Birmingham is engaged in its biggest urban regeneration programme since the advent of the motor car placed it at the heart of the 20th century's most significant industrial sector – and the city's professional community is responding to the challenge.

Not much of a change there, then. Brum has reinvented itself countless times since the industrial revolution and municipal philanthropists shot the city to national prominence in the late 1800s.

The latest transformation, however, is a £6bn affair which has been underway for years and still has a long way to go. Every step along the route is good news for lawyers and other professionals on whose advice many deals stand or fall.

It is a huge patchwork of individual projects encompassing 420 acres of brownfield land that will come together as a single scheme – and the amount of legal work involved is incredible. It will keep a great many lawyers occupied for a good chunk of their working lives, because there are so many considerations to be taken into account. There is also an extremely difficult balancing exercise to be done in managing some of the risks.

Regeneration is desirable for reasons other than pure economics. A rundown environment frequently goes hand-in-hand with chronic ill health and is often the underlying cause of social malaise such as crime and vandalism. However, the commercial benefits provide the driving force for the kind of large-scale investment required and it is in this area that the professional services have a key role.

Lawyers, accountants, bankers, venture capitalists and surveyors have all played their part in changing the face of Birmingham in the past 10 years or so. The movers and shakers of the city make up an extended family where each member knows the others, and freely exchanges leads and introductions.

Birmingham's professional community is composed, by and large, of people who are here to stay, not to make shedloads of money and then disappear. There is a social conscience at large in the city and it means that professionals are prepared to give their time for the common good.

Law firms can help in this process by accepting that they are social stakeholders along with everybody else. Anyone who wants to live and work in a place like Birmingham has to accept that – and to do at least some work for the benefit of the public.

Perhaps because it came late to the business of being a city, and had no real historical perspective from which to view its role, Birmingham has always been a place of shift and change – and that is what is makes it such a dynamic place to live and work.

Other regional centres such as Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol achieved national and international prominence thanks to their status either as major ports, or in Manchester's case its ship canal.

Birmingham did not have this advantage and came into its own with every aspect of the industrial revolution, which gave strategic importance to its location at the centre of the UK. That happy geographical accident still provides huge benefits (and drawbacks) to the region, which now sits astride the crossroads of the road and motorway network.

It is not for nothing that the city's motto is 'forward', or that everyone who visits Birmingham gets the impression that it is in an eternal state of construction. It has reinvented itself many times in the past, and will do so again in the future.

It has never been a community with a strategy to become a certain thing, or establish a specific image. It is a project that has never been completed, and never will be – and that is the way the people who live and work there like it.

This is one of the reasons that it continues to be such an attractive location for firms from other parts of the UK, as well as from overseas. They visit the city and see that it is rich in skills, along with first class housing, restaurants, bars and theatres.

Regeneration has a strong social element to it, as well as commercial benefits. People do not just want a good place to work, or live, or spend their leisure time – they want it all.

A good example of this is the Brindleyplace development, which is some distance from what used to be considered the city centre – defined by the post-war planners as everything within the inner ring road.

The ring road, conceived in the 1950s when the car was king and Birmingham's role as Motor City encouraged it to make vehicle access to the centre its number one priority, driving pedestrians into subways or onto overhead walkways, is now regarded as being restrictive. Disparagingly dubbed the concrete collar it is being breached, both physically and metaphorically, to allow Birmingham's easy expansion.

Brindleyplace and the neighbouring International Convention Centre are the flag carriers for the city's approach to permit the centre to spread, providing an exciting mix of premium office space, bars and restaurants and quality housing.

This has been followed by the Mailbox, another mixed-use development of high class shops, luxury accommodation and prime office space into which the BBC is soon to relocate its Midlands operations.

But the most ambitious plans of all are for the run-down eastern side of the city. The huge Eastside project will run in at billions of pounds during the next few years and will see the reclamation of hundreds of acres of land contaminated by centuries of who-knows-what industrial processes.

Generous tax breaks from the Chancellor have made the realisation of this dream possible. The concessions from Gordon Brown, coupled with the massive social development programme of the city council and its planners as well as the confidence the private sector has in the future of the city and the lead given by Advantage West Midlands (AWM), the brand under which the regional development agency works, have also played an important part.

AWM has been criticised for delivering change too slowly, but the complaints are born of frustration at what is perceived as lack of action. People understandably want things to happen faster, but AWM has been constrained by its budget and too few people were asked to do too much. What has been achieved has been very impressive – including support for the developments springing up on former industrial sites around the entire region, such as the Techno Centre which has been developed on the former Rolls-Royce Parkside site in Coventry.

Birmingham is proud of its heritage and part of its charm is that it absorbs what it likes – particularly the architecture – into its vision for the future. So, hospitals and municipal buildings that are no longer needed, are turned into superb hotels, restaurants, bars and living accommodation, and former factories are refitted for educational purposes.

No doubt when the tower blocks of the '50s and '60s are torn down, one example – it does not matter which – will be left standing as a listed building. A similar fate could be in store for the post-war prefabs that can still be found in the city.

It was not long ago that Birmingham firms, looking to recruit staff, placed advertisements in newspapers pointing out that you could get from the city centre to the countryside in less than half an hour. The best they could say about Birmingham was that it was an easy place to leave.

That is not the line any longer. In the past 10 years the city has swapped functionality for fun. This is a great place to live and work and there are many ways to fill your leisure time.

Birmingham's vibrant cultural life – the internationally renowned CBSO, the Royal Ballet, the International Convention Centre and the National Indoor Arena – is now such that the city is in the running to become European Capital of Culture 2008.

Birmingham is a long way from being the cultural desert some people believe it to be.

Simon Arrowsmith is head of the commercial property department at Martineau Johnson.