ARRIVING in Birmingham’s Moor Street Station, visitors see something odd: a grand Roman-columned stone building, seemingly abandoned in a wasteland of tarmac and grass. This neoclassical remnant, Curzon Street Station, was the original terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway, opened in 1838. It closed to passengers 55 years later, having proved too inconvenient. Like many of the 19th-century buildings in Birmingham’s Eastside, it has been derelict ever since.

Despite an efflorescence of striking architecture, both old and modern, Britain’s second-biggest city is not doing well. Some 14% of the population is unemployed, the highest level in any big city in the country. 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. The city’s infant mortality rate is strikingly high, around 60% worse than the national average.

Birmingham has had lots of bad luck. German bombs destroyed much of the old city centre; disastrous post-war planning strangled it with a concrete ring road. Then came deindustrialisation. By 1971 “the city of a thousand trades” had become a sort of British Detroit, employing tens of thousands of car workers. When militant unions and incompetent management destroyed the auto industry, Birmingham was hit brutally. Carmaking in Britain is now thriving again—but much less of it is in Birmingham.

The city has tried to reinvent itself as a business and tourism hub. It has built a convention centre, an opera house and a spectacular shopping mall. That has made the city a more pleasant place to live, but it has not replaced lost manufacturing jobs. Between 1998 and 2008 the city lost some 61,000 private-sector jobs, according to the Centre for Cities, a think-tank. Since around 2004 gross value-added—a measure of output—has lagged (see chart). Demography is a structural challenge. Some 22% of Birmingham’s population is under the age of 15, which puts the city on a par with Vietnam. Though that may become an asset, it puts pressure on public services. Only 25% of the working-age population have degree-level qualifications, in contrast to the 38% who do in Manchester. Thanks primarily to the city’s conservative Pakistani population, just 49% of women have jobs, against 65% nationally. But the real cause of Birmingham’s second-class status is a history of indifferent management. The city’s government was once mighty and dynamic enough to produce Joseph Chamberlain, a mayor who went on to become one of Victorian Britain’s most powerful men. Over the years Westminster power grabs have diluted the power and legitimacy of Britain’s provincial councils. In Manchester, where the council has been led by the same two men since 1998, this trend has been partly resisted. Birmingham’s more changeable government has proved less capable. Take the city’s shoddy public-transport system, which is mostly provided by private bus companies. Unlike London and Manchester, the city has been slow to organise its transport investment on a city-region level. As a result, it can be quicker to get to London than around Birmingham’s suburbs. Many of the best-paid workers live in dormitory towns like Bromsgrove or Lichfield, from where they can at least get to work by train. Others, such as Sir Albert Bore, the new Labour council leader, face grinding daily commutes by car.

Birmingham is bad at getting its message across. Many British people now seem to think that Manchester is Britain’s second-biggest city. The decision by the BBC to close Pebble Mill, a big production centre, even as it expanded in Salford, near Manchester, has not helped. Embarrassingly, the city has repeatedly failed to win competitions to become a “capital of culture”—most recently losing to Derry (Londonderry to the unionists), a small city in Northern Ireland.

Reviving Birmingham’s fortunes will require a sharp change in direction, says Gisela Stuart, a local MP. She argues that the city missed an opportunity when it rejected an elected mayor in a referendum in May. Such a high-profile figure could have pushed through radical reforms. The council, by contrast, is hamstrung by the need to cut £600m ($960m) from its £3.5 billion budget—a necessity forced onto it by a government formula which is hard on big, deprived cities.

There are hopeful signs, including Birmingham’s improving schools. Several academies—independent of the local authority—have opened, including one run by the King Edward VI Foundation, which manages the city’s remaining grammar schools. Schools still under council control are busy forging links with local firms.

In Manchester a second airport runway helped attract private-sector investment in the 1990s. Birmingham is finally catching up. A longer runway will allow the city’s airport to offer direct flights to East Asia. When a planned high-speed rail link opens in 2026, the airport will be just 40 minutes from London by train, says Paul Kehoe, its chief executive. Eventually, he hopes, the annual passenger flow could increase from 9m now to as much as 36m.

New plans could help Birmingham’s Eastside, too. After passing through the airport, the high-speed link is to terminate at a reopened Curzon Street Station. The city’s leaders hope that will be the final touch to their “Big City Plan” to regenerate the Eastside. A new park is to be built on the wasteland, while the crumbling station at New Street is to be overhauled. An entire quarter of the city has been designated an “enterprise zone”, with tax relief and simplified planning to lure investment.

When Curzon Street opened, the railway allowed Birmingham to sell its products to the world. Later, under Chamberlain’s leadership, it harnessed private capital to build the city’s infrastructure. The current leadership wants to repeat the trick, but without anywhere near the resources or the power. It’s a tall order.