Birmingham Centre Demolish and Rebuild (mapfusion)

Hurrah! Finally OK, after updating program (many A000000* errors before).

This was a strange serendipity. Heading home from a funeral on a pretty naff afternoon weather-wise, something (sudden traffic prompting a shortcut-hunt? or just needing to stop, chill and think/reflect?) made me turn left off the main road and into this little crossroads area, where I spotted the half-fallen down factory at the top (not part-demolished? - evidence of fire from some of the windows...). Realising I still had my camera in the car (NOT for the funeral - other reasons!) decided to preserve the formerly fine-looking building in digital form before its inevitable and imminent destruction.

Seeing the region was, until recently, full of active-looking factories & warehouses thanks to Live Maps aerial/birds eye view, it'd have been nice to get there earlier & document the gradual destruction (and the rebuilding in the background) of the victorian/edwardian era architecture properly. Oh well. Perhaps I can nip back in a few months. Or even tomorrow to get a couple of interstitial extra shots, given some of the wierd synthing effects that are probably from missing inbetween views at certain crucial points.

(Ditto the new hospital buildings at the Queen Elizabeth site in edgbaston - it was pretty impressive to see going up but I've only a few sparing shots of the construction, and now it's almost finished)

It's a pity really, it'll be open green space for a while, then almost certainly replaced by depressing new-age apartment buildings (as seen in the background, brightly coloured but all fairly samey and far too numerous for the actual demand) that'll become this century's equivalent of the old tower blocks.... when we could have taken the London or Hamburg tack and converted the original building shells into something far more interesting. With any luck, Moby's and that strange half-a-house will survive. Too bad the Old Railway pub didn't (a previous favourite that succumbed to the wrecking ball to make way for Millennium Point - the rotunda-style thing in the background).

Look out for the strange synth effects by the way. For some reason the synth engine seems to think that a large section that's actually downhill from the big factory is actually floating in the air a way above and to the left side of it. As the maps have not stitched in at all except to each other, I may drop them and try again with the aforementioned extra linking shots (just up and down the connecting road I think) to see if it works properly...

However, the rest of it has turned out more awesome than I could have hoped. Check out that pointcloud. It seems to even have detected far-background details (through windows, etc) that I didn't spot with my own eyes while I was there.

So, welcome to Brum. City of old industry. City of mass, indiscriminate, heartless destruction. City of yuppie-like trendy rebuilding. City wanting to be another London. God help us all.
(So why won't they build the extra few motorways & other road/rail improvements that are needed more than another posh district to go for a night out - after struggling through the traffic?)

(Yes... tons of photos, but the on-the-ground stuff didn't take long, <30m, & I stopped when rain started. A few short walks & similar short bursts of holding the shutter on continuous-shot & spinning/walking-and-panning at suitable speed, then odd single shots to fill in gaps or focus closer on interesting little features. However, next time I try this I'll try for 2 improvements: 1/250s shutter speed or faster (too much blurring, at mainly 1/160s), & better natural light! (Britain, autumn, overcast, 5pm - BAD!)