I'm currently living in Birmingham. I moved here around March 2008. At the first time, I thought that it's a horrible and ugly city, but step by step I was finding the beautiful places and the things to do.
UAB, University of Alabama at Birmingham, it's the biggest employer in birmingham and there are a lot international students, fact that do more interesting this place to live. UAB is so big, so there are a lot of young people.
Events or places where I've been and you can see more information and pictures:
Birmingham Botanical Gardens
Hallowen 2008
Miss UAB
Oktover Fest
Uab blazers football Homecomming
Hyspanic Fiesta Party
B&A Party
Birmingham is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Jefferson County. It also includes part of Shelby County. The population of the city is 242,820 as of the
2000 census, and 229,424 according to the 2006 estimate. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, as of the 2007 census estimates, has a population of 1,108,210. It is also the largest city in the Birmingham-Hoover-Cullman Combined Statistical Area, colloquially known as Greater Birmingham, which contains roughly one quarter of the population of Alabama.
Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after the U.S. Civil War, as an industrial enterprise. It was named after Birmingham, one of the UK's major industrial cities. Through the middle of the 20th century, Birmingham was the primary industrial center of the Southern United States. The astonishing pace of Birmingham's growth through the turn of the century earned it the nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South". Much like Pittsburgh in the north, Birmingham's major industries centered around iron and steel production.
Over the course of the 20th century, the city's economy diversified. Though the manufacturing industry maintains a strong presence in Birmingham, other industries such as banking, insurance, medicine, publishing, and biotechnology have risen in stature. Birmingham has been recognized as one of the top cities for income growth in the United States South with a significant increase in per capita inc
ome since 1990.
Today, Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centers in the Southeastern United States and is also one of the largest banking centers in the U.S. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial. Five Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in Birmingham.
Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871 by real estate promoters who sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North Alabama railroads. The first business at that crossroads was the trading post and country store Yeilding's, run by the still prominent Yeilding family. The site of the railroad crossing was notable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone - the three principal raw materials used in making steel. Birmingham is the only place worldwide where significant amounts of all three minerals can be found in such close
proximity. From the start the new city was planned as a great center of industry. The founders borrowed the name of Birmingham, one of England's principal industrial cities, to advertise that point. Birmingham was off to a slow start: the city was impeded by an outbreak of cholera and a Wall Street crash in 1873. However, it began to grow shortly afterwards at an explosive rate.
The turn of the century brought the substantial growth that gave Birmingham the nickname "The Magic City" as the downtown area developed from a low-rise commercial and residential district into a busy grid of neoclassical mid-rise and high-rise buildings and busy streetcar lines. Between 1902 and 1912 four large office buildings were constructed at the intersection of 20th Street, the central north–south spine of the city, and 1st Avenue North, which connected the warehouses and industrial facilities stretching along the east–west railroad corridor. This impressive group of early skyscrapers was nicknamed "The Heaviest Corner on Earth". Optimistic that the rapidly growing city could be further impro
ved, a group of local businessmen led by Courtney Shropshire formed an independent service club in 1917. The group would later incorporate and become the first chapter of Civitan International, now a worldwide organization.
The Great Depression hit Birmingham especially hard as sources of capital that were fueling the city's growth rapidly dried up at the same time that farm laborers, driven off the land, made their way to the city in search of work. New Deal programs made important contributions to the city's infrastructure and artistic legacy, including such key improvements as Vulcan's tower and Oak Mountain State Park.
The wartime demand for steel and the post-war building boom gave Birmingham a rapid return to prosperity. Manufacturing diversified beyond the production of raw materials and several major cultural institutions, such as the Birmingham Museum of Art, were able to expand their scope.
In the 1950s and '60s Birmingham received national and international attention as a center of
the civil rights struggle for African-Americans. The city was given the derisive nickname Bombingham because of a string of racially motivated bombings that took place during this time.
A watershed in the civil rights movement occurred in 1963 when Birmingham Civil Rights Movement leader Fred Shuttlesworth requested that Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come to Birmingham to help end segregation. Together they launched "Project C" (for "Confrontation"), a massive assault on the Jim Crow system. During April and May daily sit-ins and mass marches were met with police repression, tear gas, attack dogs, and arrests. More than 3,000 people were arrested during these protests, many of them children. These protests were ultimately successful, leading not only to desegregation of public accommodations in Birmingham but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause again
st segregation. Birmingham is also known for a bombing which occurred later that year, in which four black girls were killed by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The event would inspire the African-American poet Dudley Randall's opus, The Ballad of Birmingham, as well as jazz musician John Coltrane's song, "Alabama."
In the 1970s urban renewal efforts focused around the development of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which developed into a major medical and research center. In 1971 Birmingham celebrated its centennial with a round of public works improvements, including the upgrading of Vulcan Park. Birmingham's banking institutions enjoyed considerable growth as well and new skyscrapers started to appear in the city center for the first time since the 1920s. These projects helped the city's economy to diversify, but did not prevent the exodus of many of the city's residents to independent suburbs. In 1979 Birmingham elected Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. as its first African-American mayor.
The population inside Birmingham's city limits has fallen over the past few decades. From 340,887 in 1960, the population was down to 242,820 in 2000, a loss of about 29 percent.
However, the growth of Birmingham's suburbs over that same period has kept the metropolitan population growing.
Today, Birmingham has begun to experience a bit of a rebirth. Currently there are around a billion dollars being invested in reconstructing the downtown area into a 24-hour mixed-use district. The market for downtown lofts and condominiums has mushroomed while restaurant, retail and cultural options are beginning to sprout up. In 2006 the visitors bureau selected "the diverse city" as a new tag line for the city.
Crime is a challenge in Birmingham because of many residents leaving the city proper to move to the surburbs due to lower cost housing and better schools. Although homicide rates have remained at high levels for several years. , the MSA crime statistics are not nearly as high. According to statistics reported to the FBI, Birmingham has the seventh highest murder rate among US cities and is ranked eighteenth in violent crime but again this is for Birmingham proper only and does not include the various sub-cities which make up the 1.1 million Birmingham MSA. Adding these stats in, the Bham MSA crime rate is in line with several low crime southern MSA such as Jacksonville, FL and Charlotte, NC.
The downtown district, relatively free from crime, is patrolled by City Action Partnership (CAP), formed in 1995 to increase the perception of safety. Funded by a downtown improvement association, the organization reports a 62% decline in criminal activity within its 109 block area.
Birmingham is the cultural and entertainment capital of Alabama with its numerous art galleries in the area and home to Birmingham Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the state. Birmingham is also home to the state's major ballet, opera, and symphony orchestra companies such the Alabama Ballet, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Ballet, Birmingham Concert Chorale, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival and Opera Birmingham.
The historic Alabama Theatre hosts film screenings, concerts and performances.
The Alys Stephens Center for the Performing Arts is home to Alabama Symphony Orchestra and Opera Birmingham as well as several series of concerts and lectures. It is located on the UAB campus in the Southside community.
The Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex (BJCC), houses a theater, concert hall, exhibition halls, and a sports and concert arena. The BJCC is home to the Alabama Ballet and hosts major concert tours and sporting events. Adjacent to the BJCC is the Sheraton Birmingham, the largest hotel in the state.
The historic Carver Theatre, home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, offers concerts, plays, jazz classes (free to any resident of the state of Alabama) and many other events in the Historic 4th Avenue District, near the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
The Birmingham Public Library presents programs for children and adults.
Boutwell Auditorium (formerly Municipal Auditorium) is located at Linn Park.
The Verizon Wireless Music Center, formerly Oak Mountain Amphitheater, is a large outdoor venue with two stages.
Other entertainment venues in the area include:
Fair Park Arena, on the west side of town, hosts sporting events, local concerts and community programs.
WorkPlay, located in Southside, is a multi-purpose facility with offices, audio and film production space, a lounge, and a theater and concert stage for visiting artists and film screenings.
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, a celebration of new independent cinema in downtown Birmingham, was named one of TIME magazines "Film Festivals for the Rest of Us" in their June 5, 2006 issue.
The Wright Center Concert Hall at Samford University is home to the Birmingham Ballet
Birmingham's nightlife is primarily clustered around Five Points South and Lakeview, but an additional $55-million entertainment district has been approved for an area adjacent to the BJCC. Birminghamtrends, Birmingham's Online Guide to the City's Nightlife. Birmingham also has a very popular local music scene that has made the city a breeding ground for some of the nation's best musicians.
Birmingham has its own Orange Lodge. Birmingham "Sons of William" LOL 1003 was instituted as a Lodge in January 2004. The man behind the formation of this lodge was Rev Paul Zahl. The lodge has a close relationship with Maghera "Sons of William" LOL 209 from Northern Ireland. The members of the Birmingham Lodge have travelled to Northern Ireland to participate in the Annual "Twelfth" parade.
The Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham maintains activeculture.info, "a one-stop source for finding out what's going on where around" Birmingham.
UAB, University of Alabama at Birmingham, it's the biggest employer in birmingham and there are a lot international students, fact that do more interesting this place to live. UAB is so big, so there are a lot of young people.
Events or places where I've been and you can see more information and pictures:
Birmingham Botanical Gardens
Hallowen 2008
Miss UAB
Oktover Fest
Uab blazers football Homecomming
Hyspanic Fiesta Party
B&A Party
Birmingham is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Jefferson County. It also includes part of Shelby County. The population of the city is 242,820 as of the
2000 census, and 229,424 according to the 2006 estimate. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, as of the 2007 census estimates, has a population of 1,108,210. It is also the largest city in the Birmingham-Hoover-Cullman Combined Statistical Area, colloquially known as Greater Birmingham, which contains roughly one quarter of the population of Alabama.Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after the U.S. Civil War, as an industrial enterprise. It was named after Birmingham, one of the UK's major industrial cities. Through the middle of the 20th century, Birmingham was the primary industrial center of the Southern United States. The astonishing pace of Birmingham's growth through the turn of the century earned it the nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South". Much like Pittsburgh in the north, Birmingham's major industries centered around iron and steel production.
Over the course of the 20th century, the city's economy diversified. Though the manufacturing industry maintains a strong presence in Birmingham, other industries such as banking, insurance, medicine, publishing, and biotechnology have risen in stature. Birmingham has been recognized as one of the top cities for income growth in the United States South with a significant increase in per capita inc
ome since 1990.Today, Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centers in the Southeastern United States and is also one of the largest banking centers in the U.S. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial. Five Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in Birmingham.
Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871 by real estate promoters who sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North Alabama railroads. The first business at that crossroads was the trading post and country store Yeilding's, run by the still prominent Yeilding family. The site of the railroad crossing was notable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone - the three principal raw materials used in making steel. Birmingham is the only place worldwide where significant amounts of all three minerals can be found in such close
proximity. From the start the new city was planned as a great center of industry. The founders borrowed the name of Birmingham, one of England's principal industrial cities, to advertise that point. Birmingham was off to a slow start: the city was impeded by an outbreak of cholera and a Wall Street crash in 1873. However, it began to grow shortly afterwards at an explosive rate.The turn of the century brought the substantial growth that gave Birmingham the nickname "The Magic City" as the downtown area developed from a low-rise commercial and residential district into a busy grid of neoclassical mid-rise and high-rise buildings and busy streetcar lines. Between 1902 and 1912 four large office buildings were constructed at the intersection of 20th Street, the central north–south spine of the city, and 1st Avenue North, which connected the warehouses and industrial facilities stretching along the east–west railroad corridor. This impressive group of early skyscrapers was nicknamed "The Heaviest Corner on Earth". Optimistic that the rapidly growing city could be further impro
ved, a group of local businessmen led by Courtney Shropshire formed an independent service club in 1917. The group would later incorporate and become the first chapter of Civitan International, now a worldwide organization.The Great Depression hit Birmingham especially hard as sources of capital that were fueling the city's growth rapidly dried up at the same time that farm laborers, driven off the land, made their way to the city in search of work. New Deal programs made important contributions to the city's infrastructure and artistic legacy, including such key improvements as Vulcan's tower and Oak Mountain State Park.
The wartime demand for steel and the post-war building boom gave Birmingham a rapid return to prosperity. Manufacturing diversified beyond the production of raw materials and several major cultural institutions, such as the Birmingham Museum of Art, were able to expand their scope.
In the 1950s and '60s Birmingham received national and international attention as a center of
the civil rights struggle for African-Americans. The city was given the derisive nickname Bombingham because of a string of racially motivated bombings that took place during this time.A watershed in the civil rights movement occurred in 1963 when Birmingham Civil Rights Movement leader Fred Shuttlesworth requested that Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come to Birmingham to help end segregation. Together they launched "Project C" (for "Confrontation"), a massive assault on the Jim Crow system. During April and May daily sit-ins and mass marches were met with police repression, tear gas, attack dogs, and arrests. More than 3,000 people were arrested during these protests, many of them children. These protests were ultimately successful, leading not only to desegregation of public accommodations in Birmingham but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause again
st segregation. Birmingham is also known for a bombing which occurred later that year, in which four black girls were killed by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The event would inspire the African-American poet Dudley Randall's opus, The Ballad of Birmingham, as well as jazz musician John Coltrane's song, "Alabama."In the 1970s urban renewal efforts focused around the development of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which developed into a major medical and research center. In 1971 Birmingham celebrated its centennial with a round of public works improvements, including the upgrading of Vulcan Park. Birmingham's banking institutions enjoyed considerable growth as well and new skyscrapers started to appear in the city center for the first time since the 1920s. These projects helped the city's economy to diversify, but did not prevent the exodus of many of the city's residents to independent suburbs. In 1979 Birmingham elected Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. as its first African-American mayor.
The population inside Birmingham's city limits has fallen over the past few decades. From 340,887 in 1960, the population was down to 242,820 in 2000, a loss of about 29 percent.
However, the growth of Birmingham's suburbs over that same period has kept the metropolitan population growing.Today, Birmingham has begun to experience a bit of a rebirth. Currently there are around a billion dollars being invested in reconstructing the downtown area into a 24-hour mixed-use district. The market for downtown lofts and condominiums has mushroomed while restaurant, retail and cultural options are beginning to sprout up. In 2006 the visitors bureau selected "the diverse city" as a new tag line for the city.
Crime is a challenge in Birmingham because of many residents leaving the city proper to move to the surburbs due to lower cost housing and better schools. Although homicide rates have remained at high levels for several years. , the MSA crime statistics are not nearly as high. According to statistics reported to the FBI, Birmingham has the seventh highest murder rate among US cities and is ranked eighteenth in violent crime but again this is for Birmingham proper only and does not include the various sub-cities which make up the 1.1 million Birmingham MSA. Adding these stats in, the Bham MSA crime rate is in line with several low crime southern MSA such as Jacksonville, FL and Charlotte, NC.
The downtown district, relatively free from crime, is patrolled by City Action Partnership (CAP), formed in 1995 to increase the perception of safety. Funded by a downtown improvement association, the organization reports a 62% decline in criminal activity within its 109 block area.
Birmingham is the cultural and entertainment capital of Alabama with its numerous art galleries in the area and home to Birmingham Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the state. Birmingham is also home to the state's major ballet, opera, and symphony orchestra companies such the Alabama Ballet, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Ballet, Birmingham Concert Chorale, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival and Opera Birmingham.
The historic Alabama Theatre hosts film screenings, concerts and performances.
The Alys Stephens Center for the Performing Arts is home to Alabama Symphony Orchestra and Opera Birmingham as well as several series of concerts and lectures. It is located on the UAB campus in the Southside community.
The Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex (BJCC), houses a theater, concert hall, exhibition halls, and a sports and concert arena. The BJCC is home to the Alabama Ballet and hosts major concert tours and sporting events. Adjacent to the BJCC is the Sheraton Birmingham, the largest hotel in the state.
The historic Carver Theatre, home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, offers concerts, plays, jazz classes (free to any resident of the state of Alabama) and many other events in the Historic 4th Avenue District, near the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
The Birmingham Public Library presents programs for children and adults.
Boutwell Auditorium (formerly Municipal Auditorium) is located at Linn Park.
The Verizon Wireless Music Center, formerly Oak Mountain Amphitheater, is a large outdoor venue with two stages.
Other entertainment venues in the area include:
Fair Park Arena, on the west side of town, hosts sporting events, local concerts and community programs.
WorkPlay, located in Southside, is a multi-purpose facility with offices, audio and film production space, a lounge, and a theater and concert stage for visiting artists and film screenings.
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, a celebration of new independent cinema in downtown Birmingham, was named one of TIME magazines "Film Festivals for the Rest of Us" in their June 5, 2006 issue.
The Wright Center Concert Hall at Samford University is home to the Birmingham Ballet
Birmingham's nightlife is primarily clustered around Five Points South and Lakeview, but an additional $55-million entertainment district has been approved for an area adjacent to the BJCC. Birminghamtrends, Birmingham's Online Guide to the City's Nightlife. Birmingham also has a very popular local music scene that has made the city a breeding ground for some of the nation's best musicians.
Birmingham has its own Orange Lodge. Birmingham "Sons of William" LOL 1003 was instituted as a Lodge in January 2004. The man behind the formation of this lodge was Rev Paul Zahl. The lodge has a close relationship with Maghera "Sons of William" LOL 209 from Northern Ireland. The members of the Birmingham Lodge have travelled to Northern Ireland to participate in the Annual "Twelfth" parade.
The Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham maintains activeculture.info, "a one-stop source for finding out what's going on where around" Birmingham.
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