Who really cares if the City of Huntsville is bigger than the City of Birmingham because Metropolitan Birmingham is nearly three times as large as Metropolitan Huntsville.
There’s no doubt I feel a certain amount of envy —probably because I grew up in the ‘50’s when Birmingham and Atlanta were about the same size. I have fond memories of my dad taking me to Rickwood Field to root for the Birmingham Barons when we played the evil Atlanta Crackers in Southern League baseball. Continue reading Atlanta more screwed up than Birmingham→
I recently wrote a piece, “Birmingham punished for being in Alabama,” where I pointed out that job growth in Birmingham and around the state has been relatively flat while other cities in the South are flourishing.
Our Birmingham-Hoover seven county metropolitan area has fewer people working now than we did at the beginning of the recession.
I recently read a piece in the Nashville Business Journal that made me ill.
The nausea was amplified by the memories of a humiliating Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA) trip I took with about one hundred corporate, community, and political leaders to Nashville ten years ago.
None of us were prepared for the way we were mistreated. One Nashville speaker called us racists; another attacked our healthcare industry; and third referred to Birmingham as ‘Bombingham.’ (Nashville spits on Birmingham)
Folks in Birmingham squabble a lot, but there’s one thing we agree on —none of us want Birmingham to become another Atlanta.
Because the growth of metropolitan Birmingham has been so slow, I haven’t spent much time worrying about Birmingham getting too big. In fact, I’ve been much more concerned about Birmingham staying the size of Birmingham.
Then I read that researchers from North Carolina State project that the South’s explosive growth rate for the past 60 years will continue and metropolitan Birmingham could be part of an “urban megalopolis” by 2060. Continue reading Is Birmingham destined to become a suburb of Atlanta?→
If you do, your bejeebies will be obliterated when you see the one depressing statistic that best describes the economic health of metropolitan Birmingham.
Please note we’re nottalking about just the City of Birmingham or Jefferson County. We’re talking about the Birmingham Hoover Metropolitan area—defined by our seven counties: Bibb, Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, St. Clair, Shelby, and Walker.
So the folks in our suburbs are impacted by this number just as much as our local residents.
Sam Addy, Director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama
How about an idea most people think would transform Birmingham–but they will not consider because they think it would be impossible to implement?
You may say we don’t need to do anything different because we’re making progress. We are making progress, but let‘s look at how metro Birmingham compares to our regional rivals in several key areas. (Birmingham Business Journal January 10, 2014).
As you may have heard a petition filed by a Chuncula resident seeking Alabama’s withdrawal from the U.S. reached 25,000 signatures and now requires a response from the White House.
The petition asks the administration to “peacefully grant the state of Alabama to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government.”
