I grew up nearby and work in the City centre. I agree it does punch below it's weight as big city, but I think its because Brum/Brummies are all too aware the rest of the country sees the place as a bit of a joke, so instead of banging on about how wonderful it is (a la Manchester / Liverpool) it just gets on with it.

As mentioned above, like anywhere it has it's good and bad parts. Drive along the Stratford Rd from Solihull to Sparkbrook - the transformation from affulent leafy suburb to litter-strewn inner city ghetto in all of 2.5 miles is very stark indeed.

Took the wife and boy there recently, went to cadbury world then went to see relatives in Grimsby. On comparison Birmingham is beautiful.

Solihull and Sutton Coldfield are both very nice areas. Sutton Coldfield is where a good few of the footballers live, and it has the largest urban park outside of a capital city in Europe. T'was bequeathed to the people of Sutton Coldfield by Henry 8th, was of course a stage on the former RAC Rally with it's famous water splash, and I believe the park is over twice the size of Wimbledon Common.

Sutton Coldfield has sadly been blighted by the one biggest scourge of urban living: British architecture. It used to be very nice, but in the 60's the architects realised that the Luftwaffe had missed us completely so they came and did the job for them. They demolished a lovely traditional town centre down and replaced it with faceless concrete.

Sutton Coldfield is a safe tory seat and so often has a minister as it's MP, the current one being Andrew Mitchell. The tories are free to do whatever they want to Sutton as Sutton would return a chimpanzee so long as it was blue. Having said this Sutton has just gained it's first labour councillor since 1957. I think this was as much because none of the tory councillors ever feel the need to show their faces come electing time, whereas labour councillor Dr Rob Pocock has indeed decided to get involved with the running of the town.