Visit to the central Business district of Kidderminster.

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Gurpreet Singh Bharaj 11.5                      GCSE Geography Coursework – Mr Phillips

              GCSE Geography Fieldwork Investigation

Introduction

   For my GCSE fieldwork we were required to visit the central Business District (CBD for short) of a town or a city. The town that I will investigate is called Kidderminster, and is located in Central England, near the Wyre Forest District in the countryside of Worcestershire on the Stour River. Kidderminster is just 19 miles south of Birmingham. It has a very industrial history and is known as the origin of the Carpet Industry. The carpet manufacturing industry was established in 1735. The population of the town is 54,644, which were recorded last in 1991.

Aim

My aim is to find out if the number of pedestrians increases in number when moving towards the CBD. Also another aim is that I will find out if Kidderminster has the same features as a CBD.

Predictions

I have made some predictions to accompany my aim.

  1. The closer you get to the CBD, the more shops there are present.

  1. As you get closer to the CBD, the population density will increase.

  1. The Shop and Environmental quality will increase, as you get closer to the CBD.

  1. The frontages will become smaller as you get closer to the CBD.

  1. There will be an increase in specialist shops as distance is shortened towards the CBD.

  1. As the houses near the CBD, they will become more nucleated.  

I believe in these hypothesizes because of many geographical factors present, which apply to most towns in MEDC’s. 

I also believe that this is the case as when you move further away from the CBD there are less shops and businesses for the people to shop at for their leisure.

  A CBD also consists of large variety of shops including department stores. These shops sell products of high quality and the fact that the shops are paced closely together adding competition for customers, the shops will use different tactics as Sales, special offers and Discounts, which in turn will attract more people. Shops that are located in the CBD usually are specialist shops, department stores and branches of national chains of companies.

A CBD also comprises of offices. This also adds to the number of people located in the CBD because of their jobs in the banks, building societies, company headquarters, insurance companies, solicitors and government offices. These offices are often occupied in high-rise offices blocks or in the upper floors of a shop or building. This is another factor in the number of people located in the CBD. As most shops close at night the number of people must surely decrease in the CBD.

The CBD also contains public services and culture and entertainment. These may include theatre, clubs, bars and restaurants. This will also result in less people being away from the CBD. Also, the environmental quality of the CBD is far better than further away from it, I have witnessed this when visiting Kidderminster.

The Burgess model shows that around the CBD you would expect to see factories and industry around the CBD. You can see that factory/industry is located just outside the CBD, and this is where most of the carpet industry started developing. For this reason, the government created a nucleated condition, so they could fit more people into the little space they had. So houses here should be in terraced conditions. From the industrial history of the area I can see that the low class residential will exist very close to the CBD. Find factories and industry. This is where I would expect to find the carpet industry located, as Kidderminster is famous for it. The low class residential would be people living in terraced houses, which are next to the factories and industry. I would expect this investigation to be starting off in the low class residential zone as it is starting near to the CBD.

From this model I can predict that as you go out of the CBD the land use will change from Factories to a low class residential area, which has old houses. As you go further out the land middle class and high-class houses would take up use.

Also that the high class houses would be bigger and as you go inwards you would expect the house sizes to go down since it goes to lower class so I would expect that as you go further in towards the CBD the frontages will get smaller.

This model suggests that there should also be a lot of middle-classed housing. These are semi-detached houses. These could be because of the amount of renewal that went on after the war. We should be able to see low-class housing and also light wholesale manufacturing at these points. Average newsagents can appear as well as a few eateries; however the most specialist shops are not available here. It is a more modern model of a town or city, which was designed because he thought that transportation links towards the CBD split up the different sections.

The CBD itself has a whole host of work opportunities such an offices, shops and restaurants. Also, there would be a great number of tall buildings because the land in the CBD is very expensive so people have smaller bases and build upwards. Because of high land values, there would be few houses in the CBD, as people could not afford them. Because more money is spent in a main area of Kidderminster, the environmental quality of the CBD is a lot higher than the Inner city, which was made mostly for employees in the industrial revolution. So “As you get closer to the CBD, there will be a greater amount of pedestrians”

From this model I can also predict that if you walk directly towards the CBD there will be one type of land use unless there are low class houses then factories.

Methodology

The field trip took place on Thursday 2nd October 2003 we travelled to Kidderminster.

I was assigned to the East Transect, which is located on the map attached. I firstly had to start off at Lea Street, which is a residential area that is situated South of the Northern Transect. We started in the inner suburbs because I needed to see the changes between the core of the CBD and the area outside the CBD.

We firstly had to describe the types of buildings that were situated there. This was at every transect route we had to stop at each survey point and gives scores for the environmental quality. The score was from a scale of 0 to 5, 0 as being no shops and 5 being dominated or mainly shops. This was from survey point A to C. Also, we had to measure the frontages of each building at each survey point. Frontage means the front part of a building, facing the street.

On Lea Street, my partner and me Manbir worked on one side of the road, and the other half of the group worked on the right side of the road. While working on one side of the road, we filled in the URBAN TRANSECT FIELD SHEET. This sheet included the following information:

  • Land Use Classification: - This was a sheet, which was provided in my fieldwork data booklet, which is attached. Each land use was what kind of service, shops and others were used in the area e.g.
  1. Department/ Variety stores/ Major chain stores
  2. Supermarkets etc

  • Building Name: - If the building did not have a name, which in some cases, houses on Lea Street did not have. The door number was filled in replace.

  • Type of Building: - This is obviously the type of building in which was analysed on the street. Most of this column was mainly terraced housing.

  • Frontages: -This is the number of paces that I have described before.
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The last three columns were used to fill in any additional comments such as the number of storeys, and the land use of upper storeys.

I commented on whether each house had double glazing, because that was common within the street, and I also commented on whether the houses had villa or bay windows, also the amount of storeys was also used. This sheet is attached overleaf.

There was also one more column to add any additional comments about each building along side Lea Street and round the corner onto Comberton Hill. There was a change of ...

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