All this is explained better in the diagram of the Burgess Concentric Ring Model below:
PLEASE TURN OVER FOR THE DIAGRAM OF BURGEES CONCENTRIC MODEL.
KEY
To start this coursework, I will create a 10 question questionnaire to ask people in Whitechapel, Upminster and Barking. The questions I will devise have to be relevant to the genus of information I would be finding out about to help me understand more about that certain area. The questions I ask will also be closed questions because although they are not the most efficient questions to answer, they are the quickest and easiest. The questions I have devised will require answers of a rating of 1-5. With 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest score. I have chosen to plan my questionnaire like this because I believe it is a good way as well as an easy way of getting a range of views from different people in these three different urban areas. I will also emit a street quality map assessment sheet which will help analyse certain streets in Whitechapel, Barking and Upminster. This, I believe will also help show what life is like on these areas and will help prove my hypothesis correct.
For secondary data collection I will also use the Internet to find informative data about each of the three wards of Barking, Upminster and Whitechapel. I will use the National Statistics website to help with this and get maps. The Statistics will help in improving the data I will produce and will also give me factual information of the quality of life of the three urban areas, allowing me with factual results to carry out my research. This will make sure that my statistical information is up to date to help me get good accurate results that will help me get the best marks possible for this coursework.
Average cost of housing in Upminster, Barking and Whitechapel
According to the questionnaire that I gave to people to answer, these are the averages of Upminster. I have worked out the averages, so that it would be much easer for me to compare with the other urban areas. .
According to the questionnaire that I gave to people to answer, these are the averages of Whitechapel. I have worked out the averages, so that it would be much easer for me to compare with the other urban areas.
According to the questionnaire that I gave to people to answer, these are the averages of Barking. I have worked out the averages, so that it would be much easer for me to compare with the other urban areas.
One of the informations I got when searching through the internet was a research carried out by Professor Mark McCarthy and Jake Ferguson in June1999. The title for this Research was:
Environment and health in London: a report to mark the 3rd European Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health and the Healthy Planet Forum.
This report describes environment and health in London using data that are publicly available.
STATISTICAL AND HEALTH WARNING
The data presented come from many sources, and differ in reliability and accuracy. We have used the most recent data available, and where possible for London, but sometimes the only data available are less recent or for larger areas - regional or national.
We have used environmental data as a framework for the report, and linked the health data. This does not imply that the environment causes all the diseases described: but these links are part of the reason for environmental concern. We provide a guide to the strength of the causal links in a table at the end of the report.
These are the notes that they put on their report. They also set out some questionnaire to give to people and they came out with the average results, they did their research on the whole of London, but I will only be dealing with the information of Upminster, Barking and Whitechapel.
PLEASE TURN OVER FOR THEIR RESULTS
1 QUALITY OF LIFE
1.1a WHERE WOULD YOU PREFER TO LIVE?
A national survey asked people to rank where they live in comparison with places elsewhere in England. People in outer London were more frequently positive about their environment than people living in inner London. Both personal circumstances and local characteristics affect the responses.
1.1b WHAT DO YOU THINK AFFECTS YOUR HEALTH?
A survey was commissioned by the to learn what Londoners believe has the greatest impact on their health. Poor air quality, and too much traffic, tops the list, followed by dirty streets. Smoking and lack of exercise are ahead of poor quality local health services
This was a general Preview and did not have anything to do with the London boroughs.
1.2a POPULATION DENSITY
London has a population of about 7 million. The inner boroughs have terraced housing built in the nineteenth century and public housing 'estates' built in the twentieth century. Outer London has lower density, typically semi-detached housing, privately owned and with gardens.
1.3a BIRTHS
Boroughs with the highest birth rates form a ring in London where accommodation is less expensive and where there are more families with young children. Outer London has a relatively older population, while central London has more single households and second homes.
1.3b DEATHS
Inner and east London have higher death rates than elsewhere in the capital. These are also the areas with more unemployment and social deprivation. [Standardised mortality ratios compare death rates adjusted for local population structures. The national average is 100, and boroughs with higher SMRs have higher death rates.]
1.4b POPULATION
Population changes by borough are balance of births and deaths, changes in residence, and migration.
1.5b UNEMPLOYMENT
The inner London boroughs have higher levels unemployment than outer boroughs. Yet two thirds of people who work in the City of London - the heart of London's financial services sector - live outside London altogether.
Other additional information I managed to collect to help me with this coursework was a street quality assessment sheet and an in depth interview with Mr. Jones which Toma Davies did with Jamie O’ Donnell and Jay Oram. In the street quality assessment, I did a summary of a few streets in Upminster, Barking and Whitechapel. Unsurprisingly the best quality streets belonged to Upminster due to their clean, well kept and well looked after streets. While Whitechapel came last, out of the three urban areas due to the visually polluted streets and well as well as very narrow streets. In Barking some streets were clean, well kept and had no traffic pollution, while some other streets mainly main streets had a lot of traffic pollution as well as a lot of visual pollution.
In the interview I conducted with Mr. Jones, I got a lot of very useful information about Upminster. He covered many key aspects that I required such as transport, crime, parks, education, shops, housing, jobs and health. On the transport aspect, he said that it was very good because of its useful train links to Fenchurch St and Romford. In addition, he said that the buses were very frequent and reliable. The only problem was that the roads are very congested after 5pm. When speaking on crime here that it is not perfect but that it is better than other areas in Havering. When speaking to him about the parks, he said that the parks were well kept, beautiful areas in the middle of the town and due to this, they are used a lot for cricket. On education, he said that in Upminster there were some very good schools noticeably, the Bell that is a primary school and a secondary school called Coopers .On shops, Shops are okay, old traditional shops have long existed, but it is difficult to attract big name shops because of high leases (Leasers are charging shop owners too much). On housing, he said that the housing was excellent and there were little or no council estates there. The downside though was that housing was quite expensive for young people. On jobs; not many jobs in Upminster, most people go to the city to get jobs because only pubs, schools and shops provide jobs. (This actually explains the reason why Upminster has the least population and Whitechapel has the Most).Finally, on health he said that the hospitals and surgeries were not as good as the ones in Old Church and Harold Wood. In addition, you had to travel very far to get treatment.
The second interview I conducted was with Mr. Shawn, who is a resident of Whitechapel. I asked him lots of questions on Whitechapel and he helped me with relevant facts.
I asked him what the Health was like and he gave the following answers; He said there is an NHS waiting centre, where you do need an appointment, there are quite lots of G.P surgery around, and he also talked about the hospital, (Royal London Hospital) the only one with the helicopter.
Education
There are several schools due to loads of students. There is a large Indian population, so students don’t really speak English as their first language. There are two technology schools that invest lots of money in their courses, all the schools are improving.
Crime
Burggery is quite a problem, lots of poor people, high rate of unemployment. There is probably going to be a high rate of crime, especially car crimes due to the high rate of unemployment. There are also things like vandalism in the night, if you are walking alone.
Transport
Local transport is very good, but traffic is a nightmare when in a car, three tube stations, working extremely well.
Local Environment
This is not really good, there lots of pollution from traffic, litters, bad gardens, e.t.c.
Housing
There is a wide selection of housing, but the quality of housing on a whole is not really fantastic. There are still old houses built in the world war times, and also block flats. It is a very historic area; the houses are what survived from the war. There are still ruins of the war e.t.c. But there is a little regeneration and refurbishing , the council are really working hard, this repairs are occurring because it is very close to the city and people are moving into the area frequently. (This was Mr. Shawn’s opinion to the repairs). The houses are really expensive, about £1000 a month for rent which is very expensive and the houses are not worth it, they are really not nice.
Shops
There are a big variety of shops. There is huge amount of take-away food shops (fast food shops). People can’t really afford expensive restaurants (Italian food).
Entertainment
There is just one cinema, but there is a big company taking over leisure parks in the area.
The first graph I created shows the average cost of housing in the three urban areas of Upminster, Whitechapel and Barking. It turned out that Whitechapel had the most housing of the three areas with an average price of a whopping £208,367. Barking did not even come close to Whitechapel as Barking’s average housing cost was a poor £93,748. This was more than half the average cost of housing in Whitechapel. However in Upminster the average cost of housing was £136,130. Although the average cost in Upminster was quite a lot it was still significantly some thousand pounds short of the average of Whitechapel which I found very surprising as well as interesting. This proves that Whitechapel has improved a lot in the last few years because of new ideas and development that are happening there. Also because a lot of people are moving there to work the cost of housing will definitely increase and the services will try to be improved.
The second graph I created was based on the questionnaire results of all the questions I asked put together. I added the total results together then found the average results based on the answers I got from each area. I was not really surprised with the results that I got back as it was pretty much was I had expected from the start. Upminster had the best results overall with 3.38 out of 5. Barking came next with 2.88 out of 5. Then last was Whitechapel with a paltry 2.57 out of 5. This proves that from the questionnaire the overall life is best at Upminster, while the worst is in Whitechapel. This proved my hypothesis correct and also the Burgess Concentric Ring Model right.
The third graph I created showed the level of good healthcare from the three urban areas. Upminster came top of the three areas with 72.6%. Then next was Whitechapel with 68.6%. Last of all the three urban areas was Barking with 65.5%. I think Upminster probably has the best healthcare because it is a wealthy area and they have the money to build the best hospitals and doctor’s surgeries. This will enable the people of Upminster to get the best health around. It is also a very clean neighborhood, so the transmissions of diseases due to dirty environment are very low, and also the crime rate in Upminster is very low compared to that of Whitechapel; so the death rate in Upminster is low.
The fourth chart I produced was a special type of chart called a doughnut chart. This chart was based on the overall crime rate in each of the three areas. Whitechapel had the lowest crime rate with 28%. While the highest crime rate was in Upminster with 40%. Second between Whitechapel and Upminster was Barking which had a crime rate of 32%, although this was slightly less than Upminster’s crime rate it was still significantly better than the crime rate in Upminster.
The last graph I produced was based on the no. of people that employed and unemployed in the three urban areas. Upminster had both the highest number of employed people 64% and the lowest number of unemployed people out of the three areas, 1.7%. Barking then came next with a slightly lower number of people who were employed, 56% and just a slight higher number of people who were unemployed with 4.5%. Last came Whitechapel with the lowest number of employed people 44.6% and the highest no. of unemployed people 6.3%.
The Informations I got form the internet as also really helped me in my research, it has given me lots informations on the three urban areas and I had a huge variety of results to compare.
The results I collected more or less proved my hypothesis correct. However, I was flabbergasted at a few of the results I got because some of them went versus my hypothesis. The first graph completely proved my hypothesis wrong. I predicted that Upminster would have the highest average price of housing and that Whitechapel would have the lowest. Nevertheless, Whitechapel turned out to have the highest average price of housing while Barking turned out to have the lowest. Although I found out later during my research, that Whitechapel had built a lot of new expensive housing to attract people to Whitechapel, and since there are lots of people there, the only normal thing to happen is for all prices upsurge.
The second chart/graph was about the overall results of my questionnaire and they proved my hypothesis correct. However, I thought that the average result I got for Upminster would be a lot higher than the one I received.
The third chart/graph I created almost proved my hypothesis right but it did not. I correctly predicted that Upminster would have the best healthcare. It thought this because it was a wealthy area and it would have the money to create good healthcare facilities. But I wrongly predicted that Whitechapel would have the worst healthcare because it came second ahead of Barking. After further research, I believe that Whitechapel had the second best healthcare because they had one of the best hospitals in England.
The fourth chart/graph which was about the crime rate completely proved my hypothesis erroneous. I thought that Upminster would have the lowest crime rate because a wealthy, conservative area, where there are no people, and all the unemployed people have moved to the city to work, would not tend to have a high crime rate. I also knew that Whitechapel would have the worst crime rate because it is a poor working class area and it would be bound to have a bad/high crime rate. In addition, Barking would be in between Upminster and Whitechapel because although its crime rate would be considerably worse than Whitechapel’s, it would not be worse than Upminster.
In the last chart/graph I conducted was about the no. of employed and unemployed people in the three urban areas. I correctly predicted that Upminster would have the highest no. of employed people and lowest no. of unemployed people because Upminster is an area of well educated and finically secure people. Other the other hand Whitechapel would have the lowest no. of employed people and the highest no. of unemployed people because not a lot of people in Whitechapel are educated and there are too many people there, compared to the job opportunities there. Again, Barking would be in between Upminster and Whitechapel because they have a lower unemployment number to Whitechapel and a better employment number to Whitechapel but it is lower than Upminster in both aspects.
I found collecting certain pieces for this coursework went well, such as me collecting my own results through rigorous and scrupulous research. I believe I found a good, sufficient and accurate amount to help me achieve high marks.
The main problems I encountered while I was doing this coursework was that when I actually set out to collect results from people on the streets for my questionnaire was I got shunned on numerous occasions. It nearly affected the outcome of my coursework results but I managed to triumph over it by collecting a few results from my friends whilst using a bit of basic erudition to improvise some of the results. The production of the data collected was also a main problem; it took me ages to get the information into correct data presentation and to produce accurate graphs, charts, e.t.c.
I could improve my coursework if I were to do it again; all I have to do is make sure that I got results from the people I interview on the streets and not get disillusioned if many people rejected my approaches for answers, Because I think the inappropriate informations I got from my colleagues is what proved my hypothesis wrong in graph four.
