Awards celebrate the women who are shaping Birmingham

DESPITE 50% of women studying the subject at university, architecture Is still a male-dominated profession. Less than 25% of female students take up roles in the profession.

- Mary Keating

The industry is often hierarchical in its organisation and blind to the value of bottom-up working, making it more difficult for women’s voices to be heard. To break out of this straitjacket, women, especially in London, are setting up their own design and architectural practices to promote a ‘softer’ way of working, a way of working which involves flat structures with a more collaborative, egalitarian approach.

With Birmingham's architecture scene dominated by large, corporate, commercial practices, we have a very good reason for establishing the first UK Jane Jacobs Award in our city for women campaigning for fuller public participation and more informed debate about heritage, climate, housing, and public good.

But who was Jane Jacobs? Jane Jacobs was born in 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA. She had no formal training in architecture or urban planning but is famous for her clear-sighted understanding of the economic functions of cities and the need for local communities to be involved in urban development.

Writing for a range of publications, she rapidly became known for challenging the established ways that urban planners worked; she was the ‘crazy dame’ of urban renewal. She described Birmingham (UK) as ‘the city of the future’ because its multiple small industries had the ability to adapt swiftly and effectively to changing demand: ‘lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration’ (The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961).