Within the terraces

The Gresham area of Middlesbrough consists of back-to-back terraced properties that house 6.5% of the town’s population. When this work was made, many of these properties were being threatened with demolition due to a huge regeneration project in the area. Many were owner/occupiers and were being threatened with compulsory purchase orders on their homes.

The Mosque and the surrounding streets where the majority of the Pakistani community lived (known as the ‘Bow street triangle’ by locals) has been left alone, with streets all around earmarked for this ’regeneration’.

Figures at the time showed that nearly a quarter of all robberies took place in the Gresham area, and nearly a third of all dealer-a-day activity was happening within these streets. Gresham houses a multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious community that largely defies these claims, and insists that there is deep-down strength in this diverse community that can be saved with sympathetic regeneration rather than demolition.

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