My hunt for the Brummie officers of post-war Bosnia — and other observations

Dear readers — today's piece is a writer's edition from Samuel. Expect musings on the walkability of the Jewellery Quarter vs Digbeth, saxphones and Nigerian choral music, West Midlands police in Bosnia and Gen Z Brummie rappers.

All that, and more, in today's article.

Where I live: Technically, in the Jewellery Quarter and only a few minutes walk away from Dispatch HQ on Albion Street. If you hadn’t already guessed, I don’t like commuting. I’m one of those annoying under 40s who thinks that cities should be walkable, full of public transport, and relatively hostile to cars. I realise the irony here, Brum is a city where the car is still very much king. According to The Economist, Birmingham is the least active-travel orientated city outside of North America. The Jewellery Quarter makes up for this: it's one of the few places in Brum that is dense, walkable, and not totally chopped to pieces by motorways. The area was saved from city engineer Herbert Manzoni’s postwar planning by accident: all his proposed motorways happened to skim around the area, rather than through it. 

I used to live in Digbeth, which is also relatively walkable, but I made the move to the JQ a few weeks ago. The key difference is that the JQ feels like it has had time to build up a thicker layer of life than Digbeth — which, to be frank, still feels like it's in chrysalis stage (whether it gentrifies into bland corporate crazy golf bars, continues its decline — property prices fell by 20% last year — or becomes something amazing, is anyone’s guess).