I am going to then compare these results to the 1970 GOAD maps
Geographical Background to St. Ives
St. Ives is a small bridge town in Cambridgeshire in between Cambridge and Huntington. It started because of the bridge. People would come from a long way away to cross the Ouse on this bridge. It is this fact why the town grew, more and more people started to come across the bridge shops appeared, the town grew and grew. Here is a population graph of St. Ives showing the growth of the town. 1941 has been left out because there were no records made because of World War II.
St. Ives in 1970
St. Ives CBD in 1970 was centred on Bridge Street; it is less obvious in the surrounding areas. There are a lot of vacant buildings and housing along the other roads this indicates that they are less busy, as Bridge Street is full of shops, restaurants, cafés pubs and general services. There are very few vacant buildings or dwellings. I can tell all of this from a goad map of the CBD of St. Ives in 1970. The goad map is very hard to read.
I believe that the CBD in St. Ives was in the
St. Ives CBD in 2002
Broadway
Broadway is the main road into the CBD of St. Ives. It is a very broad road that was use
This graph helps to show that the amount of people compared to cars that pass by in an hour. This helps us to tell how busy the street is and how many people park on this road.
This shows that a lot more of the shops on Broadway are Local and not Chain shops. Over 75% of the shops in Broadway are local. This is a sign that Broadway is not a CBD road.
The average height of the buildings in Broadway is 2.5 this is also not a very good sign that this is a part of the CBD as only half of the buildings have three stories and half 2. In the definitions for a CBD one of the recurring points is that they build up and not out, but here they don’t seem the have built up much. Another interesting point is that there are 7 catering services in Broadway now most CBDs don’t have many restaurants as they usually can’t support themselves there, as other statistics have shown this makes it look like a feeder road to the main area of CBD.
Bridge Street
Bridge Street is almost definitely the CBD of 1970, but this is the time where we find out if the CBD of St. Ives has moved . (See map above)
This graph is very important but also a bit unfair. There was the usual amount of people but there were no cars at all. This is because there were road works going on in Bridge Street to make it completely pedestrianised, the whole of the road, and the bridge, is being closed to all traffic. This is mainly because of the fact that the bridge is old and is to weak to carry heavy traffic any more, so they have closed it off to all vehicles.
This as the title states is a comparison of local and chain shops, similar to the one on Broadway, it shows that almost half of the shops are Chain and half are Local. This is not typical of a CBD, but it does have more Chain shops, typical of a CBD, than Broadway. This helps to back up my belief that Bridge Street was the main part of the CBD in 1970 but not any more and has started to loose the Chain shops and gain more and more local shops.
One of the important points important parts of my statistics is the building height in bridge street it was also 2.5 which shows a lack of three story buildings this makes me believe that the CBD is not here but somewhere else. There are only 3 restaurants but these are very successful restaurants.
Market Hill
Market Hill is as it says in the name is where the market is held every Monday and Friday. The market brings people from all over St. Ives and all of the surrounding villages to buy and/or sell food, sweets, clothes, and many more items. This makes our people count a little unfair. (see map above)
This is a graph of the comparison between the no. of people and vehicles that pass by per hour. As you can see the amount of people that pass by far surpasses the amount of vehicles. This is because of the market, it stops cars from getting in and it attracts much more people to this particular road
The number of local shops, for the first time is smaller than the number of chain shops. This is a good sign for having found the CBD. There are also many more Public Buildings here than anywhere else. This proves that the council believe that this is also the CBD otherwise why build so many public buildings? Also the average height of buildings has gone up to 2.8 this shows a massive increase in the amount of three story buildings in this road. All of these points have inclined me to believe that this is the modern CBD.
Station Road
Station Road is a small dead end road that follows on from Market Hill (map above for the specifics).
Station Road has more people and cars than you would have expected but it is connected to Waitrose car park. Which is the major car park for the whole of St. Ives. So it has a lot of people walking to and from here and cars leaving and arriving.
This shows a reversal of Market Hill the local shops are in the majority in this road. This is exactly what I expected to happen, as soon as we leave Market Hill it resumes the feeder status again.
There is an average building height of 2, all the buildings are 2 stories high.
Analysis
I have compared the four streets individually and now I am going to bring it all together. Broadway is obviously not a part of the CBD, it has a lot more local shops than chain which is one of the major points that a modern CBD has. Bridge Street was my choice for the old CBD so it did have some of the characteristics of a CBD but not enough of them to convince me that this is the modern CBD. Station Road is just to small to be part of the CBD. Market hill on the other hand does look like it could be part of the CBD. It has lots of people and cars, considering the market, it has the market, it has plenty of shops (mostly chain) and lots of public buildings. The average building height is higher than all the other streets. Therefor I believe that Market Hill is the modern CBD.
Conclusion
“Has the CBD in St. Ives migrated in the last 30 years?” That was the hypothesis that I started with. I believe that the CBD has migrated from Bridge Street to Market Hill. I believe that the CBD in St. Ives was here because of the bridge. As in 1970 the bridge was still open to all traffic. This let all traffic from the other side of the river still come straight into the road and making it easier to get goods from one side to the other. But since then the bridge has been more and more restricted, and less and less traffic over. Market Hill on the other side has become more and more busy mainly with the opening of Waitrose. Its massive car park allows lots of people to park very close to Market Hill. Although the car park is closer to Station Road it is not big enough to support a CBD.
Limitations
I think that the four streets were enough as they are the main streets of the CBD, but I believe that the alleyways of Bridge street and Market hill are important. I do not know about 1970 but now there are quite a lot of small shops in them and the movements of these shops could tell us about the location of the CBD at the specific times.
Joshua Elliott 10 OL page