Good culture, bad culture…no culture! The implications of culture in urban regeneration in Bradford, UK

an article by Marta Bolognani (University of Sussex, UK) published in Critical Social Policy Volume 32 Number 4 (November 2012)

Abstract

This paper shows how regeneration policies in Bradford (UK) have over the years been modified following local, national and international events since 1997.

It will be argued that policy makers reacted to public perceptions of the city itself and of its large Muslim community in three phases: celebration of local minority ethnic culture; pathologisation of the same; exclusion of any cultural element from the city’s self-projection.

The paper suggests that these changes are at the same time reflexive of historical events and hegemonic discourses, and likely to be constitutive (as they have the potential to deeply affect social relations in the city).

Further investigation is required to measure such constitutive long-term effects on minority ethnic groups and social relations in the city.

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