I grew up near trendy Birmingham suburb Harborne - it's so much more than a great place to eat and drink

As residents of Birmingham know only too well, the fact that there’s another dispute involving refuse collectors in the city – the last one in 2017 – means our bins are not being emptied as regularly as we’d like.

However, what’s being experienced across many parts of Birmingham has allowed media outlets outside the city, particularly those based in London, to indulge in reporting on the build-up of garbage and, it appears, all manner of detritus that is causing concern for health, especially from rats and cockroaches.

Therefore, it’s gratifying to be able to read a report from The London-based Sunday Times naming the suburb of Harborne as one of the best place to live in the UK.

Read more: We visit trendy Birmingham neighbourhood named best place to live in the city for 2025 by the Sunday Times

Harborne, only a couple of miles from the city centre was judged a great place to live on the basis of criteria including schools, transport, broadband speeds, mobile signal, culture, access to green spaces and the health of the high street.

It’s significant that those carrying out judging for The Sunday Times’ listing visit all the locations “to get a sense of what it’s like to live there,” according to Helen Davies who edits the guide who explains what they are looking for:

“We talk to locals to find out what they love most about the places they call home. That could be anything from high-achieving schools and reliable commuter links to cafés and culture or somewhere wonderful to walk the dog. More than anything else, what we are looking for are towns, villages and cities with strong, hard-working communities who love where they live.”

Notably, the list of the top ten locations includes the average price supplied by the Halifax using Land Registry data. Harborne is shown as having an average price of £400,400 (in Saffron Walden, Essex, the overall winner, this figure is £607,100).

So, what do we make of this list?

Apart from reading a positive take on Birmingham which has long suffered from being perceived by outsiders as being a curious place that’s probably best avoided, is that Harborne demonstrates what’s possible with sufficient investment and a vibrant community and, of course, bustling high street.

For sure, Harborne benefits from being a leafy suburb with an abundance of good schools and has the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on its doorstep.

Due to the fact that Harborne it attracts those whose net worth and income is undoubtedly higher than most other suburbs, there’s plenty of demand for the large Victorian built properties as well as the tastefully constructed terrace and semi0detatched housing.

Read more: Birmingham deserves better than London's sneers – here's why

This, in turn, means that housing in Harborne is much higher than the average for Birmingham as a whole which, according to the Office for National Statistics is £232,000.

Of course, for casual visitors, what marks out any area we visit are the pubs and restaurants.

As a point of reference, I first got to know Harborne when I attended sixth form college in Edgbaston in the late 1970s and discovered the fact that, because it was developed in the early 1900s and, unlike Bournville which was influenced by the Cadbury family who, as Quakers eschewed alcohol and therefore public houses, was blessed with an abundance of such establishments.

For those who’ve never attempted it, there’s the bragging rights of saying you’ve completed what’s known as the ‘Harborne Run’, a pub crawl which consists of over ten pubs on or just off the main street.

As Tim Palmer from the Sunday Times explains in a more detailed examination of Harborne, it benefits from having branches of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer, and a variety of independent outlets offering artisan coffee and eateries serving all manner of food attracting visitors from across the city and beyond.

Crucially, Harborne’s status as a great place to live is based on more than it being a place to eat and drink.

There are wonderful gems to explore such as a visit to Chad Valley which contains a fishpond and, having taken its name from the Chad Brook, a tributary of the River Rea, provided name for the Chad Valley toy company which, formed in 1830 by Anthony Bunn Johnson, became one of Britain’s leading makers of toys last century.

For those interested in learning more about the history of Chad Valley Toys, the Woolworth Museum website provides some fascinating facts, Woolworths having bought the brand from Palitoy in 1988 who’d taken over the company a decade earlier.

Unfortunately, the jobs created by Chad Valley to make the wonderful toys enjoyed by previous generations have disappeared.

In an era when, sadly, due to the parlous state of finances of Birmingham City Council libraries across the city a e under threat of closure, it’s heartening to see that a branch of Waterstones has opened.

As is the case in places such as Moseley, also known as a culturally great place to live, there’s a monthly market at which a range of artisan products are available.

Harborne, therefore, shines out as a beacon of hope when Birmingham’s immediate prospects are decidedly less optimist than when I first got to know the suburb in the 1970s.

It’s worth reflecting that the late 70s were a time of tumult when Birmingham, most particularly the huge car plant in Longbridge regularly featured in national media as indicative of what was going wrong with manufacturing.

However, like Chad Valley Toys, workers at Longbridge, like so many other great names, became victims of cheaper wages paid elsewhere in the world.

Change was to come and altered the way in which this Birmingham is perceived, greatly assisted by the building of the Convention Centre by which many buses to Harborne pass from the city centre.

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe that Harborne’s place in the latest Sunday Times Best Places to Live Guide 2025 acts as a catalyst for renewal and revival elsewhere.

As emphasised by the criteria used to judge great places to live, community and reasonably well-paid jobs are essential to success in ensuring places are good to live in.

It was the late John Lennon who included the lyric “You may say I’m a dreamer,” in the seminally evocative ‘Imagine’ released in 1971.

As Lennon continues, “But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will be as one”.

I sincerely hope Harborne’s success is equally inspirational to local policy makers and our politicians.

Dr Steven McCabe

Steve is Professor and Pro Vice Chancellor, DoctorateHub.

Previously, having worked for Birmingham City Council, he spent the last 35 years as an academic at Birmingham City University teaching and researching economics, management and business. Additionally, he has written extensively for edited texts examining economics and politics.

He regularly writes and comments regularly in the national and international media on politics and the economy and has published texts on quality management, benchmarking, ‘Brexit’ and its economic and social impact, the green economy and manufacturing, house prices and India’s progress since independence.