Part One: An initial descriptive account

As we saw in Chapter Two earlier, Manningham is an area of inner-city urban Bradford that has a long history, with a mixed range of housing stock. The success of Victorian industrial expansion laid down the particular mix of substantial bourgeois mansions and large terraced houses alongside the modest, and even minimal, terraced and back-to-back terraced housing for the large population of workers who were the engine of this economic revolution. This same economic transformation also attracted waves of migrant workers to service the demand for labour, which not only changed the demography of the area, but also significantly changed its perceived character among residents and those living outside of Manningham. The reputational biography of Manningham, as discussed earlier, has provided a significant social framework within which its residents have learned to coexist and, in many cases, thrive. In this chapter, we will begin to enter into our contemporary analysis of Manningham by, first, descriptively exploring the physical properties of the area and then, second, discussing the contemporary significance of this streetscape for its residents.

Given the language of parallel lives and the heated national discourse around the dangers of the Muslim inner cities of the North, it might reasonably be assumed that walking through this area has all the characteristics of walking through a North American ghetto. The reality is quite the contrary. After tens of hours of walking through these streets, what remains striking is the mismatch of the reality with what it would be reasonable to assume that a stranger who knew this neighbourhood only by reputation and through the media might have anticipated. The prevailing sense of the terraced streets is of quiet domestication: of housing that is cared for and valued as home. The great majority of the housing is in good external repair. The paintwork is not dilapidated and the curtains, and often contemporary vertical blinds, are in good shape. Perhaps, this is a consequence to some extent of the extensive presence of housing association stock across the area, where the care of the fabric of the buildings will be externally regulated. However, the areas of owner-occupied terracing show very much the same sense of pride.