Bradford:
Bradford is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, 8.6 miles (13.8 km) west of Leeds, and 13 miles (20.9 km) northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Following local government reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon the wider metropolitan borough.
Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world".
Since the 1950s Bradford has experienced significant levels of immigration, particularly from the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan. Bradford has the second highest proportion of Muslims in England and Wales outside London. An estimated 101,967 people of South Asian origin reside in the city, with the vast majority from Pakistan/Kashmir. This represents around 20.5% of the city's population, with this figure projected to rise to 28% by 2011.
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