Honestly, what has gone wrong with Birmingham

Well, IMHO Birmingham is a victim of the "social aversion" and classism.  The city used to be way better than Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, and Jacksonville along with being much larger than Raleigh, Orlando, and Tampa (all of whom have surpassed the city population and metro area size).  However, there is a huge leadership void in the region because nobody wants to step up unless they have been "vetted" by the current establishment.  The Richard Arringtons, Larry Langfords, and Frank Matthews don't help united the cause of the improving the city without reminding progressive whites in the city that THEY'RE NOT BLACK.  How many times do we have to do this to them when many of them chose to reside in the city over the "Over-the-Mountain" communities like Homewood, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook (if they can afford it), or Hoover.  Instead we have that strife that exists then you have the "powers-that-be" leadership like George Barber, Charles McCrary, and Dowd Ritter, the useless CEO of Regions Financial Corp, who doesn't do anything but talk about what "needs" to occur in Greater Birmingham.

There are traces of revitalization such as Crestwood, Redmont, Glen Iris, and Southside that have all comeback from the pits of slum-dom.  Now the real question is what needs to occur to get these groups of progressive whites and progressive blacks to come together to get things moving here?  This is just another post in my series of what is wrong with Birmingham series.