends groups and volunteers.
Schools and health professionals.
Planners and engineers.
Community organisations and businesses.
Researchers and artists.
Children and grandparents.
People who know the names of every species they see.
And people who simply know that sitting beneath a tree makes the day feel better. They are all part of my ecology. So are you.
There have been difficult years.
Money has been tight.
Organisations have changed.
People have arrived and people have left.
Plans have sometimes moved more slowly than hoped.
The climate itself has continued to change.
There have been moments when progress was obvious and others when it was difficult to see. But systems do not change only when something new is built. Sometimes change begins when people start seeing differently. And perhaps that is one of the things these five years have achieved. You are beginning to see me differently. Not as a city containing nature. But as a city within nature.
So now we arrive at five years. Please don’t ask whether you have finished. You haven’t. And don’t ask whether I have finally become a City of Nature. I always was one. Ask instead:
What kind of City of Nature am I becoming?
Am I becoming Fair, so that where somebody lives does not determine their access to nature and its benefits?
Am I becoming Green, with functioning habitats and living networks running through every neighbourhood?
Am I becoming Healthy, helping people and the wider living world to flourish together?
Am I becoming Involved, with people able to shape, care for and belong to the places around them?
Am I becoming Valued, with nature understood not as an optional extra but as fundamental to how the city works?
Those are harder questions – keep asking them.
And when you make the thousands of decisions that will shape my next five years, remember something.
I cannot sit in your meetings.
I cannot write your strategies.
I cannot set your budgets.
I cannot vote.
I cannot decide whether a tree stays or goes, whether a river is restored, whether a park is cared for, whether a child has somewhere green to play or whether one neighbourhood receives the same opportunities as another. I cannot make those choices. You can. But I will live with the consequences of them. And because you live within me, so will you.
I am not asking you to save me. I am asking you to understand what you are part of.
Every street.
Every garden.
Every school.
Every park.
Every river.
Every tree.
Every neighbourhood.
Every person.
Every decision.
They are not separate stories. They are mine. They are yours. They are ours.
I am Birmingham. I am a City of Nature. I always have been.
The next five years are not about making that true. They are about deciding what that truth means. Choose well.
