described it as a "great, confused laboratory of
ideas", noting how its chaotic structure as a "muddle of
oddments" meant that it "grew through constant diversification".
The historian G. M. Young – in a classic comparison later expanded upon by Asa
Briggs – contrasted the "experimental, adventurous, diverse" culture
of Birmingham with the "solid, uniform, pacific" culture of the
outwardly similar city of Manchester. The American economist Edward Gleason wrote
in 2011 that "cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have
been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian
marketplace. The streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance and the streets of
Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution", concluding: "wandering
these cities ... is to study nothing less than human progress
