I recently attended a really great community event in London called High Street 2012 about a communities relationship with the city: http://www.highstreet2012.com/ As part of it there was an input about urban riots in relation to architecture. I think it's really useful to get an architectural insight into some of the issues. See these articles, a key point Wouter made was that the urban neighbourhoods of the banlieu riots and the London riots are very similar in architectural terms (high density 1960's high rise): http://www.standard.co.uk/arts/architecture/what-now-for-the-regeneration-of-london-6433765.html http://bk.tudelft.nl/fileadmin/Faculteit/BK/Actueel/Nieuws/Nieuwsberichten_2011/doc/Back_to_Normal_WouterVanstiphout_BDOnline.pdf