Where do Britain's many urban communities stand today? They do not always fit together; they are not always interconnected; and they have lost many jobs, skills and working residents. Heavy industries have gone, and traditional streets are struggling against suburban attractions. People's expectations of the homes and neighbourhoods where they live and raise their families have changed and many dislike cities. Cities generally face an uncertain future as environmental problems gather momentum, threatening our river-hugging cities with floods but also exposing chronic water shortages, energy insecurity and traffic gridlock. This would have been unimaginable only a few generations ago. We need to fit together the fragmented and scattered pieces left from a past that no longer seems to serve present-day realities.

In 2003 the government set out its big-picture of vision continuing urban growth for England in the Sustainable Communities Plan, a radical attempt to ‘re-balance’ housing supply and demand in all parts of the country. Already after four years, the plan seems seriously dated, mainly by environmental and social constraints. Our progress report presents a mosaic of encouraging dynamism and new thinking, alongside worrying signs of decrepitude and mistakes.

The continuing pressures on our cities at the turn of the millennium pose real questions: urban flight and suburban sprawl; inner-city social decay; over-supply of new homes and low demand in the North and Midlands; under-supply and an affordability crisis in the South; a North–South divide; life-threatening environmental limits; and a still impoverished social housing sector. Pioneering solutions vie with these problems. Through Birmingham and other cities in the middle of these cross-currents, we try to get under the skin of the problems, to explore their roots, apply the proposals in the plan and flag up the missing pieces in the urban jigsaw.

Overgrown and out of love

Britain has never truly loved its industrial cities nor their large urban hinterland. But they have also bred an intense loyalty and urban culture that could help us today.