Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands county of England. It is the most populous British city outside London with a population of 1,028,700 (2009 estimate) and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the United Kingdom's second most populous Urban Area with a population of 2,284,093 (2001 census). Birmingham's metropolitan area, which includes surrounding towns to which it is closely tied through commuting, is also the United Kingdom's second most populous with a population of 3,683,000.

Birmingham was the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution in England, a fact which led to it being known as "the workshop of the world" or the "city of a thousand trades". Although Birmingham's industrial importance has declined, it has developed into a national commercial centre, being named in 2010 as the third-best place in the United Kingdom to locate a business. Birmingham is a national hub for conferences, retail and events along with an established high tech, research and development sector, supported by its three Universities. It is also the fourth-most visited city by foreign visitors in the UK, has the second-largest city economy in the UK, is often referred to as The Second City and is ranked as a gamma- world city by theGlobalization and World Cities Research Network.