Birmingham is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Jefferson County. The population of the city proper is 242,820 (2000 U.S. census), and has declined to 231,483 according to the 2005 estimate. It also serves as the primary nucleus for a sprawling urbanisation known as Greater Birmingham with 1,170,012 inhabitants constituting roughly one quarter of the state of Alabama's entire population. Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after the U.S. Civil War, as an industrial enterprise. It was named after Birmingham, the major industrial city of England. Home to a significant African American middle class, Birmingham was one of the battlegrounds of the American Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1960s. --------------------------------------- Today, Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centres in the Southeastern United States and is also one of the largest banking centres in the U.S. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to two Fortune 500 companies: Regions Financial and Saks Incorporated. Birmingham has been recognised as the South's top city for income growth and among the top ten nationally over the last 20 years.------------Through the middle of the 20th century, Birmingham was the primary industrial centre of the Southern United States. The astonishing pace of Birmingham's growth through the turn of the century, earned it the nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South". Birmingham's major industries centred around iron and steel production. Over the course of the 20th century, while industry declined nationwide, the city's economy diversified. Though manufacturing is still a strong sector, Birmingham has also become a major medical research centre and a regional banking and publishing power. In recent years, biotechnology and information technology have begun to grow rapidly to complement other sectors of Birmingham's economy. In recent years Birmingham has been named by various groups as one of the best U.S. cities in which to live.--------Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871 by real estate promoters who sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North railroads. The site of the railroad crossing was noteable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone - the three principal raw materials used in making steel. Birmingham is the only place worldwide where significant amounts of all three minerals can be found in close proximity. From the start the new city was planned as a great centre of industry. The founders borrowed the name of Birmingham, England's principal industrial city, to advertise that point. Birmingham got off to a slow start: the city was impeded by an outbreak of cholera and a Wall Street crash in 1873. But soon afterward the city began growing rapidly. ---------------------------------- The turn of the century brought the substantial growth that gave Birmingham the nickname "The Magic City" as the downtown area rapidly developed from a low-rise commercial and residential district into a busy grid of neoclassical skyscrapers and busy streetcar lines. Between 1902 and 1912 four large office towers were constructed at the intersection of 20th Street, the central north-south spine of the city, and 1st Avenue North, which connected the warehouses and industrial facilities stretching along the east-west railroad corridor. This impressive group of early skyscrapers was nicknamed "The Heaviest Corner on Earth".---------The Great Depression hit Birmingham especially hard as sources of capital that were fuelling the city's growth rapidly dried up at the same time that farm laborers, driven off the land, made their way to the city in search of work. New Deal programs made important contributions to the city's infrastructure and artistic legacy, including such key improvements as Vulcan's tower and Oak Mountain State Park. The wartime demand for steel and the post-war building boom gave Birmingham a rapid return to prosperity. Manufacturing diversified beyond the production of raw materials and several major cultural institutions, such as the Birmingham Museum of Art were able to expand their scope. ------------------------- In the 1950s and '60s Birmingham received national and international attention as a centre of the civil rights struggle for African-Americans. The city was given the derisive nickname Bombingham because of a string of racially motivated bombings that took place during this time. A watershed in the civil rights movement occurred in 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr., imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause against segregation. Birmingham is also known for a bombing which occurred later that year, in which four black girls were killed by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The event would inspire the African-American poet Dudley Randall's opus, The Ballad of Birmingham.------In the 1970s urban renewal efforts focused around the development of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which developed into a major medical and research centre. In 1971 Birmingham celebrated its centennial with a round of public works improvements, including the upgrading of Vulcan Park. Birmingham's banking institutions enjoyed considerable growth as well and new skyscrapers started to appear in the city centre for the first time since the 1920s. These projects helped the city's economy to diversify, but did not prevent the exodus of many of the city's residents to independent suburbs. In 1979 Birmingham elected Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. as its first African-American mayor.--------Following the same pattern as many other American cities, the population inside Birmingham's city limits has fallen over the past few decades. From 340,887 in 1960, the population was down to 242,820 in 2000, a loss of about 29 percent. However, the growth of Birmingham's suburbs over that same period has kept the metropolitan population growing. Over the course of the 20th century, while industry declined nationwide, banking, law, medicine, research and publishing emerged as Birmingham's new economic engines.-------------- Today, Birmingham has begun to experience a bit of a rebirth. Currently there are hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in reconstructing the downtown area into a 24-hour mixed-use district. The market for downtown lofts and condominiums has mushroomed while restaurant, retail and cultural options are beginning to sprout up. In 2006 the visitors bureau selected "the diverse city" as a new tagline for the city.