Birmingham is surprisingly versatile as a filming location. The dystopian scenes in “Ready Player One” were shot there, but it can also double for up-market London housing as seen in the “Kingsman” movies.

Britain has always worn its class divisions on its sleeves.

It may be of note that the recent "The Batman" was largely filmed in the UK and specifically liverpool

This fact is very dystopic in itself.

Birmingham, city of the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHVO1eSMFc "Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham", 5m, 1981. Note the use of shots of complicated motorway junctions to indicate modernity.

For reference, the everlasting beauty of Spaghetti Junction [1]

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Junction,_Birmingham

Surprisingly green for so much concrete.

More trees than Paris and more canals than Venice

This could easily pass as parody, at this point I'm not sure if it isn't. Hilarious in any case.

The fun bit about that is that most of the "state of the art" modern stuff like the railway station and shopping centres has been demolished and replaced since

Not sure Birmingham looks that post-apocalyptic despite its reputation, although the starchitecture of the Bull Ring centre that replaced the Bull Ring centre in the video has a definite aliens-have-invaded vibe to it... e.g https://i2-prod.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article1992671...

I would say in every city with more than 2 millions inhabitants there will be at least one location that looks "apoliptically".

This happens for many reasons: abandoned industrial areas, location that came out of fashion, people moving to cheaper places, etc.

Heh - the Netflix zombie series "Black Summer" was filmed in "North East" Calgary, Alberta Canada.

The running joke was that because the "North East" was a fairly rough/work traditional working-class area, they didn't have to do much "set dressing".

Can you expand on this? I have visited Birmingham many times so curious why you think it's a good setting.

Richness of history. As other comments say, it's a versatile slice of an ex-industrial heartland. Some bits are Tudor (Shakespeare lived up the road in Stratford), Then it was a powerhouse right through the industrial revolution, well connected by canals and rail (technically Birmingham would make a great New Green Capital when the sea reclaims London). Then Hitler dropped several Hiroshima's worth of bombs on Britain in a WW2 campaign we called "The Blitz". A lot of that fell on Coventry and Birmingham causing millions of pounds of improvements :) So it became a testing ground for new and innovative architecture, some of which was the Brutalist concrete of the late 50s and 60s. That looked great and "modern" at the time, and now looks a perfect "dystopian" setting. Last time I visited that was being bulldozed, but preservation orders actually protect some of the "ugliest" skyline, because that's part of our culture now. So, if you're looking to make a dark post-industrial apocalypse move, come check out Birmingham.

Birmingham Alabama is probably a better choice. Lots of burnt out structures that never got cleaned up, and the people apparently can't afford trash service there so they just leave it on the sidewalk until it eventually piles up over your head. Hotels are filthy too. Garbage and used needles inside the elevators -- and this was a nice hotel.