HITCHIN cbd

Is it possible to delimit the CBD?

Location: Hitchin

Introduction

The aim of this project is to delimit the CBD of Hitchen. The CBD is the central business district of a town in which are found most of the offices and shops. The group that aimed to find the borders of the town was a group of STAGS School pupils. This group collected the Data and in this booklet is discussed the relevancies of the information, why trends in the data have been found and how these trends could be used to find and Delimit the CBD of Hitchen. This delimitation is done in the conclusions section. Finally in the Evaluation problems with the project are discussed and how it could be improved if the investigation.

Hitchen is to the North West of Stevenage, and is famous for trading during ancient times, and it’s market in the present day. It has established itself as a centre of commerce and and industry. We had chosen this area as it is an infamous British landmark, symbolising trade in the Vicrorian era. It is also a great example to use for coursework, as it is a fairly reliable and safe area to focus on, with consistant results that we can manipulate, with unreliable results that we may comment on.

Hypothesis

-Pedestrian numbers would decrease with increasing distance from the town centre. This is because there is more reason for people to be at the centre where there are shops and jobs to go to. I also think that Shops would improve in appearance with decreasing distance from the town centre. Those shops that can afford the rent in the centre of a town are high quality stores, for them appearance is important. Shops that are located in the CBD usually are specialist shops, department stores and branches of national chains of companies. I ...

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Hypothesis

I also think that the number of shops and numbers of stories in each building increases with decreasing distance from the town centre. The more people there are around, the more shops there will be to exploit the market and due to the high cost of land the shop owners will maximise the floor space on small plots of land by building more stories. Another of my predictions is that I believe that the number of residential homes would decrease with increasing distance from the town centre. The cost of land would be greater in the CBD so less people can afford to live there. As the houses near the CBD, they will become more nucleated. I believe in these hypothesizes because of many geographical factors present, which apply to most towns in MEDC's. As you get closer to the CBD, I also think that the population density will increase. I also think that more well known and chain stores increase in number with decreasing distance from the town centre. Only the richer companies can afford the high rent, and that parking restrictions increase with decreasing distance from the town centre. More people mean more cars and cars cause congestion, parking restrictions therefore discourages cars. The pedestrians’ distance from home would increase with decreasing distance from the town centre, Because the homes are mainly in the outskirts of the city.

Method/data collection

On March the 16th, we collected data from hitchin, from around 9:00 AM untill 2:30 PM. I found this way of recording data unreliable, as it is only sampling form one single day, and that it was also market day, it hindered our results. We measured heights of buildings using the numbers of stories. I found this unreliable, as we cannot judjed a CBD using how many stories there are in that particularly small stretch. There were also several shops and businesses that would have one window 2 stories up, which reduced the validity of our results. We also measured shop frontage, which was equally unreliable. Different people had different pace lengths, which meant that there were different measurements for the same length. Another flaw in the investigation was the different perspective of people on the environmental qualities, which depended entirely on opinion. Our pedestrian count was definitely an anomoli, ours was roughly 150 people more than the average result of the class LOL. The weather conditions at the time were cold but otherwise clear from rain, and this would effect our pedestrian count and our traffic count, as more may be walking than usual down the particular stretch we examined.

Analysis and interpretation of results

From my results, I could understand that the further from the CBD, the larger the shop frontage. I think this is as the area can sustain their population threshold. Also, as the distance from the CBD decreased, there was less litter. I think that this is because more people were using that area at the time, and therefore there would be an increase in kevels of litter. However, I think this is a personal opinion as to the level of litter, which may affect our results. The same problem occurred when collecting data about the noise pollution, and therefore I would see it as more accurate to use a decibel meter. Also, the number of people in the CBD during my survey was hindered .

Conclusion

I believe that I had not collected enough data, as our results would be unreliable because of the fact it was market day. We had several problems collecting the data; ……… the advantages of our techniques used in our method were that we could quickly and easily record data without too many errors. A disadvantage is that the errors were numerous, and that we did not record our data over a long enough period of time, so that we could average and increase the precision of our results.

All the results have given a very similar set of trends and estimates of the CBD core and fringe limits. Shopping quality, Street appearance and number of pedestrians on streets, all increase with decreasing distance from the centre of Hitchin, similarly the high point was usually the high street.