Resources that I have used to complete my tasks.
Books - To find out about York and the people it attracts I used some books to research background information on the city, and up-to-date information on the sort of businesses in and around York.
Worksheets – Taken from school these sheets help to focus me on the task that is at hand.
Computer/Internet – Up-to-the-minute and fast to look something up, make computers one of the best ways to find maps and/or background information about Yorks CBD.
Leaflets – that can be acquires from just walking around town or looking in a tourist information centre, will help to recognise where main interest points are in York.
Fieldwork notebook – this notebook contains all of the information that our group recovered from the day of fieldwork.
Hypothesis 1.) Most shops in the CBD are comparison stores.
I would expect to find the most shops in York to be comparison. On Coney Street(fig 1.3 and 2.0) and fig we found that all but two or three shops, which were bakeries, were comparison, (as shown in fig 2.0). Coney Street seems to be used as the main source of comparison shops in York as the other main street in York (parliament street) is used mainly for services. Coney Street is ideally suited for comparison shops because of its size and shape. It is very long and so allows more shops to fit, but it is quite narrow so u can get from one shop to another easily. There are many comparison shops in Coney street because the rent prices for the street are so high, and therefore the companies that rent properties in the area must be successful and therefore have a high profit margin, to do this they need to sell high order good, which is what comparison shops do. The shops in the area must also consider that in order for them to be successful, and therefore be able to afford the rent prices they must aim to cater for the targeted age group, from our questionnaires, we found that the majority of people were under 25, this is why most of the shops would be where people of 25 and under would visit. Looking at other Regional shopping centres, such as Leeds and Manchester, and many shopping villages aswell the shops found on Coney Street are usually found in many other regional shopping centres, these are chain stores. Coney Street serves its purpose as a main street in a regional shopping centre
Hypothesis 2.) Most people shopping in the CBD are from outside York
I wouldn’t expect many of the people in the Yorks centre to be from the centre of York, and I would expect that there would be quite a number of people from out side of York. On the day we did the fieldwork the weather was bad, it was cold, wet and slightly windy. We thought that because of this people wouldn’t be out as much, and if they were they would be moving fast to avoid the rain. Tourists would be at an inside attraction rather than out site seeing. If the weather had been different and it had been a day with good weather, I would have thought that there would be more people out, with people sitting on benches and lingering, but they could not do this when we were doing the fieldwork because it was raining an so the benches were wet. Once started interviewing people we noticed that many people did not want to take part, we came to the conclusion that this was because thy did not want to stop, because of the weather, and that they did not want to get wet. Many of the shoppers did come from York but there were still a few from outside of York. I think that there were more people from York because they were on their lunch break, as the fieldwork took place at 1pm, and that tourists would be at an indoor attraction because of the poor weather. Although shown by our figures most people visit daily to York, I would have thought that you would pay weekly or even less visits to York’s CBD if it were to be a RSC.
Hypothesis 3.) Most people will travel to York by car.
I think that most people will have been travelling to York by car, as the weather was bad and people will not want to get wet whilst walking or waiting for public transport. Even if the day was sunny I would still expect most people to come by car as they need something to carry home their shopping in. There are many car parks in and around town and this provides relatively easy parking. From our questionnaires we decided that people were prepared from about a 1-½ hour radius around York. Our results showed different as we found that not nearly as many people came by car as we expected in fact less than ¼ travelled to York by car, although this was still a large section of the people. With more people walking than using a car. Although at this time of day it may have been explain as people being at work or collage, people who would travel by car, were not out on the streets.
Hypothesis 4.) The CBD will have many traffic restrictions.
I think that there will be a lot of traffic restrictions in York city centre as if there were not, the amount of pedestrians mixing with a lot of cars would end up with accidents. This would make shops less accessible too. We did traffic counts by having one person stand on each side of the road, one person tallies down the amount of traffic going left, the other the amount of traffic going right, we did this for a set amount of time (10 minutes). Keeping the traffic count down with traffic restrictions makes the consumers feel safer and encourages them to explore more shops, thus spending more money. From our research we were right about the traffic restrictions there were virtually no vehicles that passed us in the 10-minute period that we were recording. All shopping centres should have strict traffic restriction, as they prevent accidents and encourage sales.
Hypothesis 5.) The flow of pedestrians will be towards the CBD
The direction of travel at the time we were investigating could have been mixed between morning shoppers leaving and afternoon shoppers arriving, the time was 1pm. I would have thought that at this time though, most people would be travelling to the city centre, for lunch, or just to the main areas of comparison shops just for bargain hunting. We did a pedestrian count in the same way that we did the traffic flow count. There was only a slight difference in direction, this could because of the above mentioned reason or it could be because the centre of York is accessible I two different directions as you can circle around onto another street to explore more shops. As it was a dull day people may have been moving to get out of the rain in no particular direction.
Hypothesis 6.)The advantages of shopping in the CBD overcome the Disadvantages
I would expect advantages of shopping in York to overcome the disadvantages. I know from experience that York is often very fully, if the disadvantages out weighed the advantages this would not be the case and York would almost certainly not be as big a city as it is. In the questionnaire there were questions about the pro’s and con’s of York. Many of the con’s were from locals about parking, this is why park and ride has been introduces from outside of the CBD, but a lot of the tourist didn’t have con’s. The advantages were recorded and most of them were about cleanliness. “There always seems to be someone cleaning”, said one woman. There are scarabs going around York each day, these are miniature dustbin vans.
Evaluation
On the day the weather was not to good, it was a dull, wet, and windy day. This meant that a lot of people were rushing and so avoided answering our questionnaires. The weather will have had a large effect on the pedestrian and vehicle counts and the questionnaire answers. The day, was a weekday, so many people will have been at work, and the time was 1-3pm this is usually a lunch break, meaning that this played havoc with the pedestrian flow, and direction of travel, as people were rushing back and forth from cafes and snack shops, in their lunch break. If I were to repeat this task, I would come on a Saturday, at either an earlier or later time, this would account for people on lunch breaks and the people working would be cut down, as it was a weekend. I would try to come on a day where the weather was better as well, a sunny, dry day where people would be lingering on benches and such, and would be more prepared to answer questionnaires. The weather played a key factor in our investigation, and should not be overlooked, there is no doubt that humidity and other weather factors such as pressure effect people, behaviour patterns alter dramatically depending on what the weather is like, or indeed a countries climate. As it was cold on the day we were in town people seemed to be moving in set directions and not wandering about too much, but on the day that I repeated the experiment in my local shopping area in Acomb, people were seen to be stopping to look in shop windows and walking back wards and forwards with no planned motion or direction.
There were also faults in the way we collected some of the data, in the way that when we were collecting data on the environmental survey, we had to give opinions on certain factors of the city, this data is obviously subjective but we had to give it a number to rate it, therefore changing it into objective data, this was hard because not everybody had the same views and we had to average out, thus making our results in accurate.
Another problem was our questionnaires, this wouldn’t have been such a problem if it wasn’t for the bad weather, the results we did get were rushed, and most people did not want to answer any questionnaires, because they did not want to get wet. Even though we had an umbrella people still did not feel like stopping.
People who stopped were mostly tourists or old people, as everyone else was in a rush because of lunchtime.
In Conclusion I feel that I have proved that York is a Regional Shopping Centre. York has met the criteria set by the hypothesis. I.e.:
Bullet list here.
Map Of York and surrounding area.
City centre of York
Bar chart to show Frequency of people visiting York.
Pie chart to show different methods of travelling to York
Bar chart to show purchases
Chart to show the sexes in the CBD
Chart to show estimated ages of people in CBD
