To define the boundaries and location of the CBD in Altrincham

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Introduction

        When I went to Altrincham I was prepared for what I was going to do. I had also researched about Altrincham’s history. This helped when it came to defining the CBD as I already had a fair idea of where the centre was. What I found was from a web site. This research was found at – .

        

“The oldest part of the town is that around the Old Market Place and Church Street. The town became part of Trafford Metropolitan Borough in 1974 having, till then, been part of the County of Cheshire. Today, most of the town’s heavy industry has disappeared and much of Broadheath is now a Retail Park, housing Homebase, B+Q and other national stores. The railway link has also declined, with Altrincham now served only by an hourly service to Chester and Manchester (via Stockport). The town centre was redeveloped in the 1970’s and lies along the pedestrianised George Street and the Parallel Stamford New Road, which lead southward to The Downs, Hale and Bowdon. The Town’s old market hall survives, as does the covered market itself, which is sited between Market Street and Greenwood Street.

        Aim: My aim is to define the boundaries and location of the CBD in Altrincham. This was done by using my hypotheses and taking them to be true.

My definition of a CBD (Central Business District) is brought about by the main characteristics of a general CBD. These characteristics are:

  1. The CBD contains the major retailing outlets. The principal Department Stores and specialist shops with the highest turnover and requiring largest threshold populations compete for the prime sites.

  1. It contains a high proportion of the city’s main offices.

  1. It contains the tallest buildings in the city, mainly due to the high rents, which result for the competition for land.

  1. It has the greatest number and concentration of pedestrians.

  1. It has the greatest volume and concentration of traffic. The city centre grows at the meeting point of the major lines of communication into the city and therefore has the greatest accessibility

  1. It has the highest land values in the city.

This list of 6 things is also my prediction of what I expect to find in the CBD of Altrincham. These hypotheses are my thoughts and ideas about how Altrincham’s CBD can be defined.

Method

On the second of October, our school (The Grange School, Hartford) went on a fieldtrip to Altrincham. We were dropped off in what appeared to be the CBD. However our aim as a whole and individual was to define the location of the CBD. We were put into pairs, in which we were to count how many, specific buildings there were in out areas. Our ‘specific’ buildings included:

  • Newsagents (A)
  • Charity Shops (B)
  • Pubs (C)
  • Banks/Building Societies (D)
  • Jewellers (E)
  • Big Department Stores (F)
  • Shoe Shops (G)

After collecting our data in our pairs and noting the data down on our street maps of Altrincham. We split up in order to complete our main objective, to count each waling person (including wheelchairs but excluding children under 3) going past us in both directions in a certain amount of time. We did this ‘Pedestrian Count’ in 2 specific areas (see diagram). Each person had 2 sites but some sites were given 2 people. This was to ensure a more accurate result. Each count lasted 10 minutes and we recorded the data on special data sheets (see example) in tallies. We did these counts at certain times during the morning and afternoon. This was to see what would happen at different times during the day, when people were leaving. We also repeated these 4 times at each site, to give a bigger range and to give more reliable results.

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Diagram –

Example –

        Once we had completed this task wee took up out own tasks, e.g.

  • Counting no.’s of storeys on different types of buildings
  • Finding where derelict buildings were
  • Discovering if types of buildings were clustered together
  • Seeing what type of layout was (Nuclear, Linear or Dispersed).

We arrived back at school and sorted our data and tallies out. This showed us how accurate our ‘counting’ was (conferring with others).

        Along with our main aim I had other aims, these were:

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