The ‘Big City Plan’, Birmingham City Council’s award winning, twenty year development masterplan, presents a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity for residents to have their say on the future direction of the city centre.

It’s also likely to start forcing us to make some tough decisions. Take the ongoing debacle over noise and the Rainbow pub in Digbeth, for instance.

According to the plan, although Digbeth has ‘limited residential, retail and office development’, the area has seen ’signficant development in the arts, media and craft industries’. It has also ‘developed a music and media industry’ and ‘has the makings of a new creative quarter’.

The plan also makes reference to the unique urban structure of the city centre - there are distinct quarters around  a modestly sized ‘core’ and over the next 20 years it’s likely that these surrounding quarters will grow in importance. Everyone who lives in the city knows what to expect in the Jewellery Quarter, for example, or in Eastside.

And Digbeth, of course, is the interesting and edgy part of town. It’s not Broad Street but neither is it the leafy suburbs. And whether it was quieter five years ago than it is now is largely irrelevant. Why, then, did the council, when granting planning permission for new flats in the area, not look ahead and make sure that the developers fitted the new blocks with a level of sound proofing suitable for living in the middle of the second largest city in the country?