Finding the boundaries of a CBD
The boundaries of a CBD could be most land or land use changes, from a change in zone (e.g. commercial to residential, a zone in transition) to a feature such as a railway line. Other things for this purpose are things that are often used as boundaries for other things like countries, e.g. Rivers. Sometimes though the edge may not be so well defined, and there may be a gradual ‘fade out’ of the CBD – such as a row of commercial going into residential, with perhaps a few houses between shops to start with, and by the end of the street only houses.
Data collection/presentation
To aid me in finding the boundaries of the CBD, I have chosen to do ‘people’ counts, and record the number of people in a certain area over a certain amount of time. The CBD will contain more people than the rest of Winchester, with tourists, consumers and business/office/retail workers clustered there, so these should give me a good indication of the CBD boundaries. I will do these counts at several locations around the centre of Winchester. I will present these results in a table, and mark the locations of the counts on the map, before using them to create/better my idea of Winchester’s CBD edges.
Predictions
I think that in some areas, it will be fairly easy to see where to CBD begins and ends, but in others such as the northern edge I may find it more difficult – I may find a sort of ‘blurred’ edge. Since a lot of business people and tourists commute to Winchester, I expect the main methods of transport will be inside the CBD – that is the bus station (which I expect will be inside anyway) and the train station.
A Blurred Edge
On of the edges of the CBD I found, the one from between the junction to just above the bus station facing the top right of the map, was a ‘blurred edge’, one that was fairly difficult to define. At the top, above north walls, is housing, most terraced. As I stated earlier housing is not considered to be in the CBD, but large areas of distribution is – and that’s what lies at the bottom of the road. So clearly the edge lies somewhere in between. As shown on page 11, I carried out people counts on it to help determine the edge. The street starts with tall expensive housing, and then gradually turns into a pub, solicitors, and a DIY store. I tried to place the defining line so as to place most residential above it and most distribution and services below it.
One of the things that was quite hard to decide where it was in or out, here or in the rest of the CBD, was services. Certain types of service – such as a motor repair shop can be found anywhere in a city or in rural areas as well, and are not exclusive to the CBD. Others though, such as banks, are usually found in the CBD so by looking at service areas on a land use map it is impossible to define the edge. The service parts of St. Peters Street are parking, and an architect, with the architect being further down the road – I put this as inside the CBD, as it is a fairly rare service, one that people from outside Winchester will require access to and feel is important. The car parks generally seemed to be for the tall housing, though some were for other purposes, and I classed these just outside the CBD.
The other two streets that run parallel to it are also part of the blurred edge, but these were easier to define that St. Peters Street.
Another Blurred Edge
Another blurred edge I found was directly opposite this on the other side of the CBD. This edge, on the road St Thomas Street, is very similar to the St Peters street edge – with fairly heavy residential furthest away from the CBD, and moving into services, and then distribution.
Churches and Car parks
Churches
Another ‘feature’ both these blurred edges is having a Church half way down (marked as purple welfare on the map). These I have included inside the CBD, as the historic value of Winchester is one of the things that sites it as a tourist attraction. A lot of Winchester is historically religious (as can be seen by the street names “St. Peters Street”), and the current CBD seems to be ringed by churches and converted church buildings. A bit towards the CBD on St. Peters Street there’s a converted church building, now used as a museum. The Winchester Cinema is a converted church, as is a theatre across the river to the bottom right of the CBD. And another church presides adjacent to the police and fire stations, to the right of the top of St. Peters Street. There are many others on the opposite side of the cathedral, And of course theirs the cathedral itself at the bottom of the CBD.
Some of these churches I have chosen to include in the CBD, as they are historic and attract tourists, but the converted ones I haven’t, nor those surrounded by residential like the one near the police and fire station.
Car Parks
Car parks in Winchester also swarm to surround the CBD, though not on the other side of the cathedral as the area there is either a) owned by Winchester college or b) the other side of the cathedral is fairly historic, and would be difficult or impossible to find space for a main road in or the car park itself, as several of the buildings are listed (can’t be knocked down).
As the map shows, the car parks cover Winchester’s city center , but tend to cling more to the edge rather than the center. A large percentage of the people in Winchester’s CBD are tourists, and these arrive through 3 methods – bus, train, and car. For those who arrive via car, they make their way towards the city center from the car parks. This means they are likely to be somewhere in between the undisputed CBD (the highstreet, and buttercross) and the car parks. For this reason I have tried to keep the car parks roughly on the edge of my CBD.
So in my study churches and carports go hand in hand – one attracts tourists, the other gets them here. I have tried to roughly keep both on the edge – either just in for an attraction or often just out for a large car park – my CBD definition.
The station
After completing the land use and pedestrian count results I decided to extend my CBD up to the station. This was largely for the same reason as the car parks – there are three ways tourists/business people commute to Winchester; bus, train, and car. My pedestrian count near the station was fairly high, similar to that of others near to the edge of the CBD.
It also logically followed through – those coming to Winchester would head towards business, large retail and tourist attractions such as the Cathedral, and would start and finish at these transport points such as the station. The transport points would receive as many people as the attractions themselves, so in my opinion should be inside the CBD.
The Station
Parks
One further outlying feature of my CBD was parks. I wasn’t sure entirely whether they should be placed in or outside the CBD, as pedestrian counts seemed slightly but not significantly less, and they were one of the things that make people come to Winchester. In the end I decided they should be out, as though they did attract some tourist, by the very definition “Central Business District” the parks were ruled out – there was no business being done here.
Pedestrian Count Results
These are the results I collected for my people counts. I wrote down the time at each of the locations numbered on the map, then timed for 5 minutes, and then counted everyone who came within about a 10 meter radius of me. I only counted people once, and I didn’t count anyone with any kind of vehicle such as roller blades. To simulate an hour, I multiplied each of the 5-min results by 12 and put them in the final column.
I tried to make it fair and accurate method of finding the CBD by ensuring:
- All of the results were collected before 5:30 when the shops shut, so there would be the same amount of people as at other times
- For the same reason, no results were taken from between 12:30 and 15:00 – lunch time
- All the days I carried out the findings were week days, so again the results should be consistent with each other
- I tried to evenly cover areas, eg. On a junction I only covered one part of it, not the whole thing, as I would get inflated numbers by people on both sides of 3 roads.
Though a lot of the people in the CBD are tourists, there were certain sites I felt were over inflated to give untrue figures, which is why I altered it as I estimated the true percentage to be when working out the number of people per hour. These anomalies were noticeable mainly outside the cathedral and bus station, where it wasn’t that busy when we walked around, but during the pedestrian count three busloads of German tourists emptied.
I used these counts to help decide my CBD. The CBD is one of the if not the place in a city where most pedestrians will be found, so I conducted these where I couldn’t tell by the land use or needed to check.
Comparison of Winchester with other city models
Of the models I compared Winchester with, this bears the least resemblance. Winchester is not surrounded by any of these rings, there are bits of each at various locations around Winchester – for example, high class residential can be found along the end of St. Peters Street, and my land use map showed almost no manufacturing/industry on the edge of the CBD.
The sector model is much more like Winchester. The CBD only has factories/light industry along one third of its edge, Though this is still too much. High class housing extends down at one point to the CBD, just as within Winchester, and medium and low class cover the rest. This is also roughly true within Winchester, with council estates not too far away and medium class housing south west of the Cathedral.
The multiple-nuclei model, while being the most complex, in my opinion doesn’t represent Winchester that much better than the Burgess model. It’s designed for larger cities, which means some parts will be included that Winchester does not have – such as more than one business district.
The main reason Winchester is fairly difficult to fit to a model, is that it’s a predominantly medieval town – meaning that a lot of traditional buildings will be fixed in places that no longer seem relevant, and tourists will be drawn to different areas.
