Is ‘Chinatown’ offensive?

I’ve heard people using back-to-back housing to mean terraces separated by back yards. But strictly, back-to-back houses are built against a party wall and face opposite ways. Byelaws after the passing of the Public Health Act 1875 prevented their continued construction.

In Birmingham, four of the city’s former thousands of back-to-backs are preserved by the National Trust off Hurst Street, which runs through the middle of what this year was officially designated Chinatown. I was surprised by the renaming because parallel designations are regarded as offensive. ‘Formerly often with negative connotations of criminality,’ says the Oxford English Dictionary of Chinatown, ‘but now typically used with more positive connotations.’ So that’s all right.