Bradfordians await with bated breath details of the promised masterplan for a World Shopping Mile along Westgate and White Abbey Road. JIM GREENHALF reports.

The meeting took place in the atrium of Bradford's Colour Museum, just behind Westgate.

It was 2002 and local businessmen, councillors, council officers, architects were among the packed audience that had gathered for the launch of the Goitside Master Plan.

The masterplan derived from a partnership of some 200 people working in and around Goitside; they jointly commissioned the plan in the year 2000.

One of the leading lights was David Scougall, director of Goitside Renaissance Ltd, who had brought about the transformation of Woolston House into a multi-purpose arts, media and business centre - until its collapse in 2003.

Graham Mahony, who had worked on the regeneration of Holme Wood for Bradford Council, was regeneration manager at Woolston House.

"The beauty of the plan was that it included an area with some very old buildings that could be refurbished and some that could be demolished - the best of both worlds.

"The big idea was to close down Godwin Street, make Sunbridge Road a bus-only thoroughfare and send traffic along Thornton Road via City Road.

"That would have meant a large pedestrianised area that would link the west end of the city to the main shopping centre," he said.

The Goitside Masterplan also allowed for flexible, piecemeal regeneration; allowing change to impact upon its locality by degrees. It was this aspect of the plan that those gathered at the Colour Museum found attractive.

Before the regeneration of disused Woolston House - formerly the HQ of the travel firm Inta-Sun - no one had seen much value in the Goitside area which includes Westgate up to about Lumb Lane. The general view was that the area was in inevitable decline.

Now, of course, such areas have become sexy for developers and would-be property entrepreneurs. Property in run-down areas is comparatively cheap which maximises the potential for sell-on profitability.

It's happening all over the country. In London, for example, Hoxton and Brick Lane are now very trendy, upmarket places with mixed shopping and residential developments. In the early 1980s, run-down Limehouse and then the whole of the former docks area underwent posh marina-style developments.

The whole of London's South Bank from Tower Bridge to Waterloo Bridge consists of pedestrianised caf-bar areas, office development and expensive apartments.

The original Goitside Masterplan, which vanished after the failure of the Woolston House project, has subsequently been resurrected by Urbed, the Manchester-based design consultancy brought in to work on Will Alsop's Masterplan for central Bradford.

What is envisaged now is a World Mile' shopping area to complement the existing shopping mall of Kirkgate and Westfield's exciting new Forster Square development, work on which is scheduled to start sometime next year.

This could mean Bradford having a mass of shops in the east, shops in the middle of town and more shops running out along White Abbey Road.

The concept of multiculturalism would be given a real invigorated boost with a multiplicity of new Asian shops and Asian shops with new shopfronts. The former Melborn pub, purchased by Bombay Stores, could turn into a specialist Asian shopping centre including a Middle Eastern jewellers, restaurant, beauty salon and wedding shop.

Vaseem Kader, store manager for Bombay Stores acknowledged that the idea for the World Mile had been behind the purchase of the Melborn.

"The plan is helping to create more confidence and excitement in the area," he added.

Who knows, White Abbey Road could be as world famous as London's Abbey Road.

The World Mile, as everyone knows, is absolutely central to the Manningham Masterplan - itself linked to the other masterplans for Airedale and the city centre.

Earlier this year Tim Whitfield, Bradford's former Community Relations Council supremo who now works in regeneration for Bradford Council, commented on the importance of proposals for the World Mile on the plan for greater Manningham.

"White Abbey Road is a wonderful story of transformation. At weekends you usually have coaches from Lancashire parked up there so people can visit the top-class shops," he said.

Back in December, 2001, when Woolston House housed 80 firms and some 300 employees, Prince Andrew paid an official visit to launch the Northern branch of the National School of Social Entrepreneurs and to meet the winners of his own Community Initiative Award.

Sadly, not even the Duke of York could save the regeneration scheme.

So what might Bradfordians reasonably expect if, this time round, the latest proposals for Goitside become reality?

Ashwani Sharma, lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of East London, is a trustee of Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, which is working within one of London's most culturally diverse areas.

He said: "Rich Mix Cultural Foundation is a £21m capital project with key funding from the Millennium Commission, London Development Agency, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the Arts Council and Cityside, the local urban regeneration body.

"Now established as an independent charity, Rich Mix Cultural Foundation is the body which is setting up a mixed arts space on the Bethnal Green Road - three cinemas, an interactive gallery, bookshop/caf, bar area, performance space and low rental studios.

"I see it as a kind of intervention. The local geography is so racially and class demarcated into white spaces and Asian spaces, middle-class and working-class, the utopian vision of Rich Mix is that within its boundaries those existing spaces are able to meet and overlap, at least by accident; and maybe something may happen.

"It is also an ethical project in that in the context of commercial pressure it is an attempt to create public space which, though publicly funded initially, does derive significant revenue from a market dimension.

"Its ethos is to negotiate and navigate the terms of reference in a cultural regeneration agenda, It has its roots in grassroots community activism"

Something like that could be just the job as an adjunct for the World Mile in the formerly riot-torn area of west Bradford.