The plan: Knowing urbanism: between the allure of the cosmopolitan and the horror of the postcolony

In the autumn of 2001 a report published by Bradford City Council, authored by Herman Ouseley – one-time head of the Commission for Racial Equality – diagnosed the causes of the disturbances of that year principally in terms of the segregated geographies of ‘white’ and ‘Asian’ communities. Echoing an earlier equivalence made by Robert Park between social distance and geographical space, the extreme forms of social segregation witnessed in the city were blamed for promoting civil collapse. Social malaise was written as spatial configuration.