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Cities 'facing growing segregation'
UK cities could be at risk of long-term social problems
if growing ethnic isolation is not addressed, a study has suggested.
The research found that some British cities are now in
the "major league" of segregation, ranking in the top 50 with American
towns such as New York, Miami and riot-riven Los Angeles.
Leicester, Bradford and Oldham were
classified as "ghettos" by the researchers, with London and Bradford
home to the most isolated ethnic communities. Pakistani and Bangladeshi
groups were found to be increasingly separated.
Dewsbury - a typically
divided Northern town
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Some 13.6% of the Indian
community in Leicester live in "isolated enclaves" - 37th in the table
of 276 US and UK cities - compared to 5.4% of LA's African Americans
and 13.3% of blacks in New York, the research revealed.
Bradford's Pakistani population was also in the top 50,
with 13.2% in isolated enclaves, while 13.3% of American blacks lived
similar lives in New York, and 15.8% and 15.4% of those in Miami and
Chicago respectively.
Researcher Dr Mike Poulsen, a senior lecturer in
geography at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, presented his
findings to the Royal Geographical Society's annual conference in
London, after examining 16 major UK cities, including Slough,
Wolverhampton, Coventry, Luton, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, and
comparing data from the 1991 and 2001 census.
The research predicts isolated ethnic enclaves will
continue to increase in size over time, and Dr Poulsen said immigration
was mainly behind the rise.
"We are talking about increases of about 30% of the
population in terms of each of the ethnic groups that moved into these
mixed enclaves over the last decade.
"The outcomes [are] the children living in some areas
are just not going to assimilate as we would have expected, and that
cannot be good.
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