Many of these old wooden flats still exist on the outskirts of the city, and people continue to live there because they simply can't afford to move into newer stone apartment buildings.
Er, alternatively you can be in Birmingham in only an hour and a half, where there is lots to see and do including the new and internationally-acclaimed Climbing Wall built on the site of the old aquarium.
And so above us, we see a huge new dinosaur museum and arching up the huge neck of a stainless steel sauropod or Brontosaurus, looming over a courtyard studded with dinosaur tracks.