Bangor Northern Ireland

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Contents

1 INTRODUCTION

2 DATA COLLECTION & PRESENTATION

3 DATA ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATION

4 CONCLUSIONS

5 EVALUATIONS

6 BIBLIOGRAPHIES


1

INTRODUCTION


1.1   INTRODUCTION

        

        Bangor is a town of approximately 80,000 people in County Down, Northern Ireland.  Bangor is on the east coast of Northern Ireland on the southern side of Belfast Lough.  It is a popular coastal town that has for many years been the tourist attraction of the area whether it is just for a day trip or a long weekend or even longer stays.  It has rail and bus links to Belfast / Londonderry / Portadown / Enniskillen and even as far as Dublin.  Bangor is also situated just 10 miles from George Best Belfast City Airport where aircraft come in from UK airports.  About 40 miles further on is the Belfast International Airport where travellers can fly in from further a field.

        Bangor grew up around the abbey founded in 586 by Saint Comgall, where the Antiphonarium Benchorense (an ancient manuscript) was written.  A copy of the manuscript can be seen today in the town’s heritage centre.  During the Dark Ages both the abbey and its university gained fame throughout the known world, but in the early 9th century a Viking attack saw some 900 of its monks slaughtered.  The modern abbey now stands on the Newtownards Road just outside the town centre, right on the corner of Castle Park.  The grounds include a small cemetery and cannon from the Amazon, a ship wrecked in nearby Ballyholme in 1780.

        The town (the third largest in Northern Ireland) is the site of a large marina (one of the biggest in Ireland).  It is primarily residential and can be viewed as a dormitory suburb of the Greater Belfast area, from which it is linked by the A2 road and a railway line.  Light industry also exists.  A notable building in the town is Bangor Old Custom House.

        The name Bangor from the town as we know it, was derived from the Gaelic name ‘Beannchor’ which is in turn derived from ‘beanna’ (peaks) and ‘chor’ (curve) which scholars presume to be Bangor Bay.  Irish place names link us with former inhabitants.  The meaning of the name ‘Bangor’ has often caused discussion.  For the ancients, the sea was the great highway.  Movement by land was difficult and dangerous.  So the theory that the name ‘Bangor’ comes from the shape of Bangor Bay’s headlands, in Irish ‘pointed like horns,’ is the most convincing.  It is easy to imagine the curraghs of trading peoples, or of missionary monks returning to their homeland, seeking safe landfall between the twin points of Bangor Bay.  

        Celts, pre-Celtic people, Vikings, Normans, English and Scots have all in turn passed through, settled in, worshipped in or fought over Bangor.

   


Population Demographics for Bangor from 1841 to 1991


This is Ballyholme Bay in the Victorian Times.

This is Ballyholme Bay today.

        

This is Dufferin Avenue in the Victorian Times.

        

This is Dufferin Avenue on the day of the Field Trip.

You can see that little has changed since the houses were built.

  1. The Project

This project is to determine where the Central Business District is in Bangor by assessing a number of criteria, namely;

  1. Land Use
  2. Building Height
  3. Rateable Value
  4. Pedestrian Flow
  5. Parking Restrictions

Bangor was chosen for this data collection because;

  • It is a compact town and easily covered on foot
  • There is a wide range of commercial activity
  • The streets selected seemed to cover the main commercial area
  • The data sheet could cover building heights, land use i.e. ease of collection
  • The rateable values were easily obtained from the rates office
  • Pedestrian flow could easily be obtained by a number of people at different locations at the same time.

        

        


The two Hypotheses which will be stated and subsequently investigated are:

Hypothesis (Null H0)

<< The CBD can not be delimited using the following criteria – land use, pedestrian density, parking restrictions, building heights and rateable values >>

Alternative Hypothesis (HI)

<< The central business district can be delimited using the following criteria - land use, pedestrian density, parking restrictions, building heights and rateable values >>

  1. Models

        There are two types of models which have been developed to describe the developmental profile of a town or city.  These are the Burgess and Hoyt models.  Each has their own way of showing the CBD of a town or city.  Burgess is a dartboard like shape with the CBD in the middle and Hoyt is a more detailed model with the CBD in the middle.  The following describes each model in more detail.

1.3.1   Concentric Model (Burgess) – Functional Zones

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Central Business District

     The innermost zone is the Central Business District (CBD).  In Chicago, Burgess identified this as being the area called the Loup in that particular city.  It is the core of the city – the centre of the commercial, social and civil life.  It is also the focus of routes and is therefore, in theory, the most accessible part of the settlement.  It includes the main theatres, cinemas, clubs, department stores, specialist shops, hotels and head offices of large companies.

Transitional Zones

     This is also called the Twilight Zone, which surrounds the central ...

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