Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. It is the second-largest city and metropolitan area in England and the United Kingdom, with roughly 1.1 million inhabitants within the city area and 4.3 million inhabitants within the metropolitan area. Birmingham is commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom. Located in the West Midlands county and region in England, approximately 100 miles from Central London, Birmingham, as one of the United Kingdom's major cities, is considered to be the social, cultural, financial, and commercial centre of both the East and West Midlands. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries River Rea and River Cole – one of the closest main rivers is the Severn, approximately 20 miles west of the city centre. Birmingham's urban area is the second-largest in the United Kingdom, with its most recently estimated population in 2017 being 2,897,303, and it also lies within the most populated English district. By 1791, it was being hailed as «the first manufacturing town in the world». Birmingham's distinctive economic profile, with thousands of small workshops practising a wide variety of specialised and highly skilled trades, encouraged exceptional levels of creativity and innovation and provided an economic base for prosperity that was to last into the final quarter of the 20th century. The Watt steam engine was invented in Birmingham.The resulting high level of social mobility also fostered a culture of political radicalism which, under leaders from Thomas Attwood to Joseph Chamberlain, was to give it a political influence unparalleled in Britain outside London, and a pivotal role in the development of British democracy.

From the summer of 1940 to the spring of 1943, Birmingham was bombed heavily by the German Luftwaffe in what is known as the Birmingham Blitz. The city is a major international commercial centre, ranked as a beta ? world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network the joint highest ranking with Edinburgh and Manchester of all British cities outside of London; and an important transport, retail, events and conference hub. Its metropolitan economy is the second largest in the United Kingdom with a GDP of $121.1bn , and its six universities make it the largest centre of higher education in the country outside London. Birmingham's major cultural institutions – the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Library of Birmingham and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts – enjoy international reputations, and the city has vibrant and influential grassroots art, music, literary and culinary scenes. The city will host the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Birmingham is the fourth-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors.
 

• The New York Times once placed Birmingham in their top 20 places to visit. Birmingham attracts over 41 million visitors a year, with just over 1 million of these being international visitors
   
• Birmingham is the youngest city in Europe with almost 40 per cent of the population being made up of under 25's. It is home to five universities and over 73,000 students
   
• The city hosts over 50 festivals each year, including the Moseley Folk Festival, Flat Pack film festival, Fierce art festival and the massive Birmingham International Jazz Festival
   
• The Birmingham Jewellery Quarter produces 40% of all jewellery produced in the UK. It is also has the highest concentration of jewellery businesses in Europe
   
• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has the world’s largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings
   
• Birmingham was home to the great scientists and inventors Matthew Boulton, James Watt and William Murdoch, leading Birmingham to be the first manufacturing town in the world. Birmingham chemist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen in 1774
   

Birmingham's boundaries were expanded several times during the 19th and 20th centuries. Birmingham was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1838. The borough initially included the parishes of Birmingham and Edgbaston and part of the parish of Aston. In 1889, the municipal borough of Birmingham was reconstituted as a county borough. It was expanded in 1891 under the City of Birmingham Extension Order by adding Harborne from Staffordshire and Balsall Heath from Worcestershire, as well as Saltley, a further part of Aston parish. Quinton in Worcestershire was added in 1909. In 1931, parts of the parishes of Minworth, Castle Bromwich, Sheldon and a tiny part of Solihull were added, including the area of Castle Vale, then known as Berwood. Birmingham was reconstituted on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, as a metropolitan district, which covered both the former county borough of Birmingham, and the municipal borough of Sutton Coldfield.

Birmingham City Council is one of the largest local authorites in Europe with, following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004, 120 Birmingham City Councillors representing over one million people, in 40 wards. The council headquarters are at the Council House in the city centre. Birmingham City Council is responsible for running nearly all local services, with the exception of those run by joint boards as detailed below. The provision of certain services has in recent years been devolved to several Districts, which each have an area committee made up of councillors from that district. From 5 April 2004, responsibility and budgets for a number of services were devolved to 11 district committees, as part of a growing trend in the UK to use area committees for large councils. Each now comprises four wards. Birmingham is unparished, apart from New Frankley, its only civil parish, which was established in 2000 in an area transferred from Bromsgrove in 1995, and which had previously been part of the Frankley parish.

Birmingham was the seat of regional government for the West Midlands region of England as the home of the region's Government Office, the regional development agency Advantage West Midlands, and the West Midlands Regional Assembly. Since 2011, Birmingham has formed part of the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership along with neighbouring authorities Bromsgrove, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, Redditch, Solihull, Tamworth, Wyre Forest. In November 2014, it was announced Birmingham was to create a combined authority with the four neighbouring boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Coventry and Solihull later joined, making the entire West Midlands county involved. The authority is expected to be formed in April 2016 in a bid to gain greater devolved powers from the government.
 

Birmingham grew to prominence as a manufacturing and engineering centre. The Gun Quarter is a district of the city, which was for many years a centre of the world's gun-manufacturing industry. The first recorded gun maker in Birmingham was in 1630, and locally made muskets were used in the English Civil War. It is an industrial area to the north of the city centre, bounded by Steelhouse Lane, Shadwell Street and Loveday Street specialising in the production of military firearms and sporting guns. Following the Big City Plan of 2008, the Gun Quarter is now a district within Birmingham City Centre. Many buildings in the area are disused but plans are in place for redevelopment including in Shadwell Street and Vesey Street.

Today, the economy of Birmingham is dominated by the service sector, which in 2012 accounted for 88% of the city's employment. Birmingham is the largest centre in Great Britain for employment in public administration, education and health and after Leeds the second largest centre outside London for employment in financial and other business services. Major companies headquartered in Birmingham include the engineering company IMI plc, and including the wider metropolitan area the city has the largest concentration of major companies outside London and the South East. With major facilities such as the National Exhibition Centre and International Convention Centre Birmingham attracts 42% of the UK's total conference and exhibition trade.

Manufacturing accounted for 8% of employment within Birmingham in 2012, a figure beneath the average for the UK as a whole.Major industrial plants within the city include Jaguar Land Rover in Castle Bromwich and Cadbury in Bournville, with large local producers also supporting a supply chain of precision-based small manufacturers and craft industries. More traditional industries also remain: 40% of the jewellery made in the UK is still produced by the 300 independent manufacturers of the city's Jewellery Quarter,continuing a trade first recorded in Birmingham in 1308.Birmingham's GVA was £24.8bn , economic growth accelerated each successive year between 2013 and 2015, and with an annual growth of 4.2% in 2015, GVA per head grew at the second fastest rate of England's eight «Core Cities». The value of manufacturing output in the city declined by 21% in real terms between 1997 and 2010, but the value of financial and insurance activities more than doubled. With 16,281 start-ups registered during 2013 Birmingham has the highest level of entrepreneurial activity outside London,while the number of registered businesses in the city grew by 8.1% during 2016. In the inner-city wards of Aston and Washwood Heath, the figure is higher than 30%. Two-fifths of Birmingham's population live in areas classified as in the 10% most deprived parts of England, and overall Birmingham is the most deprived local authority in England in terms of income and employment deprivation. The city's infant mortality rate is high, around 60% worse than the national average. Meanwhile, just 49% of women have jobs, compared to 65% nationally, and only 28% of the working-age population in Birmingham have degree level qualifications in contrast to the average of 34% across other Core Cities.According to the 2014 Mercer Quality of Living Survey, Birmingham was placed 51st in the world, which was the second highest rating in the UK. The city's quality of life rating has continued to improve over the years and Birmingham was ranked 49th in the world in the 2019 survey. This is the first time it has featured in the top 50. The Big City Plan aims to move the city into the index's top 20 by 2026. An area of the city has been designated an enterprise zone, with tax relief and simplified planning to lure investment.According to 2019 property investment research, Birmingham is rated as the number 1 location for “The Best Places To Invest in Property in the UK”.

Partly due to its central location, Birmingham is a major transport hub on the motorway, rail and canal networks. The city is served by the M5, M6, M40, and M42 motorways, and possibly the most well known motorway junction in the United Kingdom: Spaghetti Junction, a colloquial name for the Gravelly Hill Interchange. The M6 passes through the city on the Bromford Viaduct, which at 3.5 miles is the longest bridge in the UK.[264] Birmingham is planning a Clean Air Zone from 2020, which will charge polluting vehicles to travel into the city centre.Birmingham Airport, located 6 miles east of the city centre in the neighbouring borough of Solihull, is the seventh busiest airport by passenger traffic in the UK and the third busiest outside the London area, after Manchester and Edinburgh. It is the largest base for Flybe, Europe's largest regional airline, and a major base for Ryanair and TUI Airways.Airline services operate from Birmingham to many destinations in Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.

Birmingham Moor Street and Birmingham Snow Hill form the northern termini for Chiltern Railways express trains running from London Marylebone. Local and regional services are operated from all of Birmingham's stations by West Midlands Trains. Curzon Street railway station is planned to be the northern terminus for Phase One of the High Speed 2 rail link from London, due to open in 2026.

The National Express headquarters are located in Digbeth, in offices above Birmingham Coach Station, which forms the national hub of the company's coach network. The network includes: the busiest urban rail system in the UK outside London, with 122 million passenger entries and exits per annum; the UK's busiest urban bus system outside London, with 300.2 million passenger journeys per annum; and the West Midlands Metro, a light rail system that operates between Library in Central Birmingham and Wolverhampton via Bilston, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. Bus routes are mainly operated by National Express West Midlands, which accounts for over 80% of all bus journeys in Birmingham, though there are around 50 other, smaller registered bus companies.The number 11 outer circle bus route, which operates in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions around the outskirts of the city, is the longest urban bus route in Europe, being over 26 miles long with 272 bus stops.There is currently no underground system in Birmingham; it is the largest city in Europe not to have one. In recent years, ideas of an underground system have started to appear, but none so far have been planned in earnest primarily due to the ongoing expansion of the West Midlands Metro tram network being viewed as a higher priority.[An extensive canal system still remains in Birmingham from the Industrial Revolution.